Life And Fate (Orange Inheritance)

Clouds of smoke covered the ruins; the power station had finally been brought to a standstill.

After the raid, Spiridonov’s hands had begun to tremble convulsively. He splashed tea everywhere if he tried to lift a mug to his lips; sometimes he had to put it straight back on the table, knowing he couldn’t hold it any longer. His hands only stopped trembling when he drank vodka.

He and Kamyshov began allowing the workers to leave; they crossed the Volga and made their way through the steppe to Akhtuba and Leninsk. At the same time, they themselves asked Moscow for permission to leave; there was little sense in their remaining in the front line among these ruins. Moscow was slow to reply and Spiridonov became increasingly nervous. Nikolayev, the Party organizer, had already been summoned by the Central Committee; he had left for Moscow in a Douglas.

Spiridonov and Kamyshov spent their time wandering through the ruins, telling one another that there was nothing left for them to do and that they had better get the hell out of it. But Moscow still didn’t reply.

Spiridonov was particularly worried about Vera. She had begun to feel ill after crossing to the left bank and had been unable to make the journey to Leninsk. She was in the last stages of pregnancy and there was no question of her travelling nearly a hundred kilometres in the back of a truck along frozen, pot-holed roads.

Some workers she knew took her to a barge that had been converted into a hostel; it was moored close to the bank, fast in the ice.

Soon after the bombing of the power station, Vera had sent her father a note by a mechanic on one of the launches. She told him that he wasn’t to worry and that she’d been given a comfortable little corner in the hold, behind a partition. Among the other evacuees on the barge were a nurse from the Beketovka clinic and an old midwife; if there were any complications, they could call a doctor from the field-hospital four kilometres away. They had hot water on the barge, and a stove. The obkom supplied them with food and they all ate together.

Although she told him not to worry, every word of her note filled Spiridonov with anxiety. The only crumb of comfort was that as yet the barge hadn’t been bombed.

If he could only get across to the left bank himself, he could get hold of a car or ambulance and take her at least as far as Akhtuba. But there was no word from Moscow. They still hadn’t authorized the departure of the director and chief engineer – though there was no longer any need for anyone at the power station except a small armed guard. The workers and engineers had had no wish to hang around there with nothing to do; they had all crossed to the left bank as soon as Spiridonov gave his permission.

Only old Andreyev refused to accept the official permit bearing the director’s round stamp. When Spiridonov suggested he join his daughter-in-law and grandson in Leninsk, he just said: ‘No, I’m staying here.’

He felt that as long as he stayed on the Stalingrad bank he still had some link with his former life. Maybe in a little while he’d be able to get to the Tractor Factory. He’d make his way through the houses that had been burnt down or blown apart and come to the garden laid out by his wife. He’d straighten the young, injured trees, check whether the things they had buried were still in their hiding-place and sit down on a stone by the broken fence.

‘Well, Varvara, the sewing-machine’s still in its place and it hasn’t even got rusty. But I’m afraid the apple-tree by the fence has had its day. It must have been caught by a splinter. As for the sauerkraut in the cellar – that’s fine, it’s just got a tiny bit of mould on top.’

Spiridonov very much wanted to talk things over with Krymov, but Krymov hadn’t once looked in since the anniversary of the Revolution.

Spiridonov and Kamyshov agreed to wait until 17 November and then leave; there really was nothing whatever for them to do. The Germans were still shelling the power station now and again. Kamyshov, who had lost his nerve after the last air-raid, said:

‘Stepan Fyodorovich, if they’re still shelling us, then their intelligence service is a dead loss. They may bomb us again any moment. You know the Germans. They’re like bulls – they’ll just carry on pounding away.’

On 18 November, without waiting for permission from Moscow, Spiridonov said goodbye to the guard, embraced Andreyev, looked for a last time at the ruins and left.

He had worked hard and honourably. His achievement was all the more worthy of respect in that he was afraid of war, was unaccustomed to conditions at the front, had lived in constant fear of air-raids and gone completely to pieces during the bombardments themselves.

He had a suitcase in one hand and a bundle over his shoulder. He waved to Andreyev, who was standing by the ruined gates, then looked round at the engineers’ building with its broken windows, at the gloomy walls of the turbine-workshop and at the smoke from the still-burning insulators.

He left the power station when there was nothing more that he could do there, only twenty-four hours before the beginning of the Soviet offensive. But in the eyes of many people those twenty-four hours outweighed all he had done before; ready to greet him as a hero, they branded him a coward and a deserter.

Long afterwards he was to be tormented by the memory of how he had turned round and waved; of how he had seen a solitary old man standing by the gate, watching him.