The general turned his head and, narrowing his pale grey eyes, looked at Krymov intently.
“Well, so much for Sarkisyan’s fuel!” thought Krymov.
The general banged his fist on the desk and roared out, “Somov!”
The barber came in with his brushes and razors. Glimpsing the anger on the general’s red face, he took a step back.
“Beg to report!” came the loud, clear voice of Lieutenant Somov, the adjutant. Sensing the approaching storm, he too froze in the doorway.
In the soft voice of a commander issuing an order that is not to be questioned, the general said to his adjutant, “Summon Malinin this instant and tell the son of a bitch I’ll have him shot if he ever humiliates front-line commanders again. He knows very well that we have received orders to blow up our underground fuel tanks. We don’t have the tankers to transport the fuel. If he doesn’t issue it to fighting units, in forty-eight hours it’ll go up in flames. He’s to give the commissar every last drop of petrol he needs—enough to fill every vehicle and an extra five 200-kilogram barrels. And, till these orders have been carried out, he’s not to move an inch.”
The general, now on his feet, looked deep into Krymov’s eyes. In his intent gaze Krymov glimpsed cunning, intelligence and true soul.
“I don’t know how to thank you, comrade General.”
“Very good, very good,” said the general, holding out his hand in farewell. “One angry man meets another.” And then, very quiet, and with real anguish, “But we keep retreating, comrade Battalion Commissar, we keep retreating.”
63
SOMETIMES a man can be unlucky for a long time, and unable to achieve even the smallest of things—and then something changes: after one success, everything starts to work out of its own accord, as if fate had already prepared quick, easy and convenient solutions for every difficulty.
Krymov had barely left the general’s office when he saw a messenger from the fuel-supply section hurrying towards him. And he had barely left the head of the fuel-supply section’s office, with a fuel-entitlement order made out and signed in only a few minutes, when he caught sight of Sarkisyan. The stocky senior lieutenant was running towards him, his large brown eyes shining:
“Well, comrade Commissar?”
Krymov handed him the order. During the last forty-eight hours fuel had been a matter of torment for Sarkisyan. If only he had been more diligent, long ago, in his studies of mathematics—then he might have been able to solve the insoluble. He and his sergeant had covered every sheet of paper they had with signs and numbers. In his large, round handwriting he had added, multiplied and divided kilograms, kilometres and the capacities of various fuel tanks, sighing, frowning and wiping the sweat from his forehead.
“Well, now we’re alive and kicking!” he kept saying, laughing out loud and repeatedly scrutinizing the fuel order.
Even Krymov yielded for a moment to what he sometimes called “the euphoria of retreat”—a state he was quick to detect in others and that upset him deeply. He knew only too well the look on the faces of men ordered to withdraw from positions where they had been under heavy fire; he knew the bright eyes of the lightly wounded, men legitimately walking away from the hell of the trenches.
He understood the preoccupied bustle of those about to set off east yet again; how a leaden weight in the heart could suddenly give way to a sense of invulnerability.
But he also knew that there was no getting away from the war. It followed men like a black shadow. The faster they fled the war, the faster it pursued them. Those who retreated brought the war with them, close on their heels. The vast spaces to the east were a dangerous lure. The limitlessness of the Russian steppes was treacherous; it seemed to offer the possibility of escape, but this was an illusion.
The retreating troops came to peaceful orchards and villages. The peace and quiet were a joy to them—but an hour or a day later the black dust, the flames and thunder of war would burst in after them. The troops were bound to the war by a heavy chain, and no retreat could snap this chain; the further they retreated, the heavier the chain grew and the more tightly it bound them.
Krymov went with Sarkisyan to the western edge of the village, to the gully where the mortar unit had halted. The vehicles and equipment had been dispersed, hidden beneath the slope or camouflaged by branches. The men seemed sullen and idle; there was no sign of the usual businesslike behaviour of soldiers deftly and confidently establishing themselves in a new place—cooking, making straw beds, washing and shaving, and checking their weapons.
After a few brief conversations, it became clear that the men were depressed. Seeing Krymov approach, they got to their feet only slowly and reluctantly. If he made a joke, they replied with obstinate silence or a sullen question; if he tried to speak seriously, they answered with a joke. Krymov’s connection with the men had broken—and he sensed this at once. Generalov, a man known for his cheerful courage, asked, “Is it true, comrade Commissar, that the whole brigade’s going to the city for a good rest? People say you’ve been telling everyone that our unit’s been singled out, that it’s just us who’ve been ordered not to retreat.”
Krymov was angered by the veiled reproach.
“Are you dissatisfied, Generalov? Have you changed your mind about defending your Soviet motherland?”
Generalov straightened his belt.
“I said no such thing, comrade Commissar. Why put words like that in my mouth? The section commander will tell you that my crew was the last to leave their position the day before yesterday. Everyone else had withdrawn, but we were still firing.”
A young ammunition-bearer, with a cross, mocking look on his face, said, “Last to leave, first to leave—what’s the difference? We still end up tramping across the whole of Russia.”
“Where are you from?” asked Krymov.
“I’m from Omsk, comrade Commissar. The Germans aren’t there yet.” Evidently he was trying to forestall lectures about what the Germans might do to his birthplace.
From behind a car a voice asked, “Is it true, comrade Commissar, that the Germans are already bombing Siberia?”
“And how do things stand with fuel, comrade Commissar? Apparently the infantry are already well on their way east.”
The mortarmen listened in silence to Krymov’s angry reply. Then the voice from behind the car said sadly, “So it’s all our fault again. It’s not the Germans advancing—it’s just us retreating.”
“Who is it back there?” asked Krymov. He went over to the car. But whoever it was had disappeared.
64
KRYMOV ordered Sarkisyan to take all his vehicles to the fuel depot, since they did not have enough containers to transport the fuel.
Sarkisyan expected to be back by evening, and Krymov decided to wait for him in the village.
But Sarkisyan was delayed. First, to get enough petrol to drive to the Front fuel depot, he had to wait for a long time at the Army fuel depot. Then he took the wrong road. Finally it turned out that it was forty-two kilometres to the Front depot, not thirty as he had been led to believe.
It was still daylight when he got there, but he was told that fuel could be delivered to vehicles only at night. The depot was near the main highway, and German planes were patrolling the sky all day long.
As soon as a vehicle appeared, the Germans would swoop down, drop a few small bombs and rattle away with their machine guns.
The watchman reckoned that they were being bombed as often as eleven times in a single day.
The depot manager and his subordinates kept to their dugout. If anyone went outside, they would call after him, “What’s it like up there?”
“Only a single plane,” the man would answer. “Circling about—as if the bastard’s on sentry duty.”
Or: “Coming straight at us, damn him! In a dive!”
At the sound of an explosion they would all throw themselves to the floor, cursing and swearing. Then one of them would shout to the man up above, “Wha
t are you doing, parading about up there? You’ll lure him back. Next time it’ll be an armour-piercing incendiary.”
The day Sarkisyan came, they hadn’t even been able to cook dinner, in case the Germans noticed the smoke. They had eaten only dry rations.
Sarkisyan had been stopped by sentries a kilometre before the depot. “From here you must walk, comrade Senior Lieutenant. Until dark, vehicles are not allowed further.”
The depot manager, who had thistle heads, wisps of straw and bits of clay sticking to his uniform, advised Sarkisyan to take a good look around while it was still light. He should memorize the way—and then return with his vehicles as soon as it got dark.
“But make sure that your drivers understand. They must not switch on their headlamps for even a second. If they do, we’ll fire on them.”
Sarkisyan was to arrive with his vehicles at twenty-three hundred. Neither earlier nor later.
“He’s out of the way then—seems that’s when he likes to have supper,” the depot manager explained, pointing up at the dusty blue sky. “And then just before midnight he litters the sky with signal flares, like an old woman putting her pots out to dry.”
German bombers were clearly no laughing matter.
65
REALIZING that Sarkisyan was being badly delayed, Krymov ordered his driver to look for a billet in the village.
Semyonov was awkward and impractical. When they stayed the night in a village he was embarrassed to ask the peasant women for a glass of water, let alone milk. He slept hunched up in the car, too timid to enter someone else’s hut. There appeared to be only one person whom he did not fear: the stern commissar. With Krymov, he did little but argue and grumble. In response Krymov would say, “But one day I’ll be transferred—and then you’ll find yourself dying of hunger!”
Krymov was not simply joking. He felt a fatherly tenderness towards Semyonov and was truly concerned about his well-being.
On this occasion, however, Semyonov got everything right: he found an excellent billet—spacious, high-ceilinged rooms that until a few hours before had housed the Support Services HQ secretariat.
Only that morning the house’s elderly owners—along with a tall, handsome young woman and the little fair-haired, dark-eyed toddler who was always there at her heels—had stood beneath the awning of their summer kitchen and watched the secretariat staff make their final departure preparations.
After lunch the last HQ sections had gone on their way, the guard battalion had followed—and the village had been left empty. Evening had set in and once again the flat steppe had taken on the moist colours of sunset. Light and dark had once again fought their silent battle high in the sky. Once again there had been a note of sadness and anxiety in the evening scents, in the muted sounds of the earth now condemned to darkness.
There are intoxicating yet bitter hours, sometimes whole days, when villages are deserted by the powers that be and are left in expectant silence. HQ had simply got to its feet and walked away; many huts now stood empty.
All that remained were tyre tracks; scraps of newspaper; empty tins outside huts; mountains of potato peelings beside the village school, which had housed the HQ canteen; narrow, carefully dug slit trenches, their walls lined with withered wormwood; and an aspen pole barrier, now raised to the vertical: the road was open—anyone could drive wherever they wished.
People felt both free and orphaned. Children roamed about the school premises: Had the canteen staff left any tins of food behind, any candle ends or bits of wire, or even a bayonet? Sharp-eyed old women were checking whether their time-pressed guests had gone off with their scissors, their bits of rope, their cans of kerosene or their glass lamp-cover. An old man wanted to know how many apples had been stolen from his orchard, how much of his firewood had been consumed and whether or not his stock of dry boards was still intact. After looking around, he muttered crossly but without malice, “Well, they’re gone now, the devils . . .”
And then his wife came in and said, “That dratted cook really has gone off with my tub.”
A young woman looked thoughtfully at the empty road. Her mother-in-law, who had been keeping her under constant observation, said angrily, “I see, missing that driver already, are you?”
Once again the village felt quiet, spacious and comfortable—but from the sudden sense of sadness and anxiety one might have thought the soldiers had lived their whole lives there, not just a day or two.
The villagers called to mind the commanders who had just left. One was quiet and diligent and always scribbling away; another, scared stiff of aeroplanes, was always first to enter the canteen and last to leave; a third, pleasant and straightforward, liked to have a smoke with the old men; a fourth was always bartering tinned meat for moonshine and pestering the young women; a fifth was arrogant and hardly ever spoke, but he had a good voice and played the guitar beautifully; and the sixth was the worst of all—you only had to look at him the wrong way and he’d accuse you of waiting impatiently for the Germans. And there was little about the commanders that the villagers didn’t know; drivers, orderlies, messengers and sub-machine-gunners—Vanka, Grishka and Mitya to the villagers—had told them about the commanders’ idiosyncrasies, where they were all from, and which of them was sleeping with which of the telephonists and secretaries.
But in less than an hour, every trace of these men would be gone, shrouded in dust by the wind. And then some stranger would turn up, and everyone would be shaken by the news they brought: that there was no sign of the Red Army, that the road was empty and that the Germans were approaching.
Semyonov said in a whisper that he didn’t much like the owners but that the rooms were good. The old woman made and sold her own vodka. A neighbour had told him that before collectivization the old couple had made their living not only from the land but also from trade. Still, it wasn’t as if he and Krymov were going to be staying with them for the next year. And as for the young woman, she was a real beauty!
Semyonov’s sunken cheeks went a little pink. He was evidently very taken with this tall, high-breasted young woman, with her strong legs and strong, bronzed hands, with the bold, clear look in her eyes that makes a man’s heart tremble.
Semyonov had learned that she was a widow. She had been married to the old couple’s son, who was now dead. He had fallen out with his parents and so they had lived in another village, where he worked as a tractor-station mechanic. The young woman had come to her in-laws for a brief visit, to collect a few belongings. She would soon be leaving.
The smells brought by their recent guests had already evaporated. The freshly washed floor had been sprinkled with fragrant wormwood to get rid of the soldiers’ fleas. The brightly blazing stove had absorbed the scents of light tobacco, city food and box-calf leather. Now there was only the powerful smell of the old man’s home-grown tobacco.
Not far from the stove stood a large bowl of dough, protected from draughts by a little blanket.
Wormwood, home-grown tobacco, the stove, the moist cool of the newly washed floor—these smells had already blended together.
The old man put on his glasses and, looking round at the door, read in an undertone a German propaganda leaflet he had picked up in a field. Beside him, his chin touching the table, stood his fair-haired grandson, frowning severely.
“Grandad,” he asked very seriously, “why does everyone keep liberating us? First we were liberated by the Romanians and now it’s going to be these Germans.”
“Quiet!” said the old man, waving the boy away. And he went back to his reading. Figuring out the words was clearly a struggle. He was like a horse pulling a cart up an icy hill; if he stopped for even a moment, he’d never get started again.
“Grandad, who are these Yids?” asked his four-year-old listener, still severe and attentive.
When Krymov and Semyonov came in, the old man put down the leaflet, took off his glasses, looked straight at them and asked, “So, just who were you two? How come you haven’t left
yet?”
It was as if Krymov and Semyonov no longer had a real, material existence. They were insubstantial, imaginary, no longer creatures of flesh and blood. And so, when he addressed them, the old man used the past tense.
“Whoever we were, we’re no different now,” Krymov said with a smile. “And if we haven’t left, it’s because we’ve been ordered to stay.”
“Why ask questions?” the old woman said to her husband. “They’ll leave when they need to.” And then, addressing their visitors: “Sit down now and have a bite to eat.”
“No, thank you,” said Krymov. “We’ve eaten already—but don’t let that stop you.”
Then the young woman came in. She glanced at the new arrivals, wiped the back of her hand across her lips and laughed. As she walked past Krymov, she looked him straight in the eye. He felt as if he had been burned, and he didn’t know whether this was from the intensity of her gaze or from the warmth and smell of her body.
“I had to call our neighbour round to milk the cow,” she said to Krymov in a slightly husky voice. “My mother-in-law shares a cow with her neighbour, but I can hardly get near the animal. No, she’s not one to let herself be milked by some stranger. Seems it’s easier now to get a woman to do what you want than a cow.”
The old woman put a green bottle of moonshine down on the table.
“Pour yourself a glass, comrade Commander,” said the old man, bringing some stools up to the table.
There was a casual mockery in his use of the word Commander. Obliquely, he was saying, “I’m not going to bother to find out what kind of commander you are. You may be a high-ranking commander or you may be a lowly commander, but really you no longer command anything at all—you can neither help me nor harm me. There’s only one real commander in life—and that’s the peasant. But if you want to be called Commander, if that’s what you’re used to, then I’ll play along. I’ll do as you wish.”
Stalingrad Page 44
