The commando unit moved off down a winding lane through the snow dune. It was instantly swallowed up by sepulchral whiteness. The twilit land was beginning to merge with empty space, and space into darkness. On the other side of a half-invisible sloping bank, pale as death, the presence of the river was palpable under its crust of ice and snow, an expanse of camouflaged pitfalls crisscrossed by hidden threats. The woods, that by day gave every horizon a bluish tinge, were now invisible, and there was nothing left but the absolute silence of uninhabited expanses. Distant explosions and quick-fading flashes in the sky did not interrupt so much as magnify the silence and the vastness. This site of immobility evoked only feelings from beyond despair: total extinction, uselessness, the biting cold. The landscapes of dead planets must look like this. “From here, Daria Nikiforovna, you can see a long way into enemy positions, but take care not to go past the salient, they have it under observation… We’ve had men killed there.” But there was nothing to be seen, neither there nor here, the two dead men had left no trace. And yet numberless eyes were on the lookout, trained through lenses; sound detectors were listening; radar beams were searching through space; field telephones were active from station to station; patrols were crawling over the ice… This is what man has become, this murderous worm! Machines for riddling puny human bodies, smashing holes into concrete, pulverizing the earth, whipping snow into squalls, drowning the night under torrents of fire, orchestrating screams of agony, drinking the blood of sacrifice, all these latent machines were crouched expectant on the brink of fury. The earth was as primed with violence as the air was with cold, the sky with snow, and the human spirit with that resigned anguish which journalists have distilled into “Bravery.”
At the command post, men were playing cards with a pack reduced to tatters. Noncoms were on the line to other hidden dens, swiftly writing down the hour, the minute, the response, “all quiet, all quiet.” Vosskov had dropped off with his elbows on the map, a wax dummy. Time flowed like invisibly falling snow, the time of the last certainty, charged like all else with the inevitability of catastrophes moving closer and closer. A devouring second toward what, yet another second toward what? Who will ever understand?
“It’s starting,” whispered the chubby-cheeked telephonist.
“Right,” Vosskov said, shaking himself out of his torpor, “pass me the receiver.”
The voice at the other end launched into an algebraic report, the pencil traced a curve on the map as though impelled by a will of its own. “I see, good, very good…” This meant: disastrous. Major Vosskov was no longer listening, but he could hear through the silence. Patkin’s six stumble into hell one hour before the projected time. Bad. They will be destroyed because of that timing. First a volley of machine-gun fire rips through the emptiness, instantly followed by tracer bullets striping the night with low arcs, like maddened colored stars. Now a planet ignites in the sky and spreads a colossal glare over the white desert it conjures into being. Ice and snow become peopled with shadows, obscure forms drawing bursts of projectiles from automatic weapons; most of these shadows turn out to be illusory. Everything dies down suddenly in a panicked silence, a darkness of inexistence. And then it all begins again, the rising and sinking of northern lights, the whistling upward blast of a torpedo… Major Vosskov rose to his feet and put on his shroud, imitated by several men and by Daria. Outside, at first, they saw nothing. Even the snow was black. But there are different kinds of nothingness, and this one was a sham. Sure enough, less than a mile away a searchlight skimmed the snows like a small, jerky snake. Were the seven men headed back across the river already? Was that possible? Downstream bright planets leaped, the facing shore thundered chaotically, silence fell, and the river arched its back in an eruption of black water and fire. “They’re breaking up the ice, the vicious bastards!” Vosskov hesitated. Should we start firing, to create a diversion? His orders were to operate discreetly and husband the ammunition. The enemy would fire back, which could hamper the return of the commando unit and entail the loss of a few men… Things might escalate into an artillery duel, prompting the division to hold an inquiry into the waste of munitions occasioned by his recklessness… Then should he do nothing? Like an anxious schoolboy, Vosskov imagined the general shouting: “And you simply sat back? Where did your duty lie?” A note would appear in his file: “Lacks initiative.” Where did his duty lie? Our bank was silent, or nearly. Ring through to post 4 with instructions to open fire? Patience, I shall be patient as death. “Find out,” he told the liaison officer in a steady voice, for the leader must display exemplary calm. “What have they seen? Have they spotted them?” Under a rigid posture, he was squirming. “No, sir.” A cone of pink light had stabilized out there, boiling on the spot with each regular explosion. At last the riposte was under way. Vosskov was delighted to see that the order had been given by someone else (one less responsibility). Dark white sprays spurted up beyond the Neva, a thick cloud blurred the left flank of the luminous cone. “Ten to one the survivors are through safe… Did you understand the operation?” he asked Daria. “I think so…” It was hideously beautiful. “You there, Rodion, run back and check the casualty figures. If our people are inside the sector, increase firing for another five minutes…” He stooped to light his pipe under a soldier’s coat. “I reckon they’ve taken more losses than we have… That big strike you saw, it must have hit a blockhouse…” His pipe had gone out immediately; he was inhaling imaginary smoke and expelling it through protruded lips. “All right, the night has had its little epileptic fit. Home we go.” The battle was tapering off into ever-shorter spasms of brilliance and noise. Darkness reclaimed the snow, dappled at first, then total.
Nothing had happened. “Reporting sporadic incoming fire, location, time…” Propped over the map, Vosskov was dozing again, a wax statue. One hundred and four hours on duty and so little sleep! All he wanted was sleep. He would lie down in piles of warm fresh straw, he would sleep on stoves in peasant kitchens, sleep in meadows of grass, rest against the wall of a shelter, collapse wherever he could! The miracle of sleep began to steal over him, there was a lively country fair, children singing… “Right,” he groaned, his blissful expression morphing into a scowl, “hand me the receiver…” Colonel Fontov was on the line. “No, Comrade Colonel, no sign of them yet… Nothing to report…” Time crept onward, malign and inconceivable. Daria was prowling back and forth between the claustrophobic shelter, the trench, and the eternity of darkness beyond. There she ran into the colonel. During the incident, he had given himself one of those injections against physiological depression. (Humiliating to know how much we depend on our glands!) “Ah, it’s you! Enjoying a breath of northern air? Bracing, isn’t it? Did you like our little party? It went off very well. My plan executed to the letter. Our men are coming back…” She was still lost for a reply when he turned and ambled off, spry despite the stick, trailing a fan of shadows. Daria wrung her hands in the emptiness.