Senka

That morning, Senka was still in control of himself. But when, after a brief respite, the aircraft started coming in not only from the sun, but from all four sides, he realized he couldn’t go on. His body shook with a slight, dreadful shiver, and, whenever he relaxed his jaw slightly, his teeth started to chatter, just like they did when he had malaria. He had a sinking feeling in his belly, and his mouth was dry and bitter from tobacco smoke. That morning he had still had a full pouch, but now there was nothing but dust Ñ he had smoked his three-day ration in the space of half a day.

“There’s enough left for a couple more smokes,” thought Senka, as he sprinkled the dust mixed with breadcrumbs onto some paper, “and then...”

But he didn’t have time to think this through. A whole swarm of planes (“A hundred odd,” was the thought that flashed through Senka’s head) with wheel carriages like red talons started swooping straight over him. He dropped his pouch and paper, shoved his head between his legs, clenched his teeth, screwed up his eyes and sat like this until the explosions stopped. Then he carefully opened his eyes and stuck his head out of the trench. Through the smoke blowing somewhere to the left he spotted the black wing of a plane with a black cross on it. Senka closed his eyes again. But nothing happened. The plane flew off.

“Oh my God... WhenÕs it going to end... Oh my God...”

Senka began to look for his paper, then the tobacco pouch, then rolled a cigarette, but his fingers were trembling, the tobacco fell out and the cigarette turned out thin and pathetic.

Titkov, the machine-gunner from the second platoon, crawled past him. His face was all wet, his forehead and cheeks caked with earth. His right arm dangled like a rag and dragged along the ground. He stopped for a minute by Senka’s trench, took a drag of his cigarette and crawled on further.

“He’s done his share,” thought Senka, and he imagined Shura the Sanitary Instructress bandaging TitkovÕs arm, his shaking as he was admitted to the medsanbat and lying on the straw.

More planes appeared over the copse. Soldiers on their way past Senka’s trench ran in all directions as they saw them. Someone heavy and hot jumped on Senka and pinned him to the ground.

The bombs kept on exploding close by for some time, and when they finally stopped, Senka tried to straighten up. But the heavy thing still lay on him and would not budge. Senka swore at it, but the heavy thing still lay there. He pushed up with his arms against the ground and threw the heavy thing aside. A strapping soldier wearing an unbuttoned tunic wet with sweat lay beside Senka, looking at him with frozen and unblinking eyes. Senka got scared.

Yesterday as they drove to the front line, he had seen only horses, swollen, their legs buckled, lying on the road. The human bodies must have been removed. And now this man was lying right beside him, so large, still warm... And his arm doubled back behind his head.

Soldiers ran past the trench, one after the other, with mines and mess-tins round their necks, bent double, dragging their machine-guns. The planes made a second swoop.

“Here they come again, the bastards...”

The noise rolled away somewhere to the side. A thick asphyxiating dust spread over the ground. Nothing was visible: not the sky or the copse, nothing but the dull flashing of the back-plate of a rifle on the parapet. Senka looked at it maliciously.

“You stupid stick!” he thought.

Without even thinking, he just took the rifle down from the parapet, squeezed it between his legs, raised the cock, put his hand on the muzzle, winced and pressed the trigger.

He didn’t hear the shot. Something knocked him hard and burnt his hand. And his whole body suddenly felt feeble. His fingers hung helplessly. His blood trickled in fine streams and dripped onto his trousers. A large red stain welled up on his knee.

Someone shouted right above his earhole:

“What the hell are you shooting for, you moron!”

Senka looked up. Sitting right in front of him was the platoon commander.

Senka looked at him blankly, then at his arm, then back at the commander. The lieutenant seemed to be shouting something, but Senka heard nothing. He looked at the unshaven face, grey with dust, saw his lips moving and his evil, prickly eyes shining, but did not even hear him. He knew only one thing: now he was going to climb out of that trench and go back there towards the river, where there were no planes, no soldier with the frozen eyes, none of that... And he sat there and listened and said nothing, and then Ñ he didn’t even remember whether the lieutenant ordered him or he decided himself Ñ pulled on his greatcoat, threw his bag over his shoulder and, supporting himself on the rifle, climbed out of the trench. He couldn’t feel any pain in his arm.

A junior sergeant Ñ Senka had forgotten his name Ñ appeared from somewhere. He was squatting nearby.

“Take him to the company commander, and then to the medsanbat.”

The junior sergeant said something in reply and jabbed Senka in the side with the butt of his sub-machine-gun.

“Let’s go...”

And off they went Ñ he and the junior sergeant.

They couldn’t find the company commander, and his combat deputy ordered them straight to the medsanbat Ñ they knew what to do with people like that there.

“IÕd have shot him on the spot, but it’s a shame to waste the bullets.”

It was only after they had walked about a hundred steps that the contents of this phrase got through to Senka. He turned round, but the lieutenant had already gone. They walked on. Telegraph poles with ripped wires loomed ahead.

 

2

 

At the medsanbat, by a large tent covered with branches, was a crowd of soldiers. Some were lying, some sitting, some just loitering. Nurses in filthy, spotted white coats kept running in and out of the tents. Huge covered vehicles lurched and rumbled around the tents. Two soldiers, shirtless and swearing, carried out stretchers with wounded and putting them into the vehicles. The wounded looked silently and anxiously at the sky. Over there, over the front line Ñ six or seven kilometers away Ñ the planes were swooping again. They couldn’t see the front line itself Ñ there were bushes in the way, but the flowering bouquets of explosions over them were clearly visible, and Senka felt a tingle down his spine. He turned round and watched a vehicle being loaded up.

The junior sergeant was sitting nearby and smoking silently. He hadn’t said a single word along the way. Senka wanted to ask him for a smoke, but didn’t have the guts.

“He’s bound to say no,” he thought, swallowing his saliva.

A dark little man in a white coat with large round spectacles ran past. He stopped for a second and barked, without so much as a glance:

“Left hand case, is it?”

“Yep,” replied the junior sergeant and got up.

“Get over here...” said the man in glasses as he rushed into the tent.

The tent was stuffy and smelt of something pungent and unpleasant. Wounded soldiers were sitting along the walls. There were two white tables in the middle covered with oilcloth. On one of them lay a soldier with his head flung back. Only his rough unshaven chin was visible. He groaned quietly and monotonously. One of his legs was missing, instead there was something red, with rolled up skin and a piece of bone sticking out of it.

Someone tall, also in a white coat, was bending over and picking at the red stuff with something shiny.

“Oh my God...” thought Senka, “whenÕs it gonna end?..” and he began to feel sick.

“Take off your shirt... and sit down here...”

The little man with glasses moved up a stool with his knee. Senka, whose left hand had become heavy and awkward, although it didn’t hurt at all, pulled his greatcoat over his head with some difficulty, then started taking off his tunic and vest. His hand couldn’t get through and just got caught in the sleeve.

“Why?” thought Senka. “I’m okay apart from my hand... But he’s making me take my shirt off...”

“Sit on the stool. How many times do I have to tell you?”

Senka sat down and put his hand on his knee, palm upwards. The blood stopped, but where was the actual wound? He couldn’t make it out Ñ everything was sealed up and covered in dirt.

“How old are you?” asked the little man in glasses (he must have been a doctor).

Senka didn’t understand the question.

“Well, what’s your year of birth?”

“Me? 1924,” Senka replied hesitantly.

“1924, and strong as a horse,” said the doctor and felt Senka’s taut biceps. “Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?”

Senka said nothing.

“You could throttle two fritzes with one hand, but instead you...” The doctor didn’t finish but rapidly tweaked Senka’s belly, tightened his skin and jabbed it with a huge needle with something made of glass in the middle. Senka shuddered, out of surprise not pain.

Then the doctor slowly washed his hand with damp cotton wool Ñ that really was painful. Then without turning round he shouted to someone: “It’s dry...” A nurse brought some bandages held in shiny tweezers, and the doctor tightly wound them round his hand.

“That’s it... Get dressed.”

Senka pulled on his vest, tunic and, not knowing whether he was allowed to sit on the stool, walked off a few steps and watched the one-legged man being taken off the table.

“Well, what do you want now?”

The doctor looked him up and down, and Senka suddenly felt embarrassed.

“Where’s your... who brought you?”

“He’s there... outside.”

“Tell him to take you to the fourth tent.”

Senka went outside.

There was only one casualty in the fourth tent. He was asleep on the straw, his legs spread and his white bandaged arm on his belly. There was a sentry at the entrance.

Senka shook the straw, put his rolled greatcoat down on it as a pillow and stretched out beside the wounded man. Outside, a vehicle was blowing its horn. There was still rumbling somewhere not far away. Senka lay there and looked at the green canvas of the tent drooping above his head. Then he closed his eyes. He lay for a long time with closed eyes...

...Old, one-eyed shabby-tailed Gypsy ran up. He wagged his tail, licked SenkaÕs hand and went on his way... Then a large bowl of pelmeni appeared. They were very hot, and his mother kept giving him more and more. He could hear someone playing an accordion outside the window. He hurried to finish the pelmeni, so that he could go with the lads to the River Yenisei, but then remembered that his father had told him to mend the porch. He started looking for an axe...

Someone entered and left the tent. Senka opened his eyes, but there was already no one there. However, the tent floor was swaying slowly. The soldier sleeping beside him mumbled something in his sleep. Senka closed his eyes again...

...The Yenisei is so very very wide. And there’s a little boat on it. Father’s in it. There arenÕt any rivers like that here. They’re all small, sour and yellow. And there are no forests here. Can you call these forests? Just baby oaks and ashes.

God knows what it is.

They told us we had come to beat the Germans... But where are the Germans? They brought us in the evening, ordered us to dig trenches. They said this was the front line and that behind that next mound was the first echelon. But Senka could see neither the echelon nor the Germans. He supped on dry biscuits from a bag Ñ the field kitchen had got stuck somewhere in the rear Ñ and started digging himself a trench. The earth was good and soft. Senka quickly dug a trench the whole length of the spade, made a parapet on the side where they said the Germans were, disguised it with weeds, put some soft, fragrant grass on the bottom and lay down to sleep Ñ the platoon commander said they could sleep till morning. And Senka did sleep, his rifle stood between his knees.

And then in the morning... Boy did it start...

The Political Instructor kept saying that the Germans were afraid of bayonets. And Senka learnt how to handle a bayonet so well that he nearly rooted the dummy out of the ground. And he could throw a grenade further than anyone else in the battalion, even the commander himself... But he spent two months throwing and throwing, and what use was it? The Germans turned out to be in the air, you couldn’t get at them with either bayonets or grenades.

The wounded soldier beside him stirred, turned towards Senka, smacked his lips and woke up. He just lay there for a while staring at Senka, then sat up, crossed his legs and asked:

“You from the thirty-seventh?”

“Thirty-ninth.”

ÒThe one in the second echelon?”

Senka nodded. The soldier smiled. Those few teeth he had were black, he had slight wrinkles all over his face and small shining eyes with short straight eyelashes. His left hand, like Senka’s, was bandaged and in a sling.

“Do it yourself?” The soldier nodded towards Senka’s hand. Senka felt his ears flush, and said nothing.

“Don’t be afraid... Tell me.”

Senka moved his arm to his other knee Ñ it had suddenly started to ache Ñ and fixed his gaze on the end of his boot.

“Cat got your tongue? Are you shell-shocked? What’s your name?”

“Senka.”

“Semyon, you mean. And surname?”

“Korotkov.”

“Mine’s Akhrameyev, Filipp Filippovich Akhrameyev. Pleased to meet you.” He held out his hand.

Senka shook a dry, hot palm.

“Scared, are you?” The soldier forced a smile and slapped Senka over the knee with his good hand. “You shouldn’t, really. It’ll be okay. We’ll rest for a month or so, then... it’ll slowly heal and then weÕll hit the road. We won’t be court-martialled till we’re better anyway. I know that for a fact,” he stretched and yawned. “And then again maybe we can still talk our way out of it.”

Senka said nothing.

The soldier brought a flat iron box out of the straw, the kind the Germans used to carry rifle parts, and deftly, using one hand and his lips, rolled a cigarette.

“Although things are a bit worse for you, I must admit. At least we were hanging out on the front line, while you lot in the thirty-ninth just got bombed and nothing more... With a bullet wound there’ll be questions, interrogations... Did you shoot through your mess-tin?”

“What mess-tin?” said Senka, confused.

“I said, did you shoot through your mess-tin or through a wet rag?”

“No, I just fired...” Senka felt his ears go red again.

“Oh, you fool...” sighed the soldier. “How could you do it like that? A mess-tin or wet rag would hide the burn. And what’s the burn? The first piece of evidence against you,” he yawned again. “........” He stretched out on the straw and silently lit up, spitting out pieces of tobacco to the side.

Senka took the ..., smoked it right down to his fingers and quickly fell asleep.

 

3

 

That evening they brought millet soup with a piece of bread, then the regimental chemist, a senior lieutenant, came in, pulled out a piece of paper, squatted down and started asking Senka where he was born, how old he was, where he had studied and plenty more things. Senka replied to every question, and the senior lieutenant wrote everything down. Then the senior lieutenant read out what he had written and got Senka to sign on every page. Senka signed. The senior lieutenant neatly folded the pieces of paper in half, put them in his file and left without a word.

“They don’t consider me a human being,” thought Senka and remembered how once he had given this same senior lieutenant some home-made strong tobacco and how, after this, when they saw each other, the senior lieutenant would always say cheerfully: “Hey, how about smoking some of that strong Siberian stuff of yours?”

This time he didn’t so much as mention the tobacco.

“ItÕs just an inquiry” said Akhrameyev from his corner, “ItÕs crap... When the real investigator comes, you’ll know about it.”

“There’s going to be an investigator as well?” asked Senka.

“Of course...” said Akhrameyev and got up. “HeÕll have ways of making you talk. Let’s go out and see what’s happening on God’s earth.”

They went outside and sat in the entrance to the tent.

At the dressing station there were still soldiers hanging around Ñ dusty, in faded tunics and bandages black with dirt.

One soldier walked past with the aid of a stick.

ÒWell, how are things out there, brother?Ó asked Akhrameyev.

“Are you blind or something?..” The soldier nodded towards the front and asked where registration was.

German bombers swooped one by one over the front line. They were a new kind, not like the morning ones Ñ these were small and four-winged like butterflies. They circled one behind the other then dropped abruptly like stones.

“They’re the bosses... bosses in the skies... Just look at that.” Akhrameyev spat angrily. “They can do whatever they want.”

Senka said nothing. He looked at the yellowy cloud floating over the front line, and the tingling in his spine came back.

“Go and have a go at them. This morning one of our fighters joined the battle. And look at how they hounded him, poor bastard... Then shot him down. He came down somewhere beyond the woods.” Akhrameyev sighed a long drawn out sigh. “This isn’t war, it’s total murder.”

Senka squinted at Akhrameyev. The latter was sitting with his knees jammed up against his chin. He too was looking towards the bombing. Then he looked at Senka:

“I look at you and I think: you’re a healthy, strapping lad. You need to live. I say live. And instead you’re being sent to the slaughter like cattle. I’m an old man, but I want to live too. Who wants to die anyway? And especially in such a stupid way... it’s not war, it’s a slaughter-house, that’s what it is.”

“You shouldn’t say things like that,” said Senka without turning round, “soldiers shouldn’t talk like that.”

Akhrameyev cackled a slight, dry cackle.

“ Shouldn’t, you say? So why did you make a hole in your arm then? To keep the Germans back? Don’t change your tune now. You did what you did. And right thing too. It means you’ve still got a head on your shoulders. Otherwise you’d still be sitting out there at the front, and you’d have lost it altogether or ended up being carried in like that stretcher case,” and he nodded towards a wounded man on a stretcher.

It was the same one-legged man that Senka had seen in the dressing station. His face was completely white and his beard even thicker. He gripped the sides of the stretcher and winced at every step the bearers took.

“What’s this guy going to do now?” thought Senka. “Not plough or work as a carpenter.... Just sit there for an age watching others... And what about without arms.” Senka saw one man with both his arms torn off. At the elbows. He wouldn’t even been able to go to the bathroom on his own Ñ he’d have to ask for help.

Senka clenched his fist. He looked at it. It was a good fist. And a good hand. Strong. Senka had a sudden desire to chop some wood. His father had said he’d make a good carpenter Ñ he had the power, and the precision, and a good eye. Hands were everything. You couldn’t live without hands... And Senka clenched his fist again and looked at him.

Akhrameyev said something. Senka caught only the end of the phrase: “...anything could happen in a month. We have to gain time. That’s what we have to do. And then...”

Senka looked at Akhrameyev. He was still sitting there, his knees up against his chin. And Senka suddenly felt that he was only a minute away from punching that yellow, wrinkled face. He got up and went back into the tent. The sentry at the door stared at him.

“What’s he looking at? Hasn’t he seen a human being before? He should be sent a bit closer to the bombs.”

When Akhrameyev went back into the tent, Senka pretended to be asleep.

 

4

 

All the next day Senka sat by the entrance looking towards where the bombs were exploding.

There were wounded coming from the front, and he looked out for men he knew among them. A few came from the fifth and sixth companies. He wanted to stop them, but for some reason he didn’t. They went through to the dressing station, while Senka sat and looked beyond the bushes where the sky swirled and rumbled Ñ Timoshka, Sintsov and the platoon commander, and another twenty-odd men were out there, men with whom he had lived, eaten out of a single mess-tin, and shared a cigarette butt between five.

Maybe they were dead by now? But those still alive would see him, Senka, and ...

On the third day, he saw the sergeant major of his company at the dressing station. In Tretyakovka, near Kupyansk, they had shared a hut. Senka had even given him his belt Ñ good, yellow and brand new. He wasn’t a bad sergeant major. His men were always well fed. And what else did a soldier need from his sergeant major? As long as he fed them well and changed their linen frequently. As for swearing at them, well that was what sergeant majors were for. And Pushkov, though he swore a lot, looked after his men well.

After Pushkov’s dressing was put on, Senka went up to him. Pushkov was standing there, waiting for the attendant to write out some form for him.

“Greetings, comrade sergeant major,” said Senka quietly, and brought his hand up to his field cap.

The sergeant major looked round at him, then at his hand.

“You’ve been hit too?” asked Senka, as he looked to see where the sergeant major had been wounded.

“No,” he answered curtly and turned away.

Senka shifted from foot to foot, looking at that familiar broad back and his now old belt and spoke again:

“How’re things out there? On the front line...”

The sergeant major said nothing, and just stood there watching the attendant as he wrote the form, rapidly moving the pen across the paper.

“He can’t have heard me,” thought Senka. He was about to repeat the question, he really wanted to know if Timoshka and Sintsov were alive. But at that point the sergeant major turned round sharply and came at him fast.

“Now he’s going to fly at me,” thought Senka. But he didn’t fly at him, didn’t even say a word in fact, but stuffed the form in his side pocket and headed for the exit. Senka stood for a moment, then followed him out.

The sergeant major was standing by the cart, whistling and turning up the hay.

“I’ll go and ask him Ñ maybe he’ll take me...”

The sergeant major was taking bags of oats off the horses and affixing curbs.

“I’m going to tell him straight. Let them do what they like with me. I can throw grenades. Bring cartridges...”

He wiped off the sweat which had suddenly appeared on his brow and went up to the carriage. The sergeant major was already sitting inside, settling himself.

“Comrade sergeant major...”

Pushkov turned round.

His face was tired and somehow old. He had got really thin in the last few days.

“What d’you want?”

“Take me with you, comrade sergeant major...” That was all he managed to say.

“You?”

Senka nodded. His mouth went dry and his tongue suddenly felt large and awkward. The sergeant major adjusted his greatcoat under him.

“Let’s go, Serko...” he said, jerking the reins.

The cart shuddered over the ruts, sending up clouds of dust, then disappeared round the bend. Senka followed its progress, then went into the tent and lay there till lunchtime, his face buried in the straw.

That was the last time he approached anyone.