November 1916 Read online

  “Reporting as ordered, sir.”

  He had five or ten paces to step from dugout to dugout, without his greatcoat, and there were spots of rain on his well-worn, yellow-rimmed bombardier’s shoulder boards. He might have been in bed already, but he had not arrived improperly dressed. His belt was neatly buckled, and he was wearing a gunner’s cap and a bombardier’s white leather sword knot. He was neither sulky nor jolly: he had been sent for, and there he was, awaiting orders. Late at night—but war was war.

  The second lieutenant was excruciatingly aware of what he had left unsaid to Chernega, and it blocked all other thoughts until it faded. Because of that, he spoke absently, his mind elsewhere.

  “Ah, Arseni … right.” Then, realizing that it looked bad, he corrected himself. “Take a seat! Sit down!” He pointed at a place near the table.

  Blagodarev realized that it wasn’t going to be fun. “Sit down” was as much as to say this won’t be quick, no glad tidings as you step through the door. He took off his cap. (He’d let his hair grow a bit, hoping to go home.)

  He hadn’t been banking on good news, but had come along hopefully. Could this be it? Though his whole army experience told him that once the brass turned the key they weren’t going to unlock the door. He had, just before reporting, been sitting by the kerosene stove in his dugout with a folded sheet of paper spread out on a plywood board, finishing a letter, and writing in what little space was left on one side that he evidently would not be coming as soon as they had promised. There was no room, though, to let yourself go on that scrap of paper. It was folded so you could gum it together, the front was a greenish brown, with fearsome horsemen galloping over it, sabers drawn, frighten you to death if you ran up against them, thank God they weren’t galloping around anymore, but it would give them the shakes when they saw it back home. The stamp wouldn’t stick—must have been around the batteries. On the back of the letter form, pigeons were flying with letters in their beaks. There was no room to write anything. If you had good eyes you could make out, in tiny print, the words “passed by the military censorship.” If you opened it out, there were two pages inside. But the left-hand side was taken up by a ready-made message in beautiful dark blue lettering, such as not even the cleverest clerk could write:

  Dearly beloved parents!

  I hasten to notify you in the first lines of my letter that I am by God’s mercy alive and well, and I wish you the same from the bottom of my heart. I further inform you that I am happy with my life in the army and that I have good officers. So do not grieve for me or worry.

  And that was all. Add any greetings you wanted to send, sign your name, and there was your letter. To be fair, there was a very little space for a very few words, and you could … Could what? You could say I order my dear wife Katerina to obey her father-in-law and mother-in-law, and to look after the little ones, and to await me hopefully. But although there was room enough the rules did not allow him to write directly to the most important person, Katya. Nobody wrote about the things closest to his heart—he’d be ashamed to. Silly, loving words weren’t allowed in letters, let alone the secret ones you whispered in somebody’s ear—the letter had to be read out loud for whatever relatives and neighbors came to hear it. It would be awkward complaining that you weren’t being allowed the leave you’d earned, that you were sick and fed up with it, and that if the war heated up again in the spring there’d be no chance of going at all. Tsyzh had darted in at that moment.

  “Senka! The second lieutenant wants you for something. In half an hour. I don’t think he’s going to chew you out.”

  Senka felt weak. Could this be it? Maybe things had changed? The second lieutenant wouldn’t be sending for him on such a dark night for some military reason, and wouldn’t have said “in half an hour” if that was it.

  The nights were cold now, and Katya would be sleeping in the big hut with the others, and getting up to see to the child. Suddenly he had a vision of her sleeping like a child herself in the cold hallway, in late autumn, with her half-sheepskin coat pulled up over her head—when she was hidden under it you wouldn’t find her. One step and you were with her.

  What if there was somebody else there? Wouldn’t he take that one step? What was to stop some wily womanizer from sitting around, lying around, biding his time?

  No. No. No.

  But he shouldn’t have allowed himself to hope. “Sit down,” the second lieutenant had said, “I want to talk to you.”

  The second lieutenant smiled nicely, and tried to soothe his ruffled feelings. “It’s like this, Arseni. Don’t give up hope. I spoke to the lieutenant colonel today. We may be able to do something for you.”

  Do something! Do something for you! Heavens above! I haven’t misheard, have I? Just let me go, kind sirs, and when I come back I’ll fight like two big guns!

  Arseni’s rubbery lips widened in a grin.

  The second lieutenant, glad to share his happiness but fearful of promising too much, explained.

  “It’s not for sure, you know. But I’m hopeful. I’m telling you this so you won’t be too downhearted. But don’t tell anyone for the time being, don’t get them excited. As a general rule, leave is still not allowed.”

  All those months, when his citation was missing, Arseni had never grumbled, never looked reproachful, never let his face cloud over for any length of time, and had tactfully tried to conceal his sense of grievance from the second lieutenant. So now he uttered no special words of thanks, but he could not bring his lips back to their proper place, and his hands, palm upward on his knees, were weak in every finger.

  He was not wearing his two George Crosses—they were on his greatcoat. But how proud he would be, going home to his village with two Georges! Home! Straight from the front!

  The holiday mood is infectious, and those granting leave can catch it. The second lieutenant, separated from village life by university and a broader understanding of so many things, felt like the boy he was, two years younger than Blagodarev.

  But he was “senior” even to Tsyzh. The second lieutenant had been credited with the wisdom to judge whether a soldier was good or bad, whether he should be promoted to a higher position on the gun crew, or to the rank of bombardier, or transferred to reconnaissance or map reading. But there was no question of taking Blagodarev off the gun. He could assemble and dismantle the lock, and set and read the sights, panoramic sights included, so quickly, he knew the structure of a shell, and the action of fuses—without such assistants in his platoon an officer’s life was not worth living. Now that the level of soldierly proficiency had fallen so low, where would you find such a grenadier?

  Chernega, dangling his bare feet, bawled down at them.

  “What’s he want leave for? Let him get a bit of service in! He’s been for one walk already.”

  Not his own platoon commander—but any one of them could spoil things. When nobody was getting leave. Arseni stared at Chernega and spoke softly—he was an officer, if a barefooted one.

  “That’s where I got my first one.”

  “And what was your first one for?” Chernega asked sternly. “Sitting around at HQ somewhere, I’ll bet.”

  “How would I get one there?” Blagodarev knew that Chernega was ribbing him, but didn’t dare adopt the same derisive tone. The other man couldn’t affect his leave—or could he? Could he find some way?

  “Those Georges of yours, they dish ‘em out right and left at HQs. In fact, it’s your George made me think you must have been at HQ. You say you were going around with some colonel all that time. Where was that, then?”

  “You know as well as I do,” Arseni said with a smile. It was the very devil having to say “you” instead of “thou” to an officer promoted from sergeant major. Why “you”? There was only one of him. People said “thou” to God himself.

  “I don’t know anything about it!” Chernega shouted.

  “In Prussia.”

  “You mean you were in the encirclement?”


  “Yes, we were surrounded.” Arseni showed him how with his arms.

  “Lies, all lies!” Chernega gabbled, swinging his legs and turning his cheese of a head to look approvingly at Blagodarev. “Listen, Sanya my boy, let me have him in my platoon. No need at all for him to go on leave. I’ll find him a woman right here, a Pole! A beauty! And I’ll let him leave the lines without asking any lieutenant colonel. But he keeps telling these lies. Why? I ask you. If you were there, encircled with Samsonov, how was it I didn’t see you? Where were you making for?”

  Blagodarev was getting bolder. “Well, I didn’t see you either,” he said with a grin. “We covered a lot of ground, but we didn’t see you. Were you really there, or weren’t you?”

  He screwed up his eyes.

  “Is that the way to talk to me!” Chernega shouted. “I’ll have you in the guardhouse in no time!”

  He jumped down onto the floor, landing as surefootedly as a cat. He thrust his bare feet into the pair of old galoshes that served them all in turn when they went out in the night, but fitted only Ustimovich.

  He laid a plump, heavy hand on Blagodarev’s shoulders.

  “Come on, then, do what I say. We’ll go and see the women together.”

  Blagodarev answered, still squinting, no longer feeling awkward, and without rising. “And when do I get to see my children?”

  “Pooh, what a question! We’ll make some new ones, and you can forget the old ones. How many have you got?”

  “Two.”

  “What are they?”

  “A son and a daughter.”

  “Why did you settle for a girl? And there I was thinking you were a hero. Some good you going on leave! How old is she?”

  “Nine months.”

  “What did you call her?”

  “Apraksiya.”

  “All right, you can go, only make a son this time. We’re going to need all the sons we can get, I can tell you!”

  He put his cape on over his shirt, put nothing on his head, and shuffled out in the sloppy galoshes to relieve himself.

  Chernega had found out with his pushy questions things what Blagodarev’s platoon commander did not know about him. Chernega was a rogue if ever there was one, but he always managed to notice everything there was to notice in a horse, and to learn all there was to learn about a man. Whereas Sanya spent much of his time thinking, and there were times when he needed to be alone to think. So he missed things. Like the most important part of Blagodarev’s life, which had been there to be seen all along, but which had nothing to do with his adroitness as a gunner and could not influence the course of world history.

  “And what’s your village called?”

  “Kamenka. The estate’s Khvoshchovo.”

  “Big village?”

  “About four hundred households. More than a thousand male souls.”

  “Who’s the squire?”

  “Davydov, Yuri Vasilich. But he’s in Tambov, in a top job.”

  “What top job?”

  The skin on Blagodarev’s forehead moved reflectively.

  “Zemstvo or something. Anyway, they’ve sold out to us … Or leased it … There are three brothers, they’ve gone their different ways.”

  “Where to?”

  Holding his cap upside down on his knee, and basking in all this goodwill, Arseni told his story with a slight smile.

  “Vasil Vasilich and the deacon’s son got the peasants together in the bushes and tried to turn them against the Tsar. Well, the peasants reported them to the police inspector. Vasil Vasilich and his wife caught on in time and took off for Rzhaksa. They waited for the third bell, then nipped onto the train. Then, in Tambov, the story goes, Yuri Vasilich came down to the station with passports all ready for them. So they got clean away. To France. So they say.”

  “When was this, then?”

  “When I was still little.” A twitch of the brow and the wrinkle disappeared. He looked more cheerful. It was beginning to look as if he would get his leave.

  “Before the riots.”

  Damp air swung in through the door with Chernega. He snorted, and shook his big wet head like a dog.

  “What’s that? Riots? Ignorant clods! When was this rioting?”

  “Ten years ago. There wasn’t really much rioting in our village, in Kamenka. But they started fires in Aleksandrovka and in Panovy Kusty. They plundered the house of Anokhin the merchant and the Solovovs’. Our Vasili Vasilich always used to say rob the rest of all they’ve got, I’ll hand mine over and welcome! But Mokhov, the headman, called a village meeting and said, ‘Men! Maybe we ought to hold off. You can choke yourself on other people’s property.’ So our people decided: yes, they’d hold back. It was the same in Volkhonshchina, the next village.”

  Chernega slipped off the galoshes and stood barefoot on the floor.

  “No, I’m not going sweethearting. If she gets more sleep she’ll be up to milk the cows earlier. Sanya, why don’t you give the stove more of a draft.”

  “It’s warm enough.”

  “You just pop outside and see. Still, I won’t freeze up top.”

  Fat-chested, fat around the middle, fat-legged, he did not so much climb—with one foot on an angular projection, he flung himself, almost sprang aloft, and flopped so heavily onto his bed that the rods gave, bent inward, then straightened themselves again. A solid piece of work, that bunk.

  “And how did it end?” he asked from above.

  “The Cossacks were there pretty quick, sorting it all out with their whips. They reported to the general that the Kamenka estate had not been touched. What? he says. You mean it? So give those smart fellows twenty-five rubles for vodka. They rolled out the barrel, and all the village helped drink it. While in Fyodorovo the peasants were flogged to a man. It was winter, and they were flogged out in the snow. Then the general took the Cossacks off to Tugolukovo. And gave the folks there a good hiding too.”

  “Tugolukovo? Riots there as well?” Chernega called out merrily, as though greeting his platoon.

  “Ah, there’s a place where the people really love freedom. They have fistfights every Sunday. Not a man leaves the field without a shiner.”

  “Right, then,” said Chernega appreciatively. “Go home to your woman.” He punched his pillow into shape.

  He turned on his side, with his back to the dugout, and pulled the blanket over himself.

  The second lieutenant was worrying. “That’s fine, but if you go, who can we put in your place?”

  They thought about it. Could so-and-so manage?

  “Get him ready to take over from you. And you be ready. As soon as we get permission you’re to be out of here in half an hour. So if they change their minds and cancel it you’ll be away.”

  “Sir! You can slip me that bit of paper when I’m fast asleep and I’ll have my puttees on and be away in five minutes! I’ll keep clear of all the command posts and go straight to the station.”

  He left, ducking through the door.

  Chernega was already breathing heavily.

  Sanya again felt a shiver of apprehension.

  It often happened to him. He could be talking, or in the middle of some business, and something would grate on his heart—he would hardly notice it at the time but everything would cloud over, fade from view, and things that had seemed worthwhile suddenly meant nothing. The only thing to do was to seek solitude and try to retrieve without interference what exactly it was that had grated. And how to put it right. There were times when by thought, patience, promise to amend, and hard work equilibrium was restored.

  Now, as he sat at the table with his head in his hands, one thought came into his mind: Cheverdin. Cheverdin, in No. 2 Battery, to whom Sanya had never done any harm.

  If it had been in his own battery, and in reply to his own fire, it would have been understandable. As it was, there was no rational connection.

  No, that wasn’t the way to look at it. The Landwehr officer who shouted his order into the telephone would never know ab
out someone named Cheverdin. Sanya himself must have buried a few on the other side that day. This, from the point of view of the Russian high command, was highly desirable; without it, all military activity would lose its sense, and instead of hypocritically wearing a soldier’s uniform a man should take it off and report to a punitive battalion. Still, Sanya would not have been so full of doubt but for Cheverdin. The thought wouldn’t go away: would the man die or wouldn’t he?

  The empty dugout was getting colder all the time, but Sanya sat, with his eyes buried in his hands, trying to pull together the tatters of his lacerated soul, trying to heal his wounds.

  It had been what was called a good day’s fighting. He had rarely fired so much or so accurately, and the lieutenant colonel had unambiguously praised him. Then he, an officer—the last thing he had ever thought he would be—from whom confident orders were expected, had suddenly felt lost, overwound once too often, oblivious of himself and what he should be doing. The splendid life he had planned for himself was out of gear, useless, worse than useless, harmful. To live to be fifty, turning like a blade in somebody’s mincer, would be a worse fate than being killed at twenty-five.

  Neither his fellow officers nor the battery commander, nor, if he had gone home, his father and brothers, could have made it any easier for him.

  Throwing his cape over his shoulders, and slipshod in the shared galoshes, Sanya went up and out.

  It was a moonless night, and rain was falling. The murk was impenetrable. If you took a step at all, it was by half remembering, half feeling your way. He could not make out the surroundings he had known so well for a year past, could not even see, against the sky, the tops of familiar trees, scorched or skewed or splintered.

  The front line wasn’t sending up flares.

  Nor firing. And there was no wind. Just a soothing, natural downpour lashing branches, leaves, and the ground. It made the silence still deeper.

  The whole world was completely invisible. No Stwolowicze, and no Yushkevichi, with its white churches. No Poland. No Russia. No Germany. Under the invisible cloud-wrapped, dark depths of the sky—nothing, just one man.