with her mouth open. Then he left the house, not knowing if he would ever see her again, telling himself he did not care.
But his spirits lifted with the excitement and confusion of reporting to his regiment, being issued with a gun and ammunition, finding the right train, and meeting his new comrades. He stopped thinking about Katerina and turned his mind to the future.
He boarded a train with Isaak and several hundred other reservists in their new gray-green uniform breeches and tunics. Like the rest of them, he carried a Russian-made Mosin-Nagant rifle, as tall as himself with its long spiked bayonet. The huge bruise that the sledgehammer had left, covering most of one side of his face, made the other men think he was some kind of thug, and they treated him with wary respect. The train steamed out of St. Petersburg and chuffed steadily through fields and forests.
The setting sun was generally ahead and to the right, so they were going southwest, toward Germany. That seemed obvious to Grigori, though when he said it his fellow soldiers were surprised and impressed: most of them did not know in which direction Germany lay.
This was only the second time he had been on a train, and he was reminded vividly of the first. When he was eleven his mother had brought him and little Lev to St. Petersburg. His father had been hanged a few days earlier, and Grigori’s young head was full of fear and grief, but like any boy he had been thrilled by the ride: the oiled smell of the mighty locomotive, the huge wheels, the camaraderie of the peasants in the third-class carriage, and the intoxicating speed with which the countryside sped by. Some of that exhilaration came back to him now, and he could not help feeling that he was on an adventure that could be exciting as well as terrible.
This time, however, he was traveling in a cattle truck, as were all but the officers. The wagon contained about forty men: pale-skinned, sly-eyed St. Petersburg factory workers; long-bearded, slow-talking peasants who looked at everything with wondering curiosity; and half a dozen dark-eyed, dark-haired Jews.
One of the Jews sat next to Grigori and introduced himself as David. His father manufactured iron buckets in the backyard of their house, he said, and he went from village to village selling them. There were a lot of Jews in the army, he explained, because they found it more difficult to get exemption from military service.
They were all under the orders of a Sergeant Gavrik, a regular soldier who looked anxious, barked orders, and used a great deal of profanity. He pretended to think all the men were peasants, and called them cowfuckers. He was about Grigori’s age, too young to have been in the Japanese war of 1904-1905, and Grigori guessed that underneath the bluster he was scared.
Every few hours the train stopped at a country station and the men got out. Sometimes they were given soup and beer, sometimes just water. In between stops they sat on the floor of the wagon. Gavrik made sure they knew how to clean their rifles and reminded them of the different military ranks and how officers should be addressed. Lieutenants and captains were “Your Honor,” but superior officers required a variety of honorifics all the way up to “Most High Radiance” for those who were also aristocrats.
By the second day, Grigori calculated they must be in the territory of Russian Poland.
He asked the sergeant which part of the army they were in. Grigori knew they were the Narva Regiment, but no one had told them how they fitted into the overall picture. Gavrik said: “None of your fucking business. Just go where you’re sent and do as you’re told.” Grigori guessed he did not know the answer.
After a day and a half the train stopped at a town called Ostrolenka. Grigori had never heard of it, but he could see that it was the end of the railway line, and he guessed it must be near the German border. Here hundreds of railway wagons were being unloaded. Men and horses sweated and heaved to maneuver huge guns off the trains. Thousands of troops milled around as bad-tempered officers attempted to muster them in platoons and companies. At the same time tons of supplies had to be transferred to horse-drawn carts: sides of meat, sacks of flour, barrels of beer, crates of bullets, artillery shells in packing cases, and tons of oats for all the horses.
At one point Grigori saw the loathed face of Prince Andrei. He wore a gorgeous uniform-Grigori was not sufficiently familiar with badges and stripes to identify the regiment or rank-and rode on a tall chestnut horse. Behind him walked a corporal carrying a canary in a cage. I could shoot him now, Grigori thought, and avenge my father. It was a stupid idea, of course, but he stroked the trigger of his rifle as the prince and his cage bird disappeared into the crowd.
The weather was hot and dry. That night Grigori slept on the ground with the rest of the men from his wagon. He realized that they constituted a platoon, and would be together for the foreseeable future. The next morning they met their officer, an unnervingly young second lieutenant called Tomchak. He led them out of Ostrolenka on a road that headed northwest.
Lieutenant Tomchak told Grigori they were in 13 Corps, commanded by General Klyuev, which was part of the Second Army under General Samsonov. When Grigori relayed this information to the other men they were spooked, because the number thirteen was unlucky, and Sergeant Gavrik said: “I told you it was none of your business, Peshkov, you cocksucking homo.”
They were not far out of town when the metaled road ran out and became a sand track through a forest. The supply carts got stuck, and the drivers soon found out that a single horse could not pull a loaded army wagon through sand. All the horses had to be unhitched and reharnessed two to a cart, and every second wagon had to be abandoned at the roadside.
They marched all day and slept under the stars again. Each night when he went to bed Grigori said to himself: Another day, and I’m still alive to take care of Katerina and the baby.
That evening Tomchak received no orders, so they sat under the trees all the next morning. Grigori was glad: his legs ached from yesterday’s march, and his feet hurt in the new boots. The peasants were used to walking all day, and they laughed at the weakness of the city dwellers.
At midday a runner brought orders commanding them to set out at eight A.M., four hours earlier.
There was no provision for supplying the marching men with water, so they had to drink from wells and streams they came across on the way. They soon learned to drink their fill at every opportunity, and keep their standard-issue water bottles topped up. There was no means of cooking, either, and the only food they got was the dry biscuits called hardtack. Every few miles they would be called upon to help pull a wheeled cannon out of a swamp or sandpit.
They marched until sundown and slept under the trees again.
Halfway through the third day they emerged from a wood to see a fine farmhouse set amid fields of ripening oats and wheat. It was a two-story building with a steeply pitched roof. In the yard was a concrete wellhead, and there was a low stone structure that seemed to be a pigsty, except that it was clean. The place looked like the home of a prosperous land captain, or perhaps the younger son of a nobleman. It was locked up and deserted.
A mile farther on, to everyone’s astonishment, the road passed through an entire village of such places, all abandoned. The realization began to dawn on Grigori that he had crossed the border into Germany, and these luxurious houses were the homes of German farmers who had fled, with their families and livestock, to escape the oncoming Russian army. But where were the hovels of the poor peasants? What had been done with the filth of the pigs and cows? Why were there no tumbledown wooden cowsheds with patched walls and holes in the roofs?
The soldiers were jubilant. “They’re running away from us!” said a peasant. “They’re scared of us Russians. We’ll take Germany without firing a shot!”
Grigori knew, from Konstantin’s discussion group, that the German plan was to conquer France first and then deal with Russia. The Germans were not surrendering, they were choosing the best time to fight. Even so, it would be surprising if they were to give up this prime territory without a struggle.
“What part of Germany is this, Your Honor?” he asked Tomchak.
“They call it East Prussia.”
“Is it the wealthiest part of Germany?”
“I don’t think so,” said the lieutenant. “I see no palaces.”
“Are ordinary people in Germany rich enough to live in homes such as these?”
“I suppose they are.”
Evidently Tomchak, who looked as if he was barely out of school, did not know much more than Grigori.
Grigori walked on, but he felt demoralized. He had thought himself a well-informed man, but he had had no idea that the Germans lived so well.
It was Isaak who voiced his doubts. “Our army is already having trouble feeding us, even though not a single shot has yet been fired,” he said quietly. “How can we possibly fight against people who are so well organized that they keep their pigs in stone houses?”
