Stalingrad

by Vasily Grossman

  “Why’s that?” asked the man in spectacles.

  “There have been cases of measles,” said Motorin. He coughed guiltily.

  “This is the ninth day they’ve been closed,” Ivan added.

  “That’s a long time,” said the man in spectacles. Frowning a little, he asked, “And just what is this malfunction? Is it really necessary to sign some protocol? Wouldn’t it be better simply to sort out what’s wrong?”

  Looking at Ivan, he said, “Sit down, take the weight off your feet!”

  Feeling annoyed with Yazev, Ivan said, “How can I? The master of the house hasn’t yet asked me to.”

  “Sit down! You too are a master of the house!”

  Ivan glanced at Yazev, shook his head, and smiled so slyly that everyone present began to laugh.

  Ivan disliked the mine director. He remembered their very first hours in these parts: the bitter cold as they got out of the train; the snow squeaking, almost squealing underfoot; Inna sitting on their bundles of belongings, enveloped from head to toe in a wadded blanket and holding little Masha in her arms; newly kindled bonfires in a hollow not far from the railway; and Yazev standing beside his car in a white sheepskin coat and tall white boots while everyone crowded around him. The workers had just learned that their barracks were not yet properly set up and they were questioning him anxiously: What had happened to the stoves he had promised them? How, in the middle of the night, with their cases and bags, were they to get their young children to walk the eight kilometres to the settlement? Yazev had replied with fine words about the deprivations of wartime, the need to make sacrifices and what life was like now for soldiers on the front line. Coming from a man like Yazev, these words had sounded false. There had been a cold, distant look in his eyes and he had been wearing thick mittens embroidered with little fir trees. And his car had been full of parcels and packages, all neatly made up and carefully fastened.

  Early in the morning, as Ivan approached the half-finished barracks, with two heavy bundles over his shoulder, supporting his wife with one arm and holding little Masha wrapped in her blanket in the other, a three-tonner loaded with furniture and household utensils had passed by. It had been only too obvious who this furniture must belong to.

  That had been over nine months ago, and Ivan had had no face-to face encounters with Yazev since that day. Nevertheless, his sense of antipathy towards him had not abated, and he stored away in his memory every little thing that fed this antipathy. What upset Ivan most was Yazev’s general lack of feeling; he simply took no interest in his workers. Everyone agreed that it was impossible to get to see him—and that, even if you did, no good ever came of it. Not only would he refuse your request but he would also yell at his secretary, “Has the war suddenly come to an end or something? Why are you letting people bother me with such trivialities? What about improving productivity? Why does no one come to consult me about that?”

  In any enterprise there are, of course, a small number of people who like to bother their bosses with stupid and pointless requests. But for the main part people turn to a factory or workshop director only when they are desperate. And anyone who knows anything about workers’ lives understands the importance of their seemingly minor requests. Instructions to the nursery to take in a little child, a transfer from a bachelor barrack to a family barrack, permission to go to the boiler room and fill a jug with water that has been boiled, help with moving an elderly mother from her village to a workers’ settlement, changing the store where you’re registered so you don’t have to walk so far to pick up your rations, permission to take a day off work so you can accompany your spouse to a city hospital for an operation, a request for a coal bunker—these things may appear trivial and tedious, but a worker’s health and peace of mind depend on them, and so, therefore, does his or her productivity.

  Looking at Yazev’s calm, handsome face, Ivan felt ill at ease. He might be a competent director, but Ivan still didn’t like him.

  Ivan said quietly to Masha, “Let’s put you here.” And he moved her a little, so that Yazev’s bright, cold eyes could no longer see her.

  Georgy Andreyevich, the pale, bespectacled representative of the State Defence Committee, said, “Comrade Novikov, I have a few questions for you.”

  The general in the frayed jacket—evidently the director of the military factory—sighed loudly and said, “Really there’s only one question. The new seam needs to be opened up and exploited without delay.” Leaning against the desk and staring straight at Ivan, he went on, “Ahead of schedule, we have completed the construction of a factory that will produce armour plating for tanks. According to the plan, it is you who should be supplying us with both coal and coke. But you are failing to do this. We need your coal today, but the seam has not even been opened yet. You are late.”

  “On the contrary,” said Yazev. “We are not behind with the plan—we are, in fact, overfulfilling it. The new seam will be opened on schedule.” Turning to Lapshin, the director of the coal trust, he added, “That’s right, isn’t it? You provided me with the plan, and I am fulfilling it.”

  Nodding in agreement, Lapshin replied, “The works are on schedule. The mine is fulfilling the plan.” Turning to the general, he said crossly, “That’s no way to speak to people, comrade Meshkov! We have objective documentation, approved by the Party organs.” He then glanced at the obkom secretary and said, “Isn’t that so, Ivan Kuzmich?”

  Ivan Kuzmich, however, replied, “All that you say is true. Except that there is a problem. You’re not keeping up with General Meshkov. He really does need the coke—and he needs it today.”

  “I understand,” said Lapshin. “But who is to blame? And what are you saying? Are we overfulfilling—or underfulfilling—the plan? Which is it?”

  “Who is to blame?” asked General Meshkov, standing tall and looking more than ever the warrior. “Clearly, Meshkov is to blame. No doubt about it. Meshkov’s to blame for everything. And—along with Meshkov—the navvies who dug the foundation pits, the concrete layers, the bricklayers and electricians, the fitters and punchers, the riveters and welders, the entire working class, it appears. So don’t hang back, comrade Yazev and comrade Lapshin—take us to court for constructing the factory in half the time decreed by the plan!”

  Looking at the other men’s laughing faces, Yazev frowned and said, “Comrade General, you may soon be named a Hero of Socialist Labour,60 but that doesn’t make it any more possible for the mine to give you coal today. Here is a worker, a senior brigade leader, a shaft sinker. Ask him what he thinks! He’ll tell you that the workers are going all out, putting their heart and soul into the work—but that they cannot do more. In spite of everything, they are still only human. The mine cannot give you coal today.”

  “And when can it give me coal?”

  “In accordance with the plan—at the end of the fourth quarter of 1942.”

  “No,” said Ivan Kuzmich, “that’s not acceptable.”

  “Then what is to be done?” asked Lapshin. “The entire schedule, the provision of labour, materials and workers’ rations—everything has been calculated in accord with the plan. And we didn’t just dream this plan up. I ask a great deal of Yazev, but I can’t provide him with qualified cadres. I have to speak frankly. And where can he find them himself? In the taiga? We have no borers, rippers or timbermen. And even if we did, Yazev would be unable to provide them with jackhammers and power drills. And even if we had the jackhammers and power drills, we’d still be constrained by the insufficient capacity of the compressor pump and the power station. So tell me—what is to be done?”

  Georgy Andreyevich took off his glasses and studied the lenses. “Comrade miners,” he said, “the questions you keep asking are those that once preoccupied our revolutionary intelligentsia: ‘Who is to blame?’ and ‘What is to be done?’”61

  He put his glasses back on and looked around him; his eyes were now both sombre and penetrating. “Questions of guilt and blame are for the public pr
osecutor to determine. But rather than trouble him needlessly, let us agree upon a new schedule for the exploitation of this deep-lying seam. We have only one plan, and it is a very simple plan: to defend the independence of the Soviet state.” With sudden force, he added, “Understand? This is a simple plan—and it has not been dreamed up on a whim. Please reorganize your schedule in accord with this plan.”

  Just then an elderly cleaner came in, bringing a teapot and glasses.

  Turning to Motorin, Georgy Andreyevich said, “It’s horribly smoky in here—harmful to a child’s lungs.” Then he looked at Masha and said, “Perhaps you should go outside for a while, with Auntie?”

  Masha was feeling bored and unhappy. She had heard more than enough about coal horizons, jackhammers, power drills and compressor pumps. Her father was always saying things like: “Where can I find timbermen?”; “The compressor pump isn’t powerful enough”; “For rock like this we need heavy-duty jackhammers.” And now she was hearing the same long, difficult words here. She yawned and said, “It’s not harmful here—it’s boring.”

  She held out her hand to the cleaner and made as if to leave the room. When she got to the door, she stopped and looked quickly round at her father, as if unsure of her rights and wanting to reaffirm them.

  As for her father, he too was finding this discussion difficult. On the face of it, Yazev had said exactly what he wanted to say himself. All the same, he found himself wanting to disagree. Yazev’s reasons for arguing with the general were personal; he did not feel the least real concern for the workers whose efforts to fulfil the plan he had described with such eloquence.

  Then Yazev turned to Ivan and said, “Let’s ask comrade Novikov, one of our best shaft sinkers, how he gets his work done without a single experienced worker to call on. His brigade is made up of housewives, young lads from a technical school and kolkhoz workers who had never before set eyes on a mine, let alone helped sink shafts. Really I think we should all go down to the pit bottom, so you can see for yourselves the work that Novikov’s doing. He’s performing miracles! And you should see what kind of people he has for muckers and trammers. I saw one of his trammers just now—a Pole by the name of Braginskaya. She’s in poor health. Her husband, a former office worker, was killed at the front. She was born and bred in the city and she’s never even dug a garden before, let alone worked down a mine. How much can you ask of a woman like her? All these things must be taken into account, Georgy Andreyevich. You yourself have praised my work. My achievements have been noticed by the State Defence Committee. If I undertake to fulfil the plan, then that’s what I do. And so, for all these reasons I’m not afraid to ask you to reconsider your proposal. But first, let’s hear what our shock-worker has to say.”62

  Ivan had noticed a frown on Georgy Andreyevich’s face as he listened to Yazev. Abruptly, Yazev added, “And let me tell you straightforwardly, Georgy Andreyevich—there’s no need to preach at me. I understand that war is war. On our first day here, in December 1941, in the bitter cold, when our first train was unloaded onto the snow, I told everyone that this war requires sacrifices of them. And I am capable of reminding people about this—no one has ever called me soft-hearted.”

  Then General Meshkov turned to Ivan. In a very different tone, as if the two of them were old friends, he said, “We’re in the same position as you are, comrade Novikov. Our workforce is the same mix—a few experienced workers, and a great many housewives and recruits from elsewhere. But it’s not a matter of how things are for me and my factory. What matters is that new tank corps are being formed. I saw the commander of one of these new units only the other day.” Speaking more slowly and with emphasis, he continued, “My God, when I think of what is at stake in this work . . . But I must press on—yes, that’s what the Party requires. All Yazev says is true and just. But we have no choice.”

  Then Georgy Andreyevich said, “Comrade Ivan, what do you think?”

  In the course of only a second Ivan Novikov remembered what seemed like dozens of important things he wanted to say. He wanted to give vent to his anger with Yazev: How could he speak about Braginskaya with such feeling, yet refuse to help place her son in a boarding school? How could he tell his workers that they must remain in unheated barracks while installing such fine stoves in his own apartment? Ivan wanted to say that the workers’ rations were inadequate, that many of them had to live in damp dugouts and that by the end of the shift some could hardly stand upright. He wanted to describe the young soldier he had seen being buried at a small station in the Urals. He had died in a hospital train, been carried out on a stretcher and buried in frozen ground; he had looked like a fledgling. Ivan wanted to talk about his love for his daughter and how she kept falling ill here, unable to cope with the Urals climate. He wanted to say how his father had lain dying, hoping that Pyotr, his younger son, would be able to come and see him one last time. But Pyotr had been unable to obtain leave from his unit. He hadn’t been able to say goodbye to his parents’ grave—and now it was being trampled on by the Germans.

  His heart was beating fast. He had a lot to say—and these men would listen to him.

  Quietly, slowly, he said, “I think we can do it. Give us our new plan.”

  50

  A HEAVY battery lamp in one hand, Ivan was walking towards the pithead. It was late in the evening and he had just been to the office to collect his work order. Before that, while he was still at home, something astonishing had happened. Just as Inna predicted, he received news from his brother. His gasp of joy as he read the telegram had been so loud that it woke Masha. He had been feeling more and more anxious, wondering whether or not Pyotr was still alive—and now here he was, not far away, and perhaps about to come on a visit.

  The patch of light from his lamp floated along beside him. Coming from the bathhouse, the office and the lamp cabin were hundreds of other swaying patches of light, all moving towards the pithead. A second stream of swaying lights—miners who had just come off shift—was flowing in the opposite direction, away from the pithead. Few people were talking; everyone was getting ready, each in their own way, to part from the earth’s surface. However much someone may love working underground, these last moments before the descent always plunge them into a silent, meditative state; we are all attached to our everyday world and it is hard for us to leave it for even a few hours.

  The swaying lights all told their different stories. A constellation of five was clearly a single brigade, each member behaving the same above ground as underground. One light, a little ahead of the others, was the brigade leader; then came three keeping close together; then one who seemed to be flitting about—falling behind, hurrying along and overtaking the others, falling behind again . . . This was probably some young lad in boots too big for him, half-asleep one moment and then trying to get a grip on himself. Next came a dotted line of solitary lights. Then a number of pairs—friends walking side by side, exchanging a few words, then falling silent. They would enter the cage together and go their separate ways underground. At the end of the shift, they would meet again at pit bottom, their teeth and the whites of their eyes gleaming in the dark.

  •

  A shining cloud flows out of the lamp cabin. Moving faster and faster, it spreads and fragments. At the pithead a new dense cloud has taken shape, pulsing and breathing, then slipping through doors that can’t be seen in the dark. Up above in the autumn sky the stars gleam and twinkle, and there seems to be some link, some warm living connection between the lights of the miners’ lamps and the stars’ pale flickering. No wartime blackout has darkened the stars.

  One hot summer night many years ago, Ivan had gone with his parents to a neighbouring pit. His mother held little Petya in her arms; his father was lighting the way, gently swinging his miner’s lamp; Ivan was walking behind them. When his mother said she was exhausted and that she couldn’t go on carrying such a weight, his father said, “Vanya, you hold the lamp—and I’ll hold little Petya.” But it was now many years si
nce the death of their parents—and little Petya had become an imposing, taciturn colonel, and Ivan could no longer remember why they had all been walking to this other pit. To a wedding? Or because his grandfather was dying? But his memory of first touching the oil lamp’s rough hook—of the lamp’s weight and its quiet, living light—was as clear and vivid as ever.

  He had been so short that he had had to bend his arm at the elbow—otherwise the lamp would have knocked against the ground.

  •

  All that could be seen in the dark was these swaying lights. It is possible that, during this thoughtful silence before the descent, everyone was dimly remembering moments from long ago and then thinking about the present day and the war, aware that childhood memories were now inseparable from the graves of loved ones.

  Ivan went up to the cage. Instead of the freshness of the autumn night, he felt on his face the soft, dank breath of the mine.

  People watched in silence as the greasy cable, gleaming in the electric light, slid quietly up out of the black gloom of the shaft. Gradually the cable began to slow, yellow-brown patches of oil separating from the silvery white of the spiralling metal thread. Still more slowly the cage itself emerged from the gloom; the bright eyes of men and women returning to the surface in wet, dirty tarpaulin overalls met the eyes of those about to go down.

  Those who had just come up sensed the night’s freshness mingling with the close air of the mine. Tired of hanging over the abyss, they waited impatiently for the banksman to release them, to let them set foot again on the earth.

  “Eight young lads, eight lasses,” said Devyatkin, who was standing beside Novikov. Latkov laughed and shouted, “Off to the registry office with them!”

  Ivan had noticed that those new to pit work always found it impossible to stay calm as they prepared to go down. Latkov, sullen, wrinkled Kotov, the usually serious Devyatkin—all betrayed their agitation in one way or another. Latkov cracked jokes, in a loud voice clearly not that of someone simply feeling relaxed and happy. Kotov, on the other hand, always fell silent, looking down at the floor, as if saying, “This is a bad business, and there are sights best left unseen.”