Stalingrad

by Vasily Grossman

  At times like this we cease to have distinct perceptions of light, space, silence, rustlings, warmth, sweet smells, the swaying of long grass or leaves—all the millions of ingredients that make up the world’s beauty.

  What we perceive then is true beauty, and it tells us only one thing: that life is a blessing.

  And Novikov kept walking around the garden, stopping, looking about, sitting, walking a little further, not thinking about anything or remembering anything, not realizing how sad it made him that the world’s beauty is long-lived while human beings are not.

  When he got back to his room, he undressed and then, in only his socks, went up to the light bulb and began unscrewing it from its socket. The hot bulb burned his fingers and he took a newspaper from the table to wrap around it.

  He returned to more routine thoughts: about what he would be doing the next day, about the report he had now almost finished and would soon be handing in to the Military District HQ, about how his car battery needed changing and how it would probably be best to get this done in the tank corps maintenance depot.

  In the darkness he went up to the window and glanced abstractedly, with sleepy indifference, at the sky and the quiet, night-time garden. He would remember more than once just how casually he had looked for the last time at the world of peace.

  He woke up with a precise awareness that something terrible had happened, but with no idea what this might be.

  He saw tiny crumbs of alabaster on the parquet floor and glimmers of orange on the crystal pendants of the chandelier.

  He saw black scraps of smoke against a dirty red sky.

  He heard a woman wail. He heard the cries of crows and jackdaws. He heard a crash that shook the walls and, at the same time, a faint whining sound in the sky—and though this whining was quiet and even melodic it was this that made Novikov shudder in horror as he jumped out of bed.

  He saw and heard all this in a fraction of a second. Just as he was, in his underwear, he ran towards the door. Then, unexpectedly, he found himself saying, “Steady now!”—and he walked back to his bed to get dressed.

  He forced himself to do up all the buttons on his tunic. He adjusted his belt, straightened his holster and walked downstairs at a measured pace.

  Later, in newspapers and journals, he often came across the phrase “surprise attack.” How—he wondered—could anyone who had not experienced the war’s first minutes ever understand what these words really meant?

  Men were running along the corridor, some in uniform, some only half-dressed.

  Everyone was asking questions. No one was replying.

  “Have the petrol tanks caught fire?”

  “Was it a bomb?”

  “A military exercise?”

  “Saboteurs?”

  Some of the pilots were already standing on the steps outside.

  One, with no belt round his tunic, pointed towards the city and said, “Comrades, look! Over there!”

  Flames the colour of dark blood were climbing up over the railway stations and embankments, swelling and ballooning into the sky. At ground level there were the flashes of repeated explosions. Black planes were circling like gnats in the bright, deathly air.

  “It’s a provocation!” someone shouted.

  And another quiet yet clearly audible voice pronounced with awful certainty, “Comrades, Germany has attacked the Soviet Union. Everyone to the airstrip!”

  Soon after this came a moment that lodged itself in Novikov’s memory with a particular sharpness and precision. As he hurried after the pilots dashing towards the airstrip, he stopped in the middle of the garden where only a few hours earlier he had gone for a stroll. There was a silence, during which it seemed that everything was unchanged: the earth, the grass, the benches, the wicker table under the trees, a card chessboard, dominoes still lying scattered about.

  In that silence, with a wall of foliage shielding him from the flames and smoke, Novikov felt a lacerating sense of historical change that was almost more than he could bear.

  It was a sense of hurtling movement, similar perhaps to what someone might experience if they could glimpse, if they could sense on their skin and with every cell of their being, the earth’s terrible hurtling through the infinity of the universe.

  This change was irrevocable, and although only a millimetre lay between Novikov’s present life and the shore of his previous life, there was no force that could cancel out this gap. The gap was growing, widening; it could already be measured in metres, in kilometres. The life and time that Novikov still sensed as his own were already being transformed into the past, into history, into something about which people would soon be saying, “Yes, that’s how people lived and thought before the war.” And a nebulous future was swiftly becoming his present. At that instant, he remembered Zhenya, and it seemed to him that his thoughts about her would accompany him throughout this new life.

  Taking a shortcut to the airstrip, he climbed over a fence and began to run down a gap between two rows of young firs. Outside a little house—probably once the home of the landowner’s gardener—he saw a group of Poles, men and women. As he ran past them, a woman called out excitedly, “Who is it, Staś?”

  And in a clear strong voice a child replied, “A Russky, Mama. A soldier Russky.”

  Novikov ran on. Out of breath, deeply shaken, he kept repeating these words, now somehow stuck in his mind: “Russian soldier, Russian, Russian soldiers.”

  The words sounded different from how they had sounded before—both bitter and proud, new and joyful.

  The following day, he again and again heard Polish voices say, “Some dead Russians . . . We saw the Russians pass by . . . Some Russians stayed the night . . .”

  During the first months of the war it was always: “Yes, only we Russians . . .” Or “Yes, that’s our Russian organization for you . . .” Or “Our Russian let’s hope for the best . . . Our Russian by guess or by God . . .” But this “Russian soldier,” this bitterness that became a part of Novikov, that wove itself into his being, that took root in his soul along with the pain of the long retreat—this bitterness was awaiting the day of victory. Then the words would sound sweet.

  Novikov had barely reached the airstrip when he saw planes peeling away from the tops of the nearby trees. One, two . . . Three more . . . Another three . . . Something tore at the air. Something somewhere missed a beat. The earth began to smoke. It began to boil, almost like water. Without meaning to, Novikov closed his eyes. A burst of machine-gun fire tore into the ground a few steps away from him. And then he was being deafened by the roar of an engine, and he could make out the crosses on the plane’s wings, the swastika on its tail and the helmeted head of the pilot, briskly assessing what he had accomplished. And then came another roar, the growing roar of a second ground-attack aircraft. And a third, skimming the ground.

  Three of the planes on the airstrip were in flames. People were running, falling, jumping to their feet, running again . . .

  Looking resolute and vengeful, a pale young pilot got into his cockpit, waved his mechanic away from the propeller and took the quivering plane onto the runway. Barely had this plane, the draught from its propeller flattening the still dew-white grass, got up speed—barely had it leapt from the ground and begun to climb into the sky when the propeller of a second fighter began to spin. Taking heart from the roar of its engine, this second MIG made a little jump, as if flexing its leg muscles, ran a short distance along the ground and launched itself into the sky. These were the first airmen, the first Soviet soldiers of the air, to try to shield with their bodies the body of the people.

  Four Messerschmitts swooped down on the first MIG. Whistling, howling, letting out short bursts of machine-gun fire, they hung on its tail. The MIG already had holes in its fuselage. It smoked and spluttered. It was struggling to gain speed and break away from the enemy. It soared over the forest, disappeared and no less suddenly reappeared. Trailing black smoke, as if in mourning, it was trying to get back to t
he airstrip.

  The dying man and the dying plane had merged; they were a single being. And everything that the young pilot felt, high in the sky, was now being accurately registered by the wings of his plane. The plane swayed and trembled; it was in spasm, just as the pilot’s fingers were in spasm. Lit by the dawn sun, the plane lost all hope—and then, now free of hope, returned to the struggle. Everything in the young man’s consciousness—hatred, suffering, the longing to defeat death—everything in this man’s eyes and heart was conveyed to the men down below by the death throes of his plane. And then the most heartfelt wish of these men was granted. On the tail of the Messerschmitt that was finishing off this first Soviet fighter appeared the second Soviet fighter, which everyone had forgotten about. The men on the ground saw tongues of yellow fire mingle with the yellow of the Messerschmitt’s fuselage—and then this swift and mighty demon, which only a moment ago had seemed invincible, broke into pieces and fell through the air, a shapeless heap on the treetops. At the same time, spreading black, corrugated smoke through the morning sky, the first Soviet fighter crashed to the ground. The three remaining Messerschmitts disappeared to the west. The second Soviet fighter circled upwards, as if climbing invisible steps, and flew off towards the city.

  The pale blue sky was now empty. Only two black columns of smoke rose over the forest, trembling, swelling, growing thicker and thicker.

  A few minutes later an exhausted plane landed heavily on the airstrip. A man climbed out and shouted hoarsely, “Comrade Regimental Commander, to the glory of our Soviet homeland—I shot down two of them!”

  And in his eyes Novikov saw all the happiness, all the fury, all the madness and clear logic of what had just taken place in the sky, everything a pilot can never find words for but that can still be glimpsed—glimmering in his bright, dilated eyes—during his first moments back on the earth.

  At noon, at the regimental HQ, Novikov heard Molotov’s speech on the radio: “Our cause is just. We will be victorious!” He went up to the commander and embraced him. They kissed.

  Later that day Novikov was at an Infantry Division HQ.

  Brest was now beyond reach. Apparently German tanks had already entered the city, simply bypassing the Soviet fortresses to the west.

  The ceaseless roar of the heavy artillery from these fortresses shook the little house where the division was headquartered.

  The differences between people were remarkable. Some were entirely calm, rock-steady; others could barely speak, and their hands were trembling.

  The chief of staff, a lean elderly colonel, his hair streaked with grey that seemed to have appeared overnight, remembered Novikov from a training exercise the previous year. Seeing him come in, he slammed down the dead telephone receiver and said, “A far cry from last year’s ‘reds’ and ‘blues’! An entire battalion wiped out in just half an hour! To the last man! Not one survivor!” Banging his fist on the table, he yelled, “Bastards!”

  Pointing through the window, Novikov said, “Only a hundred metres from here some shit of a saboteur took a couple of shots at my car. He’s there in those bushes. You should send out a few of your men.”

  “It’s no good,” the chief of staff replied with a dismissive wave of the hand. “There’s just too many of them.”

  Screwing up one eye, as if there were a speck of dust in it that might prevent him from seeing everything clearly, the chief of staff went on: “The moment this all began, the divisional commander rushed off to the regimental HQs. I stayed here. Then one of the regimental commanders phones me, icy calm: ‘I’ve engaged with the enemy. My tanks and my infantry are in action. We’ve repelled two attacks with artillery fire.’ And then another of the commanders reports: ‘A German tank column has overwhelmed our frontier post. A large number of tanks are now advancing along the main highway. I’ve opened fire.’”

  The chief of staff jabbed at the map. “Here to the left their tanks have already outflanked us. Our frontier troops don’t even think of retreating, they’re fighting to the last man. But what about their wives and children? What about all the babies in crèches? How are we supposed to evacuate them? We’ve put them in trucks and driven them away, but God knows where to. For all I know, they may be right in the path of these same tanks. And what about ammunition supplies? Should we be sending our ammunition back to the rear? Or asking for more? It’s anyone’s guess.” He let out a few curses, lowered his voice and added, “At dawn I phoned Army Corps HQ. Some bright fellow ordered me to sit still and do nothing. ‘Don’t fall for this provocation!’ he said. The cretin!”

  “And this?” asked Novikov, pointing to a sector adjacent to the highway.

  “This is where the battalion was massacred,” the chief of staff shouted. “And the divisional commander with them. I’ve never known anyone like him—pure gold!”

  He wiped his hands across his face, as if he were washing, then pointed to some bamboo fishing rods, a dragnet and a landing net standing in one corner of the room. “We were meaning to go out at six o’clock this morning, just the two of us. He said there’d been good fishing here a week ago—the tench had been biting . . . Pure gold—and now it’s as if he’d never lived! His new deputy’s on his way from Kislovodsk and I was due to leave on the first. My travel warrant’s already been issued.”

  “What orders are you giving the regiments?” asked Novikov.

  “The only orders I can. I encourage them to carry out their duty. A regimental commander says, ‘I’m opening fire.’ I say, ‘That’s right—open fire!’ Men are digging trenches. ‘Go on,’ I say, ‘keep digging!’ After all, we all want the same thing: to stop the enemy, to fight him off!” He looked Novikov calmly in the eye. His own eyes were intelligent and alert.

  Even far to the east the Germans seemed to have seized control of the sky. All around, the earth was shaking; there were explosions both nearby and in the distance. Then the earth trembled, as if in some death agony, and the sun disappeared behind a veil of smoke. From all sides came the hammering of rapid-fire cannon and the now all too familiar sound of heavy machine guns. For all the chaos of movement and sound, the thrust of the Germans’ deadly work was painfully clear. Some pilots were heading due east, paying no attention to anything below them; each must have had his precise mission. Some were roaming about like bandits over the Soviet border units. And some were simply returning to their own airfields, west of the Bug.

  The other commanders’ faces looked very different on this day; pale, drawn, with large serious eyes, they were the faces not of colleagues but of brothers. Novikov did not see a single smile, nor did he hear a single lightly spoken or humorous word. Never before, perhaps, had he looked so far into people’s most hidden depths—depths that can be glimpsed only at moments of extreme trial. He saw stern concentration and unshakable will. Many of those who were usually most timid and silent, seemingly untalented men whom nobody noticed, revealed a wonderful strength. And sometimes he glimpsed an unexpected void in the eyes of commanders who only the day before had seemed the loudest, most energetic and self-confident; now they seemed lost, crushed and pathetic.

  There were times when everything around him seemed a mirage; in a moment there would be a breath of wind—and yesterday’s quiet evening would return, bringing with it days, weeks and months of peace. But then it would be the turn of the moonlit garden, of the sweet waitress, of his dinner in the half-empty dining room and the whole of the previous week or month to seem no more than a dream; the only reality was fire, smoke and this constant rumble.

  That evening Novikov was in an infantry battalion command post, and then in the HQ of a nearby artillery regiment. By then he had had time to draw some conclusions. The greatest misfortune of the first few hours, he believed, had been the breakdown of communications. With proper communications everything would have been different. He decided that, when he came to write his report, he would use as an example the infantry division he had visited in the afternoon. The regiments that remained in con
tact with the chief of staff had fought well, while the regiment that lost contact with HQ at the very beginning had been wiped out.

  Novikov did indeed say all this in his subsequent report. But in fact it had been the other way round: the regiment was unable to communicate with the chief of staff because it had been wiped out—it was not wiped out because of its lack of communications. Novikov’s conclusions had been drawn from only a few isolated observations.

  The simple truth of those first tragic hours was that those who carried out their duty were those able to find within their own hearts and minds the necessary faith, strength, courage, calm and intelligence to keep fighting. Often it was those left without orders who fought most successfully. Orders are born from foresight and analysis—and there had been no time for foresight or analysis. Those who usually issued orders and those who usually carried them out were all equally unprepared.

  An hour later, Novikov was with a heavy howitzer regiment. Their commander was on leave, and the acting commander was a young Major Samsonov. His long, thin face looked pale.

  “How are things going?” asked Novikov.

  “Not so badly,” said the major, with a shrug.

  “What decisions have you taken?”

  “Well,” said the major, “they’re preparing to cross the Bug. They’re concentrating their forces close to the bank. I’ve opened fire, using everything we’ve got.” As if apologizing for some foolish act, he went on, “We’re doing pretty well, I think. I’ve had a look through the OP telescope. The fountains of earth from our shells are quite something. We came first in the Military District shooting competition, you know.”

  “And after that?” Novikov asked sternly. “Remember, you’re responsible for both men and equipment.”

  “We’ll keep on shooting,” said the major, “for as long as we can.”

  “Got plenty of shells?”