Life And Fate (Orange Inheritance)

Byerozkin advised against it – even though the building was indeed almost totally surrounded. It housed observation posts of great importance to the artillery on the left bank, and a sapper detachment able to prevent any further attacks by German tanks. The Germans were hardly likely to begin a major offensive without first liquidating this little pocket of resistance – their tactics were predictable enough. And with a minimum of support the building might be able to hold out for some time and disrupt the German strategy. Since the telephone cable had been cut repeatedly, and since signallers were only able to reach the building during a few hours in the middle of the night, it would be worth sending a radio-operator there.

The divisional commander agreed. During the night Political Instructor Soshkin managed to get through to house 6/1 with a group of soldiers. They brought with them several boxes of ammunition, hand-grenades, a radio set and a very young operator, a girl.

On his return the following morning, Soshkin said that the commander of the detachment holding the house had refused to write an official report. ‘I haven’t got time for any of that rubbish,’ he had said. ‘I give my reports to the Fritzes.’

‘I can’t make head or tail of what’s going on there,’ said Soshkin. ‘They all seem terrified of this Grekov, but he just pretends to be one of the lads. They all go to sleep in a heap on the floor, Grekov included, and they call him Vanya. Forgive me for saying so, but it’s more like some kind of Paris Commune than a military unit.’

Byerozkin shook his head. ‘So he refused to write a report. Well, he is a one!’

Pivovarov, the battalion commissar, then came out with a speech about people behaving like partisans.

‘What do you mean – “like partisans”?’ said Byerozkin in a conciliatory tone. ‘It’s just independence, a show of initiative. I often dream of being surrounded myself – so I could forget all this paperwork.’

‘That reminds me,’ said Pivovarov. ‘You’d better write a detailed report for the divisional commissar.’

The divisional commissar took a serious view of all this. He ordered Pivovarov to obtain detailed information about the situation in house 6/1 and to give Grekov a good talking-to then and there. At the same time he wrote reports to the Member of the Military Soviet and to the head of the Army Political Section, informing them of the alarming state of affairs, both morally and politically, in house 6/1.

At Army level, Soshkin’s report was taken still more seriously. The divisional commissar received instructions to sort the matter out with the utmost urgency. The head of the Army Political Section also sent an urgent report to the head of the Political Section for the Front.

Katya Vengrova, the radio-operator, had arrived in house 6/1 during the night. In the morning she reported to Grekov, the ‘house-manager’. As he listened, Grekov gazed into her eyes; they seemed confused, frightened, and at the same time mocking.

She was round-shouldered and she had a large mouth with pale, bloodless lips. Grekov paused for a moment when Katya asked if she could go. A number of different thoughts, all quite unrelated to the war, flashed through his head: ‘By God, she’s pretty . . . nice legs . . . she looks frightened . . . I guess she’s mother’s little girl . . . How old is she . . . ? Eighteen at the most . . . I just hope the lads don’t all pounce on her . . .’ His final thought was quite unrelated to those that had gone before: ‘Can’t you see who’s boss here? Haven’t I driven those Fritzes up the wall?’

‘There isn’t anywhere for you to go,’ Grekov said at last. ‘Just stay by your transmitter. We’ll find you something to send soon enough.’

He tapped the transmitter and glanced up at the sky where German dive-bombers were whining and humming.

‘Are you from Moscow?’ he asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Sit down. We’re quite without ceremony here. It’s like being in the country.’

Katya stepped to one side; crumbled brick squeaked beneath her heels. She could see the sunlight glinting on the machine-gun barrels and on the dark metal of Grekov’s German pistol. She sat down, looking at a pile of greatcoats beneath a ruined wall. For a moment she felt surprised that all this no longer surprised her. She knew that the machine-guns in the breach in the wall were Degterevs; that the captured Walther took eight bullets, that it was powerful but difficult to aim; that the greatcoats in the corner belonged to soldiers who had been killed and that the corpses hadn’t been buried very deep – the general smell of burning blended with another smell that had already become all too familiar. And her wireless-set was just like the one she had worked with in Kotluban – the same dial on the receiver, the same switch. She remembered the times in the steppes when she had looked into the dusty glass of the ammeter and tidied her hair, smoothing it back under her cap.

No one spoke to her; it was as though she had nothing to do with the wild and terrible goings-on around her.

But when one grey-haired man started swearing – he seemed from the conversation to be a mortar man – Grekov chided: ‘Softly now! That’s no way to speak in front of our girl.’

Katya winced – not because of the old man’s foul language, but because of the way Grekov had looked at her. Even though no one said anything to her, she knew that the atmosphere had changed since her arrival. She could feel the tension with her skin – a tension that didn’t evaporate even when they heard the whine of dive-bombers, followed by explosions and a hail of broken brick.

By now Katya had grown used to falling bombs and the whistle of shrapnel, but she felt as confused as ever by the heavy male looks that bore down on her here.

The night before, the other girls had commiserated with her. ‘It sounds quite terrifying there,’ they had said.

A soldier had taken her to Regimental Headquarters. She had sensed at once how close she was to the enemy, how fragile life had become. People themselves seemed suddenly fragile – here one minute, gone the next.

The officer in command had shaken his head sadly and said: ‘How can they send children like you to the front?’ And then: ‘Don’t be frightened, my dear. If anything’s not as it should be, just inform me over the radio.’

He had said this in such a kind, fatherly voice that it was all she could do not to burst into tears.

She had then been taken to Battalion Headquarters. They had a gramophone there; the commander, a redhead, offered Katya a drink and invited her to dance to a record of ‘The Chinese Serenade’.

The atmosphere there had been terrifying. Katya had felt that the commander was drinking not to enjoy himself, but simply to stifle some unbearable fear, to forget that his own life was now as fragile as glass.

And now here she was – sitting on a heap of bricks in house 6/1. For some reason she didn’t feel any fear at all; instead, she thought of the wonderful, fairy-tale life she had enjoyed before the war.

The men in the surrounded building seemed extraordinarily strong and sure of themselves. This self-confidence was very reassuring – like that possessed by firemen, by tailors cutting some priceless cloth, by skilled workers in a metal-rolling mill, by old teachers expounding beside their blackboards, by eminent doctors.

Before the war Katya had always believed that her life was doomed to be unhappy. When she had seen friends of hers going anywhere by bus, she had thought them spendthrifts. As for people coming out of restaurants – however bad – they seemed like fabulous beings; sometimes she had followed a little group on their way home from some ‘Daryal’ or ‘Terek’ and tried to listen to their conversation. Returning home from school, she would announce solemnly: ‘Guess what happened today! A girl gave me some fizzy water with syrup – real syrup that tasted of blackcurrants!’

To live on what remained – after the deduction of income tax, cultural tax and the State loan – of her mother’s salary of 400 roubles had been far from easy. Instead of buying new clothes, they had always refashioned their old ones. The other tenants had paid Marusya, the caretaker’s wife, to clean the communal areas, but they had done their share themselves; Katya herself had cleaned the floors and carried out the rubbish. They had bought milk at the State shop – the queues were enormous but it saved them six roubles a month; if there wasn’t any milk in the State shop, then Katya’s mother had gone to market late in the afternoon – the peasant women would be in a hurry to catch the evening train and would sell off their milk at almost the same price as in the State shop. They had never travelled by bus, and they only went by tram if they had to go a very long distance. Instead of going to the hairdresser’s, Katya had always had her hair cut by her mother. They had done their own laundry and the light-bulb in their room was almost as dim as those in the communal areas. They had cooked for three days at a time. They had soup, and sometimes kasha with a little oil; once Katya had had three plates of soup one after the other and said: ‘Well, today we’ve had a three-course meal.’

Her mother had never talked about how things had been while her father still lived with them; she herself couldn’t remember. Once, Vera Dmitrievna, a friend of her mother’s, had watched the two of them preparing a meal and said: ‘Yes, we too had our hour of glory.’ This had made her mother angry; she hadn’t allowed Vera Dmitrievna to enlarge on how things had been during their hour of glory.

One day Katya had found a photograph of her father in a cupboard. It was the first time she had seen a photograph of him, but she knew immediately who it was. On the back was written: ‘To Lida – I am from the tribe of Asra: when we love, we die in silence.’fn1 She said nothing to her mother, but from then on, when she returned from school, she would often take the photograph out and gaze for a long time into her father’s dark, melancholy eyes.

Once she had asked: ‘Where’s Papa now?’

Her mother had just said: ‘I don’t know.’

It was only when Katya left for the army that her mother at last told her about him; she learned that he had married again and that he had been arrested in 1937.

They had talked right through the night. Everything had been reversed: her mother, usually so reserved, had told her how she had been abandoned by her husband; she had talked about her feelings of jealousy, of humiliation and hurt, of love and pity. Katya had been quite astonished: the world of the human soul suddenly seemed so vast as to make even the raging war seen insignificant. In the morning they had said goodbye. Her mother had drawn her head towards her, but the pack on her shoulders had pulled her away. Katya had said: ‘Mama, I’m from the tribe of Asra: when we love, we die in silence.’

Then her mother had gently pushed her away.

‘Go on, Katya. It’s time you left.’

And Katya had left – like millions of others, both young and old. She had left her mother’s house, perhaps never to return, perhaps to return only as a different person, cut off for ever from her harsh and beloved childhood.