Vasily Grossman: Life And Fate

'A very good sign,' said the commissar, 'especially with the divisional staff having to take part in a counter-attack.' Then Krymov heard Rodimtsev's low voice:

'There'll be flowers, there'll be flowers, There'll be berries in the factories.'

The night attack had exhausted Krymov. He would have to turn his head to look at Rodimtsev – and he was too tired. 'This is what a well must feel like after being drained,' he thought to himself. He dozed off again; the low voices fused with the sounds of explosions and gunfire into a monotone hum.

Then something new entered Krymov's consciousness: he dreamed he was lying in a room with closed blinds, watching a patch of morning sunlight on the wallpaper. This patch crept to the edge of the mirror and then expanded into a rainbow. The boy's heart trembled; the man with greying temples, the man with a heavy pistol hanging at his waist, opened his eyes and looked round.

Someone was standing in the middle of the conduit, wearing an old tunic and a forage cap with the green star of the Front. His head cocked to one side, he was playing a fiddle.

Noticing that Krymov had just woken up, the commissar leant over towards him and said: 'That's our barber, Rubinchik – a re-eal expert!'

Now and then someone would interrupt the music with a jocular curse. People would shout, 'Beg leave to report!' – and speak to the chief of staff. A spoon would clink against a tin mug. Or someone would give a long yawn and begin to shake up his straw bedding.

The barber was anxious not to disturb the officers; he was ready to break off at any moment.

Krymov thought of Jan Kubelik with his silver hair and his black dinner-jacket. But how was it that the famous violinist now seemed overshadowed by a mere barber? Why should this simple tune played on a cheap fiddle seem to express the depths of the human soul more truly than Bach or Mozart?

For the thousandth time Krymov felt the pain of loneliness. Zhenya had left him…

Once again he thought how Zhenya's departure expressed the whole dynamic of his life. He remained, but there was nothing left of him; and she had gone. There were many harsh truths he had to admit to himself. Yes, he had been closing his eyes for too long…

Somehow the music seemed to have helped him to understand time. Time is a transparent medium. People and cities arise out of it, move through it and disappear back into it. It is time that brings them and time that takes them away.

But the understanding that had just come to Krymov was a very different one: the understanding that says, 'This is my time,' or, 'No, this is no longer our time.' Time flows into a man or State, makes its home there and then flows away; the man and the State remain, but their time has passed. Where has their time gone? The man still thinks, breathes and cries, but his time, the time that belonged to him and to him alone, has disappeared.

There is nothing more difficult than to be a stepson of the time; there is no heavier fate than to live in an age that is not your own. Stepsons of the time are easily recognized: in personnel departments, Party district committees, army political sections, editorial offices, on the street… Time loves only those it has given birth to itself: its own children, its own heroes, its own labourers. Never can it come to love the children of a past age, any more than a woman can love the heroes of a past age, or a stepmother love the children of another woman.

Such is time: everything passes, it alone remains; everything remains, it alone passes. And how swiftly and noiselessly it passes. Only yesterday you were sure of yourself, strong and cheerful, a son of the time. But now another time has come – and you don't even know it.

In yesterday's fighting, time had been torn to shreds; now it emerged again from the plywood fiddle belonging to Rubinchik the barber. This fiddle told some that their time had come and others that their time had passed.

'I'm finished,' Krymov said to himself. 'Finished!'

He looked at Commissar Vavilov's calm, good-natured face. He was sipping tea from a mug and very slowly chewing some bread and a piece of sausage. His inscrutable eyes were fixed on the patch of light at the mouth of the conduit.

Rodimtsev, his face clear and peaceful and his shoulders hunched against the cold, was gazing at the musician. A grey-haired, pockmarked colonel, the commander of the divisional artillery, seemed to be looking at a map spread out in front of him; there was a harsh frown on his face, and it was only his kind sad eyes that showed he was listening to the music, not studying the map at all. Belsky was hurriedly drawing up a report for Army Headquarters; he seemed quite absorbed in this, but he had his head bent to one side so as to hear better. Further away sat the signallers, telephonists and clerks; you could see the same expression of seriousness on their exhausted faces as on the face of a peasant chewing a piece of bread.

Suddenly Krymov remembered one summer night: the large, dark eyes of a Cossack girl and her hot whisper… Yes, in spite of everything, life was good.

The fiddler stopped and a quiet murmur became audible: the sound of the water flowing by under the wooden duckboards. It seemed to Krymov that his soul was indeed a well that had been dry and empty; but now it was gently filling with water.

Half an hour later the fiddler was shaving Krymov. With the exaggerated seriousness that often makes a customer laugh, he was asking whether the razor was too harsh and then stroking Krymov's cheekbones to See if they were cleanly shaven. The smell of eau-de-cologne and powder seemed heart-rendingly out of place in this sullen kingdom of earth and iron.

Narrowing his eyes, Rodimtsev looked Krymov over – he had by now been thoroughly sprinkled with powder and eau-de-cologne -and nodded with satisfaction. 'Well, you've certainly done a good job on our guest. Now you can give me the once-over.'

The fiddler's dark eyes filled with happiness. He inspected Rodimtsev's head, shook out his white napkin and said: 'Maybe we should just tidy up your sideburns a little, comrade General?'

After the fire, Lieutenant-General Yeremenko decided to cross to the right bank and visit Chuykov. This dangerous journey served no practical purpose, but there was a very real human and moral necessity for it; Yeremenko wasted three days waiting to cross the river.

The bright walls of his bunker in Krasniy Sad seemed very peaceful, the shade of the apple trees very pleasant. But the distant rumble of Stalingrad merged with the sound of the leaves and the sighing of the rushes and felt somehow strangely oppressive; Yeremenko always cursed and swore as he went for his morning walk.

Yeremenko informed Zakharov of his decision to visit Stalingrad and ordered him to take command during his absence. He joked with the waitress laying the table for breakfast, gave permission to his deputy chief of staff to fly to Saratov for two days, and acceded to a request from General Trufanov – the commander of one of the armies in the steppe – that he should bomb a powerful Rumanian artillery position: 'All right, all right, you can have your long-range bombers!'

Yeremenko's aides tried to guess the reason for his good mood. Good news from Chuykov? A telephone conversation with Moscow? A letter from home? But such matters seldom escaped their notice; in any case the news from Chuykov had been bad and there had been no call from Moscow.

After breakfast, Yeremenko put on a jacket and went out for a walk. Parkhomenko, one of the aides, followed ten yards behind. Yeremenko walked with his usual unhurried stride, stopping now and then to scratch his thigh and glance towards the Volga.

Yeremenko stopped by a group of middle-aged labourers digging a pit. The napes of their necks were tanned dark brown and their faces were sullen and gloomy. They worked on in silence, glancing irritably at the stout man in a green cap who was standing idly by the edge of the pit.