At a New Year party, which doubled as our farewell party and was arranged by our superiors for us at the fermented mare’s milk sanatorium, Lieutenant General Biyazi told us, ‘Your weapon in this war is the German language. You can be taught to shoot once you get to the front line.’
With that, we departed, hustled through the German language in a rushed two and a half months because there really was an urgent need for military interpreters at the front.
‘Genossen,’ said Auerbach, his voice today rather solemn, ‘This will be our last lesson.’ He paused and we waited patiently, trying not to fidget, not to breathe too loudly. Standing on tiptoe, he began suddenly to recite:
For a time we are confused, not understanding what is going on. ‘Das Ew’ge regt sich fort in allen.’ Goethe put that well. Auerbach stops, and then says in an uncharacteristically stern tone, ‘I would ask you, Genossen, to remember that the author of this poem was a German. When we win and fascism has finally been done away with in Germany, we shall have the right to tell ourselves that never, even during the years of war and brutality, did we cease to love this beautiful language.’
As far as we were concerned, our relations with the German language had not recovered from our experiences at school, but that was now beside the point. We were touched by the solemnity with which he addressed us. We were issued with hats with earflaps, and the girls finally had their canvas boots replaced with leather boots. So, now it really was time for us to leave. Farewell, Stavropol! We were the course’s first cohort.
We had not yet lived there for four months, despite our diplomas certifying we had graduated from a four-month course, rather than the two-and-a-half months we had actually studied. It seemed like a whole epoch, lived in a lyrical whirl of imminent departure.
‘Ey, hey! Mother Volga!’
We had before us a hundred versts [1 verst is approx. 1.07 km] of the ancient sledge track down the Volga to Kuibyshev. A taciturn old man in a sheepskin coat, with a wispy beard the wind blew to one side, was answerable for our safe arrival. He was accompanied by young lads to handle the collective farm horses.
We took our places in the sledges, buried our feet in straw, and moved off. Our groom, a boy of fifteen or so, ran alongside, never letting go of the reins. Following the front runner, our sledge turned, creaking and swaying, and friskily picked up speed across the empty market square, tossing up bits of straw and sending lumps of frozen horse dung flying over the snow. And then, downhill to the Volga following a broad, well-travelled path and catching up with the other sledges. Our driver jumped into the sledge, whipped up the horse and yelled at the top of his voice, ‘Hey! Mother Volga!’
And so began our nostalgic journey to war. More than thirty years ago I described that journey along the Volga. I am anxious now about repeating myself, but when, year after year, you are writing what, in truth, is the story of your life, you can hardly avoid (and does it matter?) repetition, if that is what you yourself need to achieve a new understanding of both life and yourself. I hope that in my case such rumination may be judged at least partly justifiable.
So, on we go. The horse pulling us along, the sledge swaying, the snow a light grey blanket. The white, frozen Volga slips past beneath us and its white, snowy banks have branches of scrub scrabbling out everywhere from under the snow. Beyond the sloping bank is a white expanse where earth meets sky, and when the bank falls away the infinitely receding white distance beckons enticingly. Suddenly a little house appears in the snow. Who can be living there? We speed on by, plucked now from our routine of German lessons, venturing into the unknown.
As I look back, I can say we had never before been so lighthearted and carefree, and never would be again. In the dusk the horses hauled themselves over to the bank and up to a village. We got out of the sledges and scrambled after them, sinking into the snow.
Dogs barked gruffly. Above the roofs the smoke stood in a motionless column. Now it was no longer snow underfoot but floorboards. The muggy, musty warmth of a hut, a baby crying, the sound of boots and bustle in the courtyard on the other side of the log cabin wall; grey eyes looking silently out from under a headscarf, patiently taking note of us, one by one, our whole posse; and a hand lit by a russet glow stirring red embers with a poker.
Frozen bread that had been thawed, a cauldron of steaming porridge, conversation in the evening with the master of the house beside a dented brass samovar. A night sleeping under greatcoats on a floor spread with straw.
‘Arise, Monsieur le Comte, you have great things to accomplish!’ Such was the wake-up call in our student hostel. It is supposedly how his servant would waken Saint-Simon. And again we take to the road. Low snow drifting. Blurred figures ahead. We catch up with them. Women wrapped in shawls are walking in single file a little to the side of us, on a footpath trodden in the snow. They are on their way to Kuibyshev to see for the last time their husbands, who have been taken for the war.
We continue in our sledges, and encounter another dark file of women. Women are on the move the whole length of the Volga: some will not have held back on abuse for their drunkard husbands; what names will they not have called them? But now they stumble, stooped and freezing, their felt boots sinking into the snow. They have no orders, no time by which they must arrive, no package sealed with wax, but carry a gift warmed by their bosom – some last farewell, some last token of love from home.
We, state officials with provisions and horses, we who are so necessary for the accomplishment of great things, go very quiet. Only one voice from among us sings uncertainly,
A snowstorm blows up. We run behind the sledges to get warm. Suddenly, out of the blizzard, a dog is sitting alert in the snow, its jaw silvered with grey hoarfrost. A man sees us and stops shovelling and throwing snow to one side. He is a strange man, appearing out of nowhere, in a long black coat. His face is not old. He looks educated. He peers at us quizzically, quietly, intelligently… Suddenly someone yells, ‘Move on!’ That is addressed to us. ‘Nothing to look at here!’ The barrel of a rifle shows from behind the shoulder of a sheepskin coat. Somewhere nearby there will be a watchtower. We guess uneasily that we are in the vicinity of a forced labour camp, and feel bad.
We look around. The whirling snow blanks out this vision. There is no sign now of the man in black, or the dog, or the barrel of a rifle. We relapse into the cheery inebriation of new recruits.
From Kuibyshev to Moscow. GHQ on Gogol Boulevard. Some thirty of us are assembled there. A pleasant looking major with a shock of blond hair comes out to us, a folder with dangling laces pressed against his thigh. He informs us that, by order of Comrade Stalin, an Airborne Forces Directorate is being set up to strike at the enemy behind the front line in the territory temporarily occupied. ‘Interpreters are needed and we have decided to pass you over to the AFD. Any questions?’