The streetcars, too, were overcrowded, but sometimes you got lucky coming in from the barracks and you found a seat before the benches had all filled up. Then you could read over your notes. There was insufficient room at the university, as well, and the special classes for officers were held in makeshift classrooms at an agricultural cooperative administration center. Everyone was happy with that because there was a tearoom for the cadres that still had cakes and other snacks in the late afternoon, when more public establishments had long been emptied. It became a joke among the officers that the agricultural officials, whom the officers nicknamed “our kulaks,” would never run out of food. Anna was a joke among the officers, too, but laughing about her in her absence was the only way they could cope with her.
She was an unexpected girl, this young candidate of literature. With hair that swirled around the collar of her winter coat like cognac in a proper glass. When she took charge of the class, her style had the sharpness of brandy, as well. No nonsense, Comrade Officers. Attention. The tiny Polish girl is in charge here.
The officers had come to the class for assorted reasons. The military district commander maintained very close relations with the regional and city Party officials. And he had fully committed himself to the military’s current mania for improving the educational achievements of officer cadres, as well as seeking improved contacts between the military and the community. The result was a variety of special university-sponsored courses offered in the late afternoon and evening. The older officers generally considered the courses a waste. But the younger ones, the hungry junior officers who had not had the career advantage of a tour of duty in Afghanistan, were all for the courses. The classes also meant a bit more time away from the drudgery of duties. The most popular courses were in fashionable subjects such as automation techniques. Bezarin had been one of the few to sign up for a series of writing classes. He sincerely wanted to improve his level of staff culture, but he also envisioned himself as a future contributor to the military journals, offering suggestions that would be respected and that would result in tangible changes. Most of his classmates had taken the course because it sounded like the easiest of the lot. Then the little Polish girl with the bothersomely elegant features had swept in and taken charge, and there was plenty of work for all. The officers nicknamed her “Jaruzelski’s Revenge.” And Bezarin, who had little experience with female instructors, thanks to his long years as a Suvorovets cadet, then the years at the academy and higher tank school, fell in love with his teacher.
Bezarin had always thought of himself as a firm, decisive man. But he found that he dreaded poor marks from this girl as though she were a savage commanding officer. Conscious of his short stature, he hurried to be in his seat before she arrived. At work, his mind wandered from training plans and range allocations to the way Candidate Saduska looked when she came in fresh from the street, cheeks stung red above her high collar and scarf. He did not know what to say to her. Then he discovered that she, too, had found out about the tearoom and had begun to arrive early so that she could eat her fill. Marshaling all of the courage the bloodlines of three generations of tankers and cavalrymen had given him, he waited for her one day. As she peeled back the winter layers he approached her, carrying a tray with two cups of tea and a mound of sweet rolls.
She looked at him with fierce green eyes, a revolutionary judge deciding a profiteer’s fate.
Finally, she said, “Sit down, Captain Bezarin, please. I have been meaning to talk to you.”
And the spring came early to Galicia. The muddy end-of-cycle maneuvers brought with them the first small flowers, and warm winds rolled up over the Carpathians from the golden south. None of the few girls Bezarin had known had been like this one. She gave him Chekhov to read, and he dutifully reported. The officers in the play did not seem concerned about their duties, and that was why the Imperial Russian Army had performed so poorly against the Japanese. And the three sisters never did anything but complain. They were not content with anything. Overall, he declared the play irrelevant to contemporary conditions.
“But this one,” she insisted, with the park a fresh, windy green all around her,
He wanted to share her enthusiasm. But in these stories and plays of a bygone era, all of the men appeared indecisive, and the women were petty adulteresses.
“It’s all too artificial,” he answered at last, exasperated. “You. The two of us sitting in this park, now that’s real. Your ‘Lady with the Pet Dog’ is dead and gone.”
She laughed and told him the army had ruined him for life. He laughed, too, filled with unaccustomed fears that she might be right and that she would not go with him. Yet their love seemed to work: the hours in borrowed apartments and the dutyless Sundays in a countryside that had never seemed so rich before. Low hills that had until recently inspired him only to analyze terrain and ranging considerations gained a golden-green existence all their own, called to life by Anna’s words and gestures, and by the faint gorgeous smell of her when the wind blew down from the mountains and swept through her hair and over her shoulders. He gained confidence, only to have it desert him again. He knew that she liked his body, which was athletic, if short. She was a very small girl, with a frame that seemed far too light and frail for the spirit that enlivened it. And she liked his sobriety, and his earnestness, even when it made her laugh. But he could think of so little else that he had to offer. Officer’s quarters in some remote post in Kazakhstan, perhaps, where there was still no running water and where even a captain’s family had to share crude communal latrines.
In the end, he could not even ask. He had been the lucky one from the entire garrison, selected for attendance at the Vystrel command course, to be followed by early battalion command.
But Anna? Would she be waiting? Could she even consider waiting for him? And if he was posted to the Trans-Baikal? Or to Mongolia? Afghanistan, too, had been a possibility. Notions that once had filled him with visions of glorious achievement began to echo with time and distance, and he was quietly ashamed of himself. In the end, he left without asking her, without perhaps really knowing her at all. The new computers at the training school worked more often than had the earlier models, the tactical problems were simple for him, and there was much about which an ambitious officer could be optimistic. But his cowardice haunted him. During their last awkward hour, in a park that raced with fallen leaves, he had found he could not ask her. He resolved to write his feelings down. But later, he could not do that, either. All he could do was to think of her, wondering if she was teaching yet another group of young officers now, and if she ever thought of him, and whether any of her new students liked Chekhov.
Bezarin led his column through the cluttered rear of the combat area. The road network was superb, allowing his vehicles to move with what felt like irresistible speed and compactness. He had hastily restructured the battalion’s internal order of march so that he could personally guide the deployment of the three tank companies by visual means. The combat task of the motorized rifle company was to follow and be prepared to clear overrun positions, if necessary. The battalion’s rear services trailed, with instructions to break off the road when the battalion deployed into company columns but to remain mounted and ready to follow.
His small staff and his company commanders had worn solemn faces as Bezarin attempted to give them adequate verbal instructions. Nothing in their training had prepared them for this sudden acceleration of events. Fear showed openly on Roshchin’s face. The boyish company commander listened to Bezarin’s coaching with his mouth opened partway, revealing slightly buck teeth that made him appear hopelessly naive and immature. Dagliev, Bezarin’s most reliable company commander and a good improviser, looked ten years older from lack of sleep. The last tank company commander, Voronich, stood slouched, grumpy, as though his shoulders and spine were declaring, “This is pig shit, and we all know it.” Voronich was cynical to the point of being theatrical, but he was competent at his job. Lasky, who commanded the motorized rifle troops, looked like an orphan boy. Bezarin knew that the motorized rifle officer expected to receive the dirtiest tasks and the least thanks. But there was no time for coddling now. Bezarin did his best to answer their worried questions, even as his officers tried to phrase their queries in words that sounded as tough and masculine as possible. It occurred to Bezarin that they were a distinctly unheroic-looking group, huddling around the spread map in their filthy coveralls. The faces had a slightly lunatic appearance, broken skin smeared black and framed by hair skewed wildly in pulling their headgear on and off. Bezarin did not give them all of the details that would come into play should they become the designated forward detachment. He felt his officers had enough to work through in the little time available. But he was determined to be the commander who punched through.
Now, speeding along the road from village to village, Bezarin felt as though nothing could stop him. Intellectually, he realized that there was great danger, especially from enemy aircraft, since the heavy air-defense weaponry remained under centralized control. The battalion had to rely on a few shoulder-fired missiles, which, in turn, required soldiers — boys — to calmly expose their bodies under combat conditions. The army gave them a few weeks training and, sometimes, an armored vest to shield their torsos. Some of the newer soldiers had never even fired a live missile. But there was nothing to be done. And emotionally, he was already in the attack.
