He looked at her now, striding ahead of him through the moonlit forest, her head erect, her black hair dancing on her shoulders. It had all been worth it, he thought, all the years of death, if a hundredth of the new generation were her equal. It was a comforting thought, and comforting thoughts seemed more important as the years went by. It was strange how the more impact a man had on the outside world, on other people’s lives, the more the inner world clamored for attention. Perhaps she reminded him of himself at twenty, another orphan at war with the world, propelled by ideals rather than theory, with nothing to lose but life itself. Perhaps her generation would find a real dawn, perhaps not. History was never sentimental. And how many people had he told that to?
He could hear Yakovenko behind him munching noisily on yet another chocolate bar. The man was becoming an addict. A pawn of imperialist chocolate companies! He laughed out loud, and Nadezhda turned and smiled at him for the first time since he’d broken the news.
Up ahead Morisov was gesturing the line to a halt. They were close to the Ulla River, and the Lepel Bridge would be guarded. If necessary, they could ford it with a rope, but the waters would still be swollen with the spring thaw and extremely cold. Kuznetsky picked out Tolyshkin for a forward reconnaissance, watched him disappear into the darkness, and sat down with his back against a tree.
Yakovenko sank down beside him. “Well, Yakov?” he asked, “why do you think Moscow wants you?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea,” Kuznetsky replied, his eyes on Nadezhda. She came over and sat on his other side.
“I’ve decided to forgive you,” she said only half jokingly.
He smiled and said nothing, slipping his arm around her shoulders and pulling her closer. Morisov was trying to read his map by the moonlight; the others were all propping up trees, looking exhausted. One thing he’d miss, Kuznetsky thought, was being called by name. In Moscow it would be “Colonel” again, complete with the looks of deference for the uniform and fear for the reputation.
Nadezhda, with her usual remarkable facility, had already fallen asleep on his shoulder, but Kuznetsky’s head still whirred with thoughts when Tolyshkin returned. He eased her head gently onto the turf and joined Morisov.
“Good and bad,” Tolyshkin said. “The bridge is guarded by only two men, but the light’s very bright and there’s at least a hundred yards of open ground to cover.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad,” Morisov said.
“That was the good news. There’s a German bivouac another fifty yards down the road on the other side. About twenty tents, four half-tracks, one Panzer III. All the tents are dark, so I guess everyone’s asleep, but they’re close enough to be wakened by footsteps, let alone gunfire.”
Morisov sucked his teeth and looked at the forest roof.
“How about the bridge,” Kuznetsky asked, “along the girders?”
Tolyshkin thought for a moment. “Not too difficult — the trees go right down to the bank on both sides.”
“How’s the river look?” Morisov asked.
“Full and cold.”
“What about the far side?” Kuznetsky asked.
“The Germans aren’t holding their throats over the parapet. I’d say at least twenty yards of open ground between them and any cover.”
“There must be more than a hundred of them,” Morisov muttered.
Kuznetsky looked at his watch. “Look, it’ll be getting light in a couple of hours, but the moon will be down an hour before that. The Germans will probably cross over in the morning and spread out, so we can’t stay here. It’s either tackle the bridge or the river, and I don’t fancy the river. Neither Anatoly nor Nadezhda can swim. Remember the last river crossing?”
Morisov and Tolyshkin grunted their assent. Four lost that time.
“So, we’ll get under the bridge, wait for the Germans to cross, and then deal with whoever they leave behind after dark.”
“And if they don’t cross?” Morisov asked.
“Then we’ll have problems, but we won’t be any worse off than we are now,” Kuznetsky answered. He got up to indicate that the decision had been made. Half an hour later he led the group down toward the river. They came out of the trees a hundred yards downstream from the bridge, whose upper structure was still reflecting the moonlight. Within minutes that light was gone, the bridge no more than a series of triangular shadows against the starry sky. The group edged their way along the bank, the sound of their breathing barely audible above the current.
Yakovenko stretched his legs and almost cried out with the pain of cramp. They had been sitting inside the underslung girders of the bridge for almost twelve hours, darkness had fallen, and Kuznetsky still showed no inclination to move. He sat there, ten yards away, legs crossed like Buddha, a poem on his knees, the one the Hungarian deserter had written out for him the year before.
It was written by a Communist, Kuznetsky said, but Yakovenko thought it sounded too melancholy for a real Communist. The poet’s name was Attila Joszef. And the poem was called “Consciousness.” The Hungarian had said that Attila threw himself under a train years before the war. A messy way to die, and not much fun for the railway workers who had to pick him up. Kuznetsky was always reading it; he had to know it off by heart now, Yakovenko thought.
Yakovenko massaged his calves, still thinking about Kuznetsky. They had been comrades-in-arms for more than two years now, and in that time his opinion of the commissar had changed only for the better. The man’s qualities as a leader had become more and more apparent, but it wasn’t just that. The man himself had changed, and not in the usual way. Yakovenko had seen any number of men — and women too — hardened by the partisan life, but Kuznetsky was the only person he’d known who seemed to have been softened, humanized by it. God alone knew what he’d done before the war — he never spoke of it, never hinted, ignored any direct questions — but whatever it had been, it must have taken a toll.
Yakovenko himself had been an office worker with the railways, had been called up, propelled to the front, and found himself left high and dry by the German advance, all in the space of a few days. For six months he had survived alone in the vastness of the Pripet Marshes, living off lichen and birds’ eggs and whatever scraps he could beg from isolated villages. He’d been picked up by the brigade on the very day that Kuznetsky had been parachuted in as the new commissar and, like everyone else, had loathed him. He wasn’t just hard — that would have been acceptable — but he also was pitilessly correct. If the book said show no mercy, he showed none. If the book said nothing, he still showed none. Yakovenko knew he wasn’t the only one who’d toyed with the idea of putting a bullet through the new commissar’s back.
But slowly and surely two things had changed. The brigade had been honed into a formidable fighting machine and Kuznetsky turned into a human being. Even a likeable one. He still let little slip, but the rules themselves had changed: they were his now, not Moscow’s, and they nearly always made perfect sense. He was still hard, but he now seemed aware of his own hardness, and somehow that made all the difference. Occasionally over the last few months Yakovenko had felt almost sorry for him, for the responsibility that seemed to bear a little more heavily each day. Nadezhda had made him happier but she’d also become one more responsibility.
He had watched Kuznetsky at the trial of that poor peasant bastard the week before. All the old self-righteous correctness had gone. Perhaps a man had only so many death sentences to give, even in times like these. If so, he guessed that Kuznetsky was near the end of his rope.