There was something pitiful about this helplessness of hers. She and her grief were of no use to anyone. All she did was get in the way and stir up quarrels. All her life she had been strong and self-disciplined; now she was lonely and helpless.
Nadya suddenly knelt down and pressed her forehead against Alexandra Vladimirovna's legs.
'Grandmama,' she murmured. 'Dear, kind Grandmama…!'
Viktor got up and turned on the radio. The cardboard loudspeaker moaned and wheezed. It could have been the autumn weather, the wind and snow over the front line, over the burnt villages and mass graves, over Kolyma and Vorkuta, over airfields and the wet tarpaulin roofs of first-aid posts.
Viktor looked at his wife's sombre face. He went over to Alexandra Vladimirovna, took her hands and kissed them. Then he bent down to stroke Nadya's head.
To an outsider it would seem as though nothing had changed in those few moments; the same people were in the same room, oppressed by the same grief and led by the same destiny. Only they knew what an extraordinary warmth had suddenly filled their embittered hearts…
A booming voice suddenly filled the room:
'During the day our troops have engaged the enemy in the regions of Stalingrad, north-eastern Tuapse and Nalchik. On the other Fronts there has been no change.'
10
Lieutenant Peter Bach was taken to hospital after receiving a bullet-wound in the shoulder. The wound turned out not to be serious; the comrades who had accompanied him to the field-hospital congratulated him on his luck.
Even though he was still groaning with pain, Bach felt blissfully happy. Supported by an orderly, he went to take a bath.
The sensation of the warm water on his skin was a real pleasure.
'Is that better than the trenches then?' asked the orderly. Wanting to cheer up the lieutenant, he gestured towards the continual rumble of explosions. 'By the time you're released, we'll have all that sorted out.'
'Have you only just been posted here?' asked Bach.
'What makes you think that?' replied the orderly, rubbing the lieutenant's back with a flannel.
'Down there no one thinks it will be over soon. People think it will take a very long time indeed.'
The orderly looked at the naked lieutenant. Bach remembered that hospital personnel had instructions to report on the morale of the wounded. And he himself had just expressed a lack of confidence in the might of the armed forces. He said very distinctly: 'Yes, just how it will turn out is anyone's guess.'
What had made him repeat these dangerous words? No one can understand unless he himself lives in a totalitarian empire.
He had repeated these words because he was annoyed with himself for feeling frightened after saying them the first time. And also out of self-defence – to deceive a possible informer by a show of nonchalance.
Then, to dissipate any unfortunate impression he might have produced, he said: 'It's more than likely that this is the most important concentration of forces we've assembled since the beginning of the war. Believe me!'
Disgusted at the sterility of the complex game he was playing, he took refuge in a game played by children – squeezing warm soapy water inside his clenched fist. Sometimes it squirted out against the side of the bath, sometimes straight into his face.
'The principle of the flame-thrower,' he said to the orderly.
How thin he had become! Looking at his bare arms and chest, he thought of the young Russian woman who had kissed him two days before. Could he ever have imagined having an affair, in Stalingrad, with a Russian woman? Though it was hardly an affair. Just a wartime liaison. In an extraordinary, quite fantastic setting. They had met in a cellar. He had had to make his way past ruined buildings that were lit only by the flashes of shell-bursts. It was the kind of meeting that it would be good to describe in a book. He should have seen her yesterday. She probably thought he had been killed. Once he was better, he'd go and see her again. It would be interesting to see who'd taken his place. Nature abhors a vacuum…
Soon after his bath he was taken to the X-ray room. The doctor sat him down in front of the screen.
'So, Lieutenant, I hear things have been tough over there,' he said.
'Not as tough as they've been for the Russians,' Bach replied, wishing to please the doctor and be given a good diagnosis, one that would make the operation quick and painless.
The surgeon came in. The two doctors looked at the X-rays. No doubt they could see all the poisonous dissidence that had collected inside his rib-cage over the years.
The surgeon took Bach's hand and began to turn it, moving it towards and away from the screen. His concern was the splinter-wound; it was quite incidental that a young and highly educated man was attached to it.
The doctors talked to each other in a mixture of Latin and jocular curses. Bach realized he was going to be all right – he wasn't going to lose his arm after all.
'Get the lieutenant ready to be operated on,' said the surgeon. 'I'm going to take a look at this skull-wound. It's a difficult case.'
The orderly removed Bach's gown, and the surgeon's assistant, a young woman, told him to sit down on the stool.
'Heavens!' said Bach, smiling pitifully and feeling embarrassed at his nakedness. 'You should warm these stools up, Fraulein, before asking a combatant from the battle of Stalingrad to sit down on them with a bare behind.'
'That's not part of our routine,' she answered in absolute seriousness. Then she began taking out a terrifying-looking array of instruments from a glass-fronted cupboard.
The extraction of the splinter, however, proved quick and simple. Bach even felt a little resentfuclass="underline" the surgeon's contempt for this ridiculously simple operation seemed to extend to the patient.
The assistant asked Bach if he needed to be accompanied back to his ward.
'I'll be all right by myself.'
'Anyway, you won't need to stay here long,' she said reassuringly.
'Fine,' he answered. 'I was already beginning to feel bored.'
She smiled.
Her picture of wounded soldiers was obviously derived from newspaper articles. These were full of stories about soldiers who had quietly slipped out of hospital in order to return to their beloved companies and battalions. They apparently felt an overpowering need to be fighting – otherwise life simply wasn't worth living.
Maybe journalists really had found people like that in hospital. Bach, on the other hand, felt shamefully happy to lie on a bed with clean sheets, eat his plate of rice, take a puff at his – strictly forbidden -cigarette, and strike up a conversation with his neighbours.
There were four men in the ward – three officers serving at the Front and a civil servant with a pot belly and a hollow chest. He had been sent from the rear on a mission and had a car accident near Gumrak. When he lay on his back, his hands folded across his stomach, it looked as though someone had jokingly stuffed a football under the blanket. No doubt this was why he had been nicknamed 'the goalkeeper'.
The goalkeeper was the only one to complain about being temporarily disabled. He spoke in an exalted tone about duty, the army, the Fatherland and his pride at being wounded in Stalingrad.
The three officers were amused at his brand of patriotism. One of them, Krap, who was lying on his stomach because of a wound in the buttocks, had been in command of a detachment of scouts. He had a pale face, thick lips and staring brown eyes.
'I guess you're the kind of goalkeeper who's not content just to defend his own goal,' he said, 'but likes to send the ball into his opponent's net as well.'
Wanting to say something stinging in reply, the goalkeeper asked:
'Why are you so pale? I suppose you have to work in an office.'