Life And Fate (Orange Inheritance)
59
In the early morning Divisional Headquarters were informed by Byerozkin’s regiment that the men in house 6/1 had excavated a passage into one of the concrete tunnels belonging to the Tractor Factory; some of them were now in the factory itself. A duty-officer at Divisional HQ informed Army HQ, where it was then reported to General Krylov himself. Krylov ordered one of the men to be brought to him for questioning. A signals officer was detailed to take a young boy, chosen by the duty-officer, to Army HQ. They walked down a ravine leading to the bank; on the way the boy kept turning round and anxiously asking questions.
‘I must go back home. My instructions were to reconnoitre the tunnel – so we could evacuate the wounded.’
‘Never mind,’ said the officer. ‘You’re about to see someone a little senior to your own boss. You have to do as he says.’
On the way the boy told the officer how they had been in house 6/1 for over two weeks, how they’d lived for some time on a cache of potatoes they’d found in the cellar, how they’d drunk the water from the central heating system, and had given the Germans such a hard time that they’d sent an envoy with an offer of free passage to the factory. Naturally their commander – the boy referred to him as the ‘house-manager’ – had replied by ordering them all to open fire. When they reached the Volga, the boy lay down and began to drink; he then shook the drops from his jacket onto the palm of his hand and licked them off. It was as though he were starving and they were crumbs of bread. He explained that the water in the central heating system had been foul. To begin with, they had all had stomach-upsets, but then the house-manager had ordered them to boil the water and they had recovered.
They walked on in silence. The boy listened to the sound of the bombers and looked up at the night sky, now decorated by red and green flares and the curved trajectories of tracer-bullets and shells. He saw the glow of the guttering fires in the town, the white flame of the guns and the blue columns of water sent up by shells falling in the Volga. His pace gradually slackened, till finally the officer shouted: ‘Come on now! Look lively!’
They made their way between the rocks on the bank; mortar-bombs whistled over their heads and they were constantly challenged by sentries. Then they climbed a little path that wound up the slope between the bunkers and trenches. Sometimes there were duck-boards underfoot, sometimes steps cut into the clay. Finally they reached the Headquarters of the 62nd Army. The officer straightened his belt and made his way down a communication trench towards some bunkers constructed from particularly solid logs.
The sentry went to call an aide; through a half-open door they glimpsed the soft light of an electric lamp under its shade. The aide shone his torch at them, asked the boy’s name and told them to wait.
‘But how am I going to get back home?’ asked the boy.
‘All roads lead to Kiev,’ answered the aide. He then added sternly: ‘Go on now – get inside! Otherwise you’ll get yourself killed by a mortar-bomb and I’ll have to answer for you to the general.’
The boy sat down in the warm, dark entranceway, leant against the wall and fell asleep.
In his dreams the terrible cries and screams of the last few days blurred together with the quiet, peaceful murmur of his own home – a home that no longer existed. Then someone shook him and he heard an angry voice:
‘Shaposhnikov! You’re wanted by the general! Look lively!’