quarters in these sandy wastes. The sand cut their skin, got into their ears, found its way into their bread and gruel, grated in the mechanisms of their watches and the bolts of their rifles, penetrated their dreams… These were harsh conditions for a human body, for human throats and nostrils, for human calves and thighs. It was as though the human body were a cart that had left the road and was now creaking its way across rough ground.
All day long Darensky visited artillery positions, had discussions, jotted down notes, made sketches, inspected equipment and ammunition dumps. By evening he was exhausted; his ears buzzed and his legs, unaccustomed to these shifting sands, were aching and throbbing.
Darensky had long ago noticed that, during a retreat, generals become particularly sensitive to the needs of their subordinates; commanding officers and Members of the Military Soviet suddenly reveal themselves to be modest, self-critical and full of scepticism. Never does an army prove to be so full of intelligent, all-understanding men as during a forced retreat, when the General Staff are searching for culprits.
But here in the desert people were simply apathetic and lethargic. It was as though the officers were convinced there was nothing for them to do, nothing for them to be concerned about – after all, these sands would be exactly the same tomorrow, the following day, in a year's time…
The chief of staff of an artillery regiment, Lieutenant-Colonel Bova, invited Darensky to stay the night with him. Bova was stoop-shouldered, bald and hard of hearing in one ear. His quarters were in a shack made from boards smeared with clay and manure; the floor was covered with ragged sheets of tarred roofing paper. The shack was identical in every detail to those where the other officers were quartered.
'Greetings!' said Bova, shaking Darensky energetically by the hand. 'How's this then?' he asked, gesturing at the walls. 'It looks like I'll be spending the winter in a dog-kennel smeared with shit.'
'I've seen worse lodgings,' said Darensky, surprised at the transformation of the usually quiet Bova.
Bova sat Darensky down on a crate that had once contained cans of food from America, poured out some vodka into a large dirty glass whose rim was smeared with dried toothpaste, and handed him a green pickled tomato on a piece of damp newspaper.
'Make yourself at home, comrade Lieutenant-Colonel!' he insisted. 'We've got vodka and we've got fruit.'
Darensky, who seldom drank, took a small, cautious sip and pushed his glass away. He asked Bova about the state of his troops. Bova, however, didn't want to talk shop.
'Yes, comrade Lieutenant-Colonel,' he said. 'I've had enough of work. In the old days I never took a moment off – not even when there were all those splendid women around in Kuban and the Ukraine. Heavens! And they weren't shy either – believe me! You only had to wink at them. But I just sat on my arse in the Operations Section. I didn't know what I'd missed till I was out here in the desert.'
At first Darensky was annoyed by Bova's reluctance to discuss the average density of troops per square kilometre of front, or to give his opinion on the possible advantages of mortars over artillery in desert conditions. Nevertheless, he was not uninterested by the new turn the conversation had taken.
'You can say that again!' he exclaimed. 'There are some magnificent women in the Ukraine! There's one I used to visit in 1941, when we had our HQ in Kiev… She was a real beauty – the wife of someone in the public prosecutor's office… And I'm not going to argue about Kuban either. Yes, I rate Kuban very highly indeed – the number of beautiful women there is quite remarkable.'
Darensky's words had an extraordinary effect on Bova; he started to curse and then gave a cry of despair: 'And now we have to make do with Kalmyks!'
'Wrong!' said Darensky emphatically. He then became surprisingly eloquent about the charm of these swarthy and high-cheekboned women who smelt of wormwood and the smoke of the steppes. Remembering Alla Sergeyevna, he concluded: 'You're wrong. There are women everywhere. There may be no water in the desert, but there are always women.'
Bova didn't respond – he was asleep. Only then did Darensky realize that his host was drunk.
Bova's head was hanging off the edge of the camp-bed and his snores were like the groans of a dying man. Darensky, with the special tenderness and patience that a Russian feels towards a drunkard, placed a pillow under his head and some sheets of newspaper under his legs. He then wiped the saliva off Bova's lip and began looking round for somewhere to lie down himself.
He laid his host's greatcoat on the floor, threw his own on top and put his knapsack down to serve as a pillow. When he was out on a mission, this knapsack served as his office, his food store and as a container for his washing kit.
He went outside, drank in the cold night air, and gasped as he gazed at the unearthly flames in the black Asiatic sky. He urinated, still looking at the stars, thought, 'Yes, yes, the cosmos!' and went back in.
He lay down on his host's greatcoat and covered himself with his own. Then, instead of closing his eyes, he gazed pensively and gloomily into the darkness.
What poverty he was surrounded by! Here he was, lying on the floor looking at some left-over marinated tomatoes and a cardboard suitcase that no doubt contained only a skimpy towel with a black stamp on it, some crumpled collars for a soldier's tunic, an empty holster for a revolver and a squashed soap-box.
The hut in Verkhniy-Pogromniy where he had spent the night last autumn now seemed luxurious. And in a year's time, perhaps, this present hut would seem equally luxurious; he would look back on it longingly as he went to sleep at the bottom of some empty pit.
Darensky had changed during his months on the artillery staff. His need for work – something that had once seemed as powerful as his need for food – was now satisfied. His work no longer gave him any particular satisfaction – any more than eating affords any particular satisfaction to someone well-fed.
Darensky was highly regarded by his superior officers. At first this had been a great joy to him – over the years he had become all too used to the opposite. He was probably valued even more highly on the staff of the Stalingrad Front than Novikov had been during his time on the staff of the South-Eastern Front. He had heard that whole pages of his reports were transcribed verbatim in reports addressed by important people in Moscow to still more important people. At a critical period his intelligence and his work had been discovered to be of real use and importance. Five years before the war, however, his wife had left him, considering him to be an enemy of the people who had succeeded in hiding from her the flabbiness and hypocrisy that was his true nature. He had often been turned down for jobs because of his background – he came from an aristocratic family, both on his mother's side and on his father's side. To begin with, he had been upset to learn that someone particularly stupid or ignorant had been appointed instead of him. Then he had begun to feel he really couldn't be trusted with a position of executive responsibility. His spell in camp had made him certain of his inadequacy. And now this terrible war had proved how far this was from the truth.
Darensky pulled his coat up over his shoulders, exposing his feet to the cold draught from the door. He wondered why it was that, at a time when his knowledge and abilities had finally been recognized, he should be lying on the floor in a hen-coop, listening to the piercing screams of camels, dreaming not of dachas and rest-homes but of a clean pair of pants and a decent piece of soap.
He felt proud – and at the same time annoyed – that his promotion hadn't brought him any material advantage. His high opinion of himself went hand in hand with a persistent feeling of timidity. Deep down, he felt he wasn't entitled to the good things of life. This constant lack of both self-assurance and money, this constant sense of being badly dressed, was something he had been used to since childhood, something that still hadn't left him. He was terrified at the thought of going into the Military Soviet canteen and being told by the girl behind the counter: 'Comrade Lieutenant-Colonel, I'm afraid you're only entitled to eat in the general canteen.' Then some witty general would say at a meeting: 'Well, Lieutenant-Colonel, did you enjoy the borshch in the Military Soviet canteen?' He had always been amazed at the brazenness with which not only generals but even mere photographers would eat and drink, or demand petrol, clothes and cigarettes, in places they had no right even to visit.
His father had been unable to find work for years on end; his mother, a stenographer, had been the breadwinner.
Around midnight Bova stopped snoring. Darensky felt worried by the sudden silence. Suddenly Bova asked: 'Are you still awake, comrade Lieutenant-Colonel?'
'Yes, I can't get to sleep.'
'Forgive me for not making you more comfortable,' said Bova. 'I'd had a little too much to drink. But now I feel as clear-headed as ever. And what I keep asking myself is this. What on earth did we do to end up in this godforsaken hole? Whose fault is it?'
'The Germans', of course,' said Darensky.
