He felt proud – and at the same time annoyed – that his promotion hadn’t brought him any material advantage. His high opinion of himself went hand in hand with a persistent feeling of timidity. Deep down, he felt he wasn’t entitled to the good things of life. This constant lack of both self-assurance and money, this constant sense of being badly dressed, was something he had been used to since childhood, something that still hadn’t left him. He was terrified at the thought of going into the Military Soviet canteen and being told by the girl behind the counter: ‘Comrade Lieutenant-Colonel, I’m afraid you’re only entitled to eat in the general canteen.’ Then some witty general would say at a meeting: ‘Well, Lieutenant-Colonel, did you enjoy the borshch in the Military Soviet canteen?’ He had always been amazed at the brazenness with which not only generals but even mere photographers would eat and drink, or demand petrol, clothes and cigarettes, in places they had no right even to visit.
His father had been unable to find work for years on end; his mother, a stenographer, had been the breadwinner.
Around midnight Bova stopped snoring. Darensky felt worried by the sudden silence. Suddenly Bova asked: ‘Are you still awake, comrade Lieutenant-Colonel?’
‘Yes, I can’t get to sleep.’
‘Forgive me for not making you more comfortable,’ said Bova. ‘I’d had a little too much to drink. But now I feel as clear-headed as ever. And what I keep asking myself is this. What on earth did we do to end up in this godforsaken hole? Whose fault is it?’
‘The Germans’, of course,’ said Darensky.
‘You lie on the bed,’ said Bova. ‘I can go on the floor myself.’
‘What do you mean? I’m fine as I am.’
‘It’s not right. In the Caucasus it’s not done for a host to stay in his bed while a guest lies on the floor.’
‘Never mind. We’re hardly Caucasians.’
‘We’re not far off it. The foothills are very close. You say the Germans are responsible. But maybe we did our bit too.’
Bova must have sat up – his bed gave a loud squeak. ‘Yes,’ he said, drawing the word out thoughtfully.
‘Yes,’ said Darensky non-committally.
Bova had directed the conversation into an unusual channel. They were silent for a moment, each wondering whether he should continue such a conversation with someone he hardly knew. In the end it appeared that they had both decided against it.
Bova lit a cigarette. Darensky glimpsed his face in the light of the match. It looked somehow flabby, sullen, alien . . . He lit a cigarette himself. Bova glimpsed his face as he lay there, resting his head on one elbow. His face looked cold, unkind, alien . . . Then they went on with the conversation.
‘Yes,’ said Bova. This time he spoke the word sharply and decisively. ‘Bureaucrats and bureaucracy – that’s what’s landed us in this wilderness.’
‘Yes,’ agreed Darensky. ‘Bureaucracy’s terrible. My chauffeur said that in his village before the war you couldn’t even get a document out of someone without giving them half a litre of vodka.’
‘It’s no laughing matter,’ Bova interrupted. ‘In peacetime bureaucracy can be bad enough. But on the front line . . . I heard a story about a pilot whose plane caught fire after a scrap with a Messerschmidt. Well, he parachuted out and was quite unscathed. But his trousers were burnt. And do you know what? They wouldn’t give him a new pair! The quartermaster just said: “No, you’re not yet due for a new issue.” And that was that. For three days he had to do without trousers. Finally the commanding officer found out.’
‘Excuse me,’ said Darensky, ‘but you can hardly make out that we’ve retreated from Brest to the Caspian desert simply because of some idiot refusing to issue a new pair of trousers.’
‘I never said it was because of the trousers,’ said Bova sourly. ‘Let me give you another example . . . There was an infantry detachment that had been surrounded. The men had nothing to eat. A squadron was ordered to drop them some food by parachute. And then the quartermaster refused to issue the food. He said he needed a signature on the delivery slip and how could the men down below sign for what had been dropped by parachute? And he wouldn’t budge. Finally he received an order from above.’
Darensky smiled. ‘All right, that’s very comic but it’s hardly of major importance. Just pedantry. Bureaucracy can be much more terrifying than that. Remember the order: “Not one step back”? There was one place where the Germans were mowing our men down by the hundred. All we needed to do was withdraw over the brow of the hill. Strategically, it would have made no difference – and we’d have saved our men and equipment. But the orders were “Not one step back”. And so the men perished and their equipment was destroyed.’
‘Yes,’ said Bova. ‘You’re right there. In 1941 we had two colonels sent out to us from Moscow to check on the execution of that very order. They didn’t have any transport themselves and during three days we retreated two hundred kilometres from Gomel. If I hadn’t taken them in my truck, they’d have been captured by the Germans in no time. And there they were – being shaken about in the back like a sack of potatoes and asking what measures we’d taken to implement the order “Not one step back”! And what else could they do? They couldn’t not write their report.’
Darensky took a deep breath, as though preparing to plunge still deeper. ‘I’ll tell you when bureaucracy really is terrible. It’s when a lone machine-gunner has defended a height against seventy Germans. When he’s held up the enemy’s advance all on his own. When a whole army’s bowed down before him after his death. And then his tubercular wife is abused by an official from the district soviet and thrown out of her flat . . . ! It’s when a man has to fill in twenty-four questionnaires and then ends up confessing at a meeting: “Comrades, I’m not one of you. I’m an alien element . . .” It’s when a man has to say: “Yes, this is a workers’ and peasants’ State. My mother and father were aristocrats, parasites, degenerates. Go on, throw me out onto the street.”’
‘I don’t see that as bureaucracy,’ said Bova. ‘The State does belong to the workers and peasants. They’re in control. What’s wrong with that? That’s as it should be. You wouldn’t expect a bourgeois State to trust down-and-outs.’
Darensky was taken aback. The man he was speaking to evidently thought very differently to himself.
Bova lit a match. Instead of lighting a cigarette, he just held it up towards Darensky. Darensky screwed up his eyes; he felt like a soldier caught in the beam of an enemy searchlight.
‘I’m from the purest of working-class backgrounds myself,’ Bova went on. ‘My father was a worker, and so was my grandfather. My background’s as pure as crystal. But I was no use to anyone before the war either.’
‘Why not?’
‘I don’t look on it as bureaucracy if a workers’ and peasants’ State treats aristocrats with suspicion. But why did they go for my throat? I thought I was going to end up picking potatoes or sweeping the streets. And all I’d done was criticize the bosses – from a class viewpoint. I’d said they were living in the lap of luxury. Well, I really caught it then! That’s what I see as the root of bureaucracy – a worker suffering in his own State.’
Darensky had the feeling that Bova had touched on something of great importance. He felt a sudden happiness: he was unaccustomed either to talking about his own deepest preoccupations or to hearing other people talk about theirs. To do this, to speak one’s mind freely and without fear, to argue uninhibitedly and without fear, seemed a great joy.
Everything felt different here: as he lay on the floor of this shack, talking to a simple soldier who had only just sobered up, sensing the invisible presence of thousands of men who had retreated from the Western Ukraine to this wilderness, Darensky knew that something had changed. Something very simple and natural, something very necessary – and at the same time quite impossible, quite unthinkable – had come about: he and another man had talked freely and sincerely.
‘Yes,’ said Darensky. ‘But
you’ve got one thing wrong. The bourgeoisie don’t allow down-and-outs into the Senate, that’s for sure. But if a down-and-out becomes a millionaire, then it’s another story. The Fords started out as ordinary workers. We don’t trust members of the bourgeoisie and aristocracy with positions of responsibility – and that’s fair enough. But it’s another matter altogether to stamp the mark of Cain on the forehead of an honest worker simply because his mother and father were kulaks or priests. That’s not what I call a class viewpoint. Anyway, do you think I didn’t meet workers from the Putilov factory or miners from Donetsk during my time in camp? They were there in their thousands. What’s really terrifying is when you realize that bureaucracy isn’t simply a growth on the body of the State. If it were only that, it could be cut off. No, bureaucracy is the very essence of the State. And in wartime people don’t want to die just for the sake of the head of some personnel department. Any flunkey can stamp “Refused” on some petition. Any flunkey can kick some soldier’s widow out of his office. But to kick out the Germans you have to be strong. You have to be a man.’
‘That’s for sure,’ said Bova.
‘But don’t think I feel any resentment,’ said Darensky. ‘No, I bow down and take off my hat. I’m happy. A thousand thank-you’s. What’s wrong is that we had to undergo such terrible tragedies before I could be happy, before I was allowed to devote my energies to my country. If that’s the price of my happiness, I’d rather be without it.’
Darensky felt that he still hadn’t dug down to what really mattered, that he still hadn’t been able to find the simple words that would cast a new, clear light on their lives. But he was happy to have thought and talked about what he had only very seldom thought or talked about.
‘Let me say one thing. I can tell you that, whatever happens, I shall never ever regret this conversation of ours.’
14
Mikhail Mostovskoy was kept for over three weeks in the isolation ward. He was fed well, examined twice by an SS doctor, and prescribed injections of glucose.
During his first hours of confinement Mostovskoy expected to be summoned for interrogation at any moment. He felt constantly irritated with himself. Why had he talked with Ikonnikov? That holy fool had betrayed him, planting compromising papers on him just before a search.
The days passed and Mostovskoy still wasn’t summoned . . . He went over the conversations he had had with the other prisoners about politics, wondering which of them he could recruit. At night, when he couldn’t sleep, he composed a text for some leaflets and began compiling a camp phrase-book to facilitate communication between the different nationalities.
He remembered the old laws of conspiracy, intended to exclude the possibility of a total débâcle if an agent provocateur should denounce them.
Mostovskoy wanted to question Yershov and Osipov about the immediate aims of the organization. He was confident that he would be able to overcome Osipov’s prejudice against Yershov.
Chernetsov, who hated Bolshevism and yet longed for the victory of the Red Army, seemed a pathetic figure. Now Mostovskoy felt quite calm about the prospect of his impending interrogation.
One night Mostovskoy had a heart attack. He lay there with his head against the wall, feeling the agony of a man left to die in a prison. For a while the pain made him lose consciousness. Then he came to. The pain had lessened, but his chest, his face and the palms of his hands were all covered in sweat. His thoughts took on a deceptive clarity.
His conversation about evil with the Italian priest became confused with a number of different memories: with the happiness he had felt as a boy when it had suddenly begun to pour with rain and he had rushed into the room where his mother was sewing; with his wife’s bright eyes, wet with tears, when she had come to visit him at the time he was in exile by the Yenisey; with pale Dzerzhinsky whom he had once asked at a Party conference about the fate of a young and very kind Social Revolutionary. ‘Shot,’ Dzerzhinsky had answered . . . Major Kirillov’s gloomy eyes . . . Draped in a sheet, the corpse of his friend was being dragged along on a sledge – he had refused to accept his offer of help during the siege of Leningrad.
A boy’s dreamy head and its mop of hair . . . And now this large bald skull pressed against the rough boards.
These distant memories drifted away. Everything became flatter and lost its colour. He seemed to be sinking into cold water. He fell asleep – to wake up to the howl of sirens in the early-morning gloom.
In the afternoon he was taken to the sick-bay bath. He sighed as he examined his arms and his hollow chest. ‘Yes, old age is here to stay,’ he thought to himself.
The guard, who was rolling a cigarette between his fingers, went out for a moment, and the narrow-shouldered, pock-marked prisoner who had been mopping the cement floor sidled over to Mostovskoy.
‘Yershov ordered me to tell you the news. The German offensive in Stalingrad has been beaten off. The major told me to tell you that everything is in order. And he wants you to write a leaflet and pass it on when you have your next bath.’
Mostovskoy wanted to say that he didn’t have a pencil and paper, but just then the guard came in.
As he was getting dressed, Mostovskoy felt a small parcel in his pocket. It contained ten sugar lumps, some bacon fat wrapped up in a piece of rag, some white paper and a pencil stub. He felt a sudden happiness. What more could he want? How fortunate he was not to have his life drawing to an end in trivial anxieties about indigestion, heart attacks and sclerosis.
He clasped the sugar lumps and the pencil to his breast.
That night he was taken out of the sick-bay by an SS sergeant. Gusts of cold wind blew into his face. He looked round at the sleeping barracks and said to himself: ‘Don’t worry, lads. You can sleep in peace. Comrade Mostovskoy’s got strong nerves – he won’t give in.’
They went through the doors of the administration building. Here, instead of the stench of ammonia, was a cool smell of tobacco. Mostovskoy noticed a half-smoked cigarette on the floor and wanted to pick it up.
They climbed up to the second floor. The guard ordered Mostovskoy to wipe his boots on the mat and did so himself at great length. Mostovskoy was out of breath from climbing the stairs. He tried to control his breathing.
They set off down a strip of carpet that ran down the corridor. The lamps – small, semi-transparent tulips – gave a warm, calm light. They walked past a polished door with a small board saying ‘Kommandant’ and stopped in front of another door with a board saying ‘Obersturmbannführer Liss’.
Mostovskoy had heard the name ‘Liss’ many times: he was Himmler’s representative in the camp administration. Mostovskoy was amused: General Gudz had been annoyed that he had only been interrogated by one of Liss’s assistants while Osipov had been interrogated by Liss himself. Gudz had seen this as a slight to the military command.
Osipov had said that Liss had interrogated him without an interpreter; he was a German from Riga with a good knowledge of Russian.
A young officer came out, said a few words to the guard and let Mostovskoy into the office. He left the door open.
The office was almost empty. The floor was carpeted. There was a vase of flowers on the table and a picture on the wall: peasant houses by the edge of a forest, with red tiled rooves.
Mostovskoy thought it was like being in the office of the director of a slaughterhouse. Not far away were dying animals, steaming entrails and people being spattered with blood, but the office itself was peaceful and softly carpeted – only the black telephone on the desk served to remind you of the world outside.
Enemy! That word was so clear and simple. Once again he thought of Chernetsov – what a wretched fate during this time of Sturm und Drang! But then he did wear kid gloves . . . Mostovskoy glanced at his own hands, his own fingers.
The door opened at the far end of the office. There was a creak from the door into the corridor – the orderly must have shut it as he saw Liss come in.
Mostovskoy stood there and
frowned.
‘Good evening!’ said the quiet voice of a short man with SS insignia on the sleeves of his grey uniform.
There was nothing repulsive about Liss’s face, and for that very reason Mostovskoy found it terrible to look at. He had a snub nose, alert dark-grey eyes, a high forehead and thin pale cheeks that made him look industrious and ascetic.
Liss waited while Mostovskoy cleared his throat and then said:
‘I want to talk to you.’
‘But I don’t want to talk to you,’ answered Mostovskoy. He looked sideways into the far corner, waiting for Liss’s assistants, the torturers, to emerge and give him a blow on the ear.
‘I quite understand,’ said Liss. ‘Sit down.’
He seated Mostovskoy in the armchair and then sat down next to him.
Liss spoke in the lifeless, ash-cold language of a popular scientific pamphlet.
‘Are you feeling unwell?’
Mostovskoy shrugged his shoulders and said nothing.
‘Yes, yes, I know. I sent the doctor to you and he told me. I’ve disturbed you in the middle of the night. But I want to talk to you very badly.’
‘Oh yes,’ thought Mostovskoy.
‘I’ve been summoned for interrogation,’ he said out loud. ‘There’s nothing for us to talk about.’
‘Why do you say that?’ asked Liss. ‘All you see is my uniform. But I wasn’t born in it. The Führer and the Party command; the rank and file obey. I was always a theoretician. I’m a Party member, but my real interest lies in questions of history and philosophy. Surely not all the officers in your NKVD love the Lubyanka?’
Mostovskoy watched Liss’s face carefully. He thought for a moment that this pale face with the high forehead should be drawn at the very bottom of the tree of evolution; from there evolution would progress towards hairy Neanderthal man.