The soup was mostly cabbage and potatoes, and the Russian Lieutenant and I ate it with thick pieces of rather leathery rye bread. As we walked out of the hut where we had eaten, the snow was whipped up into our faces in dusty and bitter gusts of fine ice, so sudden that if you were not careful they hit your eyeballs, fetching tears of pain. Otherwise I was warm after the soup, and the cold, even on that bitterly dry, windy Russian Plateau, did not bother us much. What really bothered me was a piece of rye bread that had stuck into my teeth; I kept pushing it with my tongue, but I could not get it out at all.
It was a few days before Christmas. About fifty yards from the huts, which made up a sort of sectional headquarters, just at the intersection of the track that led between the hut and the main track where army transports and little pony sledges made a yellow-brown line as they passed all day long, stood a group of thirty or forty people. They were pretty well dressed: mostly wearing woollen scarves and Balaclava helmets and fur caps and heavy overcoats that buttoned up to the neck. It was clear that they were not soldiers, though they were all carrying rifles, with ammunition belts holding about fifty rounds. They kept stamping their feet on the frozen snow and their breath hung over them in a constant cloud that was like white smoke in the grey air of the early afternoon.
“Who are they?” I said.
“They?” the Lietenant said. “Partisans. I thought you saw them as we were going in to eat.”
“No,” I said.
“They were there,” he said. “They had just come in.”
The last fifteen miles in the lorry from Moscow had been very cold. I had felt that there was a film of ice over my eyes, and I have been glad to walk to the hut with my head down against the wind.
“You think we could talk to them now?” I said
“Talk to them by all means,” he said.
We went over to them at once and began to talk. The leader came forward and stood in front of them, leaning on his rifle. His face, as much as I could see of it, was flat and impassive. It had a kind of anonymous strength about it. His nose was very thick and broad, and his nostrils were full of wiry black hairs on which his breath had frozen in minute white beads.
The rest of the party stood watching me, faces turned one way, mouths a little open, peasant-fashion, because I was a stranger. The eldest of them were men about fifty or even fifty-five. I could not tell how young the youngest were, but one was so small that the rifle slung from the shoulder almost touched the ground.
“Even the boys are in,” I said.
“Boys?” The leader turned his head and saw me looking at the small figure that was not much taller than its rifle. “Boys? You mean Nastashya,” he said.
For a minute I did not speak. I stood looking at the small dark face in the open oval of the brown Balaclava helmet. The eyes were black and shiny and very young. Only by them could you tell you were looking at a girl.
“Could I talk to her?” I said.
“Talk to her, please,” the Lieutenant said. “Talk to her by all means.”
But when I went over to her I did not know what to say. The piece of rye crust in my teeth kept bothering me and I kept stabbing at it with my tongue, unable to get it out. It made me more nervous than the girl, who simply looked up at me with cold, placid, shiny eyes.
“Where do you come from?” I said at last.
“Voznesensk,” She said
“Ah, Voskressensk,” I said. “That’s near Moscow.”
“No,” She smiled. “Not Voskressensk, that’s another place. Not the same. Mine is Voznesensk.”
“I don’t know it,” I said.
“It’s just a little place,” she said. “That’s where I really come from.”
“Near here?” I said.
“No,” she said. “It’s the other side of Moscow. But I’ve been living here with my brother until he was killed.”
We were about ten miles behind the lines and I wondered how old she was. Still worried by the piece of bread in my tooth I stood thinking, looking at her, wondering if she could be more than eighteen. Very often, especially in the mornings, you could hear the noise of shelling from the west or, if they were bombing, the linked-up crump of bombs, but this afternoon was very quiet and you could hear nothing but the wind beating at the line of birch-trees beyond the main track and then whining down the narrow spaces between the huts, scattering snow.
“You have toothache?” she said.
“No,” I said.
“I thought you must have toothache,” she said. “You can open your mouth and the cold will give you toothache.”
“It’s a piece of bread in my tooth,” I said.
“Oh! I know. Like when you eat sunflower seeds,” she said. “It just aggravates you.”
She laughed and she took off one of her gloves and put her hand in her pocket.
“This is what you want,” she said.
I smiled and took the toothpick she gave me and thanked her.
“You can make them out of feathers,” she said. “I like making them. When we’re waiting and there’s nothing to do I sit and pick my teeth. It passes the time.”
“It’s out!” I said.
“Good.” We laughed again. “Now you can keep the toothpick for next time.”
“Yes, thank you,” I said. “Thank you.”
I stood with the toothpick in my hand and once again I did not know what to say to her. At last I thought of something.
“Are you the only girl in this company?” I said.
“Oh! no,” she said. “There’s three others. Over there. See? But I’m the youngest.”
I did not even look at the other girls and again I did not know what to say.
“We’ll soon be going now, I expect,” she said. “I see Yakov has gone for the orders.”
“Yakov?”
“Our leader, he was talking to the Lieutenant.”
“Oh! yes,” I said.
For some moments longer I stood talking to her, never quite knowing what to say. The wind was blowing more strongly now and once it came round the corner of the nearest hut in a violent gust of bitter dusty snow that caught the girl unbalanced and almost blew her down.
“You go behind the lines?” I said.
“Behind the lines,” she said.
I had not time to ask her anything more before I saw Yakov, the leader, striding back to us. There was a slight commotion in the group as he reached us and the girl hitched her rifle farther on her shoulder.
“All right,” Yakov said.
He stood talking a moment or two longer to the Lieutenant. Most of the men lengthened the slings of their rifles now and slung them full across their shoulders so that their hands were free. But Nastashya kept hers on her left shoulder, so that the butt still almost touched the ground.
“All right! Ready!” Yakov said.
Immediately the whole group began to shuffle in the snow.
“Goodbye,” Nastashya said. She smiled.
“Goodbye,” I said. I smiled too.
Before I had time to speak again she moved off with the others, as they shuffled in a kind of rough formation down the track between the huts. On this main track a few transport lorries were passing westward and the group of partisans halted until the last of the lorries had gone by. In the lorries some of the drivers lifted their hands and a few of the partisans waved their hands in reply.
It was not until they began to move again, stringing out in the now empty road, that the Lieutenant spoke to me.
“They have a good journey,” he said.
“Where?”
“Through the lines. They’re going to blow up a bridge beyond Vyazna.”
I did not speak as we watched them marching down the road. The wind was beating at them sideways, from the north, and the snow was hurled at them like bursts of smoky dust. All the time I was able to tell which was Nastashya because hers was the only rifle that almost touched the ground. All the time too I must have stood with the toothpick in my hand. I did not notice it until the moment when the girl turned to wave her hand and I lifted my own in reply.
“Happy Christmas, Nastashya,” I said.
I stood watching them a little longer, holding the toothpick in my hand. The sharp wind blew tears of pain into my eyes again as I stood there, and my lips felt frozen as I spoke. But in that moment, above all, my heart was cold.