There was something condescending in Getmanov’s laughter – as though he were criticizing this young man’s ridiculous love for his tank. Novikov felt then that he himself could be equally ridiculous, that he could fall equally stupidly in love. But he said nothing of this to Getmanov. Getmanov had then become serious again.
‘Good lad! Love for one’s tank is a great strength,’ he said sententiously. ‘It’s brought you success.’
‘But what’s there to love about it?’ Novikov had asked ironically. ‘It offers a magnificent target. Anyone can put it out of action. It makes an appalling din that gives its position away to the enemy and drives its crew round the bend. And it shakes you about so much you can hardly even observe, let alone take aim.’
Getmanov had looked at Novikov and smiled sardonically. Now, as he refilled the glasses, he looked at Novikov with that same smile and said: ‘We’ll be going through Kuibyshev. Our commanding officer will have a chance to see a friend or two there. Here’s to your meeting!’
‘That’s all I needed,’ thought Novikov. He was blushing like a schoolboy and he knew it.
Nyeudobnov had been abroad when the war began. It was only in early 1942, on his return to the People’s Commissariat of Defence in Moscow, that he had first heard the air-raid warnings and seen the anti-tank defences beyond the Moscow river. Like Getmanov, he never asked Novikov direct questions about military matters, perhaps because he was ashamed of his own ignorance.
Novikov kept wondering how it was he had become a general. He began to study the pages of forms that made up Nyeudobnov’s dossier; his life was reflected there like a birch tree in a lake.
Nyeudobnov was older than Novikov or Getmanov. He had been imprisoned in 1916 for belonging to a Bolshevik circle. After the Civil War he had been sent by the Party to work in the OGPU.fn2 He had been posted to the frontier and then sent to the Military Academy where he had been secretary of the Party organization for his year . . . He had then worked in the military department of the Central Committee and in the central office of the People’s Commissariat of Defence.
Before the war he had twice been sent abroad. He was on the nomenklatura. Before now, Novikov had never fully understood what this meant, just what special rights and privileges it entailed.
The period, usually a very lengthy one, between being recommended for promotion and having this confirmed had, in Nyeudobnov’s case, always been reduced to a bare minimum. It was as if the People’s Commissar for Defence had had no more urgent matters to attend to.
There was one strange thing, however, about the information contained in such dossiers: one moment they seemed to explain all the mysteries of a man’s life, all his successes and failures – and then a moment later they seemed only to obscure matters, not to explain anything at all.
Since the beginning of the war, people’s biographies, service records, confidential reports and diplomas of honour had come to be looked at differently . . . And so General Nyeudobnov had been subordinated to Colonel Novikov. He knew, though, that this was only a temporary abnormality, something that would be rectified as soon as the war was over.
Nyeudobnov had brought with him a hunting rifle that had made all the aficionados gasp with envy. Novikov had said that Nicholas II might have used one just like it. Nyeudobnov had been given it in 1938, together with a dacha and various other confiscated items: furniture, carpets, and some fine china.
Whether they were talking about the war, kolkhozes, a book by General Dragomir, the Chinese, the fine qualities of General Rokossovsky, the climate in Siberia, the quality of cloth used for military greatcoats, the superiority of blondes over brunettes, Nyeudobnov never ventured any opinion that was in the least original. It was hard to know whether this was a matter of reserve or simply a reflection of his true nature.
After supper he sometimes became more talkative and began telling stories about enemies of the people who had been unmasked in the most unlikely places – medical-instrument factories, workshops producing army boots, sweetshops, Pioneerfn3 palaces, the stables of the Moscow Hippodrome, the Tretyakov Gallery . . .
He had an excellent memory and seemed to have studied the works of Lenin and Stalin in great detail. During an argument he would say: ‘As early as the Seventeenth Congress, comrade Stalin said . . .’ – and begin to quote.
‘There are quotations and quotations,’ Getmanov once said to him. ‘All kinds of things have been said at one time or another. For instance: “We don’t want other people’s land and we won’t yield an inch of our own.” And where are the Germans now?’
Nyeudobnov had just shrugged his shoulders as though the Germans on the Volga were of no importance compared to the famous words he had quoted.
Suddenly everything vanished – tanks, service regulations, gunnery exercises, the forest, Getmanov, Nyeudobnov . . . Nothing was left but Zhenya. Zhenya! Was he really going to see her again?
Footnotes
fn1 Ulrich was President of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court. He presided at several of the Great Purge Trials. N. I. Yezhov was People’s Commissar for Internal Affairs, 1936–1938.
fn2 Between 1923 and 1934 the Soviet security service was known as the OGPU (United State Political Administration).
fn3 The Communist children’s organization.
53
Novikov had been surprised when Getmanov, having read a letter from home, had said: ‘My wife says she feels sorry for us. I told her what our living conditions are like.’ What Getmanov found arduous, Novikov regarded as uncomfortably luxurious.
For the first time he had been able to choose his own lodgings. Once, leaving to visit one of the brigades, he said he didn’t like the sofa. On his return, he found it had already been exchanged for an armchair. His orderly, Vershkov, was waiting anxiously to see if he liked it.
The cook was always asking: ‘Is the borshch all right, comrade Colonel?’
Ever since he was a child he had loved animals. Now he had a hedgehog that lived under his bed and pattered round the room at night. He also had a young chipmunk that ate nuts and lived in a special cage, decorated with an emblem of a tank, which had been presented to him by the maintenance workshop. The chipmunk had quickly got used to Novikov and now sometimes sat on his knee, looking up at him with childish trust and curiosity. Orlenev the cook, Kharitonov the driver, and Vershkov were all kind and attentive towards these animals.
All this was not without importance for Novikov. Once, before the war, he had brought a puppy into the officers’ mess. It had taken a bite out of the slipper of the lady sitting next to him – a colonel – and made three puddles on the floor in half an hour. There had been such an outcry in the communal kitchen that he had had to part with the creature at once.
It was their last day – and it brought with it worries about fuel, about supplies for the journey and the best way to load the vehicles onto the tank-carriers.
He began to wonder about his future neighbours, the men whose artillery regiments and infantry battalions would also be setting out today. He began to wonder about the man before whom he himself would have to stand to attention and say: ‘Comrade Colonel-General, allow me to report . . .’
It was their last day – and he hadn’t managed to see his brother and niece. When he came to the Urals he had thought how near his brother would be, but in the end he hadn’t had time for him.
He had already received reports that the tank-carriers were ready, that the brigades had set off, and that the hedgehog and chipmunk had been released into the forest.
It’s hard to be the absolute master, to feel responsible for the last trifling detail. The tanks have already been loaded, but has everything been done correctly? Are they all in first gear, brakes firmly on, turrets pointing ahead, hatches battened down? Have wooden blocks been placed in position to stop the tanks shifting and unbalancing the wagons?
‘How about a farewell game of cards?’ asked Getmanov.
‘All right,’ said Nyeu
dobnov.
Novikov chose instead to go outside and be alone for a moment.
It was early in the evening, very quiet, and the air was extraordinarily transparent; even the smallest objects were clearly and distinctly visible. The smoke rose vertically from the chimneys. Logs crackled in the field-kitchens. A girl was embracing a dark-haired soldier in the middle of the street, her head on his chest, weeping. Boxes, suitcases and typewriters in black cases were being carried out of the buildings that had served as their HQ. Signallers were reeling in the thick black cables that stretched between corps headquarters and the headquarters of each brigade. A tank behind the barns backfired and let out puffs of exhaust smoke as it prepared to set off. Drivers were filling the petrol tanks of their new Ford trucks and removing the thick covers from their radiators. Meanwhile, the rest of the world was perfectly still.
Novikov stood on the porch and looked round; for a moment all his cares and anxieties fell away. Soon afterwards he set out in his jeep on the road to the station.
The tanks were coming out of the forest. The ground, already hardened by the first frosts, rang beneath the unaccustomed weight. The evening sun lit up the crowns of the distant firs where Karpov’s brigade was slowly emerging. Makarov’s brigade was passing through some young birch trees. The soldiers had decorated their tanks with branches; the pine-needles and birch-leaves seemed as much a part of the tanks as the armour-plating, the roar of the motors and the silvery click of their tracks.
When old soldiers see reserves being moved up to the front, they say, ‘It looks like a wedding.’
Novikov pulled in to the side of the road and watched the tanks come past. What dramas had taken place here! What strange and ridiculous stories! What extraordinary incidents and emergencies had been reported to him . . . ! At breakfast one day a frog had been discovered in the soup . . . Sub-Lieutenant Rozhdestvensky, who had completed ten years of schooling, had accidentally wounded a comrade in the stomach while he was cleaning his rifle; he had then committed suicide . . . A soldier in the motorized infantry battalion had refused to take the oath, saying: ‘I only swear oaths in church.’
Blue-grey smoke twined round the bushes by the side of the road. What diverse thoughts lay hidden beneath all these leather helmets! Some they all shared – love of one’s country, the sorrow of war; others were extraordinarily varied.
My God . . . What a lot of them there were, all wearing black overalls with wide belts. They had been chosen for their broad shoulders and short stature – so they could climb through the hatches and move about inside the tanks. How similar the answers on their forms had been – to questions about their fathers and mothers, their date of birth, the number of years they had completed at school, their experience as tractor-drivers. The shiny green T-34s, hatches open, tarpaulins strapped to their armour-plating, seemed to blend into one.
One soldier was singing; another, his eyes half-closed, was full of dire forebodings; a third was thinking about home; a fourth was chewing some bread and sausage and thinking about the sausage; a fifth, his mouth wide open, was trying to identify a bird on a tree; a sixth was worrying about whether he’d offended his mate by swearing at him the previous night; a seventh, still furious, was dreaming of giving his enemy – the commander of the tank in front – a good punch on the jaw; an eighth was composing a farewell poem to the autumn forest; a ninth was thinking about a girl’s breasts; a tenth was thinking about his dog – sensing that she was about to be abandoned among the bunkers, she had jumped up onto the armour-plating, pathetically wagging her tail in an attempt to win him over; an eleventh was thinking how good it would be to live alone in a hut in the forest, drinking spring-water, eating berries and going about barefoot; a twelfth was wondering whether to feign sickness and have a rest in hospital; a thirteenth was remembering a fairy-tale he had heard as a child; a fourteenth was remembering the last time he had talked to his girl – he felt glad that they had now separated for ever; a fifteenth was thinking about the future – after the war he would like to run a canteen.
‘Yes,’ thought Novikov, ‘they’re fine lads.’
They were looking at him. They thought he was inspecting their uniforms; that he was listening to the sound of the engines to check the competence of the drivers and mechanics; that he was checking whether the correct distance was being maintained between each tank and each section or whether there were any madmen trying to race one another. In fact he was just standing there, no different from them, full of the same thoughts – about his bottle of cognac that had been opened by Getmanov, about how difficult it was to get on with Nyeudobnov . . . He was thinking that he would never again go hunting in the Urals and what a pity it was that the last hunt had been a failure – just stupid anecdotes, too much vodka and the chatter of tommy-guns . . . He was thinking that soon he would see the woman he had been in love with for years . . . When he had heard, six years ago, that she had got married, he had written a brief note: ‘I am taking indefinite leave. I return my revolver – number 10322.’ That had been when he was serving in Nikolsk-Ussuriysk. But in the end he hadn’t pulled the trigger . . .
There his men were: timid, gloomy, easily amused, thoughtful; womanizers, harmless egotists, idlers, misers, contemplatives, good sorts . . . There they all were – going into battle for a common, just cause. The simplicity of this truth makes it difficult to talk about; but it is often forgotten by people who should, instead, take it as their point of departure.
The thoughts of these men may have been trivial – an abandoned dog, a hut in a remote village, hatred for another soldier who’s stolen your girl . . . But these trivialities are precisely what matter.
Human groupings have one main purpose: to assert everyone’s right to be different, to be special, to think, feel and live in his or her own way. People join together in order to win or defend this right. But this is where a terrible, fateful error is born: the belief that these groupings in the name of a race, a God, a party or a State are the very purpose of life and not simply a means to an end. No! The only true and lasting meaning of the struggle for life lies in the individual, in his modest peculiarities and in his right to these peculiarities.
Novikov had the feeling that these men would succeed, that they would outwit and overcome the enemy. This vast reserve of intelligence, labour, bravery, calculation, skill and anger, of all the different endowments of these students, schoolboys, tractor-drivers, lathe-operators, teachers, electricians and bus-drivers – all this would flow into one, would coalesce. And once united, they were certain to conquer. They were too rich not to conquer.
If one failed, another would succeed; if it wasn’t in the centre, it would be on a flank; if it wasn’t in the first hour of battle, it would be in the second. These men would surpass the enemy in both strength and cunning; they would break him, destroy him . . . Victory depended on them alone. In the smoke and dust of battle they would turn, they would break through, they would strike a fraction of a second earlier than the enemy, a fraction of an inch more accurately, more crushingly . . .
Yes, they held the answer. These lads in their tanks, with their cannons and machine-guns, were the most precious resource of all.
But would they unite? Would the inner strength of all these men coalesce?
Novikov stood and watched. He felt a sense of mounting joy and confidence about Zhenya: ‘She’ll be mine! She’ll be mine!’
54
What an extraordinary time this was! Krymov felt that history had left the pages of books and come to life.
Here, in Stalingrad, the glitter of sunlight on water, the colour of the sky and the clouds, struck him with a new intensity. It had been the same when he was a child: the patter of summer rain, a rainbow, his first glimpse of snow, had been enough to fill him with happiness. Now he had rediscovered this sense of wonder – something nearly all of us lose as we come to take the miracle of our lives for granted.
Everything Krymov had disliked in the life of these last yea
rs, everything he had found false, seemed absent from Stalingrad. ‘Yes, this is how it was in Lenin’s day!’ he said to himself.
He felt that people were treating him differently, better than they had done before the war. It was the same now as when he had been encircled by the Germans: he no longer felt he was a stepson of the age. Recently, on the left bank, he had been preparing his talks and lectures with enthusiasm, quite reconciled to his new role.
Nevertheless, there were times when he did feel a sense of humiliation. Why hadn’t he been allowed to continue as a fighting commissar? He had done his job well enough, better than many others . . .
There was something good about the relations between people here. There was a true sense of dignity and equality on this clay slope where so much blood had been spilt.
There was an almost universal interest in such matters as the structure of kolkhozes after the war, the future relations between the great peoples and their governments. The day-to-day life of these soldiers – their work with spades, with the kitchen-knives they used for cleaning potatoes and the cobblers’ knives they used for mending boots – seemed to have a direct bearing on their life after the war, even on the lives of other nations and states.
Nearly everyone believed that good would triumph, that honest men, who hadn’t hesitated to sacrifice their lives, would be able to build a good and just life. This faith was all the more touching in that these men thought that they themselves would be unlikely to survive until the end of the war; indeed, they felt astonished each evening to have survived one more day.
55
After his evening lecture, Krymov was taken to Batyuk’s bunker. Lieutenant-Colonel Batyuk, a short man whose face expressed all the weariness of the war, was in command of the division disposed along the slopes of Mamayev Kurgan and alongside Banniy Ovrag.
Batyuk seemed glad of Krymov’s visit. For supper there was meat in aspic and a hot pie. As he poured out some vodka for Krymov, Batyuk narrowed his eyes and said: ‘I heard you were coming round giving lectures. I wondered who you’d visit first – me or Rodimtsev. In the end you went to Rodimtsev’s.’