Life And Fate

'We should have thought of that in 1937,' said Novikov. 'One man I knew, Mitka Yevseyev, was always strutting about and repeating: 'I'm a Russian, that's all that matters!' A fat lot of good it did him – he was sent to a camp.'

'There's a time for everything,' said Nyeudobnov. 'And if this man was arrested, then he must have been an enemy of the people. People don't get arrested for nothing. Twenty-five years ago we concluded the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with the Germans – and that was Bolshevism. Today comrade Stalin has ordered us to annihilate the German aggressors who have invaded our Soviet homeland – and that's Bolshevism too.

'Today a Bolshevik is first and foremost a Russian patriot,' he added sententiously.

All this irritated Novikov. His own sense of Russian patriotism had been forged during the most difficult days of the war; Nyeudobnov's appeared simply to have been borrowed from some office – an office to which he himself was denied admittance.

He went on talking to Nyeudobnov, felt irritated, thought about hundreds of different things… And all the time his heart was thumping, his cheeks burning as though he had been in the wind.

It was as if a whole battalion was marching over his heart, as if thousands of boots were beating out the words: 'Zhenya, Zhenya, Zhenya.'

Vershkov looked into the compartment. By now he had forgiven Novikov and his tone of voice was conciliatory.

'Beg leave to report, comrade Colonel. The cook's giving me a hard time. He's been keeping your dinner hot for over two hours.'

'Very well then, but make it quick!'

The cook rushed in, covered in sweat. With a look of mingled suffering, resentment and happiness on his face he laid out various dishes of pickles that had been brought from the Urals.

'And I'd like a bottle of beer,' said Nyeudobnov languidly.

'Certainly, comrade Major-General,' said the cook.

Novikov suddenly felt so hungry, after his long fast, that tears came to his eyes. 'Yes, the commander has forgotten what it's like to go without meals,' he thought to himself, remembering the cold lilac.

Novikov and Nyeudobnov both looked out of the window. A policeman, a rifle hanging from his shoulder strap, was marching a drunken soldier across the tracks; the soldier was stumbling, lurching about and letting out piercing screams. He tried to hit out and break free, but the policeman just grabbed him firmly by the shoulders. Then – God knows what thoughts were passing through his befuddled mind! – he began kissing the policeman's cheek with sudden tenderness.

'Find out what the hell all that's about,' Novikov ordered Vershkov, 'and report back immediately!'

'He's a saboteur. He deserves to be shot,' said Nyeudobnov as he drew the curtain.

You could see a number of different feelings on Vershkov's usually simple face. In the first place, he was sorry that his commanding officer had had his appetite spoiled. At the same time he felt sympathy for the soldier, a sympathy that included nuances of amusement, approval, comradely admiration, fatherly tenderness, sorrow and genuine anxiety. After saluting and saying that of course he'd report back immediately, Vershkov began embroidering:

'His old mother lives here and… Well, you know what we Russians are like. He was upset, he wanted to mark his departure and he misjudged the dose.'

Novikov scratched the back of his head and pulled his plate towards him. 'Damn it, that'll be my last chance to get away on my own,' he said to himself, thinking of Zhenya.

Getmanov came back shortly before their departure, red-faced and merry. He said he didn't want supper and just asked for a bottle of fizzy orange, his favourite soft drink. He pulled off his boots with a grunt, lay down and pushed the door shut with his foot.

Then he told Novikov the news he had received from an old comrade, the secretary of an obkom, who had recently returned from Moscow; he had been received by someone who had a place on the mausoleum on public occasions in Red Square, though not, of course, at Stalin's side by the microphone. This man didn't know everything and, needless to say, hadn't told all of what he did know to the secretary of the obkom, someone he had previously known only as a raykom instructor in a small town on the Volga. The secretary of the obkom, weighing Getmanov up on some invisible chemical balance, had told him only a small part of what he had heard. And then Getmanov had passed on to Novikov only a small part of what he himself had been told.

Nevertheless, he was speaking in a particularly confidential tone he had never used before with Novikov. He seemed to take it for granted that Novikov was au fait with the secrets of the great; he talked as though Novikov must be aware that Malenkov possessed enormous executive power, that Beria and Molotov were the only people who addressed comrade Stalin as 'ty', that comrade Stalin strongly disliked unauthorized personal initiatives, that comrade Stalin liked sulguni cheese, that on account of the poor state of his teeth comrade Stalin always clipped his bread in wine, that his face, incidentally, was very pock-marked from the smallpox he had had as a child, that comrade Molotov had long ago fallen from his position as number two in the Party, that Iosif Vissarionovich had been far from well- disposed towards Nikita Sergeyevich [39] recently and had even given him a good dressing-down over the telephone…

The confidential tone of these remarks about people in positions of supreme power, about the way Stalin had joked and crossed himself during a conversation with Churchill, about Stalin's displeasure at the high-handedness of one of his Marshals – all this somehow seemed more important than Getmanov's veiled hint as to what the man with the place on the mausoleum had said. This news was something Novikov had long and eagerly expected: soon they were to launch a counter-offensive. With a stupid, self-satisfied smile he felt quite ashamed of, he thought to himself: 'Well, I seem to have become part of the nomenklatura myself!'

With no warning of any kind, the train moved off.

Novikov walked to the end of the corridor, opened the door and stared out into the darkness that now covered the city. Again he could hear marching boots beating out the words 'Zhenya, Zhenya, Zhenya.' From the front of the train, he could hear snatches of song.

The thunder of steel wheels on steel rails, the clatter of wagons carrying steel tanks to the Front, the young voices, the cold wind from the Volga, the starry sky – suddenly they all took on a different tone, different from that of a moment before, different from that of the whole of the past year. He felt an arrogant happiness, a joyful sense of his own harsh strength. It was as though the face of the war had changed, as though it no longer expressed only hatred and agony. The mournful snatches of song that were wafted out of the darkness suddenly sounded proud and threatening.

This happiness, however, did not make him feel in any way kind or forgiving. On the contrary, it aroused anger, hatred and a desire to show his own strength, to annihilate whatever stood in his way.

He went back to the compartment. Just as he had been surprised earlier by the charm of the autumn night, so he was now by the stifling closeness, the tobacco smoke, the smell of rancid butter, shoe polish and the sweat of well-fleshed staff officers. Getmanov was still stretched out across the seats; his pyjama top was open and you could see the white skin on his chest.

'Well, how about a game of dominoes? The general's willing.'

'Certainly,' said Novikov. 'Why not?'

Getmanov gave a discreet burp and said anxiously: 'I'm afraid I must have an ulcer somewhere. As soon as I have a bite to eat, I get the most terrible heartburn.'

'We shouldn't have left the medical officer behind to come on the other train,' said Novikov.

Working himself up into a rage, he said to himself: 'I decided to promote Darensky; Fyodorenko frowned and I began to lose confidence. I told Getmanov and Nyeudobnov; they said we could do without former zeks and I quite lost my nerve. I proposed Basangov; they wanted a Russian and I gave way again. Do I have a mind of my own or not?' He looked at Getmanov and thought, with deliberate absurdity: 'Today he offers me my own cognac; tomorrow, if she comes on a visit, he'll be wanting to sleep with my woman.'

Why, if he was so sure that he, and no one else, was destined to break the back of the German war machine, did he always feel so timid and weak when he talked to Getmanov and Nyeudobnov?

He could sense the anger and hatred that had been welling up for years, his resentment at the way people who were militarily illiterate -but accustomed to power, good living and the tinkle of medals – had graciously intervened