She thought about the gypsies on the bonfire. Her hands were shaking. She glanced at Grekov to see if he'd noticed.
Yesterday she'd thought that no one in this building was ever going to talk to her; today the bearded second lieutenant, tommy-gun in hand, had rushed by as she was eating her kasha and called out as though they were old friends: 'Don't just pick at it, Katya!' He had gestured at her to show how she ought to plunge her spoon into the pot.
She had seen the boy who'd read the poem yesterday carrying some mortar-bombs on a tarpaulin. Later she had looked round and seen him standing by the water-boiler. Realizing he was watching her, she had looked away, but by then he had already turned away himself.
She already knew who would start showing her letters and photographs tomorrow, who would look at her in silence and sigh, who would bring her a present of half a flask of water and some rusks of white bread, who would say he didn't believe in women's love and would never fall in love again… As for the bearded second lieutenant, he would probably start pawing her.
Finally an answer came through from Headquarters. Katya started to repeat the message to Grekov.
'Your orders are to make a detailed report every day at twelve hundred hours precisely…'
Grekov suddenly knocked Katya's hand off the switch. She let out a cry.
He grinned and said: 'A fragment from a mortar-bomb has put the wireless-set out of action. Contact will be re-established when it suits Grekov.'
Katya gaped at him in astonishment.
'I'm sorry, Katyusha,' said Grekov and took her by the hand.
59
In the early morning Divisional Headquarters were informed by Byerozkin's regiment that the men in house 6/1 had excavated a passage into one of the concrete tunnels belonging to the Tractor Factory; some of them were now in the factory itself. A duty-officer at Divisional HQ informed Army HQ, where it was then reported to General Krylov himself. Krylov ordered one of the men to be brought to him for questioning. A signals officer was detailed to take a young boy, chosen by the duty-officer, to Army HQ. They walked down a ravine leading to the bank; on the way the boy kept turning round and anxiously asking questions.
'I must go back home. My instructions were to reconnoitre the tunnel – so we could evacuate the wounded.'
'Never mind,' said the officer. 'You're about to see someone a little senior to your own boss. You have to do as he says.'
On the way the boy told the officer how they had been in house 6/1 for over two weeks, how they'd lived for some time on a cache of potatoes they'd found in the cellar, how they'd drunk the water from the central heating system, and had given the Germans such a hard rime that they'd sent an envoy with an offer of free passage to the factory. Naturally their commander – the boy referred to him as the 'house-manager' – had replied by ordering them all to open fire. When they reached the Volga, the boy lay down and began to drink; he then shook the drops from his jacket onto the palm of his hand and licked them off. It was as though he were starving and they were crumbs of bread. He explained that the water in the central heating system had been foul. To begin with, they had all had stomach-upsets, but then the house-manager had ordered them to boil the water and they had recovered.
They walked on in silence. The boy listened to the sound of the bombers and looked up at the night sky, now decorated by red and green flares and the curved trajectories of tracer-bullets and shells. He saw the glow of the guttering fires in the town, the white flame of the guns and the blue columns of water sent up by shells falling in the Volga. His pace gradually slackened, till finally the officer shouted: 'Come on now! Look lively!'
They made their way between the rocks on the bank; mortar-bombs whistled over their heads and they were constantly challenged by sentries. Then they climbed a little path that wound up the slope between the bunkers and trenches. Sometimes there were duck-boards underfoot, sometimes steps cut into the clay. Finally they reached the Headquarters of the 62nd Army. The officer straightened his belt and made his way down a communication trench towards some bunkers constructed from particularly solid logs.
The sentry went to call an aide; through a half-open door they glimpsed the soft light of an electric lamp under its shade. The aide shone his torch at them, asked the boy's name and told them to wait.
'But how am I going to get back home?' asked the boy.
'All roads lead to Kiev,' answered the aide. He then added sternly: 'Go on now – get inside! Otherwise you'll get yourself killed by a mortar-bomb and I'll have to answer for you to the general.'
The boy sat down in the warm, dark entranceway, leant against the wall and fell asleep.
In his dreams the terrible cries and screams of the last few days blurred together with the quiet, peaceful murmur of his own home – a home that no longer existed. Then someone shook him and he heard an angry voice:
'Shaposhnikov! You're wanted by the general! Look lively!'
60
Seryozha Shaposhnikov spent two days at Army HQ. He found it oppressive. People seemed to hang around all day doing nothing.
Somehow it reminded him of the time he had spent eight hours in Rostov with his grandmother, waiting for the train to Sochi – he laughed at the absurd idea of comparing house 6/1 to a holiday resort.
He kept begging the chief of staff to let him go, but the latter had had no definite instructions from the general. The general had already spoken to Shaposhnikov, but after two questions their conversation had been interrupted by a telephone call from his commanding officer. The chief of staff preferred not to let the boy go for the time being – the general might still remember him.
Every time the chief of staff came into the bunker, he felt Shaposhnikov looking at him. Sometimes he said: 'Don't worry, I haven't forgotten,' but at other times the boy's constant look of entreaty really got under his skin. 'Anyway,' he demanded, 'what are you complaining about? It's nice and warm here and you get lots of food. There'll be time enough to get yourself killed back at the front.'
When a man is plunged up to his neck into the cauldron of war, he is quite unable to look at his life and understand anything; he needs to take a step back. Then, like someone who has just reached the bank of a river, he can look round: was he really, only a moment ago, in the midst of those swirling waters?
Seryozha's old life in the militia regiment now seemed almost unbelievably peacefuclass="underline" sentry-duty at night in the steppe, a distant glow in the sky, the soldiers' conversations…
Life in house 6/1 had blotted out everything that had gone before. Improbable though this life was, it now seemed the only reality; it was as if everything before was imaginary. Only now and then, at night, did he feel a sudden twinge, a sudden surge of love as he imagined Alexandra Vladimirovna's grey head or Aunt Zhenya's quick, mocking eyes.
During his first days in house 6/1 he had thought how strange and impossible it would be if people like Grekov, Kolomeitsev and Antsiferov were suddenly to appear at home… Now he sometimes thought how absurd his aunts, his cousin and Uncle Viktor would seem if they were suddenly to become part of his present life.
Heavens! If his grandmother could hear the way he swore now…
Grekov!
He wasn't sure whether these men had always been exceptional, or whether they had only become exceptional on arriving in house 6/1.
Grekov! What an extraordinary combination of strength, daring, authority and common sense. He remembered the price of children's shoes before the war; he knew the wages of a machinist or a cleaning lady, how much grain and money the peasants received for each unit of work on the collective farm where his uncle lived.