Юбер Мингарелли - Four Soldiers

All the same, we tried to be careful and the ranks came apart. The whole company became scattered.

Pavel and I went into a yellow-painted shed. There was no window and it was dark inside. At the back of the shed, we found some rope and a nicely sharpened pickaxe. Kyabine, Sifra and the Evdokim kid were waiting for us outside. Brandishing the pickaxe, Pavel said we’d be able to dig trenches around the tent to protect us from the rain. He broke the handle in half to make it less cumbersome to carry. We heard the first gunshots and the shells exploded at the front of the column with a terrible roar. The mules bolted at a gallop towards the edge of the forest while huge clods of earth flew from where the shells had hit.

All over the gardens, men were screaming. We threw ourselves to the ground. I fell on top of Kyabine and rolled onto my back. The kid was kneeling behind one of the sheds. He held the tent pole in both hands, as if he were clinging to it. Pavel ordered him to lie down. Sifra crawled up behind us. When he reached us, a second salvo came from the edge of the forest, and this time the shells exploded closer to us. A shed was blown into the air. Bits of plank fell back down to earth. We covered our heads with our bags. Yassov, the hand sculptor, crawled past us. He was moving fast, heading for one of the sheds. We heard men calling out behind us. Further ahead, one started screaming that he’d been hit. We waited but they didn’t fire again and soon — apart from the man who was screaming — silence descended over the gardens again. I lifted my head to look over at the forest. Nothing moved. I didn’t see anything. The mules had vanished. All I saw was the dark line of undergrowth. I told the others that I didn’t see anything.

Pavel lifted his head too. I heard Sifra loading his rifle. Then Kyabine started crawling over to the Evdokim kid. Pavel asked him what he was doing. Kyabine replied that he was going to see the kid. The man who’d been screaming fell silent. And now we didn’t hear anything at all.

They had heavy artillery over there, and probably machine guns too. They were waiting for us to get up and start running in the open. But where were we supposed to run to? We didn’t know. Kyabine was now close to the kid, who was lying behind the shed. He’d covered the kid’s head with the tent. Sifra was aiming his rifle at the forest. We heard murmurs as the men started to talk and call out to one another. And the man who’d stopped screaming now let out a piercing howl. Sifra touched my shoulder and pointed to the mules, which were running past the forest towards the hills. I rolled onto my back and tried to see where we would start running when the time came. The only safe place was behind us, opposite the forest, where the gardens ended. I could see a road and behind it a vast field that sloped up a long way towards a plateau.

The order came through to pull out. After that there was a silence, finally broken by Commander Kaliakine’s whistle. The whole company stood up and started running away from the forest. Kyabine and the Evdokim kid came over to us and we all ran together. Kyabine was carrying the tent under one arm. We heard the rattle of their machine guns and, almost immediately afterwards, the boom of their artillery shells.

The ones who were hit started yelling at us to wait for them. Sergeant Ermakov yelled even louder that we must not stop. So we ran. The bullets whistled, and when a shell landed, its explosion was all that we heard. We reached the road and dived into the ditch that ran alongside it: first Pavel, the kid and me, then Kyabine and Sifra. We rolled to the botton of the ditch and caught our breath. Suddenly Kyabine sat up and started calling Sifra’s name at the top of his voice, as if he were still back at the other end of the gardens. But he was with us in the ditch. He was covered in blood. He seemed to be looking at us all and, at the same time, staring into space. Pavel lifted up Sifra’s head and Sifra let out a scream that no words could ever describe. Pavel carefully lowered his head back and signalled to him that he wouldn’t touch him again.

Sifra appeared to be staring at the sky now, his jaw trembling, and the despair in his eyes… never had I seen anything like it. I’d never seen anything like the despair in Kyabine’s eyes either. The rest of our company had jumped over the ditch and crossed the road and now they were running up the field towards the safety of the plateau. A deep silence fell, because the firing had ceased. But I could see them coming out of the forest, moving towards us with their machine guns on tripods. And Kyabine knelt close to Sifra and he couldn’t bring himself to look at him but kept looking from Pavel to me and back again, and suddenly Pavel told him to take the kid and run with him to the plateau. Kyabine kissed Sifra’s leg, as far away as possible from his wound, then he grabbed the tent, took the kid by one arm, and they climbed out of the ditch and crossed the road. Pavel told Sifra to close his eyes. Sifra did as he was told and Pavel’s hand stroked his cheek, then he stood up, aimed the barrel of his rifle at the back of Sifra’s neck, and fired. Then we climbed out of the ditch, ran across the road and started up the slope of the field. We passed Commander Kaliakine, who stood with his revolver in his hand. The machine guns started to rattle again. When we caught up with Kyabine and the Evdokim kid, our throats were burning and the bullets whistled everywhere through the air and landed in the earth.

The men in our company who had already reached the crest of the plateau were lying behind it and firing at the machine guns in the distance with their rifles, screaming insults because our rifles didn’t carry far enough.

Soon we reached the crest. The kid, who was running in front of me, let go of the tent pole and fell to the ground. He’d been hit by several bullets. I ran past him and picked up the tent pole without stopping, and suddenly I dropped to the ground and turned around and began crawling back to the kid. I opened up his jacket and took his notebook.

BEFORE THEY REACHED the road below us and came within range of our rifles, we retreated from the crest, fleeing towards the hills, and each hill looked just like the last one, covered in the same forest, as if we were constantly retracing our steps, eternally following the same paths that wound around the hills as if there was nowhere to go.

Around noon, Sergeant Ermakov did a head count.

We were under some trees and while he counted us, nobody looked at him. Kaliakine, our commander, stood apart, stooped and pensive, his blanket over his shoulders and his whistle swinging as it hung from his neck.

In the evening we pitched our tents on the side of a hill. Pavel used the pickaxe to dig a flat spot in the slope. We lit our lamp and hung it from the pole and on the canvas we could see our shadows and the shadow of the smoke from the oil lamp. Kyabine was lying on his side. Pavel was lying on his back, eyes wide open. I was sitting between them and looking outside through the gap in the tent. But the flame of the lamp was so close to my eyes that I couldn’t see anything outside. Kyabine suddenly burst into sobs. The sobs seemed to come through his nose and they made the strangest and most horrible sound.

After a while, Pavel said: ‘Stop, Kyabine!’

Kyabine didn’t stop. Pavel waited a bit longer, grinding his teeth, then barked: ‘Stop it!’

But Kyabine continued making that horrible, heart-rending sound.

Pavel leaned on an elbow: ‘Shut your bloody mouth!’

Kyabine got to his feet and rushed at Pavel, knocking me over on the way. He pinned Pavel down between his legs, clasped his huge hands over Pavel’s throat, and started screaming things — strange, incomprehensible, heart-rending things — while Pavel closed his eyes, making no attempt to struggle against the hands that were strangling him.