Vasily Grossman - Life And Fate

The lieutenant made his report and said: 'We tried to get through at night, but it was no good. We had one man killed and two who returned wounded.'

'Get down!' screamed the soldier on watch. Several men dropped flat on the ground; the lieutenant, unable to finish what he was saying, threw up his arms as though he were about to make a dive, and flopped down.

The whine rose to a piercing howl and was followed by a series of thunderous explosions that shook the earth and filled the air with a suffocating stench. Something big and black crashed onto the floor, bounced, and rolled between Byerozkin's legs. At first he thought it was a log that had been thrown there by the force of the explosion; then he realized it was a live grenade. The tension of the next second was unbearable.

The grenade failed to explode. The shadow that had swallowed up the earth and sky, that had blotted out the past and cut short the future, faded away.

The lieutenant got back to his feet.

'Nasty little thing!' said a voice.

'Well, I really did think I'd bought it then!' said someone else with a laugh.

Byerozkin wiped the sweat off his brow, picked up the white aster, shook off the dust and stuck it back in the lieutenant's tunic. 'I suppose someone gave it to you as a present.' He then turned to Podchufarov and went on: 'So why do I say things are nice and quiet here? Because there are no senior officers coming and going. Senior officers always want something from you… You've got a good cook – you can hand him over to me! You've got a splendid barber, a splendid tailor – let me have them!… Yes, they're a bunch of extortioners… That's a fine dug-out – you can climb out of it right now! That is good sauerkraut – have it sent to me straight away!'

Then he suddenly asked the lieutenant: 'Why did you say two men returned without reaching the surrounded house?'

'They were wounded.'

'I see.'

'You were born lucky,' said Podchufarov as they left the building and made their way through the vegetable gardens. Yellow potato-tops stuck up between the trenches and dug-outs belonging to No. 2 Company.

'Who knows?' said Byerozkin, jumping down into a trench.

'The earth's better adapted to war than any of us,' said Podchufarov. 'She must be used to it.' Then, going back to the conversation begun by Byerozkin, he added: 'That's nothing! I've even heard of women being requisitioned by a senior officer.'

The trench resounded with noise: people shouting, the crackle of rifle-shots and short bursts from machine-guns and tommy-guns.

'The company commander's been killed. Political Officer Soshkin's taken command. This is his bunker right here.'

T see,' said Byerozkin, glancing in through the half-open door.

Soshkin, a man with thick, black eyebrows and a red face, caught up with them by the machine-guns. Shouting out each word, he reported that his company was keeping the Germans under fire with the aim of hindering their preparations for an attack on house 6/1.

Byerozkin borrowed his binoculars and began scrutinizing the quick flashes of rifle-fire and the flames that flickered like tongues from the mouths of mortars.

'There's a sniper right there, third floor, second window along.'

He'd hardly finished his sentence when there was a flash from that very window. A bullet whistled past, embedding itself in the wall of the trench half-way between Byerozkin's head and Soshkin's.

'You were born lucky!' said Podchufarov.

'Who knows?' replied Byerozkin.

They walked up the trench till they came to a device the company had invented themselves: an anti-tank rifle fixed to a cart-wheel.

'Our very own ack-ack gun,' said a sergeant with anxious eyes and a face covered in dust and stubble.

'One tank, a hundred metres distant, by the house with the green roof,' shouted Byerozkin, imitating the voice of a gunnery instructor.

The sergeant turned the wheel and quickly lowered the anti-tank rifle's long muzzle towards the earth.

'One of Dyrkin's soldiers,' said Byerozkin, 'fitted a sniper's sights to an anti-tank rifle and knocked out three machine-guns in one day.'

The sergeant shrugged his shoulders. 'It's all right for Dyrkin. He's behind walls.'

They walked further along the trench. Byerozkin went back to the conversation he had started at the very beginning of their tour of inspection. 'I sent them a food parcel – a very good one. And, do you realize? My wife still hasn't written. I don't know if the parcel even reached them. Maybe they've fallen ill. Anything can happen when you're evacuated.'

Podchufarov suddenly remembered how, in the past, carpenters who'd gone to work for a while in Moscow would return home laden with presents for their women, old people and children. The warmth and security of life at home had always meant more to them than the bright lights and noisy crowds of the capital.

Half an hour later they were back at the battalion command-post. Instead of going down into the cellar, Byerozkin began to take his leave in the courtyard.

'Provide every possible support for house 6/1,' he said. 'But don't try to break through to them yourselves. We'll do that by night – at regimental strength.'

'And now…,' he went on. 'First – I don't like the way you treat your wounded. You've got divans at the command-post and your wounded are just lying on the floor. Second – you haven't sent for fresh bread and your men are eating dry rusks. Third – your political instructor Soshkin was roaring drunk. And now…'

Podchufarov listened, astonished at how much his commanding officer had noticed. The second-in-command of a platoon had been wearing German trousers… the officer in command of No. 1 Company had been wearing two watches…

Byerozkin ended with a warning.

'The Germans are going to attack. Is that clear?'

He set off towards the factory. Glushkov, who had managed to nail his heel back on and stitch up the tear in his jacket, asked: 'Are we going home now?'

Instead of answering directly, Byerozkin turned to Podchufarov.

'Phone the regimental commissar. Tell him I'm on my way to Dyrkin's – in the factory, the third shop.'

He winked and added: 'And I want you to send me some sauerkraut. After all, I am a senior officer myself.'

Again there was no letter from Tolya… In the morning Lyudmila Nikolaevna Shaposhnikova would see her mother and husband off to work, and her daughter Nadya off to school. Her mother, Alexandra Vladimirovna, worked as a laboratory chemist in the famous Kazan soap factory; she was always the first to leave. As she passed her son-in-law's room, she would repeat a joke she had heard from the workers at the factory: 'We, the owners, must be at work by six, our employees by nine.'

Next, Nadya would go to school – or rather, gallop to school. It was impossible to get her out of bed in time; she always jumped out of bed at the last minute, grabbed her stockings, jacket, textbooks and exercise-books, gulped down her tea, and rushed down the staircase, flinging on her coat and scarf as she went.

By the time her husband, Viktor Pavlovich Shtrum, sat down to breakfast, the teapot would already be quite cold; Lyudmila would have to heat it up again.

Alexandra Vladimirovna would get quite angry when Nadya said: 'If only we could escape from this terrible hole!' Nadya didn't know that Derzhavin had lived in Kazan, that Aksakov, Tolstoy, Lenin, Zinin and Lobachevsky had all lived here, that Maxim Gorky had once worked in a Kazan baker's.

'What terrible senile indifference!' Alexandra Vladimirovna would say. It was strange to hear such a reproach levelled by an old woman at an adolescent girl.

Lyudmila could see that her mother remained interested both in the people she met and in her work. As well as awe at her mother's strength of character, she felt almost shocked: how could she, at such a terrible time, be interested in the hydrogenization of fats, in the streets and museums of Kazan?