‘What do you mean – “like partisans”?’ said Byerozkin in a conciliatory tone. ‘It’s just independence, a show of initiative. I often dream of being surrounded myself – so I could forget all this paperwork.’
‘That reminds me,’ said Pivovarov. ‘You’d better write a detailed report for the divisional commissar.’
The divisional commissar took a serious view of all this. He ordered Pivovarov to obtain detailed information about the situation in house 6/1 and to give Grekov a good talking-to then and there. At the same time he wrote reports to the Member of the Military Soviet and to the head of the Army Political Section, informing them of the alarming state of affairs, both morally and politically, in house 6/1.
At Army level, Soshkin’s report was taken still more seriously. The divisional commissar received instructions to sort the matter out with the utmost urgency. The head of the Army Political Section also sent an urgent report to the head of the Political Section for the Front.
Katya Vengrova, the radio-operator, had arrived in house 6/1 during the night. In the morning she reported to Grekov, the ‘house-manager’. As he listened, Grekov gazed into her eyes; they seemed confused, frightened, and at the same time mocking.
She was round-shouldered and she had a large mouth with pale, bloodless lips. Grekov paused for a moment when Katya asked if she could go. A number of different thoughts, all quite unrelated to the war, flashed through his head: ‘By God, she’s pretty . . . nice legs . . . she looks frightened . . . I guess she’s mother’s little girl . . . How old is she . . . ? Eighteen at the most . . . I just hope the lads don’t all pounce on her . . .’ His final thought was quite unrelated to those that had gone before: ‘Can’t you see who’s boss here? Haven’t I driven those Fritzes up the wall?’
‘There isn’t anywhere for you to go,’ Grekov said at last. ‘Just stay by your transmitter. We’ll find you something to send soon enough.’
He tapped the transmitter and glanced up at the sky where German dive-bombers were whining and humming.
‘Are you from Moscow?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Sit down. We’re quite without ceremony here. It’s like being in the country.’
Katya stepped to one side; crumbled brick squeaked beneath her heels. She could see the sunlight glinting on the machine-gun barrels and on the dark metal of Grekov’s German pistol. She sat down, looking at a pile of greatcoats beneath a ruined wall. For a moment she felt surprised that all this no longer surprised her. She knew that the machine-guns in the breach in the wall were Degterevs; that the captured Walther took eight bullets, that it was powerful but difficult to aim; that the greatcoats in the corner belonged to soldiers who had been killed and that the corpses hadn’t been buried very deep – the general smell of burning blended with another smell that had already become all too familiar. And her wireless-set was just like the one she had worked with in Kotluban – the same dial on the receiver, the same switch. She remembered the times in the steppes when she had looked into the dusty glass of the ammeter and tidied her hair, smoothing it back under her cap.
No one spoke to her; it was as though she had nothing to do with the wild and terrible goings-on around her.
But when one grey-haired man started swearing – he seemed from the conversation to be a mortar man – Grekov chided: ‘Softly now! That’s no way to speak in front of our girl.’
Katya winced – not because of the old man’s foul language, but because of the way Grekov had looked at her. Even though no one said anything to her, she knew that the atmosphere had changed since her arrival. She could feel the tension with her skin – a tension that didn’t evaporate even when they heard the whine of dive-bombers, followed by explosions and a hail of broken brick.
By now Katya had grown used to falling bombs and the whistle of shrapnel, but she felt as confused as ever by the heavy male looks that bore down on her here.
The night before, the other girls had commiserated with her. ‘It sounds quite terrifying there,’ they had said.
A soldier had taken her to Regimental Headquarters. She had sensed at once how close she was to the enemy, how fragile life had become. People themselves seemed suddenly fragile – here one minute, gone the next.
The officer in command had shaken his head sadly and said: ‘How can they send children like you to the front?’ And then: ‘Don’t be frightened, my dear. If anything’s not as it should be, just inform me over the radio.’
He had said this in such a kind, fatherly voice that it was all she could do not to burst into tears.
She had then been taken to Battalion Headquarters. They had a gramophone there; the commander, a redhead, offered Katya a drink and invited her to dance to a record of ‘The Chinese Serenade’.
The atmosphere there had been terrifying. Katya had felt that the commander was drinking not to enjoy himself, but simply to stifle some unbearable fear, to forget that his own life was now as fragile as glass.
And now here she was – sitting on a heap of bricks in house 6/1. For some reason she didn’t feel any fear at all; instead, she thought of the wonderful, fairy-tale life she had enjoyed before the war.
The men in the surrounded building seemed extraordinarily strong and sure of themselves. This self-confidence was very reassuring – like that possessed by firemen, by tailors cutting some priceless cloth, by skilled workers in a metal-rolling mill, by old teachers expounding beside their blackboards, by eminent doctors.
Before the war Katya had always believed that her life was doomed to be unhappy. When she had seen friends of hers going anywhere by bus, she had thought them spendthrifts. As for people coming out of restaurants – however bad – they seemed like fabulous beings; sometimes she had followed a little group on their way home from some ‘Daryal’ or ‘Terek’ and tried to listen to their conversation. Returning home from school, she would announce solemnly: ‘Guess what happened today! A girl gave me some fizzy water with syrup – real syrup that tasted of blackcurrants!’
To live on what remained – after the deduction of income tax, cultural tax and the State loan – of her mother’s salary of 400 roubles had been far from easy. Instead of buying new clothes, they had always refashioned their old ones. The other tenants had paid Marusya, the caretaker’s wife, to clean the communal areas, but they had done their share themselves; Katya herself had cleaned the floors and carried out the rubbish. They had bought milk at the State shop – the queues were enormous but it saved them six roubles a month; if there wasn’t any milk in the State shop, then Katya’s mother had gone to market late in the afternoon – the peasant women would be in a hurry to catch the evening train and would sell off their milk at almost the same price as in the State shop. They had never travelled by bus, and they only went by tram if they had to go a very long distance. Instead of going to the hairdresser’s, Katya had always had her hair cut by her mother. They had done their own laundry and the light-bulb in their room was almost as dim as those in the communal areas. They had cooked for three days at a time. They had soup, and sometimes kasha with a little oil; once Katya had had three plates of soup one after the other and said: ‘Well, today we’ve had a three-course meal.’
Her mother had never talked about how things had been while her father still lived with them; she herself couldn’t remember. Once, Vera Dmitrievna, a friend of her mother’s, had watched the two of them preparing a meal and said: ‘Yes, we too had our hour of glory.’ This had made her mother angry; she hadn’t allowed Vera Dmitrievna to enlarge on how things had been during their hour of glory.
One day Katya had found a photograph of her father in a cupboard. It was the first time she had seen a photograph of him, but she knew immediately who it was. On the back was written: ‘To Lida – I am from the tribe of Asra: when we love, we die in silence.’fn1 She said nothing to her mother, but from then on, when she returned from school, she would often take the photograph out and gaze for a long time into her father’s dark, melanc
holy eyes.
Once she had asked: ‘Where’s Papa now?’
Her mother had just said: ‘I don’t know.’
It was only when Katya left for the army that her mother at last told her about him; she learned that he had married again and that he had been arrested in 1937.
They had talked right through the night. Everything had been reversed: her mother, usually so reserved, had told her how she had been abandoned by her husband; she had talked about her feelings of jealousy, of humiliation and hurt, of love and pity. Katya had been quite astonished: the world of the human soul suddenly seemed so vast as to make even the raging war seen insignificant. In the morning they had said goodbye. Her mother had drawn her head towards her, but the pack on her shoulders had pulled her away. Katya had said: ‘Mama, I’m from the tribe of Asra: when we love, we die in silence.’
Then her mother had gently pushed her away.
‘Go on, Katya. It’s time you left.’
And Katya had left – like millions of others, both young and old. She had left her mother’s house, perhaps never to return, perhaps to return only as a different person, cut off for ever from her harsh and beloved childhood.
And now here she was, sitting next to Grekov, ‘the house-manager’, looking at his large head, at his frowning face and thick lips.
Footnotes
fn1 A quotation from a poem by Heine.
58
That first day, the telephone was still working; there was nothing for Katya to do. The feeling of being excluded from the life of the building became increasingly oppressive. Nevertheless, that day did much to prepare her for what lay in store.
She learned that the observation-post for the artillery on the left bank was situated in the ruins of the first floor. It was commanded by a lieutenant in a dirty tunic whose spectacles kept slipping down his snub nose.
The angry old man who swore a lot had been transferred from the militia; he was very proud indeed to be in command of a mortar team. The sappers were installed between a high wall and a heap of rubble; they were commanded by a stout man who groaned and grimaced when he walked, as though he was suffering from corns.
The single piece of artillery was in the charge of Kolomeitsev, a bald man in a sailor’s tunic. Katya had heard Grekov shout: ‘Kolomeitsev! Wake up! You’ve just slept through yet another golden opportunity!’
The infantry and the machine-guns were commanded by a second lieutenant with a blond beard. The beard made his face seem very young – though he no doubt imagined it made him look mature, perhaps in his thirties.
In the afternoon she was given something to eat – bread and mutton-sausage. Then she remembered she had a sweet in her tunic-pocket and slipped it quietly into her mouth. After that – in spite of the firing nearby – she felt like a nap. She soon fell asleep, still sucking her sweet; but even in her sleep she still felt a sense of anguish, of imminent disaster. Suddenly she heard a slow, drawling voice. Her eyes still closed, she listened to the words:
‘Past sorrow is to me like wine,
Stronger with every passing year.’fn1
In this stone well, lit by the amber evening light, a dirty young man with dishevelled hair was sitting reading out loud from a book. Five or six men were sprawled around him on piles of red bricks. Grekov was lying on his overcoat, resting his chin on his fists. One young man, probably a Georgian, listened with an air of suspicion. It was as though he were saying: ‘Come on now – you won’t get me to buy this rubbish.’
An explosion close by raised a cloud of dust. It was like something from a fairy-tale; the armed men, sitting on blood-coloured bricks and surrounded by this red mist, seemed to have sprung from the day of judgment recorded in the Lay of Igor’s Campaign.fn2 Suddenly Katya’s heart stirred in an absurd expectation of some future happiness.
The following day, an event took place which appalled even these hardened soldiers.
The ‘senior tenant’ on the first floor, Lieutenant Batrakov, had under his command an observer, Bunchuk, and a plotter, Lampasov. Katya saw them all several times a day: sullen Lampasov, cunning yet simple-hearted Bunchuk and the strange lieutenant with glasses who was always smiling at his own thoughts. When it was quiet, she could even hear their voices through the hole in the ceiling.
Lampasov had reared chickens before the war; he loved telling Bunchuk about the intelligence and treacherous ways of his hens. Peering through his telescope, Bunchuk would report in a sing-song voice: ‘Yes, there’s a column of vehicles coming from Kalach . . . a tank in the middle . . . Some more Fritzes on foot, a whole battalion . . . and then three field-kitchens just like yesterday . . . I can see smoke and some Fritzes with pans . . .’ Some of his observations were of greater human than military interest: ‘Now there’s a German officer going for a walk with his dog . . . the dog’s sniffing a post, it probably wants to pee . . . Yes, it must be a bitch . . . The officer’s just standing there, he’s having a scratch . . . Now I can see two girls chatting to some Fritzes . . . they’re offering the girls cigarettes . . . One of them’s lit up, the other’s shaking her head . . . She must be saying: “I don’t smoke”.’
Suddenly, in the same sing-song voice, Bunchuk announced: ‘The square’s full of soldiers . . . and a band . . . there’s a stage in the middle . . . no, a pile of wood . . .’
He fell silent. Then, in the same voice, now full of despair, he went on: ‘Comrade Lieutenant, I can see a woman in a shift . . . she’s being frog-marched . . . she’s screaming . . . the band’s struck up . . . they’re tying the woman to a post . . . Comrade Lieutenant, there’s a little boy with her . . . Ay . . . they’re tying him up . . . Comrade Lieutenant, I can’t bear to look . . . two Fritzes are emptying some cans of petrol . . .’
Batrakov hurriedly reported all this by telephone to the left bank. Then he grabbed the telescope himself.
‘Ay, comrades, the band’s playing and the whole square’s full of smoke . . .’
‘Fire!’ he suddenly howled out in a terrible voice and turned in the direction of the left bank.
Not a sound from the left bank . . .
A few seconds passed, and then the place of execution was subjected to a concentrated barrage by the heavy artillery. The square was enveloped in dust and smoke.
Several hours later, they were informed by their scout, Klimov, that the Germans had been about to burn a gypsy woman and her son whom they suspected of being spies. The day before, Klimov had left some dirty washing with an old woman who lived in a cellar together with her granddaughter and a goat; he had promised to come back for it later when it was ready. Now he intended to ask this woman what had happened to the two gypsies – whether they had been burned to death on the pyre or killed by the Soviet shells.
Klimov crawled through the ruins along paths known to him alone – only to find that the old woman’s dwelling had just been destroyed by a Russian bomb. There was nothing left of the old woman, her granddaughter or the goat – or of Klimov’s pants and shirt. All he found among the splintered beams and lumps of plaster was a kitten, covered with dirt. It was in a pitiful state, neither complaining nor asking for anything, evidently believing that life was always just a matter of noise, fire and hunger.
Klimov had no idea what made him suddenly stuff the kitten into his pocket.
Katya was astonished by the relations between the inmates of house 6/1. Instead of standing to attention to give his report, Klimov simply sat down next to Grekov; they then talked together like two old friends. Klimov lit up from Grekov’s cigarette.
When he had finished, Klimov went up to Katya. ‘Yes, my girl,’ he said, ‘life on this earth can be terrible.’
Under his hard, penetrating stare, Katya blushed and gave a sigh. Klimov took the kitten out of his pocket and placed it on a brick beside her.
During the course of the day at least a dozen men came up to Katya and started to talk about cats; not one of them spoke about the gypsies, though they had all been deeply shocked. Som
e of them wanted a sentimental, heart-to-heart conversation – and spoke coarsely and mockingly; others just wanted to sleep with her – and spoke very solemnly, with cloying politeness.
The kitten trembled constantly, evidently in a state of shock.
‘You should do away with it right now,’ the old man in charge of the mortars said with a grimace – and then added: ‘You must pick off the fleas.’
Another member of the mortar-crew, the handsome, swarthy Chentsov, also a former member of the militia, urged: ‘Get rid of that vermin, my girl. Now, if it were a Siberian cat . . .’
The sullen Lyakhov, a sapper with thin lips and an unpleasant-looking face, was the only man to be genuinely concerned about the kitten and indifferent to the charms of the radio-operator.
‘Once, when we were in the steppe,’ he told her, ‘something suddenly hit me. I thought it must be a shell at the end of its trajectory. But guess what? It was a hare. He stayed with me till evening. Then things quietened down a bit and he left.
‘Now, you may be a girl,’ he went on, ‘but at least you can understand: that’s a 108 millimetre, that’s the tune of a Vanyusha, that’s a reconnaissance plane flying over the Volga . . . But the poor stupid hare can’t make out anything at all. He can’t even tell the difference between a mortar and a howitzer. The Germans send up a flare and he just sits there and shakes – you can’t explain anything to him. That’s what makes me sorry for these dumb animals.’
Recognizing that he was in earnest, Katya responded in the same tone. ‘I don’t know . . . Take dogs, for example – they can tell different planes apart. When we were stationed in the village, there was a mongrel called Kerzon. When our ILs flew over, he just lay there without even raising his head. But as soon as he heard the whine of a Junkers, he went straight to his hiding-place. He never once made a mistake.’
The air was rent by a piercing scream – a German Vanyusha. There was a metallic crash, a cloud of black smoke mixed with red dust, and a shower of rubble. A minute later, when the dust began to settle, Katya and Lyakhov resumed their conversation – for all the world as though it was two different people who had just fallen flat on their faces. The self-assurance of these soldiers seemed to have rubbed off on Katya. It was as though they were convinced that everything here, even the iron and stone, might be weak and fragile – but not they themselves.