Apricot Jam: And Other Stories (34 page)

That girl, Iskorka, also just can
’
t sit still and is making her way to the door. Her dress is tightly belted at the waist but is quite full above and below.

“
And where are you off to?
”

“
I want to have a look at what
’
s left up there. They
’
re going to wreck our whole place.
”

“
Do you mean us?
”

“
Of course.
Your guys are stealing our chickens.
”
Anger flashes in her eyes.

“
Where
’
s your house?
”

She makes a graceful wave with her hand, as if she were dancing:
“
It
’
s the last one on that row, near the willows.
”

“
That
’
s a long way,
”
I say, taking her elbow.

“
What else can I do?
”

“
Well, be careful. If anything comes over just drop to the ground. I
’
ll stop by later and check if you
’
re OK.
”

She trips lightly up the stairs and disappears.

We
’
ve used up another roll of paper. The sky is filled with noise, from us and from the Germans. Airplane engines are roaring and whining up above as they
wheel and dive. Someone
’
s going to get it. And they
’
re firing machine guns at one another.

I hear a wild shout from the entrance up above:
“
Where
’
s the battery commander?
”

Our duty linesman runs down the steps:
“
Comrade Senior Lieutenant! Someone wants you outside.
”

I go up the stairs and see a sergeant, well turned out and looking as if he
’
s from some headquarters. His submachine gun, muzzle down, is slung from his shoulder. He
’
s very brisk and in a great hurry:
“
Comrade Senior Lieutenant, the brigade commander wants you!
Right away!
”

“
Where do I go?
”

“
It
’
s urgent! We have to run. I
’
ll take you there.
”

And so off we run, at full speed. My pistol slaps against my thigh and I have to clap my hand over it. We run past all the potholes on the track leading to Zhelyabuga Village. Now I see a
Willys
jeep parked on the open road. Couldn
’
t he have driven up to meet me? Or is he trying to teach me a lesson? We keep running.

We come running up to the jeep, and I see the black-haired Colonel
Ayrumetov
sitting in it. I salute and report. He gives me a scorching glare meant to reduce me to ashes:
“
Senior Lieutenant! For the job you
’
re doing I
’
ll have you sent to a punishment battalion!
”

He gives me a full blast.
For what?
And he
can
send me to a punishment battalion. Such things happen quickly with us.

I stand at attention, mumbling about the atmospheric inversion. (They
’
ll never accept that as an excuse. Why should they even try to understand?) And it would be idiotic to complain about all the extraneous firing: there
’
s a war going on, and you can never eliminate all those noises. His fury abates, and he grins at me:
“
You need to shave, Senior Lieutenant, even in battle.
”

Sure thing.
Then, as if from nowhere, two single-engine Junkers appear over the rim of the forest. How can they miss the single Willys jeep on the road, a clear sign that there are senior officers about? They
’
ve spotted it! They turn and start their dive.

The sergeant who came for me is already sitting in the jeep behind me. But the sharp-eyed driver, not waiting for the brigade commander
’
s order, shouts,
“
Turn back! Turn back!
”
So the colonel never finishes his reprimand.

The first Junkers is already in his dive. As always, you can see his front wheels that seem to be reaching out for you like talons; he lets loose the bomb that
falls like a droplet from his beak. (And then he comes out of his dive as if he
’
s bending his back and even giving a little shudder of rapture.)

Am I dismissed now? I run back toward my battery. Then I drop down flat in a little depression. Behind me I hear a massive, deafening explosion.

I raise my head and straighten up: the Willys has turned tail and disappeared in a cloud of dust!

What about the second Junkers? He
’
s going on with the turn he began and—is he heading straight for me? He must have realized that the man standing by the Willys was not just a private. Or is he just doing this for spite or revenge?

There
’
s no time to think, it
’
s too late to run, and I
’
ve no strength left to look up at the sky. I flop down in that little depression again, face to the earth. How can I protect my head? Even the palms of my hands might help. Is this really where it will happen, out here? And so stupidly, just by chance?

There
’
s a huge crash and I feel the scorching heat. I
’
m showered with earth. Am I still in one piece? They do miss quite often. There
’
s a terrible noise in my head, and I feel faint. I
’
ve got to run, and I do run, stumbling over those damned ruts and potholes. And it
’
s uphill all the way.

They don
’
t seem to have bombed Zhelyabuga Village, and all our lines are still fanned out around the cellar. But will the cellar itself hold out?

No, the Junkers have broken off their attack: they have their own lives to lead, up there in the sky, one racing after the other, and the sky now is no longer concerned with the earth below it.

With all the noise going on, we can
’
t make any recordings at all. So it
’
s off to a punishment battalion for me.

The battery of seventy-sixes next to us is being pulled out of Zhelyabuga and moved forward where things are hotter.

Lord, my head is still buzzing. It feels as if it
’
s swollen, filled with fluid. Things are bad enough even without that: all the stress of these last days— it seems as if there aren
’
t twenty-four hours in a day but two hundred and forty. Yet despite all these sleepless nights, you have an overwhelming sense of power; you even feel light on your feet, as if they had wings.

“
Mikhail Longinych, give me all the ribbons from target 415; I
’
ll search through them myself, and you can look at the rest.
”

I send him off to get my folding table—we have one extra. I set it up near the cellar, in the shade of a willow tree.
“
And get me a stool from one of the houses.
”
He brings me one immediately.

I sit there, searching through the strips of paper and thinking.

What the training manual said was to calculate the time differential from the beginning of the first oscillation from each listening post. But when these beginning points were indistinct we were taught to do various other things. The peaks of the oscillations could be compared—the first maximum, the second maximum. O
r the reverse: compare the mini
mums. Or you could look at all five sets of oscillations to try to find places with similar characteristics, small squiggles, and calculate the differentials from them.

I try one method, then another one. Mitya takes the ribbons down to the cellar to work on them there. If they can get a smaller triangle among all the intersections, Nakapkin will call me down to look at the plotting table.

Meanwhile, Second Battalion is asking us to help them make corrections. The guns of
Four
and Five Batteries close on our right begin banging away. We try as best we can to isolate their bursts from all the other noise and send them the coordinates. They make their adjustments, and we check them once more. Myagkov from Five Battery contrives to make his corrections toward target 421. The advance post calls, quite satisfied: the target over there has gone silent.

I couldn
’
t be more grateful for the good work of the plotting platoon.

Lipsky
’
s soft white hands are on the ribbon of paper spread out across the table.
H
e holds it down with his left, and, with his right, using a very sharp pencil like a
needle,
he goes on marking the proper places to prick the paper where a tiny, slender vertical line shows the beginning of an oscillation. (There are sometimes false results as well. They happen, and there
’
s no time to think about them in the few seconds available, yet the outcome of the operation—good or bad—depends on your results.)

Ushatov, shoulders slightly hunched, concentrates on running his viewer along his Chudnov slide rule, taking readings down to a thousandth.

Fenyushkin, the calculator, uses the tables to make corrections for wind, temperature, and humidity (we take our own measurements beside our station) and passes the adjusted figures to the plotter.

The plotter (the sharp-eyed Konchits has replaced Nakapkin), scarcely daring to breathe, is using these figures to adjust the goniometric rule along its grooved scale. And he transfers to the plotting board the angle of deviation from the perpendicular ahead of each of our posts. Now he
’
ll plot the straight lines, and we
’
ll see if they come together. The fate of those German guns, and the fate of our boys under fire, depends on the scrupulous work of each one of these men.

(When Nakapkin finishes his shift, he settles himself down to make a drawing, using the ink from the apparatus and one of the self-sealing letter cards that front-line soldiers are given, of some Red Army soldiers striking down the enemy. He
’
ll send this home or to his girlfriend.)

Our listening posts are all still in one piece. There was some bombardment near Volkov
’
s, but they
’
ve all survived and are now dug in. Our cables suffered a few hits, but they
’
ve been repaired. One good thing about dry weather is that our cables, with their fabric insulation, don
’
t get wet. They
’
ve got only a weak rubber coating, and when it
’
s damp they will ground or short out. Making a continuity test on the lines when under fire is a lot more than just a hassle. The Germans don
’
t have this problem: their cables have thick red plastic insulation. A reel of captured German cable is worth its weight in gold.

Meanwhile, Konchits phones me: my 415 has produced quite a good intersection, almost a single point. I make up my mind and phone Tolochkov:
“
Vasya
! Here
’
s the 415. Don
’
t try bracketing it. It
’
s best not to make corrections, just give it a volley and scare the shit out of them!
”

That
’
s the Russian way! Tolochkov fires off a volley, twenty shells at once,
five
from each gun. So now what? We
’
ll keep checking.

Now we
’
re having some heavy fire along our slope. I take a look. Along the little ridge where the houses at the upper end of our street stand and where the spreading group of willows is—and where Iskiteya ran off—I see a row of about two dozen fountains of black earth flying up from the ground. They
’
re putting down some accurate fire!
One-fifties, probably.
Are any of our boys there? The Germans must have scouted out that area, or maybe it
’
s their aerial reconnaissance. There are more of our planes in the sky, though. That means we can walk around with our backs straight.