Apricot Jam: And Other Stories (20 page)

Boyev was a sound sleeper, but it was always easy to wake him. With such a marvelous bed to sleep in and with a plump eiderdown as well, he had allowed himself to take off his tunic for the night. He now pulled it on and was standing on
the carpet in his woolen socks. His tunic was covered with an amazing array of orders and medals: two Orders of the
Red Banner, an Alexander Nevsky, an Order of the Fatherland War, and two Orders of the Red Star (one came from as far back as the battle with the Japanese at Lake
Khasan
, the other from the Finnish War; and there was a third Red Star, the most recent, but it had been lost or stolen after he
’
d been wounded). And so his whole chest was covered in metal, since he wore the orders themselves, not just the ribbons, and it was a soldier
’
s pleasure to feel the weight of them.

Toplev, who just a month ago had moved from head of battalion reconnaissance to Boyev
’
s adjutant, gave a dignified, regulation salute and made his report. His baby face was worried, but his voice still had the warmth of a child
’
s. Two men from Second Battalion, Podkliuchnikov and Lepetushin, had died from alcohol poisoning.

The major was of average height, but his long head with closely trimmed hair stood out like a rectangle whose corners were formed by his temples and jaw. His eyebrows were not quite level and his nose twisted just slightly toward a deep crease in his cheek, as if he were in a constant state of tension.

He listened to Toplev
’
s report with the same tension. He made no reply for a time and then said, bitterly:
“
Ahh
, the slack-brained fools …”

After surviving so many shells and bombs in so many river crossings and bridgeheads, only to cop it from some bottle in Germany . . .

They
’
d have to be buried, but where? Well, they
’
d chosen their own gravesite.

After passing through
Allenstein
the brigade had taken up firing positions here, just in case, though it seemed unlikely they would do any firing. It was just for the sake of order.

“
We won
’
t use the German cemetery. We
’
ll bury them around our firing position.
”

Lepetushin.
Well, he was that kind of fellow. Talkative, always ready to help, never complained.
But Podkliuchnikov?
That tall, serious peasant with a bit of a stoop.
He just couldn
’
t resist.

~ * ~

2

The ground was frozen and stony, impossible to dig very deeply.

Sortov, their carpenter from Mari, built the coffins quickly from some nicely planed planks he
’
d found nearby.

Should they put up a flag? No one ever saw flags except when the brigade formed up for a medals parade. Their colors were always kept in the stores, somewhere in the third echelon where they wouldn
’
t be captured.

Podkliuchnikov had been in Five Battery, Lepetushin in Six.
The party organizer, Gubaydulin—the laughingstock of the whole battalion—showed up to give a speech.
He
’
d been drunk since morning and he strung together the usual glowing phrases about the sacred Motherland, the beast
’
s den into which we had now entered, and the revenge we would take for our fallen comrades.

The commander of one of Six Battery
’
s gun platoons, the very young but solidly built Lieutenant Gusev, listened to this, ashamed and irritated. Did this fellow become a party organizer because of the quick promotion for political officers? Or was it because the brigade commissar had some special liking for him? But over the course of a year and a half, before everyone
’
s eyes, he went from junior sergeant to senior lieutenant, and now he thought he had lessons to give to everyone.

Gusev was only eighteen, but he had already spent a year at the front as a lieutenant, the youngest officer in the brigade. He was so eager to go into battle that his father, a general, had put him into an accelerated course for junior lieutenants while he was still underage.

It
’
s different for everyone.
Next to him stood Vanya Ostanin, from the battalion fire control platoon.
He was a clever fellow, and he could direct fire as well as any officer. But during the days of Stalingrad in
‘
42 every third person on their course had been yanked out of their academy and sent to the front before his training had been completed. The personnel department selected people for promotion, and there was a note in
Ostanin
’
s file that his family had stubbornly resisted joining the collective farm. Now this twenty-two-year-old, essentially an officer, was wearing the shoulder straps of a senior sergeant.

The party organizer finished his speech. Gusev was driven by emotion to step toward the graves two paces in front of him. This wasn
’
t at all what was needed. The party organizer
’
s speech hadn
’
t struck any sparks. Gusev could only ask in a choked voice:
“
Why, boys? Why
’
d you have to end that way?
”

The lids of the coffins were closed.

The nails were hammered in.

The coffins were lowered on ropes.

They were covered with foreign earth.

Gusev recalled how a Junkers had bombed them along a road near
Rechitsa
. No one was wounded and little damage was done, but a three-liter bottle of vodka in the supply truck was shattered by a bit of shrapnel. Lord, how sorry the fellows
were about that! Taking some casualties wouldn
’
t have been much worse. Soviet soldiers aren
’
t pampered by too much booze.

Grave markers, still unpainted, were driven into the little mounds.

And who would tend these graves? Gravestones of German soldiers had been standing in Poland since 1915. When they were on the Narew, the signals officer
Ishchukov
had dug up the German graves and scattered the bones—he was
“
taking revenge.
”
No one said anything to him:
Larin
, the SMERSH officer, had been standing right beside him.

Gusev passed by some soldiers standing quietly in a group and heard one of the men of his own platoon, the lively little
Yursh
from the same number three gun crew in which Lepetushin had served, say plaintively:
“
So how are we going to get by now, boys?
”

How were they going to get by? But that
’
s a soldier
’
s lot: you have to think you
’
ll make it.

But it showed on people
’
s faces, as if a dark cloud had passed over them.

Nikolaev, another man from Mari and the captain of a gun crew, looked on disapprovingly through narrowed eyes. He never touched vodka.

But life goes on, and there
’
s still a job to be done. Captain Toplev went to brigade headquarters to find out how the deaths should be designated.

The chief of staff, the thin and lanky Lieutenant Colonel Veresovoy, had a ready answer:
“
The commissar has already given instructions:
‘
They fell while bravely defending their Motherland.
’”

He was busy racking his brains: Who was he going to put in the drivers
’
seats when the brigade moved on?

~ * ~

3

The stunning speed with which our tanks broke through to the Baltic Sea altered the whole picture of the Prussian operation, and the heavy artillery brigade could not move quickly and had no assignment for the next day or two.

The brigade commander had been limping about for some time now because of an abscess on his knee. The medical officer convinced him not to put it off and to go to the hospital today for an operation. The brigade commander left, handing the unit over to Veresovoy.

There was no sound of gunfire in the distance and no aircraft—-our own or German—to be seen. It was as if the war had ended.

It was not cold that day, but it was very cloudy. Visibility was poor. For the time being, all the troops were pulled back from their prearranged fire positions, and the three battalions closed up around brigade headquarters.

The day moved on quietly toward twilight. Even though we had now penetrated Europe, we still kept to Moscow time, and so it didn
’
t get light until almost nine o
’
clock and it wasn
’
t dark until six.

Then suddenly an encoded message arrived from the headquarters of army artillery: All three battalions were to move north immediately, to the town of Liebstadt, and upon arrival were to take up fire positions seven or eight kilometers to the east, with a general grid bearing angle 90.00.

So they
’
re pulling us out anyway!
And just when we
’
re supposed to be getting to sleep.
It never fails: just when you
’
re looking forward to a quiet night in your new position and don
’
t want to move. But the 90.00 bearing was a surprise. That hadn
’
t happened since the war began: it was due east! No one ever thought we
’
d see that. We
’
d gotten used to angles of 250.00 to 270.00, more or less due west.

Even before this new order the chief of staff had been worrying about replacing the drivers who had died. There were scarcely any replacements. Which ones should he take, and which units should he leave immobile? First Battalion had suffered the most losses, and Lieutenant Colonel Veresovoy requested artillery headquarters to let it stay where it was in order to make up the complements of the Second and Third Battalions.

There was no choice, and he was granted permission.

It
’
s only the first minutes that are difficult in a nighttime move. Already the twenty-four heavy-caliber gun-howitzers had been connected to their tractors, the whole operation done in the open, under the glow of headlights. The auxiliary transport fell in line behind them. All that could be heard was the growling of motors.

The two commanders of the gun battalions in their white fur jackets and the commander of the instrument reconnaissance battalion in his long overcoat arrived to get their exact deployment locations and their objectives from the chief of staff.

As for the objectives, the chief of staff could only guess. Army headquarters had provided absolutely no intelligence data, and they had no way of knowing the situation after such a rapid breakthrough and the cloudy weather of the past day.
“
Seven or eight kilometers to the east
”
— that leaves a lot of room for guesswork. A topographical map of 1:50,000 gave some sense of the ground in the area, but couldn
’
t show everything. It did show the main and secondary roads, which places had defenses and which were without; it showed the bends in the
Passarge
River, which flowed from south to north, and the individual farms scattered across the area. But were they all just farms? And how many small, unmarked roads were there?
Were there still people on the farms or had they fled?

The lieutenant colonel assigned the areas at random: Second Battalion would go here, to the south; Third here, farther north.

They marked out approximate ovals for the positions.

Major Boyev stood with his map case opened, looking gloomily at the map. How many hundreds of times over his military career had he had to come like this to be given his objective? And often enough the disposition of
the enemy could not be indicated and remained unknown: once the unit begins
doing its job, it
’
ll locate the enemy easily enough. But here, twenty-five kilometers away from that town of Liebstadt, how could you tell which ground was unoccupied and where there might be a gap in the German flank? Above all, where was our infantry? And would they be from the division assigned to this sector? Most likely they
’
re lagging. They can
’
t keep up with the tanks and are well spread out.
But how far back?
And how do we locate them?