Life And Fate

'You lie on the bed,' said Bova. 'I can go on the floor myself.'

'What do you mean? I'm fine as I am.'

'It's not right. In the Caucasus it's not done for a host to stay in his bed while a guest lies on the floor.'

'Never mind. We're hardly Caucasians.'

'We're not far off it. The foothills are very close. You say the Germans are responsible. But maybe we did our bit too.'

Bova must have sat up – his bed gave a loud squeak. 'Yes,' he said, drawing the word out thoughtfully.

'Yes,' said Darensky non-committally.

Bova had directed the conversation into an unusual channel. They were silent for a moment, each wondering whether he should continue such a conversation with someone he hardly knew. In the end it appeared that they had both decided against it.

Bova lit a cigarette. Darensky glimpsed his face in the light of the match. It looked somehow flabby, sullen, alien… He lit a cigarette himself. Bova glimpsed his face as he lay there, resting his head on one elbow. His face looked cold, unkind, alien… Then they went on with the conversation.

'Yes,' said Bova. This time he spoke the word sharply and decisively. 'Bureaucrats and bureaucracy – that's what's landed us in this wilderness.'

'Yes,' agreed Darensky. 'Bureaucracy's terrible. My chauffeur said that in his village before the war you couldn't even get a document out of someone without giving them half a litre of vodka.'

'It's no laughing matter,' Bova interrupted. 'In peacetime bureaucracy can be bad enough. But on the front line… I heard a story about a pilot whose plane caught fire after a scrap with a Messerschmidt. Well, he parachuted out and was quite unscathed. But his trousers were burnt. And do you know what? They wouldn't give him a new pair! The quartermaster just said: 'No, you're not yet due for a new issue.' And that was that. For three days he had to do without trousers. Finally the commanding officer found out.'

'Excuse me,' said Darensky, 'but you can hardly make out that we've retreated from Brest to the Caspian desert simply because of some idiot refusing to issue a new pair of trousers.'

'I never said it was because of the trousers,' said Bova sourly. 'Let me give you another example… There was an infantry detachment that had been surrounded. The men had nothing to eat. A squadron was ordered to drop them some food by parachute. And then the quartermaster refused to issue the food. He said he needed a signature on the delivery slip and how could the men down below sign for what had been dropped by parachute? And he wouldn't budge. Finally he received an order from above.'

Darensky smiled. 'All right, that's very comic but it's hardly of major importance. Just pedantry. Bureaucracy can be much more terrifying than that. Remember the order: 'Not one step back'? There was one place where the Germans were mowing our men down by the hundred. All we needed to do was withdraw over the brow of the hill. Strategically, it would have made no difference – and we'd have saved our men and equipment. But the orders were 'Not one step back'. And so the men perished and their equipment was destroyed.'

'Yes,' said Bova. 'You're right there. In 1941 we had two colonels sent out to us from Moscow to check on the execution of that very order. They didn't have any transport themselves and during three days we retreated two hundred kilometres from Gomel. If I hadn't taken them in my truck, they'd have been captured by the Germans in no time. And there they were – being shaken about in the back like a sack of potatoes and asking what measures we'd taken to implement the order 'Not one step back'! And what else could they do? They couldn't not write their report.'

Darensky took a deep breath, as though preparing to plunge still deeper. 'I'll tell you when bureaucracy really is terrible. It's when a lone machine-gunner has defended a height against seventy Germans. When he's held up the enemy's advance all on his own. When a whole army's bowed down before him after his death. And then his tubercular wife is abused by an official from the district soviet and thrown out of her flat…! It's when a man has to fill in twenty-four questionnaires and then ends up confessing at a meeting: 'Comrades, I'm not one of you. I'm an alien element…' It's when a man has to say: 'Yes, this is a workers' and peasants' State. My mother and father were aristocrats, parasites, degenerates. Go on, throw me out onto the street.''

'I don't see that as bureaucracy,' said Bova. 'The State does belong to the workers and peasants. They're in control. What's wrong with that? That's as it should be. You wouldn't expect a bourgeois State to trust down-and- outs.'

Darensky was taken aback. The man he was speaking to evidently thought very differently to himself.

Bova lit a match. Instead of lighting a cigarette, he just held it up towards Darensky. Darensky screwed up his eyes; he felt like a soldier caught in the beam of an enemy searchlight.

'I'm from the purest of working-class backgrounds myself,' Bova went on. 'My father was a worker, and so was my grandfather. My background's as pure as crystal. But I was no use to anyone before the war either.'

'Why not?'

'I don't look on it as bureaucracy if a workers' and peasants' State treats aristocrats with suspicion. But why did they go for my throat? I thought I was going to end up picking potatoes or sweeping the streets. And all I'd done was criticize the bosses – from a class viewpoint. I'd said they were living in the lap of luxury. Well, I really caught it then! That's what I see as the root of bureaucracy – a worker suffering in his own State.'

Darensky had the feeling that Bova had touched on something of great importance. He felt a sudden happiness: he was unaccustomed either to talking about his own deepest preoccupations or to hearing other people talk about theirs. To do this, to speak one's mind freely and without fear, to argue uninhibitedly and without fear, seemed a great joy.

Everything felt different here: as he lay on the floor of this shack, talking to a simple soldier who had only just sobered up, sensing the invisible presence of thousands of men who had retreated from the Western Ukraine to this wilderness, Darensky knew that something had changed. Something very simple and natural, something very necessary – and at the same time quite impossible, quite unthinkable – had come about: he and another man had talked freely and sincerely.

'Yes,' said Darensky. 'But you've got one thing wrong. The bourgeoisie don't allow down-and-outs into the Senate, that's for sure. But if a down-and-out becomes a millionaire, then it's another story. The Fords started out as ordinary workers. We don't trust members of the bourgeoisie and aristocracy with positions of responsibility – and that's fair enough. But it's another matter altogether to stamp the mark of Cain on the forehead of an honest worker simply because his mother and father were kulaks or priests. That's not what I call a class viewpoint. Anyway, do you think I didn't meet workers from the Putilov factory or miners from Donetsk during my time in camp? They were there in their thousands. What's really terrifying is when you realize that bureaucracy isn't simply a growth on the body of the State. If it were only that, it could be cut off. No, bureaucracy is the very essence of the State. And in wartime people don't want to die just for the sake of the head of some personnel department. Any flunkey can stamp 'Refused' on some petition. Any flunkey can kick some soldier's widow out of his office. But to kick out the Germans you have to be strong. You have to be a man.'

'That's for sure,' said Bova.

'But don't think I feel any resentment,' said Darensky. 'No, I bow down and take off my hat. I'm happy. A thousand thank-you's. What's wrong is that we had to undergo such terrible tragedies before I could be happy, before I was allowed to devote my energies to my country. If that's the price of my happiness, I'd rather be without it.'

Darensky felt that he still hadn't dug down to what really mattered, that he still hadn't been able to find the simple words that would cast a new, clear light on their lives. But he was happy to have thought and talked about what he had only very seldom thought or talked about.

'Let me say one thing. I can tell you that, whatever happens, I shall never ever regret this conversation of ours.'

14

Mikhail Mostovskoy was kept for over three weeks in the isolation ward. He was fed well, examined twice by an SS doctor, and prescribed injections of glucose.