“Dear God, but that’s where he’s lying . . . Vanya, you’re crying, aren’t you? Please don’t. Everything will be all right, it really will. We’ll see each other again, I promise you, and I’ll drink milk. Poor you, you’ve been through so much, and all I’ve done is talk about myself. Look at me, look at me, my dearest. Let me wipe your nose—and your eyes. Oh, my silly, my little one, how do you ever manage without me?”
And in the morning they parted.
14
THE 13TH Guards Rifle Division was passing through the village of Verkhne-Pogromnoye, on its way from Nikolaevka to the front line.
Transport had been provided, but there were not enough trucks for everyone. Battalion Commander Filyashkin called Lieutenant Kovalyov and told him that his company would have to go on foot.
“Will there be trucks for Konanykin’s men?” asked Kovalyov.
Filyashkin nodded.
“I see,” said Kovalyov.
He disliked Konanykin and was in the habit of drawing constant comparisons between his own company and Konanykin’s.
If the regimental commander congratulated him for achieving excellent results in a shooting exercise, he would ask the secretary, “And how did Konanykin do?”
If he was issued a pair of box-calf boots, he would ask, “That’s fine—but I hope you won’t be wasting boots like these on Konanykin. He can make do with kirza!”
If he was reprimanded because too many of his men developed blisters after a long march, his main concern was the percentage of men with blistered feet in Konanykin’s company.
The soldiers usually referred to Konanykin as Long-Limbs—he really did have unusually long legs and arms.
Kovalyov was upset that he and his men would be plodding through the dust when the rest of the division was being taken by truck. If anyone was to cover this distance on foot, it should, of course, have been Long-Limbs.
After Filyashkin had outlined the company’s route, Kovalyov said he expected to complete the march only an hour or so after the trucks.
“But it seems to be always like this, comrade Battalion Commander,” he added, when the official part of the conversation was over. “If anyone has to go on foot, it’s me. There always seem to be trucks for Konanykin.”
Shifting to a less formal tone, Filyashkin explained that it was because Kovalyov’s company—unlike the other companies—had still been on the west bank when trucks were being allocated. “But how are your men doing?” he asked. “Not too many blisters?”
“They’ll cope,” said Kovalyov. “If they must march, then march they will.”
He went and ordered the sergeant major to get the company ready, hurried to his billet to collect his things and say goodbye to the landlady, and then ran on to have a quick word with medical instructor Lena Gnatyuk.
The medical section were already in their truck, about to depart. Standing beside the truck, Kovalyov said, “I know Stalingrad. I spent a day there in June, on my way back from hospital. I stayed with a friend’s family.”
Leaning over the side of the truck, Lena Gnatyuk called out, “Good luck, comrade Lieutenant. Be sure to catch us up soon!”
The truck started off. Everyone began laughing and talking at once. Lena waved her hand toward the grey houses and called out, “Farewell, land of melons!”
Kovalyov’s company had only just crossed the Volga. They were given two hours to have something to eat and to change their foot cloths. Some of the men did not even receive their tobacco and sugar rations. Nevertheless, they set off shortly after the trucks.
After the first forty kilometres, everyone fell silent, no longer even dreaming aloud about shade or water.
By evening the column had grown long and straggly, extending several hundred metres from head to tail. Kovalyov had given permission to two soldiers, who were limping badly, to sit on top of the cart, on the baggage, and to three others to hold onto the edge of the cart.
The two men sitting on top were letting out constant groans; they also kept treating the carter to tobacco. The men staggering along beside the cart kept glaring at them and saying to the carter, “Throw them out! They’re faking—can’t you see?”
“That’s for the lieutenant to decide,” the carter replied.
Above a narrow bridge hung a sign, 10 TONS. Below a large plywood arrow pointing to the left were the words DETOUR FOR TANKS.
The driver of a three-axle truck honked desperately, wanting to overtake the column, but no one responded. The soldiers seemed oblivious to everything around them. The driver opened his door and leaned out, intending to call down furious curses on these deaf soldiers. Seeing their weary faces, he muttered, “Infantry—Queen of the Battlefield” and turned off to the left.
The two men at the head of the column were Vavilov and Usurov.
From time to time Usurov looked back at the men hobbling along in the dust behind him and smirked, enjoying his feeling of superiority.
Kovalyov was walking along the edge of the road, flicking the dust off the top of his boot with a long stick. In the cheery voice required of a commander, he asked Vavilov, “Well, my good fellow? How’s it going? Still on your feet?”
“We’re doing all right, comrade Lieutenant,” Vavilov replied. “We’ll get there.”
Senior Sergeant Dodonov came up and said, “Comrade Lieutenant, Mulyarchuk is undermining discipline. He’s demanding a halt.”
“Tell the political instructor to have a word with him,” said Kovalyov.
Usurov looked at the camels harnessed to carts beside the road, and said loudly, not looking towards Kovalyov, “So now we’re fighting alongside these snake-necked creatures. Look where our kolkhozes have got us!”
“Yes,” said Vavilov, “these creatures scare me too.”
Two men at the tail of the column were neither speaking nor looking around them. Their eyes were red and their lips cracked. They did not even feel exhaustion, since their exhaustion was too extreme, filling their sinews and veins, drilling into their bone marrow. They walked at a constant speed. Had they stopped for a moment, they would have found it almost impossible to get going again.
Then one of them grinned and said in Ukrainian, “There’s still someone behind us, you know. Our company joker’s limping along the other side of the bridge.”
And the other replied, “Yes, so much for our brave Rezchikov. I thought we’d lost him completely.”
“No, he’s still limping along.”
And they walked on in silence.
Towards evening Kovalyov declared a halt. He could barely stand upright. Everyone immediately lay down by the side of the road.
Coming the other way, from Stalingrad, were groups of refugees: men wearing hats and greatcoats, children carrying pillows, women staggering under heavy burdens.
“How far do you think you’re going to walk with all that?” a young soldier asked one of the women. She had a bundle strapped to her back, and a bucket and a large bag hanging against her chest. Walking behind her were three little girls with bags on their shoulders.
She stopped and looked at him. Brushing a lock of hair from her forehead, she said, “To Ulyanovsk.”
“You’ll never get to Ulyanovsk carrying all that,” said the soldier.
“And my children?” she replied. “I’ve no money, and they have to eat.”
“I call it greed,” said the soldier, remembering the night he’d thrown his gas mask into a ditch because it was hurting his shoulder. “People weigh themselves down with clutter, and then they can’t bear to throw it away.”
“You’re an idiot,” said the woman. Her voice sounded distant and lifeless.
The soldier she had called an idiot took a large piece of dry, crumbling bread from his knapsack. “Here you are!” he said.
The woman took the bread and began to cry. Her three little girls all had large mouths and pale faces. After looking quietly and seriously first at their mother, then at the soldiers lying on the ground, they too began to cry.
The family went on their way. The soldiers saw the mother breaking the bread with her free hand and sharing it out between the girls.
“She didn’t keep a crumb for herself,” said Zaichenkov, the former accountant.
“That’s mothers for you,” someone pronounced with authority.
Next, the soldiers saw the girls approach a small boy. He looked about three, he had a large head and stout little legs, and he was eating a huge, unwashed carrot, spitting out bits of earth. As if by prior agreement, the girls all stopped. One slapped the boy in the face, the second pushed him in the ribs, while the third snatched his carrot. Then the girls went on their way again, mincing along on their slim legs. The boy sat down on the ground and watched.
“And that’s solidarity for you,” said Usurov.
The soldiers took off their boots. The smell of sun-warmed worm-wood at once gave way to the smell of an army barracks.
Very few of them waited for the water to boil. Some dipped their cubes of millet concentrate in warm water and ate with slow concentration; others lay down and fell asleep straightaway.
“Sergeant Major,” asked Kovalyov, “are the stragglers all here now?”
“Here comes the very last,” replied Sergeant Major Marchenko, “our company entertainer.”
Instead of grumbling and complaining, as everyone expected, Rezchikov called out brightly, “Here I am. Engine and horn all in good order!”
Kovalyov looked at him and said to Kotlov, “These men are a tough lot, comrade Politinstructor. We’re almost keeping up with the trucks. They passed us only an hour ago.”
Kotlov moved away a little, sat down and began to pull off his boots—he had painful blisters.
Kovalyov sat down beside him and asked quietly, “Why do you not conduct political work on the march?”
Kotlov examined his bloodstained foot cloths and replied angrily, “The soldiers were all telling me to get onto the cart. They could see the state of my feet. But I marched on and I even sang songs and got the men to join in—that was my political work for the day.”
Kovalyov looked at the stains of black blood and said, “I told you, comrade Politinstructor, that you needed boots a size larger. But you took no notice.”
Then Rysev came up and said, “That was easy going—we were marching light. Now imagine doing that with thirty kilos on your back, with a mortar or an anti-tank rifle, and cartridges. But people manage.”
Those who had not gone to sleep straightaway were now drifting off. The others were gradually waking, rummaging in their knapsacks and taking out pieces of bread.
“I could do with some fatback,” said Rysev.
“Fatback!” said Marchenko. “If only we could be back in Ukraine! Here the sun’s burnt everything black. Villages, huts, even the earth—all black as coal. And as for these camels! When I think of our village, our orchards, our river, our girls singing under the trees in the meadows . . . And then I look around and all I see is this steppe, and huts that look like tombs . . . It chills my heart—it’s as if we’ve reached the end of the world.”
An old man came up to the soldiers. He was wearing a coat and galoshes and carrying a bright red oilcloth bag. He smoothed down his white beard and asked, “Where are you lot retreating from?”
“We’re not retreating, Grandad. We’re on our way to the front.”
“We’re advancing,” said Marchenko.
“Oh yes,” said the old man. “I’ve seen how you lot advance. Another month of your advancing—and the war will be over. If it isn’t already.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Well,” said the old man, “you’ve reached the Volga. Where are you going to fight now? Fritz won’t want to go any further. What would he want with land like this?” And he gestured towards the sea of grey and rust-brown all around him.
He took a slim pouch from his pocket and began rolling an extremely slim cigarette. There was more paper in it than tobacco.
“Can you spare us a few crumbs?” asked Mulyarchuk.
“Not likely,” the old man replied—and returned the pouch to his pocket.
This angered Usurov. “And who might you be?” he asked. “Let’s see your papers!”
“No! You can ask me that in the city. But a man doesn’t need documents out in the steppe.”
“You can’t do without documents. Without documents a man doesn’t exist.”
“To hell with you. Go ask those there goats for their documents,” said the old man. And off he went into the steppe—tall, unhurried, shuffling through the dust in his galoshes. Turning round for a moment, he added, “Woe to those living on earth!”
“He should be detained,” said Marchenko.
“No getting any baccy out of him,” said a soldier.
Everyone laughed.
“Soft in the head. Did you see his galoshes?”
“What d’you mean? He spoke good sense.”
“I’ve heard our divisions have been putting up a good fight. On the Don, I think. It took Fritz by surprise. Only he found a way to outflank them.”
“The sight of this steppe makes my heart ache.”
“I’ve never seen anything like it. The sun rises—and everything looks white. You think it’s snow, but it’s salt. Yes, it’s a bitter land.”
“The way the camels twist their lips, it’s as if they’re laughing at us, thinking, ‘You idiots!’”
“These Germans are quite something.”
“No, they’re not. Wait till you’ve met them. We put them to flight at Mozhay all right. When they’re pushed, they run faster than we do.”
“Oh yes. That’s why we’re here with the camels.”
“A march like this—and you don’t want to go on living. But you don’t want to die either.”
“Think the war cares what you want?”
“Go on, Rezchikov, tell us a story.”
“First, a smoke.”
“No. Story first, then the smoke. Otherwise you’ll fob us off with some old chestnut. It’ll be ‘Give us a drink, Granny,’ said the soldier. ‘I’m so hungry there’s nowhere to lie down for the night.’”
“No,” Rezchikov replied abruptly. “This is no time for stories. I tell you—we’ll fight them off. Yes, we will! Then we can drink and feast all we want!”
“Very good,” said a serious voice. “But we’re not feasting now. Let’s at least get some sleep. And look—look at all that!”
And they all looked in the direction of Stalingrad. The sky was covered by dense, billowing smoke—dark red from the blaze below and the setting sun.
“Our blood,” said Vavilov.
15
A CHILL, pre-dawn wind stirred the grass, raising clouds of dust over the road. The steppe birds still slept, puffing up their feathers. After the heat of the day and a warm night, this chill was unexpected.
To the east the sky turned pale grey. The faint light was hard, cold, somehow metallic. It was not true sunlight, only sun reflected off clouds, and it seemed more like the dead light of the moon.
Everything about the steppe seemed hostile. The road looked grey and bleak. It was impossible to imagine peasant carts creaking slowly by, children running along in bare feet or people on their way to weddings and cheerful Sunday bazaars—this road seemed made only for guns, trucks loaded with crates of shells and soldiers going to their death. The telegraph poles and haystacks still hardly cast shadows; it was as if an artist beginning a new painting had sketched them in with a hard black pencil.
There were no real colours. Instead of the brown-green of grass, the yellow-green of hay and the river’s cloudy pale blue, there was only dark and bright—much as at night, when black objects stand out only because they are still blacker than their surroundings. The soldiers all had pale faces, dark eyes and sharp noses.
Those already awake were smoking or rewinding their foot cloths. Their exhaustion was now giving way to apprehension, to an awareness that they would soon be in combat. One mo
ment this felt like a cold lump under the heart, another moment like a blast of heat in the face.
A tall woman with narrow shoulders and a thin face walked quietly up to the men and put a wicker basket down on the ground.
“Here you are, my boys!” she said, and began handing out tomatoes.
No one thanked her or seemed in the least surprised. Everyone simply took the tomatoes, as if they were a part of their regular rations.
The woman was equally silent. She watched the soldiers eat.
Kovalyov went up to her, reached into the empty basket and said, “My eagles have cleaned you out.”
“My hut’s close by, just behind that mound,” said the woman. “Come along and I’ll give you some more.”
Kovalyov smiled; it had clearly never occurred to her that a lieutenant cannot simply stroll about the steppe carrying baskets of tomatoes. He called out to Vavilov, “Here, accompany this citizen back to her hut!”
Vavilov and the woman set off. They walked side by side, their shoulders occasionally touching. Vavilov found this upsetting. It made him think of his last night at home, of how Marya had walked beside him in the same dawn light. The woman was in her early forties and she reminded him of Marya in many ways. Her height, her gait, even her voice—all were similar.
She said quietly, “Yesterday we saw a German plane. I had some soldiers here with me. They’d been wounded, but not severely. All of a sudden the plane dived straight at the hut, straight as a spear. Those lads could have brought it down, but they just hid in the long grass. I stood in the middle of the yard, shouting, ‘Quick! Go for it—I can almost knock the bastards down with my poker!’”
“Why do you give us tomatoes?” asked Vavilov. “We’ve brought the Germans all the way to the Volga, right to your doorstep. You shouldn’t be feeding us—you should be cursing us, driving us off with your poker.”
They entered the warm half-dark of the hut. When Vavilov glimpsed the fair head of a small boy, his heart almost missed a beat. The stove, the table, the seat by the window, the thin-faced woman now looking straight at him, the sleeping bench and the fair head of the boy just getting up from it—everything seemed so familiar he could almost have been back home.
Stalingrad Page 86