A noncom in our group thought the Popovs must be patrolling in boats, knocking off Germans whenever they could. To judge by the lights of the explosions, which were sometimes hundreds of yards apart, there must have been several Russian boats. The darkness which hid our trapped men rang with the sounds of our frantic disorder.
Shells were coming in from the west, and landing somewhere to the east of us, beyond the hills. This comforted us somewhat; since the shells were falling beyond the hills, they must be landing on the Russians, and our men must be firing them. The artilleryman remarked in a pleased and knowing voice: “Those are ours all right. I’d know that yap anywhere.”
“I never thought we’d get any help,” said a soldier who had just joined us.
In the end, the shelling lasted only ten minutes, and probably had very little effect, as there was no effort to aim it with any precision. The fog had grown so thick that the glow of the discharges of the 77s was almost invisible, emerging from the darkness and vanishing again, as if we were watching through a thin, semi-transparent cloth. But, although the fog was thicker, the air had also grown astonishingly cold, stabbing our lungs every time we took a breath.
“My God, it’s cold,” someone said.
The temperature of the water, which came to the middle of our boots, must have been close to freezing. Despite their remarkable resistance to water, our boots had at last become waterlogged, and our feet felt frozen.
“We can’t keep on like this,” said the artilleryman, almost laughing. “We’ve got to get out of here, or we’ll catch our deaths. Anyway, why should we be afraid of our own guns?”
My boots each seemed to weigh a ton: a ton of dense, solid matter which was, in fact something like 95 percent water.
The exhaustion we had been dragging about with us for days increased the fear we could no longer control. Fear intensified our exhaustion, as it required constant vigilance. We had learned to see in the dark, like cats, but on that particular night no look, however penetrating, could pierce the fog, which was as thick as a London pea souper. I could no longer breathe through my clogged nose, and only drew in through my pursed lips the bare minimum necessary to sustain life. We seemed to be moving through a mixture of water and sulphur, and each icy breath stabbed me with hundreds of sharp points, all the way down to my empty stomach.
I remembered the veteran’s advice, but couldn’t think of anything convincingly warm or dry, so I began deliberately to recollect pleasant things that had happened to me, that I might have experienced a long time ago. But this proved almost impossibly difficult; my mind filled only with unpleasant memories. The hunched back of the soldier in front of me could not be transformed into the back of my mother busy with some household task on a long winter evening, or my brother’s back, or the back of anyone I had ever known in peacetime. All I saw was a silhouette of the history of the war, and Russia, which memories of youth could not blot out. It seemed as if the war would mark men for life. They might forget women, or money, or how to be happy, but they would never forget the war, which spoiled everything — even the joy which was bound to come, like the victory ahead. The laughter of men who lived through the war has something forced and desperate about it. It does them no good to say that they must now make use of the experience; their mechanisms have been run too hard, and something has gone out of balance. Laughter no longer has any more value for them than tears.
The back of the soldier in front of me filled me with pity and respect and even exasperation. I felt like hitting him until he fell, so that he would be on a level with the war. But, if that man fell, there would be another right after him, and then thousands more after that thousands of hunched backs swollen by acid fog. Russia is still full of backs like that, the hunched backs of men who have forgotten how to dream, and it will take more toil and war, too, before they all have been toppled.
The roar of the guns was growing louder, like the noise of an oncoming train, and there was the sound of machine guns too, although we still couldn’t see anything. We could also hear a vast din of human voices which rose above the thunder of guns and machinery. We stopped where we were, a light trace of breath escaping from each half-open mouth. I looked for some explanation on the filthy faces of my companions, but their expressions were as bewildered as my own, which had probably not changed much since I had begun to try to lose myself in memories. Since surprises in wartime can only be dangerous, we immediately looked for a hole. All I could find was the river bank. I slid over the edge until I was up to my thighs in the invisible water, which seemed almost warm after the icy air.
I immediately lost hold of my attempted daydream, and stared feverishly through the black and impenetrable wall which hid the action from us, like a curtain in the theatre. The roar of the tanks grew louder, and made the surface of the water tremble, with a motion I was just able to perceive.
When danger finally comes, after hours of harassing fear, it is almost like a liberation. At least one knows what the confrontation will be, and if the danger is terrible, one knows that at least it will soon be over. But, when danger continues indefinitely, it becomes unbearable. Then even an outburst of tears is no release. After hours and then days of danger, as at Belgorod, one collapses into unbearable madness, and a crisis of nerves and tears is only the beginning. Finally, one vomits and collapses, entirely brutalized and inert, as if death had already won.
For the moment, I remained calm. The river blocked our escape but, at the same time, offered a prospect of safety. I was already over my knees in water. The fog hid the terrifying breadth of the river from me, and I thought that, if the worst came to the worst, I could always try that way out, skimming over the surface like a will-o’-the-wisp. I felt almost convinced that I could do it. Then we saw lights, and heard explosions like grenades, and crackling sounds accompanied by little points of light. Five or six gasping soldiers splashed into the water beside me.
“It’s those dumb bastards in the artillery who brought Ivan here.”
Terrifying screams drowned the sound of engines, screams so prolonged and horrible that my blood froze, and the water around my legs seemed even colder than before.
“Mein Gott!” someone murmured in the darkness beside me.
We heard the sounds of gunfire and explosions coming closer, punctuated by bloodcurdling screams. Men suddenly plunged out of the pale, enveloping cotton, and disappeared like ghosts into the black water. From the sounds of splashing, we guessed they were trying to swim. We felt petrified by fear, and stayed where we were. A terrible, growling mass of machines passed by close to us, shaking the earth and water, and a penetrating headlight pierced the fog. We couldn’t see where it was going, only that it was moving. During those moments of terror, we clung to each other like children. A piece of the bank broke away under our weight, and our heap of belongings slid into the mud. My head went under for a few seconds, and when I surfaced the river bank and the long grasses hid what was happening. We could hear the sound of machine guns ripping into the air very close to us, over the grinding roar of tank treads. And always, terrifying screams, as the tanks drove a bloody furrow through the tightly packed crowd paralyzed by terror and darkness. A little higher up, two other lights, barely visible in the gloom, were seeking out other victims.
With daylight, we saw that there must have been about ten tanks, passing through without stopping, on their way to Kiev.
However, our tension was so great that we stayed in the water for a long time, without moving, in spite of the stinking mud which had seeped into our helmets, and through our hair, which was standing on end with terror.