Life And Fate (Orange Inheritance)

From time to time there were movements out in the corridor. The doors of the general cell – for deserters, traitors to the Motherland, looters and rapists – opened and closed. When the prisoners asked to go to the lavatory, the sentry would argue for a long time before opening the door.

Krymov himself had been put in the general cell after being brought over from Stalingrad. No one had paid any attention to the commissar with the red star still sewn on his sleeve: all the men cared about was whether he had any paper for rolling their dusty tobacco. All they wanted was to be able to eat, smoke and carry out their natural functions.

Who had denounced him? What a torment it was: to know that he was innocent and yet to suffer from this chilling sense of irreparable guilt. Rodimtsev’s conduit, the ruins of house 6/1, the White-Russian bogs, the Voronezh winter, the rivers they’d had to ford – everything light and joyful was lost for ever.

How he wanted simply to go out onto the street, stroll around, crane his neck and look up at the sky . . . And then buy a newspaper, have a shave, write a letter to his brother. He wanted a cup of tea. He had to return a book he’d borrowed for the evening. He wanted to look at his watch, go to the bath-house, take a handkerchief out of his suitcase. But he couldn’t do anything. He had lost his freedom.

Then he had been taken out into the corridor. The commandant had shouted at the guard:

‘I told you in plain Russian! Why the hell did you go and put him in the general cell? And don’t just stand there gaping! Do you want to be sent to the front line?’

When the commandant had gone, the guard had complained:

‘It’s always the same. The solitary cell’s occupied. He told us to keep it for people sentenced to death. If I put you there, what can I do with the fellow who’s already there?’

Soon Krymov saw the firing-squad taking the man out to be executed. His fair hair clung to the narrow, scrawny nape of his neck. He could have been anything from twenty years old to thirty-five.

Krymov was then transferred to the solitary cell. In the semi-darkness he made out a pot on the table. Next to it he could feel a hare moulded from the soft inside of a loaf of bread. The condemned man must have just put it down – it was still soft. Only the hare’s ears had had time to grow stale.

Krymov, his mouth hanging open, sat down on the plank-bed. He had too much on his mind to be able to sleep. Nor could he think. His temples were throbbing. He felt deafened. Everything was whirling around in his head. There was nothing he could catch hold of, no firm point from which to begin a line of thought.

During the night there was a commotion in the corridor. The guards called the corporal. There was a tramping of boots. The commandant – Krymov recognized his voice – said: ‘To hell with that battalion commissar. Put him in the guard-room.’ Then he added: ‘What a story! I bet it’ll get to the CO.’

The door of his cell opened and a soldier shouted: ‘Out!’

Krymov went out. In the corridor stood a bare-footed man in his underwear.

Krymov had seen many terrible things in his life, but nothing so terrible as this small, dirty yellow face. Its lips, wrinkles, and trembling cheeks were all crying; everything was crying except for the eyes; and so terrible was the expression in those eyes, it would have been better never even to have glimpsed them.

‘Come on, come on!’ said the guard.

When Krymov was in the guard-room, he learned what had happened.

‘They keep threatening to send me to the front, but this place is a thousand times worse. Your nerves get worn to a frazzle . . . A soldier’s to be executed for self-mutilation – he’d shot himself in the left hand through a loaf of bread. They shoot him, cover him over with earth – and during the night he comes to life again and finds his way back!’

The guard avoided addressing Krymov directly – so as not to have to choose between the polite and impolite forms of the second person.

‘They make a hash of everything they set their hands to. It wears your nerves to a frazzle. Even a pig gets slaughtered better than that! What a mess! The ground’s frozen – so they rake up some weeds, sprinkle them over him and off they go. And then he gets up. What do you expect? He couldn’t have done that if he’d been buried according to the rule-book.’

Krymov – who had always answered questions, given explanations, set people back on the true path – was bewildered.

‘But why did he come back here?’

The guard laughed.

‘And now the sergeant-major wants him to be given some bread and tea while they sort out his papers. The head of the catering section’s raising hell. How can they give him tea when they’ve already written him off? And why should the sergeant-major be allowed to bungle everything and then expect the catering department to bail him out?’

‘What did you do before the war?’ Krymov asked suddenly.

‘I was a beekeeper on a State farm.’

‘I see,’ said Krymov. At that moment everything – both inside him and outside him – was equally incomprehensible.

At dawn Krymov was taken back to the solitary cell. The hare was still standing beside the pot; its skin was now hard and rough. Krymov could hear a wheedling voice in the general cell:

‘Come on, comrade guard! Take me along for a piss.’

A reddish-brown sun was rising over the steppe. It was like a frozen beetroot with lumps of earth still clinging to it.

Soon afterwards Krymov was taken out and put in the back of a truck. A young lieutenant sat down beside him, the sergeant-major handed over his suitcase and the truck set off for the airfield, grinding and jolting over the frozen mud.

Krymov took a deep breath of cool, damp air. His heart filled with faith and light. The nightmare seemed to be over.