Life And Fate (Orange Inheritance)

He put down his spoon; you could tell from his sigh that it was good soup. Krymov’s eyes went moist; he desperately wanted a bite of cabbage-pie.

Behind the partition, the aide announced his arrival. After a moment’s silence Krymov heard a familiar voice; it was too quiet for him to make out the words.

The aide came out and announced:

‘The member of the Military Soviet is unable to receive you.’

Krymov was taken aback.

‘But I never asked to see him. Comrade Abramov summoned me himself.’

The aide just looked at his soup.

‘So it’s been cancelled, has it? I can’t make head or tail of all this,’ said Krymov.

He went back up to the surface and plodded along the gully towards the bank of the Volga. He had to call at the editorial office of the Army newspaper.

He felt annoyed by the senseless summons and by his sudden greed for someone else’s pie. At the same time he listened attentively to the intermittent gunfire coming from the Kuporosnaya ravine.

A girl walked past on her way to the Operations Section. She was wearing a forage cap and a greatcoat. Krymov looked her up and down and said to himself: ‘She’s not bad at all.’

The memory of Yevgenia came back to him, and as always his heart sank. As always he immediately reproved himself: ‘Forget her! Forget her!’ He tried to call to mind a young Cossack girl he had spent the night with in a village they had passed through. Then he thought of Spiridonov: ‘He’s a fine fellow – even if he isn’t a Spinoza!’

For a long time afterwards Krymov was to remember these thoughts with piercing clarity – together with the gunfire, the autumn sky and his irritation with Abramov.

A staff officer with a captain’s green stripes on his greatcoat called out his name. He had followed him from the command-post.

Krymov gave him a puzzled look.

‘This way please,’ the captain said quietly, pointing towards the door of a hut.

Krymov walked past the sentry and through the doorway. They entered a room with a large desk and a portrait of Stalin on the plank wall.

Krymov expected the captain to say something like this: ‘Excuse me, comrade Battalion Commissar, but would you mind taking this report to comrade Toshcheev on the left bank?’ Instead, he said:

‘Hand over your weapon and your personal documents.’

Krymov’s reply was confused and meaningless.

‘But what right . . . ? Show me your own documents first . . .!’

There could be no doubt about what had happened – absurd and senseless though it might be. Krymov came out with the words that had been muttered before by many thousands of people in similar circumstances:

‘It’s crazy. I don’t understand. It must be a misunderstanding.’

These words were no longer those of a free man.