Vasily Grossman: Life And Fate

'Tell me now,' said Yeremenko. 'Which of you is the worst worker?'

This question seemed very opportune; the men were tired of wielding their spades. They all looked round at a man who was busy emptying his pocket, pouring out breadcrumbs and tobacco-dust into the palm of one hand.

'Maybe him,' said two of them, looking round at the others for their agreement.

The man in question gave a dignified sigh and looked meekly up at Yeremenko. Realizing that Yeremenko was asking questions purely for the sake of it, he didn't say anything.

'And which of you is the best worker?'

They all pointed at a man with grey, thinning hair.

Troshnikov,' said one of them. 'He really does put his heart into it.'

'He's used to hard work – he just can't help it,' said some of the others. It was almost as though they were apologizing on his behalf.

Yeremenko fumbled in his trouser-pocket and took out a gold watch that gleamed in the sun. Bending down with considerable awkwardness, he held it out to Troshnikov. Troshnikov looked at him blankly.

'Go on!' said Yeremenko. 'That's your reward.' Still looking at Troshnikov, he said: 'Parkhomenko, write out a certificate for him!'

He walked on, leaving a buzz of excitement behind him. Everyone was laughing, gasping with amazement at the hard-working Troshnikov's amazing stroke of luck.

Yeremenko waited three days to cross the river. Communications with the right bank had almost been severed. Those launches that did get through to Chuykov were holed fifty to seventy times in only a few minutes. They arrived at the right bank with their decks covered in blood.

Yeremenko was irritable and quarrelsome. The officers in charge of the crossing came to be more afraid of his anger than of the German bombs and grenades. He seemed to think it was negligent majors and idle captains who were to blame for the excesses of the German mortars, cannons and aircraft.

One night Yeremenko left his bunker and stood on a sand-dune beside the water. What had once been a map spread flat on a table was now suddenly alive – thundering, smoking, and breathing out death.

He seemed to recognize the red dots of the front line, the thick arrows of Paulus's thrusts towards the Volga, the key defences, the concentrations of artillery that he himself had circled in coloured pencil. But looking at the map, he had felt he had the power to bend and shift the line of the front. He had been the master; the power to order the heavy artillery to open fire from the left bank was his… His feelings now were very different indeed. The glow of the fire, the slow thunder in the sky were awesome. And their power had nothing to do with him, in no way depended on him.

He heard a faint cry from the area of the factories, a cry that was almost drowned by the shell-bursts and gunfire: 'A-a-a-a-a-h!' There was something terrible, but also something sad and melancholy in this long cry uttered by the Russian infantry as they staged an attack. As it crossed the cold water, it lost its fervour. Instead of valour or gallantry, you could hear the sadness of a soul parting with everything that it loved, calling on its nearest and dearest to wake up, to lift their heads from their pillows and hear for the last time the voice of a father, a husband, a son or a brother…

Yeremenko felt the same sadness in his own heart. Suddenly he had been sucked in by the war he was used to directing from outside. There he was – a solitary soldier on the shifting sands, stunned by the fire and thunder, standing on the bank like tens of thousands of other soldiers. He knew now that this people's war was beyond his understanding and outside his power… This was perhaps the highest understanding of the war he was ever to reach.

Just before morning Yeremenko crossed to the right bank. Chuykov had been notified by telephone; he walked down to the water and watched the armoured launch as it sped across.

The gangplank bent under Yeremenko's weight as he got out. He stepped clumsily over the pebbles and went up to Chuykov.

'Greetings, comrade Chuykov!'

'Greetings, comrade Lieutenant-General!'

'I wanted to see how you're getting on over here. Well, you certainly don't seem to have got yourself burnt! You're still as shaggy as ever… And you haven't even grown thin – we must be feeding you all right after all!'

'Do you expect me to grow thin from sitting all day and night in a bunker?' asked Chuykov. Still offended at Yeremenko's greeting, he went on: 'But what am I doing – receiving a guest out here on the bank?'

Now it was Yeremenko's turn to feel angry. It was very galling indeed to be referred to as a guest in Stalingrad. When Chuykov invited him in, he said: 'It's all right. I'll stay out here in the fresh air.'

The right bank, lit up by flares, shell-bursts and burning buildings, seemed quite deserted. The light brightened and faded, flaring up for a few seconds at a time with blinding intensity. Yeremenko gazed at the slopes pitted with bunkers and communication trenches, at the heaps of stone by the water – massive shapes that loomed out of the darkness and quickly slipped back into it.

Just then a loudspeaker struck up from across the river. An immense voice began to sing:

May noble fury boil up like waves! This is the people's war, a sacred war.

Since there were no human beings in sight, and since everything round about – the earth, the sky and the Volga – was lit up by flame, it seemed as though the war itself were singing this ponderous song.

Yeremenko was embarrassed by the interest he felt in the picture before him; it really was as though he was a guest come to see the master of Stalingrad. It angered him that Chuykov appeared to understand the anxiety that had led him to cross the Volga, to know how tormented he had felt as he paced about Krasniy Sad listening to the rustle of dry leaves.

He began questioning the master of this fiery hell about the disposition of his reserves, the co-ordination between the infantry and the artillery, and the build-up of German forces around the factories. Chuykov answered in the customary tone of an officer being questioned by a superior.

They fell silent for a moment. Chuykov wanted to say: 'This has been the greatest defensive action in history. But still, what about a counter-offensive?' But he didn't dare. Yeremenko would think that the defenders of Stalingrad lacked endurance, that they were begging for a burden to be lifted from their shoulders.

Suddenly Yeremenko asked: 'Your mother and father are from the country, aren't they? Somewhere round Tula?'

'That's right, comrade General.'

'Does the old man write to you?'

'Yes, he does. He's still working.'

They looked at one another. The lenses of Yeremenko's spectacles were pink from the glow of the fire.

Another moment and it seemed they might begin the one conversation that really mattered – about the meaning of Stalingrad. But Yeremenko just said: 'You probably want to ask the usual question an officer puts to his superior – about reinforcements and supplies of ammunition.'

The one conversation that could have had meaning failed to take place.

A sentry on the crest of the slope glanced down at them. Hearing the whistle of a shell, Chuykov looked up and said: 'I bet that sentry's wondering who on earth the two eccentrics by the river can be.'

Yeremenko sniffed and started to scratch his nose. The moment had come for him to leave. It was an unwritten law that a superior officer standing under enemy fire should only leave when his subordinate asked him to. But Yeremenko's indifference to danger was so complete and so unfeigned that this rule seemed irrelevant.

A mortar-bomb whistled past. He turned his head quickly and unthinkingly to follow its trajectory.