'The lieutenant-general would like you to know that this Christmas present from Germany was flown in by a pilot who was mortally wounded over Stalingrad itself. The plane landed in Pitomnik and he was found dead in the cabin.'
36
The soldiers were holding the trees in the palms of their hands. As they warmed up, a fine dew appeared on the needles and the bunker was filled with the smell of resin. The usual smell of the front line – a cross between that of a morgue and that of a blacksmith's – was quite blotted out. To the soldiers it was as if this smell of Christmas emanated from the grey-haired general sitting beside the stove.
Bach felt the beauty and sadness of the moment. These men who defied the power of the Russian heavy artillery, these coarse, hardened soldiers who were dispirited by their lack of ammunition and tormented by vermin and hunger had all understood at once that what they needed more than anything in the world was not bread, not bandages, not ammunition, but these tiny branches twined with useless tinsel, these orphanage toys.
The soldiers sat in a circle round the old man on the crate. Only that summer he had led the vanguard of the motorized infantry to the Volga. Everywhere, all his life, this man had been an actor. He had played a role not only in front of the soldiers or during conversations with a superior officer, but also when he was at home, when he was with his wife, his daughter-in-law or his grandson, when he went for a walk in the garden. He had played a role when he lay alone in bed at night, his general's uniform spread out on the chair beside him. And of course he had been playing a role when he had asked the soldiers about their mothers, when he had made coarse jokes about their affairs with women, when he had looked inside their cooking-pots and tasted their soup with exaggerated seriousness, when he had bowed his head austerely before still uncovered graves, when he had given heartfelt, fatherly speeches to the new recruits. And all this hadn't been a pose; it had been a part of his inner nature, infused into all his thoughts. He was quite unconscious of it; it could no more be separated from him than salt can be filtered out of sea-water. It had been there as he entered the bunker, as he flung open his greatcoat, as he sat down on the crate in front of the stove, as he looked calmly and sorrowfully at the soldiers and wished them a happy Christmas Eve. But now, for the first time in his life, he became conscious of this theatricality; and – just as salt crystallizes when water freezes – it deserted him, leaving him to his melancholy, to his sense of pity for these hungry, exhausted men. Now he was just a weak, helpless old man sitting with a group of other men who were equally helpless, equally unhappy.
One soldier quietly began to sing.
'O, Tannenbaum, O, Tannenbaum, wie grtin sind deine Blatter.'
Two or three more voices joined in. The scent of pine-needles was enough to make you feel dizzy; the words of the children's song were like fanfares of heavenly trumpets.
'O, Tannenbaum, O, Tannenbaum .. .'
Out of the cold darkness of oblivion, as though from the depths of the sea, long-dead thoughts and feelings rose slowly up to the surface. They brought no joy, no relief, but their strength was a human strength, the greatest strength in the world…
One after another came the explosions of large-calibre Soviet shells. Ivan must have been annoyed about something – perhaps he had guessed that the besieged soldiers were celebrating Christmas. None of these soldiers, however, paid the least attention to the plaster falling from the ceiling or to the clouds of red sparks belched out by the stove.
Then there was a burst of furious, metallic hammering; the earth seemed to be screaming. That was Ivan playing with his beloved Katyushas. Then came a crackle of machine-gun fire.
The old man sat there with his head bowed; he looked like thousands of other men who have been exhausted by a long life. The footlights had faded; the actors had taken off their make-up and gone out into the grey light of day. Now they all looked the same: the legendary general, an insignificant corporal, even Private Schmidt who had been suspected of harbouring dissident thoughts… Bach suddenly thought of Lenard. A man like him would never have surrendered to the charm of this moment. There was too much in him that was German, that was dedicated only to the State; now it was too late for that to be made human.
Bach looked up towards the door and caught sight of Lenard.
37
Stumpfe, once the finest soldier in the company, a man the new recruits had regarded with frightened admiration, was now unrecognizable. His large, blue-eyed face was thin and sunken. His uniform and greatcoat were just crumpled rags that barely kept out the wind and frost. He had lost his sharp intelligence and his jokes no longer made anyone laugh.
An enormous man with a vast appetite, he suffered more acutely from hunger than anyone else in the company. His constant hunger drove him out foraging early in the morning. He dug about in the ruins, begged, gathered up crumbs, hung around outside the kitchen. Bach had grown used to his tense, watchful face. Stumpfe thought about food incessantly; he searched for it even when they were fighting.
As he made his way back to the bunker, Bach caught sight of the huge back and shoulders of this eternally hungry soldier. He was digging in a patch of wasteland where the kitchens and supply-depot had once stood. Here and there he found old cabbage leaves and tiny acorn-sized potatoes that had escaped the pot. Then an old woman appeared from behind a stone wall. She was very tall and was wearing a ragged man's coat, tied with a piece of string, and a pair of down-at-heel hobnailed boots.
She walked towards the soldier, staring down at the ground as she stirred around in the snow with a hook made from a thick piece of twisted wire.
Their two shadows met on the snow; otherwise they would have been unaware of each other's presence.
Finally the vast German looked up at the old woman. Trustingly holding out a cabbage leaf that was stone-hard and full of holes, he said slowly and solemnly: 'Good day, madam.'
The old woman pushed back the piece of rag that had fallen forward onto her forehead, looked at him with dark eyes that were full of kindness and intelligence, and said equally slowly and majestically: 'Good day, sir.'
It was a summit meeting between the representatives of two great peoples. Bach was the only witness; the soldier and the old woman forgot the meeting immediately.
As it grew warmer, big flakes of snow settled on the ground, on the red brick-dust, on the crosses of graves, on the turrets of abandoned tanks, in the ears of dead men waiting to be buried.
The snow filled the air with a soft grey-blue mist, softening the wind and gunfire, bringing the earth and sky together into one swaying blur.
The snow fell on Bach's shoulders; it was as though flakes of silence were falling on the still Volga, on the dead city, on the skeletons of horses. It was snowing everywhere, on earth and on the stars; the whole universe was full of snow. Everything was disappearing beneath it: guns, the bodies of the dead, filthy dressings, rubble, scraps of twisted iron.
This soft, white snow settling over the carnage of the city was time itself; the present was turning into the past, and there was no future.
38
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Bach was lying on a bunk behind a cotton curtain that screened off a small corner of the cellar. A woman was sleeping beside him, her head on his shoulder. Her face was very thin and looked somehow both childish and withered. Bach looked at her thin neck and at the outline of her breasts under her dirty grey blouse. Very gently, so as not to disturb her, he lifted an untidy tress of hair to his lips. It was springy and smelt of life and warmth.