Life and Fate

by Vasily Grossman

  On 31 January Paulus had finally received an answer: the announcement of his promotion to the rank of Field-Marshal. He had made one more attempt to prove his point – and been awarded the highest decoration of the Reich: the Knight’s Cross with oak leaves.

  It gradually dawned on him that Hitler was treating him as a dead man: it had been a posthumous promotion, a posthumous award of the Knight’s Cross. His existence now served only one purpose: to create a heroic image of the defender of Stalingrad. The official propaganda had made saints and martyrs of the hundreds of thousands of men under his command. They were alive, boiling their horsemeat, hunting down the last Stalingrad dogs, catching magpies in the steppes, crushing lice, smoking cigarettes made from nothing but twists of paper; meanwhile the State radio stations played solemn funeral music in honour of these still living heroes.

  They were alive, blowing on their red fingers, wiping the snot from their noses, thinking about the chances of stealing something to eat, shamming illness, surrendering to the enemy or warming themselves on a Russian woman in a cellar; meanwhile, over the airwaves, choirs of little boys and girls were singing, ‘They died so that Germany could live.’ Only if the State should perish could these men be reborn to the sins and wonders of everyday life.

  Everything had happened precisely as Paulus had predicted. This sense of his own rightness, confirmed by the absolute destruction of his army, was painful to live with. At the same time, in spite of himself, it gave him a kind of tired satisfaction, a reinforced sense of his own worth.

  Thoughts he had suppressed during his days of glory now came back to him.

  Keitel and Jodl had called Hitler the divine Führer. Goebbels had declared that Hitler’s tragedy was that the war offered him no opponent worthy of his own genius. Zeitzler, on the other hand, had told him how Hitler had once asked him to straighten the line of the front on the grounds that its curves offended his aesthetic sensibilities. And what about his mad, neurotic refusal to advance on Moscow? And the sudden failure of will that had led him to call a halt to the advance on Leningrad? It was only a fear of losing face that made him insist so fanatically on the defence of Stalingrad.

  Now everything was as clear as daylight.

  But clarity can be very terrifying. He could have refused to obey the order. Hitler would have had him executed, but he would have saved the lives of his men. Yes, he had seen many people look at him with reproach.

  He could have saved his army!

  But he was afraid of Hitler, afraid for his own skin!

  Chalb, the chief of the SD at Headquarters, had flown to Berlin the other day. He had made some confused remark to the effect that the Führer had revealed himself to be too great even for the German people. Yes . . . Yes . . . Of course . . .

  Demagogy, nothing but demagogy . . .

  Adam turned on the radio. The initial crackle of interference was succeeded by music: Germany was lamenting the dead of Stalingrad. The music had a strange power. Maybe the myth created by the Führer would mean more for the people and for battles to come than the lives of the lice-ridden, frostbitten wrecks that had once been his men? Maybe the Führer’s logic was not a logic that could be understood merely from reading orders, poring over maps and drawing up schedules?

  Perhaps the aura of martyrdom to which Hitler had condemned the 6th Army would bestow a new existence on Paulus and his soldiers, allowing them to participate in the future of Germany?

  It wasn’t a matter of pencils, calculating-machines and slide-rules. This Quartermaster-General worked according to a different logic, different criteria.

  Adam, dear, faithful Adam: the purest souls are constantly and inevitably a prey to doubt. The world is always dominated by limited men, men with an unshakeable conviction of their own rightness. The purest souls never take great decisions or hold sway over States.

  ‘They’re coming!’ shouted Adam. He ordered Ritter to put the open suitcase out of the way and then straightened his uniform.

  There were holes in the heels of the socks Ritter had just thrown into the case. What troubled Ritter was not that a careless and anxious Paulus might wear these socks, but that the holes might be glimpsed by hostile Russian eyes.

  Adam adopted what he considered to be the correct pose for an adjutant to a field-marshal: he stood quite still, his hands resting on the back of a chair, his back turned to the door that any moment now would be flung open, his eyes gazing calmly, attentively and affectionately at Paulus himself.

  Paulus leant back, away from the table, compressing his lips. If the Führer wanted play-acting, then he was ready to comply.

  Any minute now the door would open; this room in a dark cellar would be scrutinized by men who lived on the earth’s surface. The pain and bitterness had passed, what remained was fear: fear that the door would be opened, not by representatives of the Soviet High Command who had prepared their role in this solemn scene, but by wild, trigger-happy soldiers. And fear of the unknown: once this final scene had been played out, life would begin again. But what kind of life and where? Siberia, a Moscow prison, a barrack-hut in a labour camp?

  45

  That night the people on the left bank had seen multi-coloured flares light up the sky over Stalingrad. The German army had surrendered.

  People had immediately begun crossing the Volga into the city itself. They had heard that the remaining inhabitants of Stalingrad had endured terrible hunger during these last weeks; the officers, soldiers and sailors from the Volga fleet all carried little bundles of tinned food and loaves of bread. A few of them also brought some vodka or an accordion.

  These unarmed soldiers who entered Stalingrad during the night, who handed out bread and kissed and embraced the inhabitants, seemed almost sad; there was little singing or rejoicing.

  The morning of 2 February, 1943, was very misty. The mist rose up from the holes pierced in the ice and from the few patches of unfrozen water. The sun rose, as harsh now in the winter winds as during the blazing heat of August. The dry snow drifted about over the level ground, forming milky spirals and columns, then suddenly lost its will and settled again. Everywhere you could see traces of the east wind: collars of snow round the stems of thorn-bushes, congealed ripples on the slopes of the gullies, small mounds and patches of bare clay . . .

  From the Stalingrad bank it looked as though the people crossing the Volga were being formed out of the mist itself, as though they had been sculpted by the wind and frost. They had no mission to accomplish in Stalingrad; the war here was over and no one had sent them. They came spontaneously, of their own accord – soldiers and road-layers, drivers and gunners, army tailors, mechanics and electricians. Together with old men wrapped in shawls, old women wearing soldiers’ trousers and little boys and girls dragging sledges laden with bundles and blankets, they crossed the Volga and scrambled up the slopes of the right bank.

  Something very strange had happened to the city. You could hear the sound of car-horns and tractor engines; people were playing harmonicas, soldiers were shouting and laughing, dancers were stamping down the snow with their felt boots. But, for all this, the city felt dead.

  The normal life of Stalingrad had come to an end several months before: schools, factories, women’s dressmakers, amateur choirs and theatre groups, crèches, cinemas, the city police had all ceased to function. A new city – wartime Stalingrad – had been born out of the flames. This city had its own layout of streets and squares, its own underground buildings, its own traffic laws, its own commerce, factories and artisans, its own cemeteries, concerts and drinking parties.

  Every epoch has its own capital city, a city that embodies its will and soul. For several months of the Second World War this city was Stalingrad. The thoughts and passions of humanity were centred on Stalingrad. Factories and printing presses functioned for the sake of Stalingrad. Parliamentary leaders rose to their feet to speak of Stalingrad. But when thousands of people poured in from the steppes to fill the empty streets, when the firs
t car engines started up, this world capital ceased to exist.

  On that day newspapers all over the world reported the details of the German surrender. People in Europe, America and India were able to read how Field-Marshal Paulus had left his underground headquarters, how the German generals had undergone a preliminary interrogation at the headquarters of Shumilov’s 64th Army, and about what General Schmidt, Paulus’s chief of staff, had been wearing.

  By then Hitler, Roosevelt and Churchill were looking for new crisis points in the war. Stalin was tapping the table with his finger and asking the Chief of the General Staff if arrangements had been completed to transfer the troops from Stalingrad to other Fronts. The capital of the world war, full as it was of generals, experts in street-fighting, strategic maps, armaments and well-kept communication trenches, had ceased to exist. Or rather, it had begun a new existence, similar to that of present-day Athens or Rome. Historians, museum guides, teachers and eternally bored schoolchildren, though not yet visible, had become its new masters.

  At the same time, an everyday, working city was coming into being – with schools, factories, maternity homes, police, an opera and a prison.

  A light dusting of snow had fallen on the paths along which men had carried shells, loaves of bread and pots of kasha to gun emplacements, along which they had dragged machine-guns, along which snipers and artillery observers had crept to their stone hiding-places.

  Snow had fallen on the paths along which messengers had run between companies and battalions, the paths leading from Batyuk’s division to Banniy Ovrag, to the slaughterhouse and the water-towers. Snow had fallen on the paths where the inhabitants of the wartime city had gone for a smoke, to celebrate a comrade’s name-day with a few drinks, to have a wash in a cellar, to play a game of dominoes, to have a taste of a neighbour’s sauerkraut. Snow had fallen on the paths leading to dear Manya and the beautiful Vera, to menders of watches and cigarette-lighters, to tailors, accordion-players and storekeepers.

  A whole network of capricious, winding paths was being covered by snow; not one fresh footprint could be seen on all these thousands of kilometres. This first snowfall was soon followed by a second. The paths blurred and faded.

  Meanwhile thousands of people were making new paths, ordinary paths that didn’t wind about in great loops or hug the walls of ruins.

  The old inhabitants of the city felt both happy and empty. After defending Stalingrad for so long, the soldiers felt strangely depressed.

  The whole city was suddenly empty and everyone could feel it – from army commanders and commanders of infantry divisions to ordinary soldiers like Polyakov and Glushkov. This feeling was absurd. Why should a victorious end to the slaughter make one feel sad?

  The telephone on the commanding officer’s desk was silent in its yellow case. A collar of snow had settled round the housing of the machine-gun. Battery-commanders’ telescopes and embrasures had clouded over. Well-thumbed maps and plans were transferred from map-cases to pouches, and sometimes to the kitbags and suitcases of commanders of platoons, companies and battalions . . .

  At the same time crowds of people were wandering among the dead houses, shouting loud ‘hurray’s and embracing one another. They looked at each other and thought: ‘What fine brave lads you are! Just like us in your winter hats and your jackets! But what we’ve achieved doesn’t even bear thinking about. We’ve lifted the heaviest burden in the world. We’ve raised up Truth over Lies. We’ve just accomplished what most people only read of in fairy-tales.’

  All these people belonged to the same city: some of them came from Kuporosnaya Balka, others from Banniy Ovrag, others from the water-towers or from ‘Red October’, still others from Mamayev Kurgan. And the people who had lived in the centre, on the banks of the Tsaritsa, near the wharves, behind the oil-tanks, came out to meet them. The soldiers were both hosts and guests. The wind roared as they showered one another with congratulations. From time to time they fired a few shots into the air or let off a hand-grenade. They clapped each other on the back, threw their arms round each other, kissed with cold lips and then broke into light-hearted curses . . . They had all risen up from under the earth: metal-workers, turners, ploughmen, carpenters, navvies . . . They had ploughed up stone, iron and clay; together they had fought off the enemy.

  A world capital is unique not only because it is linked with the fields and factories of the whole world. A world capital is unique because it has a soul. The soul of wartime Stalingrad was freedom.

  The capital of the war against the Fascists was now no more than the icy ruins of what had once been a provincial industrial city and port.

  Here, ten years later, was constructed a vast dam, one of the largest hydro-electric power stations in the world – the product of the forced labour of thousands of prisoners.

  46

  The German officer had only just woken up and hadn’t yet heard the news of the surrender. He had fired a shot at Sergeant Zadnyepruk and slightly wounded him. This had aroused the wrath of the Russians in charge of the operation: the German soldiers were filing out of their vast bunkers and throwing down their arms, with a loud clatter, onto the steadily growing pile of tommy-guns and rifles.

  The prisoners tried to look straight ahead – as a sign that even their gaze was now captive. Private Schmidt was the only exception: he had smiled as he came out into the daylight and then looked up and down the Russian ranks as though he were sure of glimpsing a familiar face.

  Colonel Filimonov, who was slightly drunk after arriving from Moscow the day before, was standing beside his interpreter and watching General Wegler’s division surrender their arms. His greatcoat with its new gold epaulettes, its red tabs and black edging, stood out among the filthy, scorched jackets and crumpled caps of the Russian officers and the equally filthy, scorched, crumpled clothes of the German prisoners. He had said yesterday in the Military Soviet canteen that the central commissariat in Moscow still contained supplies of gold braid that had been used for epaulettes in pre-revolutionary days; it was the done thing among his circle of friends to have one’s epaulettes sewn from this fine old braid.

  When he heard the shot and Zadnyepruk’s wounded cry, Filimonov shouted: ‘What was that? Who’s shooting?’

  ‘Some fool of a German,’ several voices answered. ‘They’re bringing him along . . . he says he didn’t know.’

  ‘Didn’t know?’ shouted Filimonov. ‘Hasn’t the swine spilt enough of our blood?’

  He turned to his interpreter, a tall Jewish political instructor.

  ‘Bring me that officer straight away. I’ll make him pay for that shot with his life!’

  Just then Filimonov caught sight of Schmidt’s large, smiling face and shouted: ‘So it makes you laugh, does it, to know that another of our men’s been crippled? I’ll teach you, you swine!’

  Schmidt was unable to understand why his well-meaning smile should have made this Russian officer scream at him with such fury. Then he heard a pistol shot, seemingly quite unconnected with these shouts. No longer understanding anything at all, he stumbled and fell beneath the feet of the soldiers behind. His body was dragged out of the way; it lay there on one side while the other soldiers marched past. After that, a group of young boys, who were certainly not afraid of a mere corpse, climbed down into the bunkers and began probing about under the plank-beds.

  Colonel Filimonov, meanwhile, was inspecting the battalion commander’s underground quarters and admiring their comfort and solidity. A soldier brought in a young German officer with calm clear eyes.

  ‘Comrade Colonel,’ said the interpreter, ‘this is the man you asked to have brought to you – Lieutenant Lenard.’

  ‘This one?’ asked Filimonov in surprise. He liked the look of the officer’s face and he was upset at having been involved, for the first time in his life, in a murder. ‘Take him to the assembly point. And no mucking about! I want him alive and I shall hold you responsible.’

  The day of judgment was drawing to an end
; it was already impossible to make out the smile on the face of the dead soldier.

  47

  Lieutenant-Colonel Mikhailov, the chief interpreter of the 7th section of the Political Administration of the Front, was accompanying Field-Marshal Paulus to the Headquarters of the 64th Army.

  Paulus had left his cellar without so much as glancing at the Soviet officers and soldiers. They had stared at him with greedy curiosity, admiring his grey rabbit-fur hat and his field-marshal’s greatcoat with its band of green leather running from the shoulder to the waist. He had strode past towards the waiting jeep, head erect, not looking at the ruined city.

  Mikhailov had often attended diplomatic receptions before the war and he felt confident and at ease with Paulus. He was never over-solicitous, but always cool and respectful.

  He was sitting beside Paulus, watching his face and waiting for him to break the silence. He had already been present at the preliminary interrogation of the other generals; they had behaved very differently.

  The chief of staff of the 6th Army had declared in a slow, lazy voice that it was the Italians and Rumanians who were to blame for the catastrophe. The hook-nosed Lieutenant-General Sixt von Armin, his medals tinkling gloomily, had added: ‘And it wasn’t only Garibaldi and that 8th Army of his. It was the Russian cold, the lack of supplies and munitions . . .’

  Schlemmer, the grey-haired commander of a tank corps, wearing a Knight’s Cross together with a medal he had been awarded for having received five wounds, had interrupted this conversation to ask if they would look after his suitcase. After that everyone had begun talking at once: General Rinaldo, a man with a gentle smile who was head of the medical service; Colonel Ludwig, the morose commander of a tank division, whose face had been hideously scarred by a sabre cut . . . Colonel Adam, Paulus’s adjutant, had made the worst fuss of all. He had lost his toilet-case and he kept throwing his hands up into the air and shaking his head in despair; the flaps of his leopard-skin cap had flapped about like the ears of a pedigree dog just out of the water.