The guards noticed he was hurrying and thought he must have urgent matters to attend to. How could they have imagined that the gathering twilight had reminded the Fuhrer of a wolf in a fairy-tale?
Through the trees he could see the lights of the buildings. For the first time, he felt a sense of horror, human horror, at the thought of the crematoria in the camps.
17
The men in the bunkers and command-posts of the 62nd Army felt very strange indeed; they wanted to touch their faces, feel their clothes, wiggle their toes in their boots. The Germans weren't shooting. It was quiet.
The silence made their heads whirl. They felt as though they had grown empty, as though their hearts had gone numb, as though their arms and legs moved in a different way from usual. It felt very odd, even inconceivable, to eat kasha in silence, to write a letter in silence, to wake up at night and hear silence. This silence then gave birth to many different sounds that seemed new and strange: the clink of a knife, the rustle of a page being turned in a book, the creak of a floorboard, the sound of bare feet, the scratching of a pen, the click of a safety-catch on a pistol, the ticking of the clock on the wall of the bunker.
Krylov, the chief of staff, entered Chuykov's bunker; Chuykov himself was sitting on a bed and Gurov was sitting opposite him at the table. He had hurried in to tell them the latest news: the Stalingrad Front had gone over to the offensive and it would be only a matter of hours before Paulus was surrounded. Instead, he looked at Chuykov and Gurov and then sat down without saying a word. What he had seen on his comrades' faces must have been very special – his news was far from unimportant.
The three men sat there in silence. The silence had already given birth to sounds that had seemed erased for ever. Soon it would give birth to new thoughts, new anxieties and passions that had been uncalled-for during the fighting itself.
But they were not yet aware of these new thoughts. Their anxieties, ambitions, resentments and jealousies had yet to emerge from under the crushing weight of the fighting. They were still unaware that their names would be forever linked with a glorious page of Russian military history.
These minutes of silence were the finest of their lives. During these minutes they felt only human feelings; none of them could understand afterwards why it was they had known such happiness and such sorrow, such love and such humility.
Is there any need to continue this story? Is there any need to describe the pitiful spectacle many of these generals then made of themselves? The constant drunkenness, the bitter disputes over the sharing-out of the glory? How a drunken Chuykov leapt on Rodimtsev and tried to strangle him at a victory celebration – merely because Nikita Khrushchev had thrown his arms round Rodimtsev and kissed him without so much as a glance at Chuykov?
Is there any need to say that Chuykov and his staff first left the right bank in order to attend the celebrations of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Cheka? And that the following morning, blind drunk, he and his comrades nearly drowned in the Volga and had to be fished out by soldiers from a hole in the ice? Is there any need to describe the subsequent curses, reproaches and suspicions?
There is only one truth. There cannot be two truths. It's hard to live with no truth, with scraps of truth, with a half-truth. A partial truth is no truth at all. Let the wonderful silence of this night be the truth, the whole truth… Let us remember the good in these men; let us remember their great achievements.
Chuykov left the bunker and climbed slowly up to the top of the slope; the wooden steps creaked under his boots. It was dark. Both the east and the west were quiet. The silhouettes of factories, the ruined buildings, the trenches and dug-outs all merged into the calm, silent darkness of the earth, the sky and the Volga.
This was the true expression of the people's victory. Not the ceremonial marches and orchestras, not the fireworks and artillery salutes, but this quietness – the quietness of a damp night in the country…
Chuykov was very moved; he could hear his heart thumping in his breast. Then he realized the silence was not total. From Banniy Ovrag and the 'Red October' factory came the sound of men singing. Below, on the banks of the Volga, he could hear quiet voices and the sound of a guitar.
He went back to the bunker. Gurov was waiting for him so they could have supper.
'What silence, Nikolay Ivanovich!' said Gurov. 'I can't believe it.'
Chuykov sniffed and didn't answer.
They sat down at table. Gurov said:
'Well, comrade, you must have had a hard time if a happy song makes you cry.'
Chuykov looked at him in astonishment.
18
In a dug-out on the slope leading down to the Volga, a few soldiers were sitting around a table fashioned from a few planks. The sergeant-major was pouring out mugs of vodka by the light of an oil-lamp; the soldiers watched as the precious liquid slowly mounted to the level indicated by his horny fingernail.
They drank and then reached out for some bread.
One of the soldiers finished chewing his piece of bread and said:
'Yes, he gave us a hard time. But we were too much for him in the end.'
'He's certainly quietened down now. You can't hear a sound.'
'He's had enough.'
'The epic of Stalingrad is over.'
'He's done a lot of damage, though. He's set half of Russia on fire. '
They chewed their bread very slowly. It was as though they were breaking off for a meal, after a long and difficult job of work.
Their heads grew hazy, but somehow this haziness left them clear-headed. The taste of bread, the crunch of onion, the weapons piled beside the mud wall, the Volga, this victory over a powerful enemy, a victory won by the same hands that had stroked the hair of their children, fondled their women, broken bread and rolled tobacco in scraps of newspaper – they experienced all this with extraordinary clarity.
19
The Muscovites who were now preparing to return home were probably rejoicing more at the thought of escaping their life as evacuees than at the thought of seeing Moscow again. Everything in Sverdlovsk, Omsk, Tashkent and Krasnoyarsk had become unbearable: the streets and houses, the stars in the autumn sky, even the taste of bread.
If there was a hopeful Soviet Information Bureau bulletin, they said: 'Well, it won't be much longer now.'
If the news was bad, they said: 'Oh, that means they'll interrupt the re-evacuation of families.'
Countless stories sprang up about people who'd managed to get back to Moscow without a pass – you had to change trains several times, using local and suburban trains where there were no inspectors.
People had forgotten that only a year before, in October 1941, every extra day spent in Moscow had seemed a torment. How enviously they had looked at their fellow citizens who were about to exchange the dangerous skies of their birthplace for the peace and safety of Tartary and Uzbekhistan…
They had forgotten how some of the men and women not included on the lists of evacuees had abandoned their bundles and suitcases and walked to Zagorsk on foot – anything to get out of Moscow. Now people were ready to abandon their work and belongings, abandon their ordered lives, and walk back to Moscow.
In the second half of November the Soviet Information Bureau announced first that a blow had been struck against the German Fascist forces in the region of Vladikavkaz, and then that a successful offensive had been launched in the Stalingrad area. There were nine announcements in the course of two weeks: 'The offensive continues… A new blow struck against the enemy… Our forces near Stalingrad, overcoming enemy resistance, have broken through his new line of defence on the east bank of the Don… Our forces, continuing their offensive, have advanced another twenty kilometres… Our troops in the Central Don region have now taken the offensive against the German Fascist forces… The offensive launched by our forces in the Central Don region continues… The offensive launched by our forces in the Northern Caucasus… A new blow struck by our forces to the south-west of Stalingrad… The offensive launched by our forces to the south of Stalingrad…'