you remember that wonderful cellar where we were quartered in September?'
A second soldier, lying on his back, said: 'You were already here when I joined you.'
'That was a splendid cellar,' several other voices confirmed. 'You can take our word for it. It was a real home, with proper beds…'
'Some of the fellows were beginning to despair when we were outside Moscow. And look what happened: we reached the Volga!'
Another soldier split a board with his bayonet and opened the door of the stove to throw in a few bits of wood. The flames lit up his large, grey, unshaven face, turning it a reddish copper.
'And a lot of good that's done us!' he said. 'We've swapped a hole near Moscow for an even worse hole near the Volga.'
A gay voice rang out from the dark corner where the soldiers' packs were piled. 'Horsemeat! You couldn't think of a better Christmas dinner if you tried!'
The talk turned to food and everyone grew more animated. First they discussed the best way of getting rid of the smell of sweat in boiled horsemeat. Some said you just needed to scoop the black scum off the top of the boiling water. Others said it was important to simmer the broth very gently; still others said you should only use the meat from the hind-quarters and put it straight into the boiling water while it was still frozen.
'It's the scouts who really have a good time of it,' said one young soldier. 'They steal provisions from the Russians and then share them with their women in the cellars. And people wonder why the scouts always get off with the youngest and prettiest ones!'
'That's one thing I no longer think about,' said the soldier stoking the stove. 'I don't know whether it's just my mood, or not having anything to eat. But what I would like is to see my children before I die. Just for one hour!'
'The officers think about it, though. I met the lieutenant himself in one of their cellars. He was quite at home, almost one of the family.'
'What were you doing there?'
'I'd gone to get my washing done.'
'You know, I was once a guard in a camp. I saw prisoners-of-war picking up bits of potato-peel, fighting over a few rotten cabbage leaves. I said to myself: 'They're not human beings – they're beasts.' And now we've become beasts ourselves.'
Suddenly the door was flung open. The mist swirled in and a loud, ringing voice shouted: 'On your feet! Attention!'
These words of command sounded the same as ever, calm and unhurried.
The men in the bunker made out the face of Lieutenant Bach through the mist. Then there was an unfamiliar squeak of boots and they caught sight of the light blue greatcoat of the general in command of the division. He was screwing up his myopic eyes and wiping his monocle with a dirty piece of chamois. There was a gold wedding-ring on his white hand.
A voice accustomed to ringing out over vast parade-grounds said:
'Good evening! Stand at ease!'
The soldiers answered in a ragged chorus. The general sat down on a crate; the yellow light from the stove flickered over the black Iron Cross on his chest.
'I wish you a happy Christmas Eve,' he said.
The soldiers who were accompanying him dragged another crate up to the stove, prised open the lid with their bayonets and began taking out tiny Christmas trees wrappped in cellophane. Each tree, only a few inches long, was decorated with gold tinsel, beads and tiny fruit-drops.
The general watched as the soldiers unwrapped the cellophane, then beckoned the lieutenant towards him and mumbled a few words in his ear. The lieutenant announced in a loud voice:
'The lieutenant-general would like you to know that this Christmas present from Germany was flown in by a pilot who was mortally wounded over Stalingrad itself. The plane landed in Pitomnik and he was found dead in the cabin.'
36
The soldiers were holding the trees in the palms of their hands. As they warmed up, a fine dew appeared on the needles and the bunker was filled with the smell of resin. The usual smell of the front line – a cross between that of a morgue and that of a blacksmith's – was quite blotted out. To the soldiers it was as if this smell of Christmas emanated from the grey-haired general sitting beside the stove.
Bach felt the beauty and sadness of the moment. These men who defied the power of the Russian heavy artillery, these coarse, hardened soldiers who were dispirited by their lack of ammunition and tormented by vermin and hunger had all understood at once that what they needed more than anything in the world was not bread, not bandages, not ammunition, but these tiny branches twined with useless tinsel, these orphanage toys.
The soldiers sat in a circle round the old man on the crate. Only that summer he had led the vanguard of the motorized infantry to the Volga. Everywhere, all his life, this man had been an actor. He had played a role not only in front of the soldiers or during conversations with a superior officer, but also when he was at home, when he was with his wife, his daughter-in-law or his grandson, when he went for a walk in the garden. He had played a role when he lay alone in bed at night, his general's uniform spread out on the chair beside him. And of course he had been playing a role when he had asked the soldiers about their mothers, when he had made coarse jokes about their affairs with women, when he had looked inside their cooking-pots and tasted their soup with exaggerated seriousness, when he had bowed his head austerely before still uncovered graves, when he had given heartfelt, fatherly speeches to the new recruits. And all this hadn't been a pose; it had been a part of his inner nature, infused into all his thoughts. He was quite unconscious of it; it could no more be separated from him than salt can be filtered out of sea-water. It had been there as he entered the bunker, as he flung open his greatcoat, as he sat down on the crate in front of the stove, as he looked calmly and sorrowfully at the soldiers and wished them a happy Christmas Eve. But now, for the first time in his life, he became conscious of this theatricality; and – just as salt crystallizes when water freezes – it deserted him, leaving him to his melancholy, to his sense of pity for these hungry, exhausted men. Now he was just a weak, helpless old man sitting with a group of other men who were equally helpless, equally unhappy.
One soldier quietly began to sing.
Two or three more voices joined in. The scent of pine-needles was enough to make you feel dizzy; the words of the children's song were like fanfares of heavenly trumpets.
Out of the cold darkness of oblivion, as though from the depths of the sea, long-dead thoughts and feelings rose slowly up to the surface. They brought no joy, no relief, but their strength was a human strength, the greatest strength in the world…
One after another came the explosions of large-calibre Soviet shells. Ivan must have been annoyed about something – perhaps he had guessed that the besieged soldiers were celebrating Christmas. None of these soldiers, however, paid the least attention to the plaster falling from the ceiling or to the clouds of red sparks belched out by the stove.
Then there was a burst of furious, metallic hammering; the earth seemed to be screaming. That was Ivan playing with his beloved Katyushas. Then came a crackle of machine-gun fire.
The old man sat there with his head bowed; he looked like thousands of other men who have been exhausted by a long life. The footlights had faded; the actors had taken off their make-up and gone out into the grey light of day. Now they all looked the same: the legendary general, an insignificant corporal, even Private Schmidt who had been suspected of harbouring dissident thoughts… Bach suddenly thought of Lenard. A man like him would never have surrendered to the charm of this moment. There was too much in him that was German, that was dedicated only to the State; now it was too late for that to be made human.
Bach looked up towards the door and caught sight of Lenard.
