Евгений Водолазкин - Solovyov and Larionov

Solovyov explained the Reds’ four- or five-fold superiority over the Whites by the separate peace treaty that the Reds and Poles had concluded behind the general’s back. The agreement untied the Reds’ hands: after withdrawing their large forces from the western front, they moved them south, against the White Army. The Whites’ position was becoming critical.

All that remained for the White Army of the entire, huge country was a patch of land surrounded by sea. It was connected to the mainland by the narrow isthmus for which the retreating army was striving. The White Army’s fate depended on who reached the isthmus first: if cut off from Crimea, the White Army would not have the slightest chance of being saved. This did not just affect the army, though. The downfall of the White troops would subject to mortal danger thousands of others who had retreated to Crimea with those troops. They would not have time to evacuate.

The general was in a hurry. He had a slight time advantage that he was afraid of losing. After the battles near Kakhovka, he moved his troops southeast through Northern Taurida without giving them respite. He was still not giving up. As he reviewed episodes of the Kakhovka combat in his mind, he was still relying on the power of his soldiers’ desperation and the special courage of the doomed. After that strange forced march began, however, the general sensed the beginning of the end for the first time.

This was not an army advancing toward Perekop, it was an unorganized column of sleepwalkers traveling along the ice-bound expanse of Northern Taurida. Leaning from his saddle, the general peered into his soldiers’ faces and saw an expression of mortal exhaustion on those faces. He knew this expression. He had seen it on the faces of those who froze in snow banks. Of those who stood up straight and walked into machine gun fire. But never before had he seen this expression on every face. The general was beginning to understand that he had lost more than just an individual, if very important, battle. It was becoming clearer to him with every minute that the war, as a whole, had been lost.

His army could no longer fight. The reason was not the poor uniforms (though they truly were poor) and not the lack of ammunition (which was, indeed, lacking). This was not even about the army’s demoralization: the general had managed to restore his soldiers’ fighting spirit even after worse defeats. The reason was that the army had depleted its entire reservoir . It was this very expression that the general used in the telegram he sent to foreign envoys when he was halfway to Perekop. In their response, the envoys requested an urgent meeting. They needed the general’s explanations. But what was the point of a meeting like that? What, in actuality, could he explain to them?

After dropping the reins, the general took a sheet of paper and a pencil from his map case. His horse slowed to a walk. He thought a bit and wrote to the envoys that there was no more rage in his soldiers’ eyes. There was no joy. There was no fear. There was not even suffering. There was nothing there but an endless wish for repose. How does it happen, the general asked, that an object suddenly loses its qualities? Why does a magnet demagnetize? Why does salt stop being saline? After reading what he had written, the general folded the sheet in neat quarters and ripped it to pieces. They fell behind his back like large snowflakes.

The soldiers could not warm up. They stuffed straw under the thin broadcloth of their military overcoats but it did not help. Sometimes the soldiers burned tumbleweeds so they could at least hold their numbed fingers over them for a minute. Gusts of wind carried off the tumbleweeds; small fiery balls scattered along the steppe when dusk was falling. That wind flung prickly bits of ice into the marchers’ faces and the wind got under their overcoats, removing the last bit of warmth radiated from the soldiers’ fatigued bodies.

The soldiers wanted to sleep. After two days of uninterrupted battle, some fell asleep on their feet. Lulled by the column’s even pace, they closed their eyes involuntarily and continued walking in their sleep. The artillerymen began sitting on the gun carriages but the general forbade that. As they drifted into sleep, they fell from the gun carriages and under the wheels.

The general did not allow them to lie down on the carts. He pulled from the carts those wounded but still capable of traveling and forced them to walk. Cursing the general and his orders, they walked. They held the sides of the carts and left a bloody trail in the snow, but they walked. Their bandages trailed behind them. And they remained alive. The gravely wounded, unable to move, could not warm up. They shouted that they were freezing. Someone covered them with coats, mattresses, and rags, but still they could not warm up. The majority of them had frozen by the end of the march.

As the general straightened an overcoat that dangled from one of the carts, he touched the firm, oblong object that was holding the overcoat. It was a frozen soldier’s arm. It held the overcoat in a death grip. The general rode off abruptly and observed the overcoat trailing behind the cart for a while.

The field kitchens had no provisions. The general ordered that what little still remained be given to the wounded. But only thin soup remained. This soup could not satiate the wounded; it could not even warm them. They looked upward incessantly as they lay on the carts, feeling nothing but the cold. This was a cosmic cold, emanating from distant, indifferent stars.

It was the kind of cold that made the soldiers think they would never warm up now. Not warm up and not get a good sleep. Many wanted to die and the general knew that. He forbade his soldiers to daydream about death.

‘Whoever of you dies,’ said the general, ‘will end up in the grave unwarmed.’

There was no answer.

‘He will freeze eternally,’ said the general.

The soldiers walked in complete silence. They were afraid that their last remnants of warmth would leave, along with the words they uttered. All that sounded were the even clatter of horse hoofs, the creak of carts, and the crunch of frost under the gun carriages’ wheels. And the groans of the wounded. A while later (their sense of time was dulled, too) a quiet glass-like sound blended in with those other noises. The general rode off to the side and saw ice chafing against rocks by the water. They had retreated to the Sivash. The salt-water lake was covered with a thin icy crust.

An explosion rang out somewhere in the distance. And then closer. Again in the distance. This was the Reds’ artillery shelling. It created the impression that the Reds were shooting at random. The retreating troops did not slow their pace. Sometimes the shells landed a few dozen meters from the column. They raised pillars of water in the sea that flashed briefly and gloomily in the moonlight. At times they exploded with a deafening dry bang; the general understood then that the Sivash had frozen solid in places. This discovery made him feel uneasy.

‘General Winter,’ whispered General Larionov. ‘He’s made his appearance a month earlier than usual.’

They saw distant campfires at around two in the morning. This did not bode well at all for those retreating and the general knew it. Those campfires meant that isolated Red units had managed to go around his army from the east and enter the isthmus first. It was also possible that the Sivash had frozen so much in places that the Reds could cross from the side of the village of Stroganovka. Now they awaited the general’s troops along their retreat route. Movement continued, though those campfires meant death.