Life And Fate

everyday life in the division. Everything he said seemed to have some bearing on what had happened to him in the first hours of the war; it was as though all his thoughts had developed from that one point.

Ever since he had arrived in Stalingrad, Krymov had had a strange feeling. Sometimes it was as though he were in a kingdom where the Party no longer existed; sometimes he felt he was breathing the air of the first days of the Revolution.

'Have you been a member of the Party for long, comrade Lieutenant-Colonel?' he asked Batyuk abruptly.

'Why do you ask, comrade Commissar? Do you think I'm deviating from the Party line?'

For a moment Krymov didn't answer. Then he said: 'I've always been considered quite a good orator, you know. I've spoken at large workers' meetings. But ever since I arrived here, I've felt that I'm following people rather than guiding them. It's very odd. Just now I wanted to say something to your snipers and then I thought they knew all they needed to know already. Actually, that wasn't the only reason I didn't say anything. We've been told to make the soldiers think of the Red Army as an army of vengeance. This isn't the moment for me to start talking about internationalism or class consciousness. What matters is to mobilize the fury of the masses against the enemy. I don't want to be like the idiot in the story who began reciting the funeral service at a wedding…'

He thought for a moment. 'Anyway, I'm used to it… The Party's mobilized the fury of the masses in order to destroy the enemy, to annihilate them. There's no place for Christian humanitarianism now. Our Soviet humanitarianism is something more stern… We certainly don't wear kid-gloves…' He paused again.

'Of course I'm not talking about incidents like when you were nearly shot. And in 1937 there were times when we shot our own people – yes, we're paying for that now. But now the Germans have attacked the homeland of workers and peasants. War's war! They deserve what they get.'

Krymov waited for a response from Batyuk, but it wasn't forthcoming – not because Batyuk was perplexed by what he had said, but because he had fallen asleep.

56

It was almost dark. Men in padded jackets were scurrying about between the furnaces of the 'Red October' steelworks. In the distance you could hear shooting and see brief flashes of light; the air was full of a kind of dusty mist.

Guryev, the divisional commander, had set up the regimental command-posts inside the furnaces. Krymov had the impression that the people inside these furnaces – furnaces that until recently had forged steel – must be very special, must themselves have hearts of steel.

You could hear the tramp of German boots; you could hear orders being shouted out; you could even hear quiet clicks as the Germans reloaded their tommy-guns.

As he climbed down, shoulders hunched, into the mouth of a furnace that was now the command-post of an infantry battalion, as his hands felt the warmth that still lingered in the fire-bricks, a sort of timidity suddenly came over Krymov; it was as though the secret of this extraordinary resistance was about to be revealed to him.

In the semi-darkness he made out a squatting figure with a broad face, and heard a welcoming voice.

'Here's a guest come to our palace! Welcome! Quick – some vodka and a hard-boiled egg for our visitor!'

A thought flashed through Krymov's brain: he would never be able to tell Yevgenia Nikolaevna how he had thought of her as he climbed into a dark, airless steel-furnace in Stalingrad. In the past he'd tried to forget her, to escape from her, but now he was reconciled to the way-she followed him wherever he went. The witch – she'd even followed him into this furnace!

It was all as clear as daylight. Who needed stepsons of the time? Better to hide them away with the cripples and pensioners! Better to make them into soap! Her leaving him was just one more sign that his life was hopeless. Even here in Stalingrad they didn't want him as a combatant.

That evening, after his lecture, Krymov talked to General Guryev. Guryev had taken off his jacket and kept wiping the sweat off his red face. In the same harsh voice he offered Krymov vodka, shouted orders down the telephone to his battalion commanders, abused the cook for failing to grill the shashlyks correctly, and rang his neighbour, Batyuk, to ask if they were playing dominoes on Mamayev Kurgan.

'We've got some good men here,' said Guryev. 'They're a fine lot. Batyuk's certainly got a head on his shoulders. And General Zholudyev at the tractor factory's an old friend of mine. And then there's Colonel Gurtyev at 'The Barricades' – only he's a monk, he never drinks vodka at all. That really is a mistake.'

Then he told Krymov about how no one else had so few men as he did – between six and eight in each company. And no one else was so cut off from the rear – when they sent him reinforcements, a third of them would arrive wounded. No one else, except perhaps Gorokhov, had to put up with that.

'Yesterday Chuykov summoned Shuba, my chief of staff. They had a disagreement over the exact position of the front line. Poor Colonel Shuba came back in a terrible state.'

He glanced at Krymov.

'Do you think Chuykov just swore at him?' He burst out laughing. 'No, he gets sworn at by me every day. He came back with his front teeth knocked out.'

'Yes,' said Krymov slowly. This 'yes' was an admission that the dignity of man didn't always hold sway on the slopes of Stalingrad.

Then Guryev held forth about how badly the war was reported in the newspapers.

'Those sons of bitches never see any action themselves. They just sit on the other side of the Volga and write their articles. If someone gives them a good dinner, then they write about him. They're certainly no Tolstoys. People have been reading War and Peace for a century and they'll go on reading it for another century. Why's that? Because Tolstoy's a soldier, because he took part in the war himself. That's how he knew who to write about.'

'Excuse me, comrade General,' said Krymov. 'Tolstoy didn't take part in the Patriotic War.'

'He didn't take part in it – what do you mean?'

'Just that,' said Krymov. 'He didn't take part in it. He hadn't even been born at the time of the war with Napoleon.'

'He hadn't been born?' said Guryev. 'What do you mean? How on earth?'

A furious argument then developed – the first to have followed any of Krymov's lectures. To his surprise, the general flatly refused to believe him.

57

The divisional commander asked Major Byerozkin about the position with regard to house 6/1. Should they withdraw?

Byerozkin advised against it-even though the building was indeed almost totally surrounded. It housed observation posts of great importance to the artillery on the left bank, and a sapper detachment able to prevent any further attacks by German tanks. The Germans were hardly likely to begin a major offensive without first liquidating this little pocket of resistance – their tactics were predictable enough. And with a minimum of support the building might be able to hold out for some time and disrupt the German strategy. Since the telephone cable had been cut repeatedly, and since signallers were only able to reach the building during a few hours in the middle of the night, it would be worth sending a radio-operator there.

The divisional commander agreed. During the night Political Instructor Soshkin managed to get through to house 61 ? with a group of soldiers. They brought with them several boxes of ammunition, hand-grenades, a radio set and a very young operator, a girl.

On his return the following morning, Soshkin said that the commander of the detachment holding the house had refused to write an official report. 'I haven't got time for any of that rubbish,' he had said. 'I give my reports to the Fritzes.'