The People's Act of Love (17 page)

It was a hot day towards the end of August. I remember
the smell of cowslips growing at the roadside, stronger than the
smell of dung, sometimes, from the wagon trains we overtook.
We passed columns of marching soldiers miles long. Many
of them were singing. The feeling that this was some kind of
strange mass excursion started to come back. It did not last.
We started to pass people fleeing their homes, moving in the
opposite direction. We were still in Russia, but it was a different
kind of Russia, one where the people who lived there did
not believe in it. In the Jewish villages those brave enough to
come out and watch us pass looked at us as if they hoped we
would never come back; in the Greek Catholic villages, the
cheering was half-hearted. We passed the Greek Catholic
shrines, with their Christs in agony on the cross, and their
contented, placid Madonnas. I remember thinking how strange
it was that all the armies about to fight each other believed
that Christ was sent by God to be the last man tortured by
other men, yet here they were, about to torture each other by
the tens of thousands. The only people who did not believe it
were the Jews, and they were not fighting.

At noon, we approached the artillery line. They had not
begun firing, but they were preparing to. The road passed close
to a battery of about two dozen howitzers. Hundreds of men
were moving around them with an energy and purpose I had
not seen before in the tending of machinery. You know I am
not good with comparisons, Anna, I am not a poet, but I
remember thinking how it looked as if the men were serving
the guns, as if the guns were their masters and they were
running about for their sake. It put me in mind of that film
we saw about Louis XIV, the Sun King, do you remember?
How the big, fat actor playing the king stood absolutely still,
just yawning, while all those dozens of servants fussed over
him, dressing, bathing and powdering him. And the king never
acknowledged they were there, or what they were doing. Such
was his power. These machines, these big black ugly tubes with
their wheels and pistons and levers, were the masters of the
men. Next to each gun was a pyramid of brass shells, higher
than a horse, to feed them with.

When we were a few hundred metres away the artillerymen
froze, like actors in a tableau vivant, and there was a bright
flash from each gun, together with a puff of black smoke,
and the guns jumped back and rolled forward again. For one
second I was amazed at how quiet they were. Then the sound
reached us, a series of terrible, cracking thuds. I suppose we
were badly trained. I had never heard so many big guns so
close. What you have to understand, Anna, is that this is not
just a loud noise, like a shout, or a train passing, or an
orchestra at full blast. It is a physical blow, it does not just
deafen you but it punches your chest as well, you feel as if
your heart and lungs are being shaken free of their fastenings.
Most of us struggled to control our horses. A few shied; none
bolted. Hijaz took it better than I did. After a few moments I
realised I was bent forward in the saddle, eyes closed, breathing
as if I had just come up for air after nearly drowning, and
was gripping Hijaz so tightly with my knees that he was slowing
down, about to stop. And the firing was finished; there
was the clatter of the column on the road again, and the larks
over the fields on either side. I relaxed, opened my eyes and
nudged Hijaz forward before he had a chance to obstruct the
squadron behind me.

As I passed the guns, they fired again. The flash, the smoke,
the recoil and the blast all happened at the same time. It could
not have been much louder but it seemed so. All I could think
of was myself, keeping myself whole. It was so intimate. I had
the feeling that a stranger had appeared in front of me and,
without any reason or sign of emotion, shoved me hard in the
chest. Without realising what I was doing, I dropped the reins,
and my feet seemed to lift out of the stirrups of their own
accord, and I hunched over with my knees drawn up against
the pommel and my hands over my face. As before, the horror
passed, and I became aware of what I was doing, and moved
my hands slowly away from my eyes. I could not understand
what was happening; I seemed to be in shade, though there
were no trees; and Hijaz was walking on as if nothing had
happened. I straightened up and returned my feet to the stirrups.
When I had tried to hide from the noise of the guns, four
of my troopers, the tallest, had ridden around me, shielding
me from the view of the rest of the squadron and picking up
Hijaz’s reins. They did not look at me, and did not speak. Their
move was so lightly and quickly made that they must have
rehearsed it. I was astonished, and grateful, although I said
nothing, bracing myself for the next salvo, clenching my jaw
and feeling the reins slippery with sweat. That time, the salvo
did not come until we were a mile away, when it was more
tolerable. I do not know what happened; perhaps the troopers
had seen me flinch at the sound of artillery in exercises,
and were ready, or perhaps the Colonel had spoken to them.
He had asked me about this before, and I had lied that I was
not troubled by it. Pride, Anna. Anyway, now, I was touched
and given heart by the care my troopers showed. Yet what if
I had been exposed there and then, and led back down the
lines in shame, accused, I suppose, of cowardice? Perhaps I
would have been shot. Perhaps I would never have met Chanov
again. God knows his purpose.

We rode on. The gunfire stopped after a time, and it became
very peaceful, although I remember thinking how few civilians
there were to be seen.

We were on the Lemberg road. The regiment was marshalled
and fed and watered at an abandoned village, where the staff
had made headquarters in the house of the richest peasant.
They were setting up field telephones, and a despatch rider on
a motorcycle came and went. Again there was a sense of order and purpose and service to a remoter, more demanding power
than we had served before. At about four in the afternoon the
fighting squadrons were ordered to mount up and advance in
columns, cross country.

Some word came down to the junior officers about what
had been said among the staff. This was not the great attack;
that would be later. We were being sent to test enemy defences.
Balloons, aeroplanes, spies and scouts had looked over the
Austrian lines – they were Austrians, it turned out – but there
were still enemy positions the staff weren’t sure about. There
was a wooded valley they were interested in. The plan was for
the regiment to approach the valley from the low ridges on
either side. Rumlyan-Pechersky was in trouble because this was
to have been done the previous day, and so even though it
was late, with only five hours of decent light left, and we were
supposed to go, reconnoitre, and return, he insisted we move
immediately. The squadron commanders did not like his plan,
which involved taking the whole regiment through a five
hundred metre gap between dense woods to reach the open
country that led to the valley. Rumlyan-Pechersky insisted,
pointing out that the staff had promised to send a rifle battalion
to secure the woods on either side of the gap. So we set
off, with the sun in our eyes, as if we had given it to the
Austrians to use against us.

After an hour, we saw the gap ahead. The squadrons were
walking in columns four abreast across the stubble of harvested
wheat. The idea was to move as quickly as possible through
the gap and then wheel round and dash for the ridges.
Rumlyan-Pechersky’s adjutant was looking through binoculars.
Even without them we could see the flags waving from
the edges of the woods, the signal that the infantry had secured
them. The bugler sounded canter and our horses stretched their stride. We drew our sabres, although God knows, we did not
expect to have to use them. It was to make us feel strong, their
sharpened weight hanging from our arms. And we did feel
strong, as the ground began to thunder with the sound of our
hooves, and we were young, and there seemed to be so invincibly
many of us, almost a thousand, a flood of horse power
and khaki stretched back in the wind. You could see the teeth,
horse teeth and men’s teeth as their lips stretched back. The
sabres were supposed to have dull, greased flats, to slide smoothly
out of the scabbard and not reflect the sun, but some men’s
metal sparkled among the field of warriors. I saw it shine.

I was in the van of the second squadron to go through. Ahead of me I could see the first squadron slow as it entered
open country and begin to turn towards the head of the valley.
I heard a strange little sound in the air around me, the kind
of sound a fly swatter makes before it hits anything, and sure
enough, Khigrin, the lieutenant next to me, slapped his neck
with the kind of grunting cry you make when an insect bites
you. And then he fell off his horse! I remember thinking how
embarrassed he would be, one of the best horsemen in the regiment,
falling off his mount because of an insect bite. It seems
to me now that I thought all this before I became aware that
above the jostling, thudding, jingling sound of horsemen and
that curious whishing sound of air being struck there was the
sound of machine gun fire. Even then I could not comprehend
that it might be directed towards us. I turned round and saw
our column was shedding little black heaps which lay dark
against the bright stubble like dung. Trooper Bilenko was looking
at me with a face like a fighting dog at bay. I saw him
bend sharply in the middle, sideways, like a puppet, something
a man could not do unless his spine had been violently broken,
and he started to shout something at me, I heard the first word, ‘They –’ when part of his neck snapped apart, like a piece of
rubber pulled tight, and his mouth was stopped with a sluice
of blood. I felt some warm drops of it hit my face as Bilenko’s
horse died under him and catapaulted the dead trooper over
its head onto the ground. I turned round again and wiped my
eyes clean of Bilenko’s blood with the back of my hand. I could
see the first squadron exploding in front of me. Its neat outline
of a few seconds ago was still there, only marked by dead and
crippled men and horses, while the living and wounded remnant
were flying in all directions, being cut down as they moved.

I understood the squadron had to wheel into line abreast
and head for the woods on one or other side. I was confused.
It would have been the right thing to do if I were a good officer
keeping a clear head, since the fire was coming from there
and we were too close to retreat, but in the state I was in I
was thinking just of how dark and sheltered the woods were,
how they would make a place to hide. What is even more peculiar
is that I was thinking less of myself, or the other men in
the squadron, than of Hijaz. The most important thing at that
moment was that Hijaz should not be harmed. I felt something
vital to me depended on it.

I could see no other officers left alive, or the bugler, so I
reined Hijaz in, turned, lifted my sabre and shouted the
command, looking back down the column. At first I thought
the men, in desperation, were trying to take cover on the ground,
or behind dead horses, there were so many lying still and so
few still standing. It did not seem possible that we could have
lost more than half the squadron in so short a time. Yet we
had. The survivors began to wheel. Even as they did, of course,
they were still dropping, in such a quick, dull way. The bullets
took possession of them and in a moment they ceased to be,
without a hair’s breadth of space between living and dying. A kind of incantation began to swell in my mind, to whom, I
don’t know, calling for it to slow down, to wait, to let it be
done with more mercy and dignity, to let us witness, at least,
each execution, even if the witnesses were then themselves to
be executed. And the more blood and falling around me the
louder the incantation, as if part of me felt that I could really,
if not halt the killing, at least make it pass more slowly, or be
done again from the beginning, in such a way that we were
ready. Perhaps I was thinking of football, looking for someone
to blow the whistle, impose order and fairness. But I saw
Chernetsky, sound asleep in the stubble with his jacket covered
in fresh blood and his head resting on the rising and falling
chest of his mutilated dying horse, sound asleep, even though
a trooper whose legs had been shot to bits was screaming in
his ear for him to get up. Then just as we were about to charge
for the woods we heard a sound like a flock of banshees settling
down on us from above and the sky burst into pieces. I was
inside a drum being beaten by a mad boy as big as the world,
the sound and the blast together, the shells exploding just above
the ground. I knew I was deaf after the first fall of shells but
I still heard the explosions with my whole body. Even though
I had not been hit I felt my bones were going to break with
the blasts. I toppled off Hijaz and fell on a corpse, rolling off
and staggering back and opening my eyes in time to see a huge
spinning blade of shrapnel cut my horse open from neck to
hindquarters, cut him ragged and deep, to guts and joints. He
stood four square for a moment, shook his head from side to
side in irritation, as he would do when the flies got too many.
Then his legs folded and he fell. I drew my pistol and crawled
over to him but his heart had stopped beating. I put my hands
around his neck and curled myself up as tightly as I could,
burying my face in the warm dark shield of my chest and his
mane, and cried like a baby. Anna, I truly did, I had read the
expression, but I heard myself bawling, screaming through the
tears, and even when the tears stopped, till my throat was raw.