Grossman, Vasily by Life & Fate (Trans. Chandler)

Author:Life & Fate (Trans. Chandler) [html] [Life & Fate (Trans. Chandler) [html]]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

23

During the initial air-attack, a bomb had fallen on top of the underground pipeline that housed one of Byerozkin's battalion command-posts; Byerozkin himself, Battalion Commander Dyrkin and the telephonist had been trapped. Finding himself in complete darkness, deafened and choking with dust, Byerozkin had thought he was no longer in the land of the living. Then, in a brief moment of silence, Dyrkin had sneezed and asked: 'Are you alive, comrade Lieutenant-Colonel?'

'Yes,' Byerozkin had answered.

On hearing his commander's voice, Dyrkin had recovered his customary good humour.

'Well then, everything's fine!' he said, hawking and spitting. In fact, things seemed far from fine. Dyrkin and the telephonist were up to their necks in rubble; it was impossible for them even to check whether they had any broken bones. An iron girder above them prevented them from straightening their backs; it was this girder, however, that had saved their lives. Dyrkin turned on his torch for a moment. What they saw was quite terrifying: there were large slabs of stone hanging right over their heads, together with twisted pieces of iron, slabs of buckled concrete covered in oil, and hacked-up cables. One more bomb and all this would crash down on top of them.

For a while they huddled in silence, listening to the furious force hammering at the workshops above. Even posthumously, these workshops continued to work for the defence, thought Byerozkin; it was difficult to destroy iron and reinforced concrete.

Then they examined the walls. There was clearly no way they could get out by themselves. The telephone was intact but silent; the line must have been cut.

It was also almost impossible to talk - they were coughing constantly and their voices were drowned by the roar of explosions.

Though it was less than twenty-four hours since he had been in delirium, Byerozkin now felt full of strength. In battle, his strength imposed itself on all his subordinates. Nevertheless, there was nothing essentially military or warlike about it; it was a simple, reasonable and very human strength. Few men were able to display strength of this kind in the inferno of battle; they were the true masters of the war.

The bombardment died down. It was replaced by an iron rumble. Byerozkin wiped his nose, coughed and said: 'Now the wolves are howling. Their tanks are attacking the Tractor Factory . . . And we're right in their path.'

Perhaps because he couldn't imagine anything worse, Dyrkin began singing a song from a film. In a loud voice, he half-sang, half-coughed:

'What a beautiful life we lead, what a beautiful life! Things can never go wrong, never go wrong with such a wonderful chief.'

The telephonist thought Dyrkin had gone mad. All the same, coughing and spitting, he joined in:

'She'll grieve for me, she says she'll grieve for me all her life, But soon another man, another man, will make her his wife.'

Meanwhile, up in the workshop filled with dust, smoke and the roar of tanks, Glushkov was tearing the skin off his hands and fingers as he rooted up slabs of stone, iron and concrete.

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