First, there was a vague sound from the west, that must be an airplane. Then the silver bird appeared directly over the height. It flew a few loops over the shattered blocking position.
Looking into the sun, Lieutenant Trupikov could barely make out the black Maltese crosses on the wings. The doomed band of Germans sent up white flares. He hoped the reconnaissance plane wouldn’t see them in the bright sunlight. He pressed himself against the wall of the trench, and followed every movement of the airplane. It seemed to be less interested in the barren hill than the frozen sector of Front by the swamp, where there was suddenly fearful quiet. The tanks pressed themselves into the ground like frightened beasts. Only the Germans, whose defensive hedgehog constituted a barrier between himself and the line of the swamp, exhibited signs of life. They waved canvas sheets that fluttered over their holes. They yelled and fired off shots, as though their noise could be heard by the men in the machine.
The plane circled endlessly, flew lower, and then climbed up into the sky with a yowl of its engines. As it flew towards the skeleton of the pylon and the debris of the tanks on the heights, Trupikov hoped it would turn away. No, the machine was merely snuffling around. It came back.
The Lieutenant had a queasy feeling. At last he understood why the plane refused to go away. A quiet buzzing became audible from the direction of Emga, and grew louder. Then he made out dark points in the sky. The air became a little oppressive. His men behind the line of swamp began to fret. The tanks seemed to lose their heads. Red Guards ran around in confusion like little insects. And then Trupikov heard the ack-ack guns, dull thumps, leaving little puffs of white in the sky. The squadron broke out of formation. The planes approached in single file.
The reconnaissance plane sheered off as though it had nothing to do with the affair. Until a swarm of rockets hissed from its silver body. The rockets fanned out towards the sector behind the swamp. Lieutenant Trupikov felt ashamed of his relief. Now he could make out the objective; not one of the rockets strayed to his position. Like a hawk, the first plane plummeted past the white fleecy clouds of ack-ack, towards the swamp position. It would pull out of its dive directly above his own section of the trench. Hideous siren wailing filled the air. Trupikov was helpless before the flight of the machine. Lamed with fear, he saw the flat cockpit and the raked wings making straight for him. He saw the bomb detach itself from the belly of the dive-bomber, and travel on in the direction of the flight. Now it was the bomb that threw him into panic. It was almost too much to believe that the thing would fly past his trench, and not land among the Germans either, but instead exactly where the rocket had hit the ground a moment ago, in the swamp sector. Earth spun through the air, a hail of mud, and fumes. The wave of the explosion reached the Lieutenant at the same time as the rattle of machine-gun fire. An invisible fist knocked him to the ground. A fresh howl began. The next greedy maw raced towards him. The squealing siren tore at his nerves. Plane after plane tilted down. Delivered its bomb. Behind the swamp, the earth heaved. The limber of a gun sailed aloft like a flying carpet. The gun turret of a tank flipped up in the wind, and floated over the brush. Performed an almost perfect landing.
The Lieutenant saw no men in this hell. They seemed to be extinguished in the fountains of dirt. But the tanks and all those who still survived behind the strip of swamp did not want to pass away quietly. At various points, the light anti-aircraft guns started to bark. A hail of bullets was launched towards the wailing planes. The machine guns on the tanks replied to those on the planes. A grisly spectacle, which the Germans in their trench watched with equal fascination. Lieutenant Trupikov sobbed with fury, as his tank platoon and all hope of rescue was blown up before his eyes. He kept his face pressed to the ground. Till a mighty explosion caused him to look up. With a savage bolt of flame, a mushroom cloud roared into the air. Wet clumps of mud flopped down in the trench. The guns had brought down a diving plane, the last in the line.
The rattling died away. The ack-ack guns barked forlornly after the departing Stukas. Then they too gave it up. The silence oppressed the Lieutenant. In front of him, on the downhill slope, was the jagged piece of trench occupied by the Germans. An aluminium wing as high as a house was jammed in no man’s land. From a distance, it looked like some kind of memorial. Behind it, and behind the swamp line, the landscape was volcanic. Steam squirmed over the ground. Black oilsmoke curled around crippled steel wreckage. Here and there, the tube of a gun pointed nakedly and uselessly heavenward. A bush was merrily ablaze like a tuft of straw, and human figures wandered to no end in among the craters. No. There was no hope of any support from there. The Lieutenant turned west again. Behind him the heights. The bleak hill with the steel skeleton and the two demolished tanks. No longer a victorious storm battalion. No attaining of the appointed objective. Future plans, deadlines, projections, all were as irrelevant as the commands that had led them to this point. The master of the hill was Death. The Germans and he, Lieutenant Trupikov, and his men – two useless groups of men, confronted by death. They might have done better to come to terms, like businesspeople.
The Lieutenant slipped back into the trench. He ignored the corpse whose outstretched hand smacked against his bootleg. One question tormented him: how would he and his men get back? Over the top? The German machine gun would mow them down. The only way was through the Germans. He owed his casualties the order for close-quarters combat.
The first bullets whistled over the crust of earth that was sheltering him. Further afield, the firing was flickering to life as well. He stepped up to the dugout entrance, unsure what to do. They carried a Red Guard past him. One of the kids they’d pulled out of school and shoved in his battalion. A foot dragged along the wall of the trench. On his face the astonishment of those who die without pain. The Lieutenant watched as the carriers held him by a hand and a foot apiece. They swung the body back and forth. Launched it over the rim of the trench. Now he was lying on the parapet, facing the Germans. A bullet slapped into the earth beside the dead man. The next one hit his helmet, which rolled with a clatter back into the trench. When a further bullet hit the dead boy in the head, the Lieutenant asked himself how that was helping the Germans. He shuddered. The face was no longer a face. The bullets lashed into the body as into the target at a fairground shooting stall. ‘Five, six, seven,’ he counted them with incredulity. He reached into the trench for a rifle – there were enough lying around. Cautiously, he pushed its muzzle over the rim. The puffs of smoke betrayed the whereabouts of the other. Glinting metal in the pallid afternoon sun had to be a rifle. Behind that, a patch of white: his face. He aimed carefully. But the bullet landed in something green. There’s no point, he thought. There’s no point in negotiating with them. They’re like wild animals. Either you kill them, or they kill you. There’s no other way.
The Major leaned against the wall of the trench just as he had come out of the low-lying swamp. Barefoot. With torn-off shoulder-tabs. A gaping tear in his tunic. Hands and face crusted with blood and earth. He was able to shake off the layer of mud like a brittle crust. He gripped his rifle stock, ready to shoot as soon as his inflamed eyes should see a target, to fight, to punch, to throttle. There was only one thing he didn’t want: the mosquitoes. Thousands of mosquitoes were buzzing round the trench. A blueish glittering cloud of little bodies, of tiny pricks. Insatiable for blood. A plague against which he was defenceless. They crawled over his neck, flew in his face, got in under his sleeves, settled on his bare feet. Little primordial beasts. They landed on his skin. Their stings darkened with his blood. They sipped and sucked till his flat hand crushed them, and the frail full bodies were splattered. They sacrificed their lives for a few seconds of pleasure. He was left with the itch. The biting pain. The round swellings. A rash over his collar like a scarf, around his wrists, swelling all over his feet. It was worse than a few shells, which would at least have driven them away for a little while. With his tongue, he licked the swellings on his hands. For his feet and neck, he could do nothing.
He had wanted to go to Hell, and by God, he had had his way. Tricked out with everything a sick brain could think of. And worse than putrescence, hopelessness, filth, itching and mosquitoes were his men. They had received him initially like lost souls, greedy and desperate. But slowly his presence had poisoned the air. What tank shells and hissing salvoes of bullets had failed to do – he had done it: the reins were loosening. The men received his commands with a leaden lack of interest. They eyed him suspiciously, as if he were preparing their funerals. It didn’t help at all, that he handed the command back to the NCO. The hatred was there. And now he was afraid of them. Or at the least, unsure of them. He, to whom life was a matter of indifference, who had wanted to throw it away on their behalf, now began to love it.
Here, between the rage of the enemy and the hatred of his own men, it appeared to have some value to him. The grief over his dead daughter, the memory of his wife, became somewhat notional to him. In the midst of this cratered landscape there was suddenly nothing more important than himself. In front of him the bombed scene, the Stuka wing, stuck in the earth like a splinter. Behind him the labyrinth of saps, with the cut-off platoon of Russians. Far back, the hill. Lifeless, cold, distant, like another planet. But he still lived: a filthy creature with bare feet, uniform in rags, disfigured hands, sunken cheeks and ashen skin. From all parts of the trench, his face popped up at him, his fever-burning eyes looked at him. A heap of lonely men. They envied one another the crumbled shreds of tobacco in their pockets. A crust of petrified bread. A fistful of bullets, scooped out of the mire. During the Stuka attack on the position behind the swamp, they had briefly made common cause. They had uttered bone-piercing yells. Had waved the shreds they wore over their nakedness. And then the disappointment when the squadron had disappeared over the horizon. As if they had expected more, even just a sign. WE’VE SEEN YOU! HANG ON! WE’RE COMING BACK FOR YOU! But nothing. They were left behind. Abandoned in the limitlessness of the battlefield. Forever in the expectation that, from in front or behind, the brown wave would roll up to them, shouts of hurrah! to accompany the whines of ricochets, the cracks of tank shells, the twittering of mortars. No, not quite yet. An oppressive silence. Accompanied by exhaustion, hunger and mosquitoes. No bandages. No water. And, worst of all, no ammunition. In their excitement, they had failed to notice how their supplies were dwindling. The first to notice were the ammunition carriers, who were running back and forth to the two machine guns.
‘Ammunition!’ The cry ran along the winding trench, as far as the foxhole. From the foxhole, someone yelled: ‘Surrender, for fuck’s sake! White flag!’ And, as if he’d gone crazy, the man banged off shot after shot. Aimed ferociously. Applauded every hit with a grisly whoop. The NCO swore at him to get him to shut up. His steel helmet bobbed along the trench, came to the Major.
‘We’d better take a vote,’ said the NCO. He was panting. In him too, the Major identified his own face. ‘We must let them vote, Major. No one will follow an order any more. Surrender or break-out. Last chance.’ The Major bit into the palm of his hand. The skin felt bumpy. The mosquito poison burned like fire.
The Major took evasive action: ‘You’re in charge here.’
‘OK,’ said the NCO. ‘Break-out or surrender?’ He held his pistol in his hand, directed at the Major. As if he wanted to use it to get the right answer out of all of them.
The Major bit down on his finger. He asked: ‘Do you think we could manage to break out?’ Blood oozed out of the blisters on his fingertips. He bit harder.
‘Yes,’ said the NCO. ‘Shit on God if we don’t.’
The Major shook the blood off his hand: ‘Majority decision?’
‘That’s right.’
‘That wasn’t an order.’
‘Was.’ The NCO rammed the mouth of the pistol into the wall of the trench. The opening was full of earth. If he fired it now, the thing would explode in his hand. ‘Answer!’ he suddenly screamed at the Major. ‘Surrender or break-out?’
‘I don’t count.’ Through a gap in the parapet by the shelter, the Major saw the wounded Russian officer lying. They had just thrown him out. He couldn’t see the man’s face. But he saw one of his hands scraping at the earth.
‘You’ve got to decide,’ the NCO pressed him. ‘You first. I’ve got no time to lose. We’re shooting off the last of our ammunition.’ The Major didn’t open his mouth. ‘I need you to vote,’ the NCO yelled at him.
No time, no ammunition. Break-out or suicide. Surrender or suicide. Either way worked. The Major bit into the palms of his hands again. An airburst shell blew up above them. ‘I’m afraid I must abstain,’ said the Major. The wounded Russian rolled off his place. He couldn’t see his hand any more. There was no prison for him.
‘Goddamnit, Major!’ said the NCO. ‘Break-out or surrender?’
‘Can’t I get it into your head that I can’t participate in the decision!’
The NCO examined his plugged pistol muzzle. He banged it clear against his left elbow. The earth trickled over the Major’s bare feet. It was as though he’d touched him. ‘I demand an answer!’
‘All right, if you must – surrender!’ The Major’s teeth dug into his palms again. The pain from the bite this time cut through his whole body. He could no longer feel the burning of the mosquito stings. His bare soles felt icy. The NCO looked at him: his own face looked at him. But with a hate-filled expression. He had a sense of how the NCO would see him: no epaulettes, barefooted, with the rip in his tunic, grimed hands, and bloodied welts along his wrists and neck.
‘Coward!’ The NCO turned away.
The word didn’t upset the Major. If it wasn’t that he’d lately kissed his life goodbye, he would have felt proud. He began to think how to go about it. He didn’t have a pistol. What if he took a wire, and stuck the rifle in his mouth? The Russians stopped shooting in the saps. It was almost quiet. The NCO was talking to the nearest sentry.
‘Break-out or prison camp?’
‘What did the Major choose?’ asked the sentry.
‘Break-out.’
‘OK. Break-out it is then,’ said the man.
That’s not true, I didn’t, the Major wanted to call out. He couldn’t make a sound. The NCO’s steel helmet moved on. The Major looked for a wire or a bit of string. He found a gun sling. As he loaded his rifle, he thought about how quiet the Russians were being at the former company office. Maybe they’d shot off all their ammunition as well. Maybe he should have voted for break-out. The idea that he might kill himself just before a decisive turn in events gave him pause. His hand shook as he looped the sling round the trigger guard. He permitted himself no distraction. All that mattered was that he was dead right away. The bullet was to go through the roof of his mouth into the brain. He would feel nothing. He propped the rifle between his legs. Checked whether he could use his big toe to pull the trigger. As he looked at his feet, it crossed his mind that he would leave an extremely unappetizing corpse. A smashed skull and a filthy body. As well that no one would see him. As an officer, incidentally, he was entitled to a coffin. But in fact he’d be lucky if they dug him a hole. Comforting that he wouldn’t leave anyone behind, wife or child. He wanted to do it in such a way that he fell face down. All he had to do was lean forward slightly. The mouth of the rifle under his chin looked at him like a dead eye. Suddenly the sound of voices came from the foxhole. He heard his name mentioned. ‘If he hadn’t come, they’d still be alive now.’ He wondered what it was they held against him. ‘When the Captain called on us to surrender, there were more of us. He’s got five lives on his conscience.’ Then the NCO’s voice again. A quarrel, evidently. The voices grew louder. ‘Equal rights for all! You can’t ignore me!’ The NCO made some reply he couldn’t hear. ‘Well, shoot me then, shoot me, why don’t you!’ the voice screamed again. The NCO: ‘Do you think I wouldn’t waste a bullet on you?’ The other: ‘Surrender – whatever the Major says!’
A gunshot whined through the trench. Five plus one make six, thought the Major. The muzzle between his legs stared up at him. He should have stayed in Podrova. He remembered the telephone conversation with Divisional HQ. His command: counter-attack towards the log-road. That was only yesterday, wasn’t it? Thirty replacements he had ordered to this position. And the dead driver he’d lost in the Podrova cemetery. Sum total from a single day, on his account. And how many days like that did he have to look back on? He leaned forward over the muzzle, mouth wide open. The cold metal brushed his gums. His toe groped for the trigger. Would he feel something after all?
‘Major!’
He jumped, pushed the rifle against the trench wall in confusion. The NCO was standing in front of him.
‘All unanimously in favour of break-out!’
The Major gazed at his bare feet. The NCO saw the gun, took in the sling wrapped round the trigger . . .
Lieutenant Trupikov entered the shelter. The German Captain was sitting behind the makeshift table, with his hands on it.
‘Still no signs of a surrender, Lieutenant?’
He tried to put on a concerned expression. Not a syllable about the air attack.
‘No! They’re not surrendering!’ Another one of those animals, thought the Lieutenant. Here in his cage he behaves like a human being, but put a rifle in his hands and he’ll start shooting corpses. What’s he doing here? The wolf with his sheep’s face. Aren’t there enough hills in his own country? I’ve even seen them myself, green trees, streams, trim villages. No rubbish or muck on their roads. Ears of corn stand upright in the fields like soldiers. But they want to take our marshy forests off us, our dried-out steppes, a few wooden huts . . . The Lieutenant became incoherent with rage, adrift on a flood of misunderstandings. He would shoot this German. That was the obvious solution. A shot in the neck. He wouldn’t have to see his face any more. With the head bent, it’s not possible to miss the spine. No chance of hearing a cry of pain from the victim. Even before death, the nervous connections to the vocal cords are broken. An ideal type of execution. He looked at his victim. Very short neck, he finally concluded. Curious, the ways in which one can assess someone’s neck. Only the German’s high shirt-collar bothered him. Maybe he could get him to take off the tunic first. But no: he had to shoot him outside. He would have to take account of the tunic. Then what if the pistol failed? He could give the command to the Sergeant. He sent him a piercing look. Why couldn’t the man read minds! Suddenly he ordered: ‘In half an hour we’re going to overrun the German position! Signal for the attack will be a red flare. Every platoon to take its own wounded forward. I want all units informed!’
‘Signal for the attack: red flare. Take the wounded with us,’ repeated the Sergeant.
The Lieutenant gestured towards the German. Surely to God that was clear enough. But the Sergeant ran out. The opportunity had passed. ‘Let’s try again.’ The Lieutenant made an effort to speak distinctly.
‘What?’ asked the German.
‘In half an hour it’ll all be over!’
‘What will?’ the German asked again.
Then we’ll leap at each other’s throats, thought the Lieutenant. He said: ‘Our tanks will smoke them out with flame-throwers. Come on, after all these are your men we’re talking about.’
‘I’ve thought about it some more,’ replied the German. ‘It’s wrong for me to do it.’ He was speaking slowly and distinctly, the way you speak to a dog if you’re not sure whether it’ll bite you or be harmless.
‘Why not?’ All he wanted was to get the German outside, with his back to him, and his neck within reach. His refusal upset his plan.
‘Why not? You did it before!’
The German shook his head: ‘Do you know who they’ve got with them?’
‘No!’
‘Their commander!’
‘And?’
‘The single soldier who made his way through your lines is my Major!’
The Lieutenant felt a surge of interest in this opponent whom he would see in half an hour. So they’ve got a few of that sort as well, he thought. A commander who will join his frontline forces during a battle. ‘What difference does that make?’ he asked crossly. His time was ticking by. Things were coming to a head.
‘He warned me,’ said the Captain. ‘He’ll call me to account later.’
So he’s just scared, concluded the Lieutenant with relief. He’s scared of his commander. He stared fixedly into the candle flame.
A pit in the woods. Gloomy vegetation, dwarf firs. Pallid twilight behind the treetops. In front of the pit, the prisoners. One next to another. Eyes on the prepared grave. Not a word from their lips, not a word from the group of Red Guards. ‘Kneel down!’ ordered the Commissar in German. The prisoners pretended not to understand him. Click of a pistol safety catch. One prisoner grinds his teeth together. A crunching, as if his jaw were splintering. A clump of earth eases itself off the wall of the grave, and falls down. Finally, the Commissar goes from one prisoner to the next. Does it with a certainty as if he’d never done anything else. The echo of every shot breaks up in the treetops. The prisoners fall forwards. By the time the last of them falls into the deep, it’s night. Just one last dying glimmer of light in the sky. No. It was tempting, but repugnant. And time trickled by. Only a few more minutes, and then at least he wouldn’t have to endure any more waiting.
Red Guards carried stretchers into the shelter. The soft groans of the wounded rose from their pallets. Weapons were loaded. The Siberians looped sacks full of hand-grenades round their necks. The shelter, with its smell of carbolic, dirt, and thickening tallow, did all it could to seem homely. He felt a sensation of leave-taking. Taking leave of security. Taking leave of life. With every stretcher they carried out, the apprehension and fear increased. Man after man stepped out into the passage. Hesitantly, with the small, faint hope that it would be the man next to him who would cop it, and not him.
‘I’ll keep it short,’ said Lieutenant Trupikov. ‘The situation . . .’ He didn’t know how to go on. ‘For some time we’ve been cut off . . . A violent break-out . . . our only option. I want you to come with us!’
The Captain looked at him uncomprehendingly. It took a long time for him to understand: ‘That’s not possible! You said . . . your word of honour!’ He was stunned, suddenly cheated of his vision of serenity. Of little barrack huts surrounded by barbed wire . . . no shells . . . no fear of death . . . calm. It was all gone. ‘Leave me here,’ he begged. ‘There’s no point. Please understand my position . . .’ His stammering seemed to bounce back off the other’s stony features. ‘I could look after your wounded . . . Sure I could, sure I could . . .’ He was talking like a child that hadn’t yet learned to lie.
All the while, the shelter was emptying. As if they understood they were now superfluous, the candle flames started to drown in little puddles of tallow. One wick after another hissed out in grease. Only one was still burning, to light him the way to death. On one pallet there was still a bundle of humanity. His breathing was ticking like a clock, but he didn’t move. He was forgotten. Like the rickety table, the empty conserve tins, a scrap of bread, the smeared jam, shreds of paper and unusable arms.
‘Come on!’ ordered the Lieutenant.
The Captain stood up behind the table. ‘What about him?’ he asked, pointing to the bundle.
The Lieutenant didn’t answer. They went out into the passage, the Lieutenant keeping close behind his captive. They pushed aside the oilcloth in the entryway, and emerged into the trench. The bright sun blinded them like a lightning flash.
‘Stoi!’ ordered the Lieutenant. The Captain froze. He felt the muzzle of a pistol against his back. He turned round in terror: a bottle-shaped explosive lay in the hand of the Lieutenant. The Russian was fiddling around with a string.
‘No!’ screamed the German in dismay.
The Lieutenant looked up, a little surprised, the live hand-grenade in his hand. ‘You mustn’t do that!’ the voice yelled in his ear. He stared perplexedly at his hand, and threw the grenade over the parapet where it went off. He had been going to throw it in the shelter. All right, then. He didn’t want to be an animal. ‘Stay here!’ said the Lieutenant. He pointed to the shelter. ‘March, in there. Dawai! Dawai!’ he yelled, and, almost relieved, walked off along the trench. They moved away from one another, two points on an endless grey plane. The Russian with the short hard stride of a firing squad, bound for an execution.
A red flare rose into the sky over the Russian-held saps. Green steel helmets and brown forms spilled out of the trenches. The NCO jerked the whistle to his lips. Noise on both sides. Whistling rifle shots.
‘Let them come nearer!’ shouted the NCO. The firing ceased. Only a Russian machine gun was still hammering through no man’s land. Then it too fell silent. The Major laid his rifle on the parapet, the NCO shoved his last magazine into his pistol. They leaned side by side against the earth wall.
At the head of the Russians ran an officer. With arms upraised, as though to show his men the way. Behind him stumbled stretcher-bearers with a stretcher. They came closer. Still no shot from the trench. Worried by the strange silence, they fell back a little behind the officer. Took a sudden right turn. The officer ran on. His men veered off into no man’s land.
‘They’re not obeying him!’ yelled the NCO.
The wave of the enemy turned into a long column, picking their way over the open ground. Ahead ran the riflemen with their guns, stooped, faces down towards the trench. The machine-gun crew were dragging a tripod with them. And at the end the stretchers. The stretcher-bearers stumbled and fell, picked themselves up again. Their loads swayed. Only the officer charged on ahead. Without a look back.
‘Don’t shoot!’ ordered the Major. ‘Don’t shoot!’ the order went along the line. They watched the men running across the top, and the officer running at their head. He emerged with ever greater clarity, while the others turned into blurred brown shapes in the distance. They could make out the steel helmet, then the grey revolver barrel, and finally the contorted face. He was running towards the foxhole. Two engineers scurried to the place where he would enter their line. He loomed up above the parapet. Gigantic. A broad chest. An unfamiliar being, as from another world. He leaped down into the trench with extended arms. Dull thumps of gunstocks. A gurgle. Then silence. The ghostly queue of men in the distance for a while longer. They melted away among the craters. The NCO and the Major looked at each other.
‘Do you understand that?’
‘A miracle,’ said the Major. They couldn’t believe their eyes.
‘We can make it back!’ the NCO finally managed to blurt out. ‘We can make it back!’ He seized the Major’s hand, and shook it. Laughing, they patted each other on the back. Their grey faces, their dulled eyes, came to life. They slurred their speech like drunks. The rifle with the sling looped around the trigger-guard slipped down from the parapet. Behind them, in the trench, voices began to sound. A tear trickled down the Major’s cheek, like a brook through barren earth. Filthy figures pressed up to them, surrounded the Major. A cigarette was passed from hand to hand. Bodies were still littered around, and their uniforms still stank of dead bodies. But they seemed to have forgotten that there were still tanks behind the barbed wire. That it was a long way back to what was now the Front. The warren of saps, the path through the brush. The ravaged hill. The marshy forest in the hollow. And somewhere in the impenetrable thickets lurked the enemy . . .
The Major thought about the way back. He walked along the trench. Only realized now where he was. Took it in. A moment ago, in the grip of fear, the trench had been nothing but a rip in the earth. A narrow gulch full of shit, blood and bodies. With the empty saps behind them, clarity returned to him. He took in details. Not just vague outlines. A heap of used cartridges. The clay balls from the rip-cords on grenades, as white as mothballs. The shattered tripod of a machine gun. The cloven steel helmet. A human foot detached from a leg, naked and waxy, like an exhibit in a pedicurist’s window. A step further, dangling over the parapet, a head. Curved eyebrows, like a Mongol’s carnival mask. The used air-canister from a flame-thrower. At the bend in the line, the stiff arm you had to push aside that came down behind you again like a turnstile. The supple, bouncy ground. The silent stepping over bodies that were only a thin layer of earth away. The curled-up bit of telephone wire. The dead man spread-eagled against the trench, as though crucified. Only the mosquitoes the Major couldn’t see any more. Their blueish swarms teetered in the air like veils, stepped off the trench with him, as if he were carrion, there to feed them. And then the wounded. They came crawling up out of the foxhole. Stammering words. Oozing bandages. Lightless eyes. Imploring gestures. He had to guarantee them that he wouldn’t leave them behind. That he would have stretchers made for them. He saw the badly wounded Russian Captain, and he knew he couldn’t tell them the truth. That even the healthy ones would be unlikely to reach their own lines alive. That if things got hot, the bearers would have to dump the stretchers in the swamp. He awakened hopes he knew he couldn’t fulfil. He lied. Maybe out of compassion, maybe out of cowardice . . .
He gave instructions for departure calmly and thoughtfully. The order of march. The distribution of the remaining ammunition. It wouldn’t have made sense to leave these dispositions to the NCO. When they moved out, the sun was like a red disc behind the skeleton of the steel mast. The Major went first. He pulled the corpses aside that had blocked off the saps, and only took in the earthen walls of the trenches. At a wrecked machine-gun nest, they swung to the rear. That dead Russian must mark the spot from where the Captain had addressed them. The Major didn’t expect to see him alive any more.
And even when he did see him, propped against the busted tank, pale, motionless, his first thought was that he was dead, and so he walked past him in silence. So many dead men of his acquaintance had looked at him. The Captain was resting in the shade, the Major was dazzled by the sun; it’s not nice to look at a dead man. The Major wasn’t thinking of punishment or guilt, nor even of what he would do if the Captain was still alive. He only felt sympathy. He thought of the climb ahead of him, the way through the swamp, the pressing feeling of responsibility. His bare feet trembled with fatigue. Thirst tormented him. And a sharp pain in his lung.
The NCO, who was walking directly behind the Major, stared at the Captain as at a miracle. He had been watching the Major. A faint movement on the part of the Captain had caught his attention. He saw who it was. Was startled, baffled, too excited to be able to speak, and so, mechanically, he did what the Major before him had also done. He passed him in silence.
The Captain let the rest of his company file past. A grey column, longer than he had hoped. Familiar faces, etched with hunger and pain. He smiled at them all. He felt like embracing every one of them. His joy on seeing them again was perfectly genuine. He was happy. Stood up straight. Pushed his steel helmet back out of his face. His eyes beamed at them till the last man passed. Not one of them had looked at him. Not a word of recognition. Not a gesture. Even from the bearers, who filed past with the wounded. He felt as though he’d been buried alive.
He had to sit down, and perched on the shot-up caterpillar belt of the tank. His hands were shaking. He had no sensation in his feet. He looked up with vacant eyes. In the evening sun, everything looked blueish red. The steel plates against which he rested. The trench with its walls. The bushes in front of the hill. The men slowly getting smaller as they went away. The cratered hollow. With difficulty, he stood up. Cautiously moved his feet. Inched his way forward. Looked for support from the edges of the saps. Tumbled past the opening to his shelter, regardless. He had forgotten there was still a fellow lying there. He was an outcast. He didn’t care about the corpses he stepped over any more either. He didn’t understand he was walking over his position for the last time. He walked through silence, till the gurgle of a man pressed against his ear. The gurgle came from a disfigured face. The face went with a blood-covered uniform of a Russian Captain. It took pain to convert these scattered impressions into a single picture.
‘Woda,’ begged Zostchenko. He sensed there was someone nearby. The Captain looked at him in confusion. ‘Water,’ he had heard him say. He didn’t have so much as a canteen on him.
‘Woda,’ begged the hand of the Russian, with a tired gesture. The Captain reached for the hand. He had to overcome some repugnance to do so. Two outcasts. Two dying men, comforting one another. Absent-mindedly, he stroked the battered hand.
‘Sonia,’ whispered Zostchenko.
That too the Captain thought he somehow understood. What the spume-flecked lips said next escaped him. If you see the icon, give it poison. Always carry the poison with you. You can never tell when you might see the cat. It struck the Captain almost as a reproach, the fact that he couldn’t understand any of it. ‘A cigarette,’ he thought. They hadn’t left him so much as a cigarette. No, there was nothing he could do for the man any more. The gurgling ended. He was not yet dead, and yet already he smelled of corruption. The mosquitoes settled greedily on his lips. The Captain spread his handkerchief over the face.
He staggered onwards, and already had forgotten the man. And the saps that gave him shelter. The path that would have taken him to a destination. Branches slapped him in the face. Mosquitoes supped at his brow. Indifferently, he trotted through the brush. There was something ticking in his ear. He ignored it. In front of him was the lunar landscape climbing to the heights. A blueish surface, spotted with dark round hollows. Further up, there were figures walking. Some had frames they were carrying. His men, perhaps. He didn’t care. The ticking was louder now. The figures flew to the horizon like little dots. Some seemed to leap into a void. The sky took on the colour of blood. The earth was a deep blue. The Captain left the protection of the shrubbery. Next to him, a little stream started up, and stones clattered down the hill. He reeled as he planted one foot in front of the other. What have I done, he asked himself. No thoughts, just fragments of questions broke through his foggy groping forward. A single notion kept coming back: justice. He wouldn’t have been able to express what he meant by it.
There was a bit of wire on his path. He stumbled over it, and fell. When he lay on the ground, he had a different perspective on the heights. The light was reflected in wavy valleys. The shell craters formed picturesque volcanoes. There were mild slopes and little crevices. As far as he could see, he saw nothing comforting. The trickle of a little puddle was like a lake to him. The quest for justice led to understanding. There are different perspectives, he said to himself. As he picked himself up, he repeated this thought to himself. It sounded like a theorem or principle. He dimly remembered that it was quite old already. In his slothfulness, he had not made any use of it, ever. He ought to try to understand everything. Memories occurred to him. There was much he had neglected.
He got up, and ran on. Those of the living dots that hadn’t come to an abrupt stop, had now reached the edge of the height. He and some whistling iron shards were the only moving things on the terrain.
An abandoned stretcher lay across his path. It tempted him to sit down on it. To wait and see what would happen. Whether one of the splinters would finally catch up with him. But he saw dried blood on the carrying straps, and he’d had enough of blood. It was better if the bullet caught him from behind. His back was a good target.
He walked ever more slowly. He wanted to have done with fear. Now that he knew enough, he no longer needed to run for his life. A few more years, an extra day – it hardly mattered, either way.
Finally, the bullet came. It didn’t hurt. Just a tap on his back. The heights, the shot-up pylon, the red of the evening sky all sank into darkness. He plunged into a crater, face down. Water trickled into his mouth. His last thought was: Is this justice?