Stalingrad

by Vasily Grossman

  “Dunno about gods,” Kotov replied good-humouredly. “Some damned devil more like.”

  “The man’s certainly no slouch,” said Devyatkin.

  Sullen, skinny Vikentiev, with his constant cough, had once resented Ivan. He had felt angry that he, born in Siberia, should be subordinate to a foreigner, a newcomer from the Donbass. But even he said, “You have to hand it to him. He’s a true miner. He knows what’s what down below.”

  •

  Ivan went up to the others and said, “Well, comrades, we’ve made a vent. Now it’s time to get down to a little work.”

  Each member of the brigade had their particular task.

  Braginskaya and Lopatina carried out the slabs of coal and piled them into the trams. Slowly, overcoming the resistance of the wheels, which were initially reluctant to turn, they pushed the loaded trams along to the main gallery. Latkov went to fetch the pine props and Vikentiev sorted through them, shaping them with a saw or an axe, and then putting in place the timber sets that secured the top and sides of the working. Kotov and Devyatkin worked alongside Ivan, breaking up with their picks the rock he loosed with his sticks of dynamite.

  Each of these people had their particular thoughts, hopes and fears. Vikentiev thought about his wife and children, now in Anzhero-Sudzhensk. His wife had just written to say that she no longer had the strength to go on living apart from him—but what could he do? There were no more family rooms in the Chelyabinsk hostel. He thought about the seams he had worked in the Kuzbass, and how much richer they were than the thin, ashy Donbass seams that Novikov always spoke about with such pride. All the same, Novikov was a good brigade leader. With him around the work was never dull—it had soul. And Vikentiev also thought about his eldest son. In the autumn he’d probably be called up—he was already going to classes at the military commissariat. And he and his son wouldn’t even be able to say goodbye—he certainly had no chance of getting any leave himself. And he thought about his wife: “Liza, Liza, if only Liza were here . . . When I get back from work, she could apply cupping glasses. That would knock this damned cough on the head.”

  And Latkov was thinking it was a pity he’d quarrelled with Niura Lopatina, and a pity he hadn’t asked for meal coupons for canteen number one—everyone said the director was an honest man, that he didn’t filch any of the supplies. And he shouldn’t have gone to the flea market and swapped his boots for a leather jacket—his mates were making fun of him and saying he’d been swindled. But it was good to be working with an experienced timberman—he’d already learned all the main joints: dovetail, tongue and groove, mortise and tenon, and plain butt joints. At this rate, he’d soon have his name on the Board of Honour! Too bad he hadn’t signed up for the evening course for coal-cutter operators. If only he were like Ivan Novikov, a man who put his heart and soul into whatever he did and fought his way past every obstacle! As for the bottle of moonshine he’d paid 150 roubles for on Saturday evening, it had brought him no joy. He hadn’t liked the men he drank it with and the commandant had threatened to throw him out of the barrack. Yes, he just kept on getting everything wrong. He failed to think something through, then he wished he’d done it differently, then he went and got it wrong all over again. But perhaps he should just forget about those wretched boots . . . And forget about that ignorant kolkhoz Niura . . . Perhaps he should just go to the commissariat and say, “I renounce my exemption. Please send me to join the defence of Stalingrad.”

  Devyatkin, for his part, was thinking, “This just isn’t the right place for me. I’m a press operator, not a miner. I’ll hitch a lift to the military factory and talk to the men in the workers’ settlement there. I’m sure they’ll say they need people in my line of work. Then I’ll go and ask to be taken on. After all, I don’t have a family to think about. I don’t need a place in a hostel—I’m sure to find something somewhere. Except they probably won’t let me leave this pit. That bureaucrat in charge of cadres is bad news, and I need her permission . . . And then there’s my father—I need to send him 200 roubles. Yes, I will, of course I will. Have I ever said that I won’t? I’ll never get any promotion here. On the shop floor it would be another story. I’ve got a lot of experience—I’d be noticed at once. Yes, I’d show them a thing or two—I’d be as good a worker as Ivan Novikov . . . If it weren’t for the war, I’d be married by now. But she went and signed up as a nurse. She’s probably forgotten all about me. There’ll be soldiers around her all the time, you can bet your life on it! Before the war I was a member of the guitarists’ club . . . Still, it may be all for the best. War’s not so bad if you’re single . . . No . . . My life’s been ruined, and that guitar of mine no longer even exists.”

  Braginskaya was remembering for the thousandth time the day she said goodbye to her husband, at the main railway station in Kharkov . . . No, that’s just not possible. There must have been some mistake. Another man with the same surname. But no, there had been no mistake. She was a widow now, a widow—a word she could never get used to. A widow, a widow, a widow, and Kazimir was an orphan. And he, her husband, was lying there all on his own, in the earth, under a willow. Who, in the spring of 1941, could have imagined all this? Who could have imagined that he would be gone forever and that she would be working deep underground and wearing a tarpaulin jacket, far away to the east? In the summer they’d been planning to go to the Black Sea, to Anapa. Before they left, she would have had a perm and a manicure. When they got back, little Kazimir would have started at a school for musically gifted children . . . There are times you forget everything, when it seems there’s nothing more important than this coal and your shovel. And then, again, the Kharkov railway station, that warm, close morning, and puddles gleaming in the sun and rain, and that last sweet, confused, would-be-encouraging smile he had given her, and all those different hands waving from the carriage windows: “Goodbye, goodbye!” Had she merely imagined that life? Two rooms, an ottoman, a telephone, a bread basket on the table, all those different breads—white bread, bread from sifted flour, bread rings64 and yesterday’s bread that no one wanted to eat. And now, backfill, tie beams, coal hewers, a tram going off the rails, blast holes, cutting and boring . . . And the way Ivan says, “The coal’s waiting. Shall we get down to work?”—and then smiles that wonderful smile of his.

  Kotov was frowning, wondering how things were now in Karachev, the town near Oryol where he’d been born. He could almost feel the breeze, first thing in the morning, coming off the Bryansk forest. And he was thinking about his eighty-two-year-old mother: “No, I’ll never see Mama again—no, not with the fascists roaming around the village. As for dear Dasha, she doesn’t have a clue. Why is it, she asked yesterday, that Vikentiev brings back 900 roubles while you only get 486? Does she think I’m a trained miner, with years of experience? She’s a fool—she always has been a fool, and she always will be a fool. I’ll tell her it’s time she started working herself. Standing in line outside stores and chitchatting isn’t what I call work—and certainly not in wartime. You’re strong and fit, so work as a trammer! I’ve been kind to her, she’s never wanted for anything. Still, she used to make a fine borsch, back in Karachev . . . And when I had to go to Oryol, Petya would drive, and I’d be up in the cab beside him. Orchards everywhere. Apple blossom. And the sky . . . No, there’s nowhere better on earth.”

  Niura Lopatina was thinking, “It’s probably all for the best. Latkov’s a lout. Mama was right—there’s no one to beat our village lads. I don’t understand what the likes of Latkov are always moaning about. Work below ground, work above ground—it’s all much the same. I like the young girls in the hostel. Once a week to the cinema. And magazines, and the radio. No, I won’t find anyone better than my Sasha . . . Latkov’s a loudmouth. It’s all right for him—he’s got himself exempted. While my Sasha’s ready to die for us, he’s defending Stalingrad. Yet he’s so gentle, and he has principles, and he never says a coarse word in front of a woman. Latkov’s not like that—you can see at once he�
��s from a children’s home. I’m better off on my own. I send money to my mother and father every month. And I’ll go to evening classes and study to be an electrician. Yesterday I spoke to a Komsomol representative and she promised to register me for the course. I just hope my brother comes back alive. And Sasha, and Uncle Ivan, and Uncle Petya, and Alyosha Nyurin. But no, that’s not likely. I heard from Mama that Luba Rukina’s already received a notification of death. And Sergeyeva received two on the same day. While back here, far from the front, we get men like Latkov. To this day he’s afraid of the mine—I can see it in his eyes. Foul language is another matter—he’s not afraid of that. Yes, he’s not like the lads from our village.”

  Everyone seemed to be carrying out their individual task—yet, now and then, in the stifling air, it was as if you could hear the buzzing of bees, a delicate, joyful music that stirred every heart, no matter how young or old. Everyone working there was bound by this strong, singing link. Their tasks, their movements, the slow steps of the trammers, the dull blows of the picks, the grinding sound of the shovels, the hiss of the saw, the boom of the back of an axe striking an obstinate strut that doesn’t want to take on the burden of supporting the roof, the measured, regular breathing of the man operating the borer—all these came together to form a single living force. Everything was living as one and breathing as one.

  And the fair-haired man with the kind eyes and the broad cheekbones, the man with hands strong enough to lift a heavy iron beam and delicate enough to adjust the hairspring of a watch—this man could sense everything. Without even turning his head, he sensed with some sixth sense the threads that linked him to all his fellow workers.

  But later, as they made their way to the lamp room, groaning with exhaustion, thinking about their homes and their difficult lives, there was much they found strange and mysterious. Why could they only feel their own good, wise strength when it was united with the strength of others? How could they feel so free when they had yielded their freedom to others? It was not easy to understand how subordination to their brigade leader could allow the very best in them to open and blossom.

  52

  LATE IN the evening, everyone gathered for a brief meeting at the pithead. Those on the night shift had been told to come to work twenty minutes early. The day-shift workers were streaming out from the cage.

  Party Secretary Motorin had gone down the mine earlier to tell them about the meeting. Some had grumbled, saying they were exhausted enough already. Motorin had replied, “You’ll be all right. The autumn nights are getting longer. Plenty of time to sleep—you can see everyone you need to see in your dreams.”

  The night was dark, windy and starless. There was a rustle of leaves from the trees nearby and the more constant, even sound of the pine forest. There were brief spells of rain; the cold droplets falling on people’s hands and faces seemed like a foretaste of the foul weather to come, of autumn mud, of the snowstorms and snowdrifts of winter. The oblique beam of the pithead searchlight picked out the heavy, ragged clouds up above, making it seem as if it were they that were rustling, not the trees.

  A number of engineers and Party leaders were standing on a simple wooden platform. There was a quiet hum from the sea of miners around them, and the black faces of the day-shift workers merged with the black of the night.

  There were repeated small flashes as people lit cigarettes. Their sense of pleasure—inhaling the warm, bitter smoke along with the damp cool of the night—was almost palpable.

  There was something peculiar and deeply affecting about this picture. The cold autumn night and the rain; the dark of the sky and the dark of the earth; the electric lights of the railway station and a coal mine close by; the faint pink stains cast on the clouds by the many other mines and factories round about; the muted hum of the forest, composed of the sullen breath of century-old tree trunks, the silky rustle of pine needles, the creak of pine branches and the sound of pine cones knocking against one another in the wind.

  And within this frame of rain and darkness shone an extraordinary concentration of light. There was more light here than the sky could ever have glimpsed, even on its starriest nights.

  First to speak was Motorin. He felt strange and awkward. He had spoken in public any number of times—underground, at pit bottom, during short briefings, at workers’ meetings, public rallies and gatherings of Stakhanovites. Talks and debates were his bread and butter. The memory of his very first speech, at a provincial Komsomol conference, now made him smile. He had mounted the rostrum, but the sight of hundreds of alert, animated faces disorientated him. He had stammered a few words, felt ashamed of the way his voice was trembling, spread his hands in despair and returned to his seat, accompanied by good-natured laughter and indulgent applause. When Motorin told his children about this occasion, he found it hard to believe that it had really happened. Today, though, he found it only too easy. There was a lump in his throat, he was out of breath and his heart was beating wildly.

  Either his nerves were giving out—from general exhaustion and too many nights without sleep—or else it was because of the report he had heard from an officer just arrived from Stalingrad. This officer had told the Party committee about the heavy fighting in the southeast, about how large areas of the city had burned to the ground, and about the Germans breaking through to the Volga. Red Army soldiers had been trapped on the shore, with their backs to the water. Laughing Germans had shouted out, “Hey, Russky, glug-glug!” And then, just before this meeting, Motorin had received yet another grim Sovinform Bureau report.

  “Comrades,” he began in a weak, trembling voice. Still struggling to get his breath back, he thought for a moment that he would be unable to speak.

  For no apparent reason, he found himself imagining his father. Barefoot, wearing a blue shirt, his father had gone to the pit to say goodbye to his fellow workers; his eyes were bloodshot and his long grey beard was unkempt. Raising one hand, he had said, “Dear workers and friends . . .”

  His voice still lived in Motorin’s memory. Carefully and obediently, with the same intonations, Motorin said, “Dear workers and friends . . .” He paused, then quietly repeated, “Dear workers and friends . . .”

  Lost in the crowd around the platform, shaft sinker Novikov let out a quiet sigh and took a step forward. He wanted to be able to hear better and to see the speaker’s face; there was something important, long familiar to him, in this voice.

  Dozens of other men and women did the same. It was hard, because of the wind in the trees, to make out the speaker’s words. Nevertheless, his voice touched something deep inside them.

  Devyatkin and Kotov edged forward. So did Latkov, Braginskaya and Niura Lopatina.

  Swaying gently, hundreds of lamps moved at once. With everyone pressing towards the platform, the light surrounding Motorin seemed brighter and more intense.

  His carefully prepared speech—about productivity, extraction rates and linear metres of coal—vanished into the air. With no idea what he was going to say, he went on, “I’ve remembered something from when I was very small. The mine owner had fired my father and locked us out of our room. He’d thrown all our belongings onto the street. It was the room where my two sisters and I were born and it was autumn, just like now. Guards came, and policemen. We had to go—but how could we? This place was our home. It was where we had lived and worked, where my grandfather and grandmother were buried. I looked at my father. I heard him saying his goodbyes. All that was a long time ago. Now I have grey hair too, but I can’t forget. I just can’t.”

  Motorin glanced at the lights all around him. He was surrounded by people, yet he felt as if he were talking to himself. In a tone of surprise he asked, “Comrades, do you understand why I’m telling you all this?”

  But he was not surprised to hear many people reply, “Yes, we do.”

  Now sounding calm and confident, though this calm was really an expression of intense inner excitement, he continued his speech. He raised his lamp in the air,
dug about in his pocket, pulled out a crumpled slip of paper and began to read the latest Sovinform Bureau bulletin:

  Fighting continues on the north-western outskirts of Stalingrad. The enemy, ready to pay any price to break the resistance of the city’s defenders, is launching repeated attacks. During the night small detachments of Hitler’s forces succeeded in penetrating several streets. Fierce street fighting is leading to hand-to-hand combat.

  He knew now that everyone understood why, before reading this bulletin, he had spoken about his father; he no longer felt the need to ask.

  He was speaking slowly and quietly, but everything he said was entirely clear. And just as before, he felt as if he were talking to himself, and yet, at the same time, giving voice to the thoughts of all those around him.

  Ivan Novikov felt as if he were not only listening but also speaking. Except that he couldn’t quite understand why his voice sounded different from usual. He felt that he, Novikov, was repeating words he had pronounced long ago: that there was no task beyond the power of the working class as they fought to defend their home. And at the same time he was thinking about little Masha. Why was she still feverish? Maybe it wasn’t just malaria. Maybe she had TB?

  High in the dark autumn sky, swift clouds reflected faint, trembling pink shadows—traces left by the breath of the many mines and factories round about, a reminder of the tens of thousands of mines, factories and railway-station workshops between the Volga and the Pacific, a reminder of all the workers who, like Novikov, Braginskaya, Motorin and Kotov, thought constantly about the dead, about those who had gone missing in action, about the war and all the hardships of wartime life, a reminder of the countless people who, like Novikov, Braginskaya, Motorin, Kotov and old Andreyev in burning Stalingrad, knew that their strength as workers was invincible, that it would overcome everything.