Life And Fate (Orange Inheritance)

She learned that the observation-post for the artillery on the left bank was situated in the ruins of the first floor. It was commanded by a lieutenant in a dirty tunic whose spectacles kept slipping down his snub nose.

The angry old man who swore a lot had been transferred from the militia; he was very proud indeed to be in command of a mortar team. The sappers were installed between a high wall and a heap of rubble; they were commanded by a stout man who groaned and grimaced when he walked, as though he was suffering from corns.

The single piece of artillery was in the charge of Kolomeitsev, a bald man in a sailor’s tunic. Katya had heard Grekov shout: ‘Kolomeitsev! Wake up! You’ve just slept through yet another golden opportunity!’

The infantry and the machine-guns were commanded by a second lieutenant with a blond beard. The beard made his face seem very young – though he no doubt imagined it made him look mature, perhaps in his thirties.

An explosion close by raised a cloud of dust. It was like something from a fairy-tale; the armed men, sitting on blood-coloured bricks and surrounded by this red mist, seemed to have sprung from the day of judgment recorded in the Lay of Igor’s Campaign.fn2 Suddenly Katya’s heart stirred in an absurd expectation of some future happiness.

The following day, an event took place which appalled even these hardened soldiers.

The ‘senior tenant’ on the first floor, Lieutenant Batrakov, had under his command an observer, Bunchuk, and a plotter, Lampasov. Katya saw them all several times a day: sullen Lampasov, cunning yet simple-hearted Bunchuk and the strange lieutenant with glasses who was always smiling at his own thoughts. When it was quiet, she could even hear their voices through the hole in the ceiling.

Lampasov had reared chickens before the war; he loved telling Bunchuk about the intelligence and treacherous ways of his hens. Peering through his telescope, Bunchuk would report in a sing-song voice: ‘Yes, there’s a column of vehicles coming from Kalach . . . a tank in the middle . . . Some more Fritzes on foot, a whole battalion . . . and then three field-kitchens just like yesterday . . . I can see smoke and some Fritzes with pans . . .’ Some of his observations were of greater human than military interest: ‘Now there’s a German officer going for a walk with his dog . . . the dog’s sniffing a post, it probably wants to pee . . . Yes, it must be a bitch . . . The officer’s just standing there, he’s having a scratch . . . Now I can see two girls chatting to some Fritzes . . . they’re offering the girls cigarettes . . . One of them’s lit up, the other’s shaking her head . . . She must be saying: “I don’t smoke”.’

Suddenly, in the same sing-song voice, Bunchuk announced: ‘The square’s full of soldiers . . . and a band . . . there’s a stage in the middle . . . no, a pile of wood . . .’

He fell silent. Then, in the same voice, now full of despair, he went on: ‘Comrade Lieutenant, I can see a woman in a shift . . . she’s being frog-marched . . . she’s screaming . . . the band’s struck up . . . they’re tying the woman to a post . . . Comrade Lieutenant, there’s a little boy with her . . . Ay . . . they’re tying him up . . . Comrade Lieutenant, I can’t bear to look . . . two Fritzes are emptying some cans of petrol . . .’

Batrakov hurriedly reported all this by telephone to the left bank. Then he grabbed the telescope himself.

‘Ay, comrades, the band’s playing and the whole square’s full of smoke . . .’

‘Fire!’ he suddenly howled out in a terrible voice and turned in the direction of the left bank.

Not a sound from the left bank . . .

A few seconds passed, and then the place of execution was subjected to a concentrated barrage by the heavy artillery. The square was enveloped in dust and smoke.

Several hours later, they were informed by their scout, Klimov, that the Germans had been about to burn a gypsy woman and her son whom they suspected of being spies. The day before, Klimov had left some dirty washing with an old woman who lived in a cellar together with her granddaughter and a goat; he had promised to come back for it later when it was ready. Now he intended to ask this woman what had happened to the two gypsies – whether they had been burned to death on the pyre or killed by the Soviet shells.

Klimov crawled through the ruins along paths known to him alone – only to find that the old woman’s dwelling had just been destroyed by a Russian bomb. There was nothing left of the old woman, her granddaughter or the goat – or of Klimov’s pants and shirt. All he found among the splintered beams and lumps of plaster was a kitten, covered with dirt. It was in a pitiful state, neither complaining nor asking for anything, evidently believing that life was always just a matter of noise, fire and hunger.

Klimov had no idea what made him suddenly stuff the kitten into his pocket.

Katya was astonished by the relations between the inmates of house 6/1. Instead of standing to attention to give his report, Klimov simply sat down next to Grekov; they then talked together like two old friends. Klimov lit up from Grekov’s cigarette.

When he had finished, Klimov went up to Katya. ‘Yes, my girl,’ he said, ‘life on this earth can be terrible.’

Under his hard, penetrating stare, Katya blushed and gave a sigh. Klimov took the kitten out of his pocket and placed it on a brick beside her.

During the course of the day at least a dozen men came up to Katya and started to talk about cats; not one of them spoke about the gypsies, though they had all been deeply shocked. Some of them wanted a sentimental, heart-to-heart conversation – and spoke coarsely and mockingly; others just wanted to sleep with her – and spoke very solemnly, with cloying politeness.

The kitten trembled constantly, evidently in a state of shock.

‘You should do away with it right now,’ the old man in charge of the mortars said with a grimace – and then added: ‘You must pick off the fleas.’

Another member of the mortar-crew, the handsome, swarthy Chentsov, also a former member of the militia, urged: ‘Get rid of that vermin, my girl. Now, if it were a Siberian cat . . .’

The sullen Lyakhov, a sapper with thin lips and an unpleasant-looking face, was the only man to be genuinely concerned about the kitten and indifferent to the charms of the radio-operator.

‘Once, when we were in the steppe,’ he told her, ‘something suddenly hit me. I thought it must be a shell at the end of its trajectory. But guess what? It was a hare. He stayed with me till evening. Then things quietened down a bit and he left.

‘Now, you may be a girl,’ he went on, ‘but at least you can understand: that’s a 108 millimetre, that’s the tune of a Vanyusha, that’s a reconnaissance plane flying over the Volga . . . But the poor stupid hare can’t make out anything at all. He can’t even tell the difference between a mortar and a howitzer. The Germans send up a flare and he just sits there and shakes – you can’t explain anything to him. That’s what makes me sorry for these dumb animals.’

Recognizing that he was in earnest, Katya responded in the same tone. ‘I don’t know . . . Take dogs, for example – they can tell different planes apart. When we were stationed in the village, there was a mongrel called Kerzon. When our ILs flew over, he just lay there without even raising his head. But as soon as he heard the whine of a Junkers, he went straight to his hiding-place. He never once made a mistake.’

The air was rent by a piercing scream – a German Vanyusha. There was a metallic crash, a cloud of black smoke mixed with red dust, and a shower of rubble. A minute later, when the dust began to settle, Katya and Lyakhov resumed their conversation – for all the world as though it was two different people who had just fallen flat on their faces. The self-assurance of these soldiers seemed to have rubbed off on Katya. It was as though they were convinced that everything here, even the iron and stone, might be weak and fragile – but not they themselves.

A burst of machine-gun fire whistled over their heads, then another.

‘This spring we were stationed near Sviatogorsk,’ Lyakhov told her. ‘Once there was a terrible whistling right over our heads, but we couldn’t hear any shots. We didn’t know what on earth was happening. It turned out to be the starlings imitating bullets . . . The lieutenant had even put us on alert – they did it perfectly.’

‘When I was at home,’ said Katya, smiling, ‘I imagined that war would be a matter of lost cats, children screaming and blazing buildings. That seems to be just how it is.’

The next man to approach her was the bearded Zubarev.

‘Well,’ he asked sympathetically, ‘and how’s our little man with the tail?’

He lifted up the scrap of cloth that had been laid over the kitten.

‘Poor little thing. You do look weak!’ As he said this, his eyes gleamed insolently.

That evening, after a brief skirmish, the Germans managed to advance a short distance along the flank of the building; now their machine-guns covered the path leading back to the Soviet lines. The telephone link with Battalion Headquarters was severed again. Grekov ordered a passage to be blasted to link up with a nearby tunnel.

‘We’ll use the dynamite,’ said Antsiferov, the sergeant-major – a stout man with a mug of tea in one hand and a sugar-lump in the other.

The other inmates were sitting in a pit at the foot of the main wall and talking. As before, no one mentioned the two gypsies; nor did they seem worried at being encircled.

This calm seemed strange to Katya; nevertheless, she submitted to it herself. Even the dreaded word ‘encirclement’ no longer held any terrors for her. Nor was she frightened when a machine-gun opened up right next to them and Grekov shouted: ‘Fire! Fire! Look – they’ve got right in!’ Nor when Grekov ordered: ‘Use whatever’s to hand – knives, spades, grenades. You know your job. Kill the bastards – it doesn’t matter how.’

During the few quiet moments, the men engaged in a long and detailed discussion of Katya’s physical appearance. The short-sighted Batrakov, who had always seemed to live in another world, turned out to be surprisingly interested.

‘All I care about are a woman’s tits,’ he said.

Kolomeitsev disagreed. He – in Zubarev’s words – preferred to call a spade a spade.

‘So have you talked to her about the cat, then?’ asked Zubarev.

‘Of course,’ said Batrakov. ‘Even old grey-beard here’s had a chat with her about that.’

The old man in command of the mortars spat and drew his hand across his chest.

‘Really! I ask you! Does she have what makes a woman a woman?’

He got particularly angry if anyone hinted that Grekov might have his eye on her.

‘Well, of course! To us, even a Katya seems passable. In the country of the blind . . . She’s got legs like a stork, no arse worth speaking of, and great cow-like eyes. Call that a woman?’

‘You just like big tits,’ Chentsov retorted. ‘That’s an outmoded, pre-revolutionary point of view.’

Kolomeitsev, a coarse, foul-mouthed man, whose large bald head concealed many surprising contradictions, said: ‘She’s not a bad girl, but I’m very particular. I like them small, preferably Armenian or Jewish, with large quick eyes and short hair.’

Zubarev looked thoughtfully at the dark sky criss-crossed by the beams of searchlights. ‘Well, I wonder how it will work out in the end.’

‘You mean who she’ll end up with?’ said Kolomeitsev. ‘Grekov – that’s obvious.’

‘Far from it,’ said Zubarev. ‘It’s not in the least obvious.’ He picked up a piece of brick and hurled it against the wall.

The others laughed.

‘I see! You’re going to charm her with the down on your chin, are you?’ said Batrakov.

‘No,’ said Kolomeitsev, ‘he’s going to sing. They’re going to make a programme together: “Infantry at the microphone”. He’ll sing and she’ll broadcast it into the ether. They’ll make a fine pair!’

Zubarev looked round at the boy who’d been reading poetry the evening before. ‘And how about you?’

‘If he doesn’t say anything, it’s because he doesn’t want to,’ said the old grey-beard warningly. Then he turned to the boy and said in a fatherly way, as though he were rebuking his son for listening to the grown-ups: ‘You’d do better to go down to the cellar and get some sleep while you can.’

‘Antsiferov’s down there right now with his dynamite,’ said Batrakov.

Meanwhile Grekov was dictating to Katya. He informed Army Headquarters that the Germans were almost certainly preparing an offensive and that it would almost certainly be directed at the Tractor Factory. What he didn’t say was that house 6/1 appeared to lie on the very axis of this offensive. But as he looked at Katya’s thin little neck, at her lips, at her half-lowered eyelashes, he saw an all-too-vivid picture of a broken neck with pearly vertebrae poking out through lacerated skin, of two glassed-over, fish-like eyes, and of lips like grey, dusty rubber.

He was longing to seize hold of her, to feel her life and warmth while they were both alive, while this young being was still full of grace and charm. He thought it was just pity that made him want to embrace the girl – but does pity make your temples throb and your ears buzz?

Headquarters were slow to answer. Grekov stretched till every joint in his body began to crack, gave a loud sigh, thought, ‘It’s all right, we’ve got the night ahead of us,’ and asked tenderly: ‘How’s Klimov’s kitten getting on? Is he getting his strength back?’

‘Far from it,’ answered Katya.

She thought about the gypsies on the bonfire. Her hands were shaking. She glanced at Grekov to see if he’d noticed.

Yesterday she’d thought that no one in this building was ever going to talk to her; today the bearded second lieutenant, tommy-gun in hand, had rushed by as she was eating her kasha and called out as though they were old friends: ‘Don’t just pick at it, Katya!’ He had gestured at her to show how she ought to plunge her spoon into the pot.

She had seen the boy who’d read the poem yesterday carrying some mortar-bombs on a tarpaulin. Later she had looked round and seen him standing by the water-boiler. Realizing he was watching her, she had looked away, but by then he had already turned away himself.

She already knew who would start showing her letters and photographs tomorrow, who would look at her in silence and sigh, who would bring her a present of half a flask of water and some rusks of white bread, who would say he didn’t believe in women’s love and would never fall in love again . . . As for the bearded second lieutenant, he would probably start pawing her.

Finally an answer came through from Headquarters. Katya started to repeat the message to Grekov.

‘Your orders are to make a detailed report every day at twelve hundred hours precisely . . .’

Grekov suddenly knocked Katya’s hand off the switch. She let out a cry.

He grinned and said: ‘A fragment from a mortar-bomb has put the wireless-set out of action. Contact will be re-established when it suits Grekov.’

Katya gaped at him in astonishment.