Vasily Grossman - Life And Fate

They were all well aware of the strange quirks of superior officers: how they seem to expect everyone in a battalion always to be fighting, peering at the enemy through binoculars, or puzzling over a map. But a man can't be shooting or on the phone to his superiors and subordinates twenty-four hours a day; he has to eat sometime.

Byerozkin looked askance at the murmuring gramophone and grinned.

'All right!' he said. 'Sit down, comrades, carry on!'

It was unclear whether these words were to be taken at their face value. Podchufarov looked both sad and repentant, while Movshovich – the commander of an independent sapper battalion and thus not directly subordinate to Byerozkin – merely looked sad.

In what struck them as a particularly unpleasant tone, Byerozkin said: 'So where's this five-kilo pike-perch, comrade Movshovich? The whole division's talking of nothing else.'

With the same sad look, Movshovich ordered: 'Cook, show him the fish please.'

The cook, the only man present to have been carrying out his duties, explained: 'The comrade captain wanted it stuffed in the Jewish manner. I've got some pepper and bay-leaves, but I haven't any white bread or horse-radish…'

'I see,' said Byerozkin. 'I once had one done like that in Bobruysk, at the house of one Sara Aronovna – though, to be quite frank, I didn't think much of it.'

Suddenly they all realized that it hadn't even occurred to Byerozkin to get angry. It was as though he knew that Podchufarov had fought off a German attack during the night; that he had been half-buried under falling earth during the small hours; that his orderly, the man responsible for the 'Chinese Serenade', had had to dig him out, shouting: 'Don't worry, comrade Captain, I'll get you out of there.' It was as though he knew that Movshovich and his sappers had crept along one particularly vulnerable street, scattering earth and crushed brick over a chessboard pattern of anti-tank mines.

They were all young and they were glad to be alive one more morning, to be able to lift up a tin mug and say, 'Your good health!', to be able to eat cabbage and smoke cigarettes… In any case, nothing had really happened – they had just stood up for a moment before a superior and then invited him to eat, watching with pleasure how he enjoyed his cabbage.

Byerozkin often compared the battle for Stalingrad with what he had been through during the previous year of the war. He knew it was only the peace and silence within him that enabled him to endure this stress. As for the soldiers, they were able to eat soup, repair their boots, carve spoons and discuss their wives and commanding officers at a time when it might well seem impossible to feel anything except fury, horror and exhaustion. Byerozkin knew very well that the man with no quiet at the bottom of his soul was unable to endure for long, however courageous he might be in combat. He thought of fear or cowardice, on the other hand, as something temporary, something that could be cured as easily as a cold.

But what cowardice and bravery really were, he was by no means certain. Once, at the beginning of the war, he had been reprimanded by a superior for his timidity: without authorization, he had withdrawn his regiment from under enemy fire. And not long before Stalingrad, he had once ordered a battalion commander to withdraw over the brow of a hill, so as not to expose his men unnecessarily to the fire of the German mortars.

'What's all this, comrade Byerozkin?' the divisional commander had reproached him. 'People always told me you were calm and courageous, not someone to lose his nerve easily.'

By way of answer, Byerozkin had merely let out a sigh; people must have been mistaken.

Podchufarov had red hair and clear blue eyes. It was only with difficulty that he could restrain his sudden, unexpected fits of anger that were usually followed by equally sudden bursts of laughter. Movshovich was very thin; he had a long, freckled face and streaks of grey in his dark hair. He answered Byerozkin's questions in a hoarse voice and then sketched out a new scheme for mining the areas most vulnerable to tank attacks.

'You can give me that sketch as a souvenir,' said Byerozkin, leaning over the table. 'I was sent for just now by the divisional commander,' he went on very quietly. 'According to our scouts, the Germans are withdrawing forces from the town itself and concentrating them against you. And there are a lot of tanks. Do you understand?'

He listened to a nearby explosion that shook the walls of the cellar and smiled.

'Things are very quiet here. In my own gully at least three people will have been round from Army HQ while I've been out. There are different inspection teams coming and going all day long.'

The building was shaken by yet another blow. Lumps of plaster rained down from the ceiling.

'Yes, that's true enough,' said Podchufarov. 'No one really bothers us here.'

'Right. And you don't know how lucky you are,' said Byerozkin.

He went on confidingly, genuinely forgetting – perhaps because he was so used to being a subordinate – that he himself was now the officer in command:

'You know what the brass hats are like? "Why don't you advance? Why didn't you take that height? Why so many losses? Why no losses? Why haven't you reported back yet? Why are you sleeping now? Why, why, why…?"'

Byerozkin stood up. 'Let's go, comrade Podchufarov. I'd like to inspect your sector.'

There was something heart-rending about this little street in a workers' settlement, about the exposed inner walls hung with brightly-coloured wallpaper, about the flower and vegetable gardens that had been ploughed up by tanks, about the solitary dahlias that were still flowering.

'Do you know, comrade Podchufarov,' said Byerozkin suddenly, 'I still haven't heard from my wife. I only found out where she was on my way here – and now it's weeks since I heard from her. All I know is that she and our daughter were going to the Urals.'

'You'll hear from them soon, comrade Major.'

The wounded were lying in the basement of a two-storey house, waiting to be evacuated during the night. The windows had been blocked up with bricks. On the floor stood a mug and a bucket of water. A postcard of a nineteenth-century painting, 'The Major's Courtship', had been stuck up on the wall.

'This is the rear,' said Podchufarov. 'The front line's further on.'

'Let's have a look at it then,' said Byerozkin.

They walked through a lobby and into a room where the ceiling had fallen in. It was like walking out of a factory office straight onto the shop-floor. Empty cartridge-cases creaked underfoot and the air was full of the peppery smell of gunpowder. Some anti-tank mines had been stacked on top of a cream-coloured pram.

'The Germans captured that ruin over there last night,' said Podchufarov. 'It's a real shame. It's a splendid building with windows facing south-west. Now the whole of my left flank's exposed to enemy fire.'

A heavy machine-gun was installed in the narrow aperture of another bricked-up window. The gunner, a dusty, smoke-blackened bandage round his head, was inserting a new cartridge-belt. His number one, baring his white teeth, was chewing a piece of sausage, ready to return to work in half a minute's time.

The company commander came up, a lieutenant. He had a white aster poking out of the pocket of his tunic.

'A real young eagle!' said Byerozkin with a smile.

'It's lucky you've come round, comrade Major,' said the lieutenant to Podchufarov. 'It happened just like I said it would. Last night they made another attack on house 6/1. They began bang on nine o'clock.'

'The CO's present. Make your report to him.'

'I'm sorry, I didn't see you,' said the lieutenant, saluting quickly.

Six days before, the Germans had isolated several buildings in the sector and begun chewing them up with Teutonic thoroughness. The Soviet resistance had been snuffed out – together with the lives of the defenders. But there was one factory building with particularly deep cellars where the Russians were still holding out. Its strong walls stood up to direct hits, even though holes had been blasted in them by grenades and mortar-bombs. The Germans had tried to destroy the building from the air and torpedo-bombs had been dropped on it three times. One whole corner had collapsed. But beneath the ruins the cellar remained intact; the defenders had cleared away the debris, mounted machine-guns, mortars and a light cannon, and were still keeping the Germans at bay. The building was fortunately situated, with no hidden approaches.