Daria suggested to Captain Potapov that this narrative, revised by a writer (for it was poorly expressed, marred by clumsy attempts to dissemble), could usefully be published. “I’ve read few that are so moving,” she said. Her superior listened, doodling stars onto his blotter.
“Moving? War is not moving. Human testimonies, if authentic, are more apt to be demoralizing… Let our unionized pencil pushers do their own writing, they know their business. I shall want those papers for the psychology department. You must focus your attention on information with some practical use. Have you made a note of the movements of this Gutman, dates, unit numbers, and so forth?”
“Yes, Comrade Captain.”
“That’s what we need.”
There was a touch of pained reprimand in his tone, as though he had been about to say: What are you so bothered by? One atom of cruelty in the bloody nebula we inhabit? It doesn’t mean a thing, nothing counts now except pitiless efficiency, get that into your head and start being a tiny cog in the machine… At least, that was how Daria took it.
The shelter with its log ceiling provided a deceptive impression of security… You scrambled down an embankment and entered an underground passageway, at the end of which the command post opened out like a roomy cave, lit by oil lamps. It had bunks, telephones, a stove; the pungent scents of leather, tinned food, and urine hung in a dank chill of cellars. The liaison officer, Ivanchuk, sat permanently glued to the receiver: his dimpled, rosy cheeks were a welcome sight. He was just in from Siberia, and still radiated the plenitude of life. Everyone who met him must have said to himself: “If you only knew what you were in for…”
Colonel Fontov, by contrast, was a greenish individual with a visionary glare, ravaged face, too-long neck, and jutting, prickly beard; he usually leaned on a thick wooden stick and seemed not to have slept for weeks; he stared at you with the eyes of a nocturnal bird capable of strange divinations. That night he was there only for some raids that had been put off by a shower of torpedoes and a blizzard of snow. His glance frequently alighted, with pleasure, on Daria. A woman in the midst of all this, a real woman, recalling to mind the lost world out there; it was better than a big glass of alcohol in the belly, for it sharpened the faculties. As heavy crashes shook the earth around them, Fontov rose from his table and paced up and down, smoking (he limped without his stick; his beard poked irascibly sideways). “Everything all right?” he asked the telephonist. “Yes, Comrade Colonel.” “Check on post 4.” The younger man was trying not to look rattled while bits of earth sprinkled down from the quivering ceiling, like the sly patter of haiclass="underline" it was thoroughly unnerving.
Fontov sent some lieutenants up to reconnoiter what was happening outside. It’s best to keep the men busy under bombardment, especially the younger combatants. So they won’t have time to think, so they’ll only follow orders. “Quite a hailstorm,” said the colonel to Daria. (If he addressed her, it was as an excuse to look at her without embarrassment.) “Can’t think why the sons of bitches are squandering so much ammunition, they’d be insane to attack in this sector… But insane is what they are, sometimes.” A troubling thought shifted his gaze, and Daria was forgotten: of course, there was always the possibility of treachery. A soldier strides over pack ice, sure of himself and of the awesome cold; but the ice is cracked, the trap powdered with new-fallen snow, the somber waters beneath suck you into their bubbling vortex, goodbye to the man, the darkness carries away what they call a drowned man… The shelling having tapered off, the Colonel assembled his officers for going out. Daria volunteered to go along. “No,” he said, “it’s not advisable, that hail can fall again at any moment…” He was a man without nerves, who spoke in a penetrating voice, managed never to lose his temper, and mastered himself with unanswerable firmness. Daria was amazed that the human animal could be brought so firmly to heel. She saw that he had been worn down to the last fiber — the last, steely fiber that held him together. The only puzzle, thought Daria, is whether he will be wounded again before his nerves break down, or whether he will crack up before his next wound… In the first case, he will be decorated and nominated for promotion; in the second, he could wind up in front of a firing squad — for raving in the middle of a division chiefs of staff meeting, or declaiming a speech during the launch of an attack, or howling at the moon all alone in the snow!