It was with these same forever deadened feelings and sense of detachment that Pavel went off to war in August ’41 as a junior lieutenant from the reserves. He had been at war for more than three years now, still unable to feel anything with his whole being, as if alien even to himself and his own body. He had lain this way in a field near Leningrad, seriously wounded, until the medics came to look after him and send him to the hospital. And just as in the pre-war days, when any boorish fool from the regional committee could give Kandalintsev instructions about plant breeding, so in the army he was never astonished when given idiotic tasks to perform.
So now the war was drawing to a close. Had he actually survived it all? But even now Pavel was unable to feel anything fully: they might kill him yet; there was still time enough for that. Someone had to die in the final months of the war, after all.
Only one feeling survived that was still keen: for his young wife, Alina. He missed her terribly.
Well, it will be as God decides.
9
THE SLED MOVED noiselessly over the soft snow, with only the horses snorting from time to time.
The night was becoming brighter: the moon could be seen behind the clouds, and the layer of clouds was growing thinner. You could identify the patches of trees and tell where the land was open.
Boyev kept checking his map, using his sleeve to cover the beam of his flashlight. By the bends in this road across the fields he could tell where he should drop off his battery commanders, each at his own OP in this field covered with fresh snow.
This seemed to be a good spot, right here.
Kasyanov and Proshchenkov jumped from their sleds and came up.
“Just don’t get too far away from me, no more than a kilometer. It’s not likely we’ll have any work to do, and I expect we’ll be moved out in the morning. Still, you’d better dig in, just in case.”
The three of them went their separate ways. The horses moved off confidently. There weren’t many hills in this area, and it took some time to make out where the high ground was. If they don’t pull us out by morning, we’ll have to look for something better.
And still there wasn’t a sound to be heard. There were no black shapes moving across the field.
When there’s a tricky job to be done, you get your best man to do it. He called up the clever Ostanin: “Vanya, take one of your gunners and go up about a kilometer, find out what the ground’s like. See if there’s anyone up there. And take some grenades with you.”
Ostanin replied in his broad Vyatka accent: “You see someone moving around out there, best not ask, ‘Who goes there?’ You’ll get an answer from his machine gun. Or you try to fake it and say, ‘Wer ist da?’ and our own guys will let you have it.”
They went off.
Now they brought up some picks and spades and began hacking at the earth. The top layer of soil was as iron hard as it had been on the graves this morning. They led the horses behind some bushes. The radio operator, using his radio on the sled, was calling out: “Balkhash, Balkhash, this is Omsk. Give me Twelve. Request from Ten.”
“Twelve”—who is Toplev—replies.
“Have you located any of our ‘sticks’?”
“No sticks, no one,” comes his very concerned voice.
If there still are no infantry around Adlig, then they haven’t caught up with us. Where can they be?
“What about Ural?”
“Ural says you’re not looking in the right place. Keep searching.”
“Just who were you talking to?”
“Zero Five.”
That’s the head of brigade reconnaissance. He should be searching for them himself, up here, and not sitting in brigade headquarters thirty kilometers back. And why haven’t they moved out yet? When are they going to get here?
The digging was going slowly. Three small trenches should be enough, not even full depth. There’s no cover here anyway.
The agile Ostanin returned even earlier than expected.
“Comrade Major. About half a kilometer ahead the ground drops into a hollow, and it looks as if it reaches around to our right. I went off to our left, slantwise, and saw some people crawling around. Couldn’t tell who they were till one of them let out a full burst of good Russian curses when his spool of cable got snarled, so they’re our guys.”
“Who are they?”
“It’s the right-hand listening post. One spool of cable will be enough to link up with them, and we’ll have a direct line to their central station. So that’s fine.”
“Right, then let’s string out some cable. Your partner can do it.”
Still, how are we going to sight in our guns? Nothing’s been surveyed in, we’ll have to do it all by eye.
“Nobody else out there? No infantry?”
“Not even any tracks in the snow.”
“Right. Twelve, twelve, search for the sticks. Send out your people in every direction!”
10
THE VISIBILITY WAS now a little better: you could make out the patch of forest that lay beyond Adlig on the left. The dark, spreading trees on the right could also be seen, but they were probably on the other side of the large hollow there.
Brigade headquarters had stopped responding to calls on the radio. That’s fine, they’ve probably moved out. Didn’t let us know, though.
Toplev was very nervous. He was often nervous. He was always concerned for everything to be correct so that no one would criticize him. He wanted to avoid the smallest error, the tiniest flaw in his work, before his superiors spotted it and blasted him for it. But how can you always know the right thing to do?
And now he didn’t know where he should be. He had to check the screen of outposts; he had to go to the guns of Four and Five Batteries. There were just two men from each crew on duty. The others had gone off to houses in the village. Were they getting something to eat? There was food in the houses. Or were they loading up with booty? There was enough of that as well, and it could be packed away in the battery trailer. (There were still a few old men and women in the village, but they didn’t dare make a fuss.)
It was a bad move, this letting them send parcels back from Germany. Now every soldier’s pack was bulging. And they never knew just what to take: they’d pick up one thing, then toss it aside when they found something better to make up their five kilos. Toplev could understand it all, but he didn’t like it because it got in the way of the job.
Then he set off back to the battalion headquarters truck on the edge of Klein Schwenkitten. Next to it was a little house that had a nice eiderdown. Time to stretch out and get some sleep, it was already past midnight. Not likely to get much sleep here, though.
THE SKY GREW lighter behind the clouds. It was peaceful and quiet, as if there were no war going on.
Yet what would happen if some of them crept up from the east? Our shells weigh forty kilos apiece, and what with carrying them and reloading, it was never less than a minute between shots. And we’d never manage to pull out of here with these eight-ton gun-howitzers. It would be great if some other guns showed up, some antitank weapons from division. But there’s nobody.
Back at the truck he went to the radio again. He reported to the major: No contact with Ural. And no “sticks” either, though we’ve sent people out to look for them.
One of the sergeants sent here sprang into action. The hum of a motor could be heard from the road they’d taken to get here. It was a jeep. He couldn’t tell who was in it until the last minute.
A man jumped easily out of the jeep. Major Baluev.
Toplev reported: these were the firing positions of a heavy artillery battalion.
The major had a youthful voice, though it was very firm. This news cheered him up: “Do you mean it? Heavy artillery! That’s something I never expected!”
They went into the house, to the light. The major was lean, clean-shaven. And he looked quite worn-out.
“That’s quite amazing! It makes our job a lot easier.”
I
t turned out that he was the commander of an infantry regiment, the very one they’d been looking for. Now it was Toplev who was cheered: “That’s great! Now we’ll get everything back in shape.”
Not quite, though. It would be half the night before the first battalion of infantry could march here.
They brought a map to examine under the kerosene lamp.
Toplev pointed out the locations of our observation posts. And then there’s the sound-ranging battery, over here in Dietrichsdorf. But we still haven’t come across a single enemy unit.
The major, his cap tilted over his flaxen hair, focused his keen eyes on the map. He wasn’t a bit happy.
He examined the map for a long time. Using a finger, not a pencil, he traced out his proposed lines. Somewhere there, past the artillery OPs, he would position his infantry. He opened his own map case and wrote out his instructions. These he gave to the senior sergeant who had come with him.
“Pass this on to the adjutant. Take the jeep. If you see anything with wheels along the way, do your best to grab it. We have to try to get at least one company up here by transport.”
He kept two scouts with him.
“I’m going to see your battalion commander.”
Toplev obligingly took the major into Adlig. When they came to the end of the road he said, “It’s straight this way, just follow the sled tracks.”
They showed clearly on the ground.
It grew lighter. The moon was making its way through the clouds.
11
AFTER BEING WOUNDED in the lung on the Sozha River, Major Baluev was sent on a year-long course at the Frunze Academy. He was afraid he might miss the war, but he came back to the headquarters of the Second Belorussian Army Group just in time for the January offensive. From there he was sent to an army headquarters, then to a corps headquarters, and then a divisional headquarters.
It was only today—no, by now it was yesterday—that he had found this latest post. As it happened, the day before he arrived, a regimental commander had been killed—the third one since the autumn. Now he had taken his place; his orders would be signed later.
He managed to speak to the divisional commander for five minutes. But even that was enough for an experienced officer: he scarcely needed to read the map and could grasp the situation as soon as the artillery officer had moved his fingers over it and voiced a few of his concerns. Do the higher-ups have any idea of what’s going on here? They seem to be in a total fog and can’t make a decision. And look who gets promoted to general these days! What’s more, they have to keep to the nationality quota to make sure each minority is represented.
After working as part of a cohesive academic team fighting a theoretical war, you can’t help but be bowled over when you’re suddenly dropped into all this. You may have forgotten some of your old habits, but you’ve got to keep your spirits up.
Baluev, in fact, had managed to grasp something of the situation here while he was on the operations staff at the army headquarters. After 1942, our troops just kept rolling on; they seemed unstoppable! So why shouldn’t they seem a bit cocky? It was a wonderful, beautiful cockiness of a triumphant army. They took it with them when they cut Prussia in two. Now their support echelons were lagging behind, the infantry was lagging, but the Fifth Tank Army went rolling on, right to the Baltic. It was something to admire; it was thrilling, in fact!
Just the same, with a forward rush of such scale a single division no longer had the usual three to five kilometers of front. Suddenly a division had a forty-kilometer front! So, you’d better make sure your regiment was well extended. And ask for a couple of seventy-sixes.
That’s how it is: An army on the move is an ever-changing structure. Sometimes it can form a wall as hard as marble in twenty-four hours; sometimes it can dissolve like an apparition in two hours. But that’s why you’re an officer in the regular army, and that’s why you’ve had this academic training.
And in this tempestuous whirl of unexpectedness, bitterness, and harshness, you find the very delight of being at war.
12
IT CONTINUED TO grow brighter, and by one o’clock the clouds had broken up. The moon wasn’t yet full, and it wouldn’t be out for the whole night. Lacking its left edge and tilted slightly westward, it began floating picturesquely behind the clouds, sometimes shining brightly, sometimes obscured.
It may have been getting brighter, but through the binoculars there was little that could be made out on the snowy field to their front; it did, though, seem completely empty beyond the depression. Yet there were those groves of trees here and there where the enemy could mass his troops.
The moon had had some special power over Pavel Boyev since he had been a child. In his youth, it would make him stop or sit or lie down simply to gaze at it. He would think about the kind of life that lay ahead of him and about the kind of girl he would meet.
But though he was strong, solid, and an excellent gymnast, for some reason girls were rarely if ever attracted to him. He racked his brain to try to find out what was wrong. True, he wasn’t very good-looking; his nose and lips were not quite straight. But does a man have to be handsome? Beauty is an entirely feminine quality, even in the least attractive women. Pavel would be simply paralyzed before a woman; he was in awe of her tenderness, her fragility, and he not only feared he might break her but even that he might scorch her with his very breath. Whether or not this was the cause, he didn’t marry before the war. (And it was only Tanya, the nurse at the hospital, who had later explained it to him: That’s just what we love, the strong hand of a man next to us, don’t you see that, silly?)
The moon was shining over his shoulder. He turned to look at it. Then a cloud obscured it again.
It was still the same: not a sound from anywhere. We must have hit the Germans right where they hurt.
Meanwhile, they had strung telephone lines from the guns to all three OPs. Via the listening post they had a connection with the sound-ranging battery in Dietrichsdorf and its posts to the left and farther north. Their battery commander was complaining that there wasn’t a soul to be seen anywhere; they had moved their advance post across the lake to their front.
The lake formed a complete gap, and in the moonlight they could spot any Germans who might be there. So, the whole area two kilometers eastward was empty.
He also reported that the surveyors were using the moonlight to fix the locations of the listening posts and some had gone back to Adlig to survey in the guns.
So, an hour from now we’ll be ready to fire! But it’s not likely we’ll be staying here. We’ll be moving out.
It didn’t look as if there would be a thaw. He was going to spend the night here, so he picked up a pair of felt boots from the sled and changed.
Then Toplev reported: still no contact at all with brigade headquarters. That was odd. How long does it take them to get here? Could the Germans have intercepted them along the road? Then he remembered: the brigade commander had gone off to the hospital yesterday. Vyzhlevsky must be in charge.
Boyev tried to keep his distance from all the political officers; he had little use for such idle people. But he found Vyzhlevsky particularly obnoxious. There was something not right about him; perhaps that was why he was so particularly keen on all his commissar’s claptrap. People in the brigade said, on the quiet, that something in his service record from’41 didn’t quite add up. He had been in Odessa when the Germans had it surrounded; then there was a mysterious gap in his record for two or three months; and then, as if nothing had happened, he was serving on the western front again with a higher rank. And how was Gubaydulin linked with all this? Why did Vyzhlevsky immediately pluck him out of the group of reinforcements, put him into the political section, and promote him so quickly? (And he saddled Boyev with the job of party organizer.)
Again from Toplev: still no contact with brigade headquarters. But the commander of the rifle regiment had turned up and was following Boyev’s tracks to the OP.
Well,
about time. Now at least that’s been cleared up.
13
“COMRADE SENIOR LIEUTENANT! Comrade Senior . . .”
“What is it?” Kandalintsev responded immediately, in an alert voice.
“There’s a German here, a deserter!”
It was Corporal Neskin who had come into the barn to tell him this. The sentries were holding the German. He had walked straight across the field.
Gusev also heard. Great news! Both platoon commanders jumped down from the stack of hay.
They went outside to take a look. The moon was bright and they could easily make out his German uniform and see that he was unarmed. He wore a warm cap.
The German saw the officers and smartly raised his hand to his temple : “Herr Oberleutnant! Diese Nacht, in zwei Stunden wird man einen Angriff hier unternehmen!”
Neither one of them had much German. They could make out a few individual words but couldn’t understand them when they were put together.
The fellow was very excited.
Still, he’s got to go to battalion headquarters. They gestured for him to go. Neskin led the way, and behind the prisoner marched little Yursh with a carbine (that fellow was always there when you needed him). Yursh passed on more information to the officers as they walked. “We’ve already tried talking a bit of ‘vas-ist-das’ to get through to him. He knows some language that’s closer to ours, but we still couldn’t make out anything.”
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