Sometimes the men running towards Kovalyov seemed mere cardboard figures, harmless and with no will of their own; sometimes he had a clear vision of men seized by the horror of death. Sometimes not only his mind but his whole body—legs, arms, shoulders and back—would sense that these men, no matter how great their numbers, had only one aim, that they were moved by a frenzied determination to reach the small pit by an overhanging wall where a Red Army company commander lay hidden, concussed, covered in blood, his index finger aching from the stiff trigger of his sub-machine gun. Then he would feel tense and furious; his breath would come only in short gasps and everything would disappear except for his tally of bullets, his thoughts about the new magazine lying beside him and his concern about how far the German soldiers might run while he was reloading: Might they reach the crooked pole with strands of wire hanging down from it? Might they even get to the shack with no roof?
Kovalyov shouted, and his voice merged with the sound of his sub-machine gun. It seemed as if it were his own hands, and the fury within him, that were making the barrel so hot.
Now and again the tension would let up. There would be a glimpse of clear blue sky and a sudden silence—not the feverish silence, worse than the thunder of guns, that heralded a German attack, but a peaceful, restorative silence he wanted to last forever.
And then a random, or not so random, memory would flash to the surface of his mind. It was early in the morning and a young girl with pale bare arms was rinsing her linen on the bank of a river; on her left arm he could see a slight scar from a smallpox vaccination. She had twisted a wet sheet into a rope and was beating this rope against a dark wooden board. Each blow gave rise to multiple echoes and sent sparkling waterdrops flying into the air. The girl glanced at Kovalyov; her half-open lips were smiling, but there was something challenging in her eyes. He could see her breasts sway as she bent forward and straightened up again, and he could sense the living warmth of her body, along with the smell of young grass and cool water. She was aware how greedily he was looking at her, and this both pleased and upset her. She liked him, and somehow it was both strange and funny that the two of them were so very young.
And then another memory. Lieutenant Shaposhnikov, his pale, thick-lipped travelling companion from only a few months ago, was lying on an upper bunk in a railway carriage. He was coughing, trying to smoke but not knowing how, holding one hand beneath his cigarette to stop the ash falling onto the passengers sitting on the lower bunk. And then the two of them were sitting at a table with a rich spread of food, in a wealthy city apartment, in this same Stalingrad—this same “inhabited point”—somewhere to the north-east of the little wall he was now lying beneath, and a beautiful young woman was looking at him with amusement. Several other people were also looking at him: a stout military doctor with a major’s bars on her collar tabs; two old men—one with a large nose and a broad forehead, the other with thick black hair and a rather sullen expression; and a dark-eyed, twitchy young man who had recited some poems. He had copied them down in his exercise book.
These people had been kind and charming, but he now felt both irritation with them and an uncertain sense of his own superiority over them.
If that beautiful woman with the pearl-white neck could see him now, she would understand why he’d got so upset and angry. What they had been talking about was death—nothing less than death. No one at that table had had the right to make silly, clever jokes about the Red Army’s long retreat. The way they’d looked at him as if he were a child, the condescending tone of their questions. As if all they could see was that he was from a village, that he was still young and that he’d only just graduated from his training course.
His heart and soul, however, really were those of a child. His experience of life, his dreams and anxieties, his moments of rudeness, his clear faith and his doubts—everything about him was still adolescent. And he was now living through a bitter, merciless fulfilment of his adolescent dreams. In the last hours of his life he had grown up; he had become the stern, unshakable figure he had so longed to see when, long ago, before going to bed, he had frowned enigmatically into a little pocket mirror backed with crinkly red paper. And his new strength and manliness would have been evident to anyone who could see him—not only to his friends and fellow villagers, not only to his mother and the girl who had once given him a photograph stamped “with a passionate kiss,” but even to his fiercest enemies.
Wanting to share his feelings with some other person, wanting to save them from being lost forever, Kovalyov took out his little exercise book, touched the photograph wrapped in cellophane and glanced at the poems copied in a large beautiful hand by a young man who was now someone else. He pulled out a sheet of paper and began to write a report.
1130 HOURS, 20-09-42.
REPORT
To Guards Senior Lieutenant Filyashkin.
The current situation:
The enemy is constantly on the offensive, trying to surround my company and to infiltrate sub-machine-gunners behind our lines. He has twice sent tanks against our positions, but his attacks have been repelled. Not until they can trample over my dead body will the Fritzes achieve their aim. My guardsmen are standing their ground, ready to die the death of the brave but not to let the enemy through our defences. Let the whole country know of the heroism of the 3rd Rifle Company. While the company commander is alive, not one of the fuckers will pass. They’ll have to wait until the company commander is killed or seriously wounded. The commander of the 3rd Company now finds himself in a difficult situation. He is unwell, physically weak and suffering from loss of hearing. His head spins. There is bleeding from his nose and he keeps falling to the ground. In spite of everything, the 3rd Guards Rifle Company is not retreating. We shall die as heroes, for the city of Stalin. May the Soviet land prove to be the enemy’s grave. I trust not one of these vermin gets through. The 3rd Company will give all its Guards’ blood for Stalingrad. We will be the heroes of the city’s liberation.
Having signed the report and folded it in four (while he was writing, the white paper turned dark brown from the blood on his palm), Kovalyov called Rysev and said, “Deliver this to the battalion commander!”43
Then he opened a small metal locket hanging on a chain around his neck. It was a present from his parents, in case he was seriously wounded or killed. Above the official details—name, rank, position, unit, address and blood group, he wrote, “Whosoever dares examine the content of this medallion, I ask him to direct it to my home address. My sons! I’m in the next world. May you avenge my blood. Forward to victory, my friends, for the motherland, for the glorious cause of Stalin!”
Kovalyov was not even married and he had no idea why he wrote to sons who did not exist. But he needed to. He wanted a sombre, honourable memory of him to endure in the world. He was a husband of the war. He did not want to accept that the war was cutting his life short, that he would never know fatherhood or be a husband to a woman of his own. He was writing these words a few minutes before his death. He was struggling for his own future time. Aged only twenty, he did not want to yield to death. Here too he remained stubborn, determined to conquer.
Rysev returned from the battalion command post, surprised to be still alive.
“There’s no one there, comrade Lieutenant,” he reported. “There’s no one to hand the report to. Everyone’s dead. There’s not a single messenger left.”
But Rysev was unable even to hand the report back. Kovalyov lay dead, his chest on his kitbag, his hand on his loaded sub-machine gun.
Rysev lay down beside him and took hold of the sub-machine gun, nudging Kovalyov’s body a little to the right with one shoulder. He could see that the Germans were getting ready to attack again. They were gathering in small groups, darting behind burnt-out tanks and gesticulating to one another. As well as the sound of shell bursts, he could now hear, coming from somewhere off to the side, the busy rattle of their sub-machine guns.
Rysev counted the remaining
grenades and took a quick look at Kovalyov. He could see a short dark notch on his forehead, between his eyebrows. The wind was catching his fair hair. His eyes were half hidden beneath his delicate eyelashes and he was looking sweetly and knowingly down at the ground, smiling at something that he alone knew, that no one but he would ever know.
“Instantaneous—on the bridge of the nose,” Rysev said to himself, appalled by death’s swiftness, yet also envious.
46
KOVALYOV was the last of the commanders to be killed, forty-eight hours after the battalion had captured the railway station.
The sergeants, too, were also nearly all either dead or seriously wounded.
Paralyzed by fear, Senior Sergeant Dodonov lay flat on the ground. No one spoke to him or took any notice of him.
Sergeant Major Marchenko also lay motionless, blood flowing from his nose and ears; he had been severely concussed by the same shell that had killed Kovalyov.
But Kovalyov’s death did not lessen the determination of the rank-and-file soldiers. While they were still alive, Konanykin, Filyashkin, Shvedkov, Kovalyov and the political instructors and platoon commanders had fought like ordinary Red Army soldiers—and this had seemed entirely normal and to be expected. After the commanders had all been killed, a rank-and-file soldier assumed command, and this seemed equally natural.
In everyday life there are many people who have what it takes to be a leader, although their gifts are not always apparent. Their greatness lies not in their ability to respond adroitly to superficial social changes but in their strength of character, in their capacity to remain true to themselves. When life’s dramas are being played out at the very deepest level, it is these people who come forward, whose modest strength is suddenly recognized.
Nobody appointed or elected Vavilov as their commander, but it was in no way surprising that the battalion’s remaining soldiers should recognize his abilities, that they should understand him to be as strong and capable a leader as the army commander himself.
Even before the war there had been moments of crisis when it was Vavilov who ended up taking charge. This had happened when he and his fellow workers were ploughing virgin soil. It had happened in the forest, when a team of loggers was felling pines, and it had happened on a windy autumn day, when the whole village was threatened by a forest fire. The other villagers were concerned only with putting out fires in their own huts and Vavilov had taken command, ordering them to attend to the kolkhoz grain store and to the school, which was already smoking. He had also once raised his axe over the head of the boatman. The village idiot, Andryushka Orlov, was on the verge of drowning and the boatman had been reluctant to go out and save him.
Now too, and without even thinking about it, others began to turn to Vavilov for advice, and to gather around him. And when Vavilov ordered them to share all they had, nobody hid biscuits in their pockets or kept quiet about the water still left in their flasks.
Vavilov divided the soldiers into small groups. He had eaten bread with these men and he had marched beside them. He knew everyone’s strengths and weaknesses, and his sense of who to put in command of each group was unerring.
He further tightened the ring of defence, placing the men where they had clear sight lines and stout walls to shelter behind.
For his own group, at the centre of the ring, he chose Rezchikov, Usurov, Mulyarchuk and Rysev. Whenever one of the other groups was under particular pressure, he quickly went to their aid.
He set aside a reserve supply of cartridges, magazines, grenades and fuses, and he positioned the machine-gun crews behind a thick concrete wall that only the very heaviest of shells could penetrate.
In only a few days the soldiers had learned the grim art of urban warfare. Just as they understood the functioning of a labour team, they now understood the functioning of a storm group. They had worked out its ideal size and the laws that determined its success. Each man was important, but his importance could only be realized if the group worked well together.
They knew which were their most valuable weapons: the F1 hand grenade, the sub-machine gun and the company machine gun. They christened the F1 the Fenka—the unwritten name by which it later became known to every Soviet soldier. Vavilov also discovered the brute power of a sapper’s spade.
Rezchikov, sullen and gloomy during the long march on the east bank, had recovered his spirits. The ever-sensible Zaichenkov, whom no one had ever heard swear, had become a wild firebrand, cursing after every word. Usurov, once greedy, quarrelsome and acquisitive, was now obliging and generous; he had given half his tobacco ration and all of his bread ration to Rysev. But no one had changed more dramatically than the sickly and seemingly slow-witted Mulyarchuk. He was now barely recognizable. Even his face had changed; the wrinkles on his forehead, which had given him a look of constant bewilderment, had fused into a furrow of intimidating severity; his raised white eyebrows now met at the bridge of his nose, blackened by dust and soot. He had twice been trapped in a trench by a German tank, and he had twice crawled out and, from an unimaginably short distance, destroyed the tank with a blast grenade. In the end he had collapsed back into the trench, severely concussed and coughing up earth and blood.
Some of those once most reserved had become big-hearted and emotionally generous. Some of those once most cheerful and carefree were now grim and taciturn.
Vavilov, however, remained the same as always. He was the man his wife, family and neighbours had known; the man who had sat in his hut in the evenings, dipping his bread in a mug of milk; the man who had worked in field and forest, or out on the road.
War shows us many things. While life is easy for them, the weak in spirit can appear strong and resourceful; they can fool not only others but also themselves. A sudden difficulty, though, can reveal their weakness. There are others who appear quiet and timid and who enjoy little success in life; they are thought weak and often end up mistakenly believing themselves to be weak. But when put to the test, they reveal their true strength, astonishing everyone around them. And then there are people of the highest mettle of all, people who remain true to themselves even while undergoing the most terrible ordeals; their smile, their gestures, the clarity of their minds, their calm voices, their gravity, their openness, their smallest quirks and the fundamental laws of their being—all remain the same during a storm as during times of calm.
Come nightfall, the soldiers still occupying the station buildings were overwhelmed by exhaustion. They fell asleep in mid-conversation, to the sound of gunfire and shell bursts.
And then, at two in the morning, in total darkness, they were faced with something new and terrible: a night attack.
The Germans did not send up flares. They crept along the ground, coming from every point of the compass. All night long the carnage continued. The stars disappeared behind clouds and the darkness deepened—perhaps to keep men from glimpsing the hate and fury in one another’s eyes.
Everything became a weapon: knives, spades, bricks, the steel heels of boots.
The darkness was full of screams, of groans and wheezes, of pistol shots, rifle shots and short bursts of machine-gun fire, of the last bubbles and gurgles of departing life.
The Germans attacked in overwhelming numbers. Wherever there was the sound of a fight, there would suddenly be a dozen of them against one or two Russians. The Germans fought with knives and fists. They went for the throat. They were frenzied, furious.
They called out to one another as seldom as possible, since every word of German elicited a shot from a Red Army soldier hiding in the ruins. It was the same when they used red and green flashlights to signal to one another—quick shots would immediately force them to turn off the flashlight and fall to the ground. And a minute later there would be another scuffle, with gasps, groans and the grating of metal.
Nevertheless, the Germans were evidently following a clear plan.
The ring of defence continued to tighten. Pits and foxholes that had sheltered Red Army sol
diers went quiet; a few minutes later there would be furtive winks of red and green light and whispers in a foreign tongue. And then a vicious, desperate cry, a clatter of stone and the sound of shots from some other place. And a minute later, a green light would flash out from this new place.
Yellow lightning, a solitary hand grenade, a flurry of movement, a piercing whistle—and then silence, followed by a quick green wink and an answering red wink. Another silence, another sudden yellow flame, as if someone had flung open the door of the village smithy and immediately slammed it shut. Another grenade, a long-drawn-out “A-a-a-a!”—and then the living cry would break off, as if plunged into silence. And a careful, watchful green light would flash closer still.
To everyone listening from a distance, it was clear that the battalion’s struggle was almost over.
But whispers of Russian could still be heard. A few men were still quietly stacking stones and reinforcing walls, preparing to continue the fight at dawn.
Their position was surrounded by pits and craters. In the darkness, it was impregnable.
Rysev was lying on one side. Breathing heavily, he whispered to the men lying close beside him, “They cornered me like a wolf. I got away by the skin of my teeth. Just a slight wound to my left shoulder. As for Dodonov, I heard the slippery bastard creeping away to surrender.”
“Maybe they killed him?” said Rezchikov.
“No, I checked everything. I could see his sub-machine gun and his grenades—but there was no Dodonov. The fucking shit.”
In the dark he groped for Vavilov’s hand and said, “It’s good to be with men I can trust.”
“Don’t worry, we won’t leave you,” said Rezchikov.
“You mustn’t,” said Rysev. “I’m wounded.”
Rysev had lost a lot of blood and his head was spinning. There were moments when he forgot where he was. He would mutter away for a while, then fall silent.
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