Life And Fate

independently, on the spot?

Then he imagined his tanks breaking through the German and Rumanian defences. Column after column, they entered the breach and set off in pursuit of the enemy. In liaison with ground-support aircraft, self-propelled guns and motorized infantry they drove further and further towards the West, seizing fords and bridges, avoiding minefields, crushing pockets of resistance… Out of breath with joy and excitement, Novikov would sit up in bed, his bare feet touching the floor.

He never felt any desire to tell Getmanov about such moments. Here in the steppe, he felt even more irritated with him and Nyeudob-nov than he had in the Urals. 'They've arrived just in time for dessert,' he would sometimes say to himself.

He himself was no longer the man he had been in 1941. He drank more, swore a lot and had become quick- tempered. Once he had almost hit the officer responsible for fuel supplies. People were afraid of him – and he knew it.

'I don't know if I really am made for war,' he said to Getmanov. 'The best thing in the world would be to live in a hut in the forest together with the woman you love. You'd go hunting during the day and come back home in the evening. She'd cook you a meal and then you'd go to bed. War's no nourishment for a man.'

Getmanov, his head cocked, watched him attentively.

Colonel Karpov, the commander of the 1st Brigade, was a man with puffy cheeks, red hair and piercingly blue eyes. He met Novikov and Getmanov by the field wireless-set.

He had seen service on the North-Western Front. There he had more than once had to dig in his tanks and use them simply as guns.

He accompanied Novikov and Getmanov on their inspection of the 1st Brigade. His movements were as calm and unhurried as if he were himself the senior officer.

From his build, you would have expected him to be a good-natured man who drank too much beer and enjoyed a good meal. In fact he was cold, taciturn, suspicious and petty-minded. He was a far from generous host and had a reputation for miserliness.

Getmanov praised the conscientiousness with which bunkers, artillery emplacements and tank shelters had been constructed. He had indeed taken everything into consideration: types of terrain over which an enemy attack would be practicable, the possibility of a flanking movement… All he had forgotten was that he would now be required to lead his brigade into the attack, to break through the enemy front, to take up the pursuit.

Novikov was annoyed by Getmanov's repeated nods and words of approval. Meanwhile Karpov, as though intentionally adding fuel to the flames, was saying:

'Comrade Colonel, let me tell you how things were in Odessa. Well, we were quite splendidly entrenched. We counter-attacked in the evening and dealt the Rumanians a good blow. And then that night the army commander had us all embark on board ship, right down to the last man. Around nine o'clock in the morning the Rumanians finally came to and stormed the empty trenches. By then we were already on the Black Sea.'

'Well, I just hope you don't hang around in front of empty Rumanian trenches,' said Novikov.

Would Karpov be capable of pressing on ahead, day and night, leaving pockets of enemy resistance behind him? Would he be able to forge on, exposing his head, his neck, his flanks? Would he be seized by the fury of pursuit? No, no, that was not his nature.

Everything was still parched by the heat of summer; it was strange to find the air so cool. The soldiers were all busy with everyday concerns: one, sitting on top of his tank, was shaving in front of a mirror he had propped against the turret; another was cleaning his rifle; another was writing a letter; there was a group playing dominoes on a tarpaulin they had spread out; another, larger, group had gathered, yawning, around the nurse. The sky was vast and the earth was vast; this everyday picture was full of the sadness of early evening.

Suddenly a battalion commander rushed up. Putting his tunic straight as he ran, he shouted: 'Battalion! Attention!'

'At ease, at ease,' said Novikov.

Getmanov walked about among the men, saying a few words here and there. They all laughed, their faces brightening as they exchanged glances. He asked whether they were missing the girls from the Urals, whether they'd wasted a lot of paper in writing letters, whether their copies of Red Star came regularly. Then he turned on the quartermaster.

'What did the soldiers have to eat today? And yesterday? And the day before yesterday? Is that what you've had to eat for the last three days? Soup made from green tomatoes and barley?

'Let me have a word with the cook!' he demanded to the accompaniment of general laughter. 'I'd like to know what the quartermaster had to eat today.'

Through these questions about the everyday life of the soldiers and their material welfare, Getmanov seemed almost to be reproaching their commanding officers. It was as though he were saying: 'Why do you go on and on all the time about the ordnance? What about the men themselves?'

The quartermaster himself, a thin man with the red hands of a washerwoman, just stood there in his old, dusty boots. Every now and then he cleared his throat nervously.

Novikov felt sorry for him. 'Comrade Commissar,' he said, 'shall we visit Byelov's together?'

Getmanov had always, with reason, been considered a man of the masses, a born leader. He only had to open his mouth for people to laugh; his vivid, direct way of talking, his sometimes vulgar language quickly bridged the distance between the secretary of an obkom and a worker in overalls.

He always began by asking about material matters. Did they get their wages on time? Was the shop in the factory or village well supplied, or were some items always unobtainable? Was the workers' hostel well-heated? How was the food from the field-kitchen?

He had a particular gift for talking to middle-aged women in factories and collective farms. They liked the way he showed himself to be a true servant of the people, the way he was ready to attack managers, food suppliers, wardens of hostels, managers of tractor-stations and factories, if they failed to take into account the interests of the working man. He was the son of a peasant, he had worked in a factory himself- and the workers could sense this.

In his office at the obkom, however, he was a different man. There his sole concern was his responsibility towards the State. There his only preoccupations were the preoccupations of Moscow. The factory managers and secretaries of rural raykoms knew this very well.

'You realize that you're disrupting the State plan, do you? Do you want to surrender your Party membership card right now? Are you aware that the Party has placed its trust in you? Need I say more?'

There were no jokes or pleasantries in his office, no talk of providing boiling water in hostels or more greenery in the factories. Instead, people gave their approval to tight production schedules, agreed that the construction of new housing should be postponed, that the workers would have to increase their daily output and that they would all have to tighten their belts, slash costs and increase retail prices.

It was during the meetings held in his office that Getmanov's power could be felt most tangibly. Other people seemed to come to these meetings not to express ideas and demands of their own, but simply to help Getmanov. It was as though the whole course of these meetings had been determined in advance by Getmanov's will and intelligence.

He spoke quietly and unhurriedly, confident of his listeners' agreement.

'Let's hear about your region then. First, comrades, we'll have a word from the agronomist. And we'd like to hear your point of view, Pyotr Mikhailovich. I think Lazko has something to tell us – he's had certain problems in that area. Yes, Rodionov, I know you've got something on the tip of your tongue, but in my opinion the matter's quite clear. It's time we began to sum up, I don't think there can be any objections. Perhaps I can call on you, Rodionov, to read out this draft resolution.' And Rodionov – who had intended to express certain doubts or even disagreements – would conscientiously read out the resolution, glancing now and again at the chairman to see if he was reading it clearly enough. 'Well, comrades, it seems we're all in favour.'

What was most extraordinary of all was that Getmanov always seemed to be absolutely sincere. He was fully himself when he was commiserating with old women in a village Soviet or expressing regret at the cramped conditions in a workers' hostel; he was equally himself when he insisted to the secretary of a raykom on 100 per cent fulfilment of the plan, when he deprived workers on a collective farm of their entitlement to a few last grains of corn, when he decreased wages, increased retail prices and demanded lower overheads.