November 1916 Read online

  Good as far as it went, but he was a little uneasy. He had distinguished himself, but he was not altogether happy about it. Because he was quicker on the uptake than the others he would be singled out all the time. For this.

  Who would endure such a war, a war of millions against millions, if they had to be killed one at a time and face to face? Sanya himself had never fired a revolver at a fellow man, and never would. But the careful calculations of angles and distances, the protractors, made it all seem so remote. And innocent.

  Observation was becoming more and more difficult, visibility was decreasing rapidly. The poplars lining the road to Stwolowicze could no longer be seen. And even the graveyard nearby was wreathed in a damp mist.

  His good mood had evaporated. Why had he let himself be carried away? Why had he felt so excited? An autumn wind seemed to blow through him, leaving him cold and empty.

  In such gloomy weather the flash of cannon is easier to pinpoint, and it is more dangerous to fire yourself: the flicker of flame at the cannon’s mouth can be seen and gives away its position.

  Like old sodden leaves, his feelings were swept away, and he was left hollow. Standing by the slit, he was now observing himself, as he had been earlier that day. He did not recognize himself.

  Visibility became poorer and poorer. Firing and movement died down. The damp early evening mist subdued both sides.

  Sanya felt lonely, and guilty. Blameless, yet guilty. He couldn’t have explained it to anyone.

  Then it began spitting with rain. A light rain, but persistent. The dugout was damper and chillier than ever. One day very soon the third winter of the war would begin, and even an officer could hardly help feeling depressed.

  With his field glasses around his neck, tucked under his greatcoat, and the hood of his cape pulled down hard over his cap, the second lieutenant too made his way back to the battery. By now it was slippery in the clayey trench, and he could not help rubbing against its sweating walls with his gas-mask case on one side and the bulky holster of his unnecessary revolver on the other.

  He felt the measured tapping of raindrops on the canvas over his head.

  The light was fading fast and he could walk to Dryagovets out in the open. Sanya took a big jump and hung from the edge of the trench, dirtying himself against its clay walls, then hauled himself out onto the grass, and strode boldly off to get to his warm bunker, dry out, and eat something hot as soon as possible. It was a relief not to be humiliatingly churning up mud in a hole but walking as befits a human being.

  He had dreamt of devoting his life to literature or philosophy, but there was no knowing whether it would ever happen. He had plenty of free time for verse, but had given up writing, couldn’t do it. His contribution to the general course of events was days of gunnery such as this, smashing down barbed-wire entanglements, knocking out machine guns, cutting down distant figures as they scurried from place to place. And of course writing and drawing with his own hand any number of reports and diagrams.

  It was the same with his soldiers—Blagodarev, Zanigatdinov, Zhgar, Khomuyovnikov—whether they handled weapons, ammunition, and horses well, whether or not they observed regulations to the letter, each of them might have a long life ahead of him, each had a place that he loved, and a wife whom he loved or did not love, each had more than one child, each had land to till or a trade to follow, and calculations and plans that went with it, horses of their own, with no War Ministry tag on their tails, hunting, fishing, fruit growing, not the greatness of Russia, these were the things that mattered in their lives, not enmity toward Wilhelm, the things they told each other about, more or less articulately, in the bunkers at night, and told their officer too if he spoke to them kindly. In their native villages or provincial towns, there were people who knew them by their works, but this knowledge did not go beyond the immediate district. The real essence of their lives would never be communicated to anyone—how could it possibly affect the general movement of mankind? If Ulezko, Khomuyovnikov, or Pecherzewski could influence the fate of his country, or of Europe as a whole, it would be by cleaning gun barrels, by speed in loading and firing, by briskness with the shovel, by alacrity in splicing telephone cable.

  But if the movement of mankind is not made up of the real lives of ordinary people, where does this leave ordinary people? What becomes of mankind?

  * * *

  IT’S WITH WORRYING AND GRIEVING I KNOW I’M STILL LIVING.

  * * *

  [3]

  The three platoon commanders shared a bunker. Built in warm, dry weather, it never got damp. It was quite deep, so that once through the door there was no need to stoop. It was roofed with ten-inch pine beams laid crisscross. The walls were lined with lath and the floor was boarded. The battery tinsmith had knocked together a stove with a merrily roaring draft and a great appetite for wood. When the stove was lit the bunker was warmer and cozier than any living room. Shelves had been fitted between the props, and nails and tacks driven in for the hanging of trench coats, swords, revolvers, pouches, caps, and towels, not to mention the guitar on which Sanya and Chernega strummed, each in his own fashion. The little window looked out on the bottom of the trench, but light sometimes got through in the middle of the day. On the smooth-planed trestle table there was room for eating and for the officers’ paperwork, although they got in each other’s way. Not one of the three had an officer’s camp bed. When the bunker was dug, a long, high earth platform (“the merchant’s bed,” they called it) had been left for Ustimovich, and there were two lath bunks one above the other—not because there was no room for three beds at ground level, but because Chernega liked sitting and sleeping up aloft, over the stove or on a top bunk.

  Although he was six years older than Sanya, and far more heavily built, he swung himself up in two easy movements and jumped down with a thud. It was difficult now to imagine the bunker without Chernega grinning down from his perch. The light up there was too poor for reading, but Chernega had no appetite for that.

  Sanya, drenched to the skin, came into the bunker bending his head. Tsyzh, the orderly, had been looking out for his second lieutenant, and had dashed off to his own bunker to warm up some food.

  Terenti was lying up above as usual, counting the beams in the ceiling. He rolled over onto his side to watch the new arrival take off his heavy wet clothes and hang them up.

  “Whew—is it coming down that hard?”

  Sanya hadn’t noticed that the rain had been getting heavier all the time as he walked along. The stove was not lit, but it was warm in the bunker.

  It was impossible to look at Chernega’s spherical head, with its chubby cheeks and its tiny ears, without smiling.

  “Turned in already? A bit early, isn’t it?”

  “You know what they say: a dog with no tail sits wondering where to put it.”

  “Where are you taking yours?”

  “In this rain? And in the dark?”

  “You can still see a little way, but in half an hour you’d fall in a hole.”

  Lying on his side, neither dressed nor undressed, in his shirtsleeves and barefoot, but with his breeches on and suspenders over his shoulders, Chernega said, “I don’t know. Buzz off to Gusti’s, maybe. Or maybe not.”

  Chernega could just as easily dress again or finish undressing. Sanya would like it better if he stayed—Ustimovich was on duty, and he somehow didn’t want to be left alone. But his advice was what he thought would be best for his friend. “Take off while it’s still light.”

  “What about coming back?” Chernega rounded his lips like a bugler and blew like a bugler into his mouthpiece.

  Sanya, relieved of greatcoat and belt, with his tunic, wet about the shoulders, outside his trousers, St. George Cross showing, tugged off his wet boots, put on slippers made from cut-down felt boots—they took turns wearing them around the dugout, off duty, except that they didn’t fit Ustimovich—and started pacing the rough floor. At least with such weather, God willing, they should have a quie
t evening and a quiet night. It could be quieter and cozier in the bunker than it sometimes was at home.

  He suddenly remembered: “What were those bangs? A six-incher maybe? Was it close?”

  “Dead on No. 2 Battery!” Chernega made a disparaging noise.

  “I heard firing just as I was leaving Dubrowina—ten rounds right over Dryagovets. Sounded at first as if they were answering us, but then it didn’t seem like that somehow. But they were aiming at something close.”

  Chernega nodded. “Yes, No. 2 Battery. They buckled the shield of one gun and knocked a wheel off. Wounded three men. But the horses were some way off, they were all right.”

  “Who saw it?”

  “I went over myself.”

  “I thought you were here at home?”

  “Well, it was quite near, so I popped over.”

  Catch Chernega staying put when it was only half a verst away and he could pop over and take a look! His stoutness didn’t stop him from running and jumping. He was all muscle, not fat.

  “D’you know a man named Cheverdin over there, gunlayer? Lanky fellow with a straggly beard. From Tagil.”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “Got one in the belly. They’re afraid to move him. Never get him there alive.”

  Right. Here I am, getting dry, making myself comfortable, belt off, slippers on. And just up the road a soldier lies dying. Better get used to it. If he lands a six-incher on us in the night our roof beams won’t be of much use.

  Here’s Tsyzh, doesn’t waste much time, looks after me like an uncle, here he comes with some soup, smells good—so let’s have it!

  “Just smelling it is a feast! Good old Tsyzh!”

  And a soft crust of bread. And a raw onion on the side.

  “Good old Tsyzh!”

  Sanya sat at the table and was soon spooning his soup.

  Tsyzh was getting on in years and had five grandsons, but was always brisk and busy. He was mess orderly for all three platoon commanders. This had been Sanya’s idea. If they each had an orderly they’d be in the way. One man could wait on them all, and the other two could be up in the line.

  But the smell was stronger up above than down below, and Chernega, rolling over on his side, took a deep breath through his wide nostrils.

  “Tsyzh! Any soup left?”

  “Sorry, sir.” Tsyzh, unshaven, couldn’t have been sorrier if he himself had been left without. “I’ve drained the last drop.”

  Chernega flopped back on his pillow. Sanya had never seen anything more beautiful than that soup, but he called out to Chernega, “You can have some of mine. Come and get it.”

  “I couldn’t,” Chernega said to the ceiling. “You’ve been freezing all day.”

  “No, come on, it’s all right!”

  “There is some buckwheat left over, sir. I could bring you some of that, with some fat.”

  “So don’t tease—let’s have it!” Chernega ordered.

  Tsyzh lurched out of the bunker in a hurry.

  Chernega drummed on his belly. “I had dinner two hours ago, and now you’ve gone and … No doubt there’s a chicken waiting for me at Gusti’s. Should I go or not?”

  There were villages near the front which had not been evacuated. They were used to the war by now and went on living a normal life. Apart from their regular sources of income the peasants could fetch and carry for the army, the carpenters among them reinforced communication trenches, teenage boys and girls dug second-line trenches and they were all paid, and fed from army cookhouses. Peasants who got their call-up papers were sometimes put in nearby units—including Sanya’s battery. Many peasant huts had soldiers for lodgers, who sometimes worked in their landlords’ fields, and gave their landladies linen to wash, or else as a present: the army was rich, and would always issue a replacement. Some bold spirits, like Chernega, surreptitiously reinforced and further extended this extended family, by taking mistresses in the villages and visiting them regularly.

  Chernega swung his Turkish-trousered legs over the side of the bunk and wiggled his bare, knobbly toes interrogatively. “Shall I go, or shall I not? She stays cheerful for a couple of days. Any longer and she gets miserable.”

  “You don’t, though. You seem to manage.”

  When Chernega was sitting on his bunk, his head with its snug covering of silky hair touched the sloping ceiling. He couldn’t put his cap on, let alone throw up his arms. So he flung them out, as though drawing to its full extent a wide accordion, and his well-covered body quivered under his shirt.

  “There’s no comparison, Sanya, my boy. Steer clear of things you know nothing about. D’you really think it’s the same for women as it is for us? What makes them cheerful or glum, d’you think? It all depends on whether they’ve had it or not.”

  Chernega was hanging over him, Chernega was strong as an ox, Chernega’s laugh was so self-assured—it would have taken more than Sanya to argue with Chernega. He and his fellow students had thought of these things so much less crudely, but in the army, in their tight unrelievedly masculine milieu, they all, without exception, talked like that in their evening conversations. Or at any rate nobody said anything different out loud. Sanya was dismayed, he resented the insult to women, but he couldn’t argue, he was dumb. What experience did he have?

  He did make a feeble protest. “Come on, Terenti, there’s more to it than that.”

  “And I’m telling you that’s all there is to it,” Terenti said, loudly striking one palm against the other. “There’s never any other reason. She can look so worn out she can’t drag her feet along, you give her a bit of a tickle and there you are. Sometimes you think something’s eating her, you think maybe she’s grieving about something. But you throw her on the bed, she has a bit of rough-and-tumble, a bit of a rest, and all of a sudden she’s merry and bright and running to the stove to bake pies.”

  Chernega guffawed. “What a child you are, Sanya. But you’re still young. You’ll learn yet!”

  So many times he’d teased Sanya about it. But that crude way of looking at things clashed with Sanya’s whole attitude toward life and toward human beings. It couldn’t be like that! It couldn’t possibly be like that!

  Tsyzh arrived with the buckwheat: a bowl for the second lieutenant with a leftover piece of meat, and a bowl for the ensign with no meat, but so thick that the handle of a wooden spoon stood upright in it.

  “Give it to me!” Chernega seized the bowl from above. He rammed the wide wooden spoon repeatedly into his mouth.

  His forehead was almost touching the roof beams. “Not ba-ad, not bad at all,” he said. “At Gusti’s I’d have had milk in it, though.”

  He polished off the buckwheat with enjoyment, and looked hard at the wet footprints and smears of clay Tsyzh had left on the floor.

  “Is it that slushy outside? No, I won’t go. I’m not that stupid.”

  He tossed the bowl to Tsyzh and swung his legs back onto the bed.

  “What makes the soldier happy? Eating his fill and taking a nap.”

  He rolled over onto his back and stared at the beams, musing aloud. “How d’you think Rasputin got where he is? What else could have made her listen to him? She would have shipped him off to Siberia long ago. No—he’s all a man should be. Slacken the rein on a woman she’ll kick up her heels.”

  It all seemed so simple to Chernega. No good contradicting him. Most of their conversations were like that. Sanya wouldn’t even begin to argue.

  But they were good friends.

  Sanya had finished his buckwheat and was sitting at the empty table absentmindedly popping the last few bread crumbs into his mouth.

  “Mm, yes,” he said. “These Grishkas are unlucky for Russia. A Grishka is sure to turn up when things are going badly. First it was Grishka Otrepev, now it’s …”

  Chernega flared up.

  “What’s Grishka got to do with it? D’you think Grishka started this war of theirs? They were in a hurry to get to the bog—and they ended up shitting the
mselves.”

  All very well, but what about Serbia? What about Belgium? And how do you account for those stories and photographs of German atrocities, of Germans cutting off the ears and noses of Russian prisoners? (Though nothing of the sort had ever happened in their sector.) Although Chernega’s strength, his quickness and his jollity made army life easier for him than for others, he took a much gloomier view of the war than Sanya: he saw it as a universal, lingering plague, with no possible sense or purpose.

  Sanya rose from the table.

  “Not going to bed, are you?” Terenti asked, suddenly remembering. “Wait a minute, dear fellow, there’s still work to be done!”

  “What work?”

  “The orders are over there.” He nodded at Ustimovich’s bed. Sanya had in fact seen the pile of papers, and ignored it.

  “Everybody else has read them, you’re the last. Get going and sign your name. The baron looked in and was going to take them, but I kept them till morning, for you.”

  “The baron” was Baron Rokossovsky, the senior officer in No. 2 Battery. Chernega was particularly fond of the word “baron” for some reason. He had always disliked barons, counts, and princes, and used foul language about them, but he had a strange, proud feeling, now that he was an officer, that he had become almost the baron’s equal, almost a member of the same club. He never called him by his name, or “captain,” but always “baron.” The regular officers pulled rank, put on airs, made invidious comparisons—the Mikhailovsky officers’ school is older than the Konstantinovsky—but look at me, from a training depot in the sticks, cheek by jowl with a baron and eat your hearts out!

  Sanya went over to Ustimovich’s roomy bed and grabbed with both hands the untidy heap of white, buff, and pink files, folders, and documents loosely clipped or pinned together, all covered with contributions from a multitude of clerks, handwritten, or typed with black or violet ribbons. It was incredible how much conscientious effort had gone into compiling all this! And how much of it there was to read! To go through it all systematically and in detail would take half the night for sure. This was what made trench warfare much the same as life behind the lines. For some reason, when the front was dangerously shifting, when columns of flame rose to the sky, nobody bothered to write and issue these endless orders and directives: battles could rage and roll without them. But as soon as the fighting slowed down, as soon as it got easier and there was some hope of a breather, a rest, the flood of orders was in full spate again, and growing steadily with every month of immobility. Officers in the line were expected to do a great deal of writing—but those higher up were no slouches! For fear that they might not have documentary justification for their actions, should it be needed, the armies at the front were slow to destroy or hand in old files, and lugged around great heaps of papers wherever they went.