'I wanted to see how you're getting on over here. Well, you certainly don't seem to have got yourself burnt! You're still as shaggy as ever… And you haven't even grown thin – we must be feeding you all right after all!'
'Do you expect me to grow thin from sitting all day and night in a bunker?' asked Chuykov. Still offended at Yeremenko's greeting, he went on: 'But what am I doing – receiving a guest out here on the bank?'
Now it was Yeremenko's turn to feel angry. It was very galling indeed to be referred to as a guest in Stalingrad. When Chuykov invited him in, he said: 'It's all right. I'll stay out here in the fresh air.'
The right bank, lit up by flares, shell-bursts and burning buildings, seemed quite deserted. The light brightened and faded, flaring up for a few seconds at a time with blinding intensity. Yeremenko gazed at the slopes pitted with bunkers and communication trenches, at the heaps of stone by the water – massive shapes that loomed out of the darkness and quickly slipped back into it.
Just then a loudspeaker struck up from across the river. An immense voice began to sing:
May noble fury boil up like waves! This is the people's war, a sacred war.
Since there were no human beings in sight, and since everything round about – the earth, the sky and the Volga – was lit up by flame, it seemed as though the war itself were singing this ponderous song.
Yeremenko was embarrassed by the interest he felt in the picture before him; it really was as though he was a guest come to see the master of Stalingrad. It angered him that Chuykov appeared to understand the anxiety that had led him to cross the Volga, to know how tormented he had felt as he paced about Krasniy Sad listening to the rustle of dry leaves.
He began questioning the master of this fiery hell about the disposition of his reserves, the co-ordination between the infantry and the artillery, and the build-up of German forces around the factories. Chuykov answered in the customary tone of an officer being questioned by a superior.
They fell silent for a moment. Chuykov wanted to say: 'This has been the greatest defensive action in history. But still, what about a counter-offensive?' But he didn't dare. Yeremenko would think that the defenders of Stalingrad lacked endurance, that they were begging for a burden to be lifted from their shoulders.
Suddenly Yeremenko asked: 'Your mother and father are from the country, aren't they? Somewhere round Tula?'
'That's right, comrade General.'
'Does the old man write to you?'
'Yes, he does. He's still working.'
They looked at one another. The lenses of Yeremenko's spectacles were pink from the glow of the fire.
Another moment and it seemed they might begin the one conversation that really mattered – about the meaning of Stalingrad. But Yeremenko just said: 'You probably want to ask the usual question an officer puts to his superior – about reinforcements and supplies of ammunition.'
The one conversation that could have had meaning failed to take place.
A sentry on the crest of the slope glanced down at them. Hearing the whistle of a shell, Chuykov looked up and said: 'I bet that sentry's wondering who on earth the two eccentrics by the river can be.'
Yeremenko sniffed and started to scratch his nose. The moment had come for him to leave. It was an unwritten law that a superior officer standing under enemy fire should only leave when his subordinate asked him to. But Yeremenko's indifference to danger was so complete and so unfeigned that this rule seemed irrelevant.
A mortar-bomb whistled past. He turned his head quickly and unthinkingly to follow its trajectory.
'Well, Chuykov, it's time I was off!'
Chuykov stood for a while on the bank and watched the launch disappear. The foam of the wake reminded him of a white handkerchief-as though a woman were waving goodbye to him.
For his part, Yeremenko stood on the deck and gazed at the left bank. It was undulating gently in the dim glow from Stalingrad, while the river itself was as still as stone. He paced irritably about; once again his mind was full of dozens of familiar thoughts and anxieties. There were new tasks before him. What mattered now were his instructions from the Stavka: to build up a concentration of armour in readiness for an attack on the enemy's left flank. [10] This was something he hadn't so much as mentioned to Chuykov.
Chuykov himself returned to his bunker. The soldier on sentry-duty, the duty-officer inside, Guryev 's chief of staff-like everyone else who jumped up at the sound of Chuykov's heavy footsteps – could see that their commander was upset.
He was indeed – and not without reason. His troops were slowly melting away. In the alternation of attack and counter-attack, the Germans were slowly gaining precious metres of ground. And two full-strength infantry divisions had been brought up from the rear and disposed opposite the Tractor Factory; there they remained ominously inactive.
No, he certainly had not expressed all his fears and anxieties to Yeremenko… But neither of the two men quite understood why their meeting had been so unsatisfactory; that the main thing about it was not the practical part, but what they had both been unable to say.
14
One cold October morning, Major Byerozkin woke up, thought about his wife and daughter, about heavy machine-guns, and listened to the now familiar rumble of gunfire. Then he called his orderly, Glushkov, and told him to fetch some water.
'It's nice and cold, just as you like it,' said Glushkov, smiling at the thought of the pleasure Byerozkin always took in his morning wash.
'It's probably already been snowing in the Urals,' said Byerozkin. 'That's where my wife and daughter are. Do you know, I still haven't heard from them.'
'You will, comrade Major,' said Glushkov.
While Byerozkin was drying himself and putting on his shirt, Glushkov told him about the events of the small hours.
'A shell fell on the kitchen block and killed the storeman. The chief of staff of the second battalion went out to relieve himself and was caught in the shoulder by a splinter. And some sappers caught a five-kilo pike-perch that had been stunned by a bomb. I've seen it myself – they gave it as a present to Captain Movshovich. And the commissar's been round – he wants you to phone him when you wake up.'
'Very well,' said Byerozkin. He drank a cup of tea, ate some calf 's-foot jelly, rang the chief of staff and the commissar to say he was going out to inspect his battalions, put on his jacket and walked to the door.
Glushkov shook out the towel and hung it up on a nail, felt the hand-grenade hanging from his belt, slapped his pocket to check his tobacco-pouch was in place, took a tommy-gun from the corner and followed the regimental commander outside.
Byerozkin screwed up his eyes as he came out into the light. He had been in Stalingrad for a month and the picture before him was by now familiar: clay scree and a brown slope dotted with the tarpaulin roofs of soldiers' dug-outs and the smoking chimneys of improvised stoves. Higher up he could see the dark silhouettes of factories whose roofs had fallen in.
On the left, towards the Volga, were the tall chimneys of the 'Red October' factory and some goods wagons that looked like a herd of animals huddled around the body of their dead leader – a locomotive that was lying on its side. Still further away one could see the skeletons of ruined buildings, with thousands of patches of open sky appearing through what had once been windows. Smoke was rising from the factory workshops, there were glimpses of flame, and the air was filled with a staccato banging. It was almost as though these factories were still working.
Byerozkin carefully looked over the 300 metre-wide sector – most of it the small houses of a workers' settlement – where his regiment was disposed. Some sixth sense enabled him to tell apart, in the chaos of ruined buildings and alleyways, the houses where his own soldiers were cooking their buckwheat
A mortar-bomb whistled through the air; Byerozkin bowed his head and cursed. There was the crash of an explosion and a cloud of smoke covered the entrance to a bunker on the opposite slope of the gully. Still in his
