The Germans were simply unable to believe that all their attacks were being borne by a handful of men. They thought the Soviet reserves were being brought up in order to reinforce the defence. The true strategists of the Soviet offensive were the soldiers with their backs to the Volga who fought off Paulus’s divisions.
The remorseless cunning of History, however, lay still more deeply hidden. Freedom engendered the Russian victory. Freedom was the apparent aim of the war. But the sly fingers of History changed this: freedom became simply a way of waging the war, a means to an end.
33
A marvellous but somehow exhausting silence lay over the Kalmyk steppe. Did the men hurrying, that very morning, along Unter den Linden know what was about to happen? Did they know that Russia had now turned her face towards the West? That she was about to strike, about to advance?
‘Don’t forget the coats,’ Novikov called out from the porch to Kharitonov, his driver. ‘Mine and the commissar’s. We won’t be back till late.’
Getmanov and Nyeudobnov followed him out.
‘Mikhail Petrovich,’ said Novikov, ‘if anything happens, phone Karpov. Or if it’s after three o’clock, get hold of Byelov and Makarov.’
‘What do you think could happen here?’ asked Nyeudobnov.
‘Who knows? Maybe a visit from one of the brass hats.’
Two small points appeared out of the sun and swooped down over the village. The whine of engines grew louder; the still silence of the steppe was shattered.
Kharitonov leapt out of the jeep and ran for shelter behind the wall of a barn.
‘Fool!’ shouted Getmanov. ‘They’re our own planes.’
At that very moment, one plane released a bomb and the other let out a burst of machine-gun fire. The air howled, there was the sound of shattering glass, a woman let out a piercing scream, a child began to cry, and clods of earth rained down on the ground.
Novikov ducked as he heard the bomb fall. For a moment everything was drowned in dust and smoke; all he could see was Getmanov standing beside him. Then Nyeudobnov emerged, standing very upright, shoulders straight and head erect. It was as though he were carved out of wood.
A little pale, but animated and full of excitement, Getmanov brushed the dust off his trousers. With an endearing boastfulness he said: ‘That’s a mercy. My trousers are still dry. And as for our general, he didn’t even bat an eyelid.’
Getmanov and Nyeudobnov went off to look at the bomb crater and to see how far the earth had been thrown. They examined a piece of smashed fencing and were surprised to see that the windows of the more distant houses had been broken, but not those of the nearer ones.
Novikov watched the two men with curiosity. It was as though they were surprised that the bomb should have been made in the factory, carried into the sky and dropped to earth with only one aim – that of killing the fathers of the little Getmanovs and Nyeudobnovs. It was as though they were thinking: ‘So that’s what people get up to during a war.’
Getmanov was still talking about the raid when they set off. Then he cut himself short and said: ‘You must find it amusing to listen to me, Pyotr Pavlovich. You’ve already seen thousands of them, but that was my first time.’
Then another thought struck him.
‘Listen, Pyotr Pavlovich. This Krymov fellow, tell me, was he ever taken prisoner?’
‘Krymov? Why do you ask?’
‘It’s just that I heard an interesting conversation about him at Front Headquarters.’
‘His unit was once encircled, but no, I don’t think he was ever taken prisoner. What was this conversation anyway?’
As though he hadn’t heard, Getmanov tapped Kharitonov on the shoulder and said: ‘That road there. It goes straight to the HQ of 1st Brigade – and we avoid the ravine. See if I haven’t learnt to orient myself!’
Novikov was already used to the way Getmanov could never follow one train of thought. He would begin telling a story, suddenly ask a question, carry on with the story, then interrupt himself with another question. His thoughts appeared to move in zigzags, with no rhyme or reason; Novikov knew, however, that this was by no means the case.
Getmanov often talked about his wife and children. He carried a thick packet of family photographs around with him and he had twice sent men off to Ufa with parcels of food. But as soon as he’d arrived he’d begun an affair – and quite a serious one at that – with Tamara Pavlovna, a swarthy, bad-tempered doctor from the first-aid post. One morning Vershkov had announced in a tragic voice: ‘Comrade Colonel, the doctor’s spent the night with the commissar. He didn’t let her go until dawn.’
‘That’s none of your business, Vershkov,’ Novikov had answered. ‘And I’d rather you stopped bringing me sweets on the sly.’
Getmanov made no secret of this affair. There in the jeep, he nudged Novikov and whispered: ‘Pyotr Pavlovich, I know a lad who’s fallen in love with our doctor.’
‘A commissar, I believe,’ said Novikov, glancing at the driver.
‘Well, Bolsheviks aren’t monks,’ Getmanov explained in a whisper. ‘What could the poor fool do? He’s fallen in love.’
They were silent for a few minutes. Then, in a quite different tone of voice, Getmanov said: ‘And as for you, Pyotr Pavlovich, you’re certainly not getting any thinner. You must be in your element here. The same as I’m in my element working for the Party. That’s what I was made for. I arrived at my obkom at the most difficult moment. Anyone else would have had a heart attack. The plan for grain deliveries was in tatters. Stalin himself spoke to me twice on the telephone . . . And I just put on weight – for all the world as though I were on holiday.’
‘God only knows what I was made for,’ said Novikov. ‘Maybe I really was made for war.’
He laughed.
‘One thing I’ve noticed – whenever anything interesting happens, I immediately think: “I must remember to tell Yevgenia Nikolaevna.” After that raid I thought: “I mustn’t forget to tell her – Getmanov and Nyeudobnov have seen their first bomb.”’
‘So you’re drawing up political reports, are you?’ asked Getmanov.
‘That’s right.’
‘I can understand,’ said Getmanov. ‘There’s no one closer than one’s wife.’
They reached Brigade HQ and got out of the jeep.
Novikov’s head was always full of names of people and places, of problems, difficulties, questions to be resolved and questions that had just been resolved, orders to be given and orders to be countermanded.
Sometimes he would wake up at night and begin wondering anxiously whether or not it was right to open fire at distances exceeding the range of the sighting gear. Was it really worth firing while on the move? And would his officers be able to take stock of a changing situation quickly and accurately? Would they be able to take decisions independently, on the spot?
Then he imagined his tanks breaking through the German and Rumanian defences. Column after column, they entered the breach and set off in pursuit of the enemy. In liaison with ground-support aircraft, self-propelled guns and motorized infantry they drove further and further towards the West, seizing fords and bridges, avoiding minefields, crushing pockets of resistance . . . Out of breath with joy and excitement, Novikov would sit up in bed, his bare feet touching the floor.
He never felt any desire to tell Getmanov about such moments. Here in the steppe, he felt even more irritated with him and Nyeudobnov than he had in the Urals. ‘They’ve arrived just in time for dessert,’ he would sometimes say to himself.
He himself was no longer the man he had been in 1941. He drank more, swore a lot and had become quick-tempered. Once he had almost hit the officer responsible for fuel supplies. People were afraid of him – and he knew it.
‘I don’t know if I really am made for war,’ he said to Getmanov. ‘The best thing in the world would be to live in a hut in the forest together with the woman you love. You’d go hunting during the day and come back home in the evening. She’d co
ok you a meal and then you’d go to bed. War’s no nourishment for a man.’
Getmanov, his head cocked, watched him attentively.
Colonel Karpov, the commander of the 1st Brigade, was a man with puffy cheeks, red hair and piercingly blue eyes. He met Novikov and Getmanov by the field wireless-set.
He had seen service on the North-Western Front. There he had more than once had to dig in his tanks and use them simply as guns.
He accompanied Novikov and Getmanov on their inspection of the 1st Brigade. His movements were as calm and unhurried as if he were himself the senior officer.
From his build, you would have expected him to be a good-natured man who drank too much beer and enjoyed a good meal. In fact he was cold, taciturn, suspicious and petty-minded. He was a far from generous host and had a reputation for miserliness.
Getmanov praised the conscientiousness with which bunkers, artillery emplacements and tank shelters had been constructed. He had indeed taken everything into consideration: types of terrain over which an enemy attack would be practicable, the possibility of a flanking movement . . . All he had forgotten was that he would now be required to lead his brigade into the attack, to break through the enemy front, to take up the pursuit.
Novikov was annoyed by Getmanov’s repeated nods and words of approval. Meanwhile Karpov, as though intentionally adding fuel to the flames, was saying:
‘Comrade Colonel, let me tell you how things were in Odessa. Well, we were quite splendidly entrenched. We counter-attacked in the evening and dealt the Rumanians a good blow. And then that night the army commander had us all embark on board ship, right down to the last man. Around nine o’clock in the morning the Rumanians finally came to and stormed the empty trenches. By then we were already on the Black Sea.’
‘Well, I just hope you don’t hang around in front of empty Rumanian trenches,’ said Novikov.
Would Karpov be capable of pressing on ahead, day and night, leaving pockets of enemy resistance behind him? Would he be able to forge on, exposing his head, his neck, his flanks? Would he be seized by the fury of pursuit? No, no, that was not his nature.
Everything was still parched by the heat of summer; it was strange to find the air so cool. The soldiers were all busy with everyday concerns: one, sitting on top of his tank, was shaving in front of a mirror he had propped against the turret; another was cleaning his rifle; another was writing a letter; there was a group playing dominoes on a tarpaulin they had spread out; another, larger, group had gathered, yawning, around the nurse. The sky was vast and the earth was vast; this everyday picture was full of the sadness of early evening.
Suddenly a battalion commander rushed up. Putting his tunic straight as he ran, he shouted: ‘Battalion! Attention!’
‘At ease, at ease,’ said Novikov.
Getmanov walked about among the men, saying a few words here and there. They all laughed, their faces brightening as they exchanged glances. He asked whether they were missing the girls from the Urals, whether they’d wasted a lot of paper in writing letters, whether their copies of Red Star came regularly. Then he turned on the quarter-master.
‘What did the soldiers have to eat today? And yesterday? And the day before yesterday? Is that what you’ve had to eat for the last three days? Soup made from green tomatoes and barley?
‘Let me have a word with the cook!’ he demanded to the accompaniment of general laughter. ‘I’d like to know what the quartermaster had to eat today.’
Through these questions about the everyday life of the soldiers and their material welfare, Getmanov seemed almost to be reproaching their commanding officers. It was as though he were saying: ‘Why do you go on and on all the time about the ordnance? What about the men themselves?’
The quartermaster himself, a thin man with the red hands of a washerwoman, just stood there in his old, dusty boots. Every now and then he cleared his throat nervously.
Novikov felt sorry for him. ‘Comrade Commissar,’ he said, ‘shall we visit Byelov’s together?’
Getmanov had always, with reason, been considered a man of the masses, a born leader. He only had to open his mouth for people to laugh; his vivid, direct way of talking, his sometimes vulgar language quickly bridged the distance between the secretary of an obkom and a worker in overalls.
He always began by asking about material matters. Did they get their wages on time? Was the shop in the factory or village well supplied, or were some items always unobtainable? Was the workers’ hostel well-heated? How was the food from the field-kitchen?
He had a particular gift for talking to middle-aged women in factories and collective farms. They liked the way he showed himself to be a true servant of the people, the way he was ready to attack managers, food suppliers, wardens of hostels, managers of tractor-stations and factories, if they failed to take into account the interests of the working man. He was the son of a peasant, he had worked in a factory himself – and the workers could sense this.
In his office at the obkom, however, he was a different man. There his sole concern was his responsibility towards the State. There his only preoccupations were the preoccupations of Moscow. The factory managers and secretaries of rural raykoms knew this very well.
‘You realize that you’re disrupting the State plan, do you? Do you want to surrender your Party membership card right now? Are you aware that the Party has placed its trust in you? Need I say more?’
There were no jokes or pleasantries in his office, no talk of providing boiling water in hostels or more greenery in the factories. Instead, people gave their approval to tight production schedules, agreed that the construction of new housing should be postponed, that the workers would have to increase their daily output and that they would all have to tighten their belts, slash costs and increase retail prices.
It was during the meetings held in his office that Getmanov’s power could be felt most tangibly. Other people seemed to come to these meetings not to express ideas and demands of their own, but simply to help Getmanov. It was as though the whole course of these meetings had been determined in advance by Getmanov’s will and intelligence.
He spoke quietly and unhurriedly, confident of his listeners’ agreement.
‘Let’s hear about your region then. First, comrades, we’ll have a word from the agronomist. And we’d like to hear your point of view, Pyotr Mikhailovich. I think Lazko has something to tell us – he’s had certain problems in that area. Yes, Rodionov, I know you’ve got something on the tip of your tongue, but in my opinion the matter’s quite clear. It’s time we began to sum up, I don’t think there can be any objections. Perhaps I can call on you, Rodionov, to read out this draft resolution.’ And Rodionov – who had intended to express certain doubts or even disagreements – would conscientiously read out the resolution, glancing now and again at the chairman to see if he was reading it clearly enough. ‘Well, comrades, it seems we’re all in favour.’
What was most extraordinary of all was that Getmanov always seemed to be absolutely sincere. He was fully himself when he was commiserating with old women in a village Soviet or expressing regret at the cramped conditions in a workers’ hostel; he was equally himself when he insisted to the secretary of a raykom on 100 per cent fulfilment of the plan, when he deprived workers on a collective farm of their entitlement to a few last grains of corn, when he decreased wages, increased retail prices and demanded lower overheads.
All this was far from easy to understand. But is life ever easy to understand?
As they made their way back to the jeep, Getmanov said jokingly to Karpov: ‘We’ll have to have lunch at Byelov’s. It’s hardly worth waiting for a meal from you and your quartermaster.’
‘Comrade Commissar,’ replied Karpov, ‘the quartermaster still hasn’t received anything from the HQ stores. And he hardly eats anything at all himself – he’s got a bad stomach.’
‘A bad stomach. Ay! Poor man!’ yawned Getmanov as he signed to the driver to start.
Byelov’
s brigade was positioned some distance to the west of Karpov’s. He was a thin man with a large nose and the crooked legs of a cavalryman. He spoke rapidly and he had a sharp, intelligent mind. Novikov liked him, and he seemed the ideal man to effect a sudden breakthrough and a swift pursuit. He was thought highly of, despite his relative lack of experience. Last December, near Moscow, he had led a raid on the enemy rear.
Now, though, Novikov was anxiously conscious only of Byelov’s failings: he was forgetful and frivolous, he drank like a fish, he was too much of a womanizer, and he was disliked by his subordinates. He had prepared no defensive positions whatsoever. He seemed quite uninterested in logistics – with the exception of fuel and ammunition supplies. He hadn’t given enough thought to the matter of the evacuation of damaged tanks from the battlefield and their subsequent repair.
‘We’re not in the Urals any longer, comrade Byelov,’ said Novikov.
‘Yes,’ said Getmanov. ‘We’re encamped on the steppes, like gypsies.’
‘I’ve taken measures against attack from the air,’ Byelov pointed out. ‘But at this distance from the front line, a ground attack seems hardly probable. ‘Anyway, comrade Colonel,’ he announced with a loud sigh, ‘what my soul thirsts for is an offensive.’
‘Very good, Byelov, very good!’ said Getmanov. ‘You’re a true commander, a real Soviet Suvorov!’ Then, addressing him as ‘ty’, he added in a quiet, good-humoured tone of voice: ‘The head of the Political Section says you’re having an affair with a nurse. Is that so?’
At first, misled by Getmanov’s friendly tone, Byelov didn’t understand the question.
‘I’m sorry. What did he say?’
Then Getmanov’s meaning became clear. With obvious embarrassment, he said: ‘I’m a man, comrade Commissar. And we are in the field.’
‘You’ve got a wife and child.’
‘Three children,’ said Byelov sullenly.
‘Three children then. Well, you know what happened to Bulanovich in the 1st Brigade. He’s a fine officer, but he was relieved of his command because of an affair like this. What kind of an example are you setting your subordinates? A Russian officer and the father of three children!’