Little Apple (21 page)

"What's more," the regimental commander cut in, "the Whites have got barbed wire entanglements and machine-guns and their artillery is superior to ours. Add that and you'll have listed all the objections I put to the divisional chief of staff an hour ago."

Storoshev, the taciturn commander of the second battalion, nodded to signify that he shared the CO's misgivings. He disliked reckless gambles and favoured the delivery of well-prepared blows that were guaranteed to destroy the enemy. There was nothing impetuous about his brand of courage. Seaman Stassik was made of different stuff Whether in action or at cards, with women or in argument, he always strove to clinch matters quickly. He laid his broad, red hand flat on the table and leant forward.

"Perhaps, comrade commander," he bellowed, "perhaps you also reported that our fraternal discipline was poor, and that our Red riflemen have refused to advance?"

"Our discipline is good," the CO said calmly, "but it takes more than fraternal discipline to render enemy positions ripe for assault."

Stassik eyed Storoshev across the table. "It almost sounds as if he wants Their White Excellencies to give us the slip," he muttered.

The one-armed captain had overheard. He flushed and took two steps in Stassik's direction, but the regimental commissar forestalled him.

"Comrade," he told Stassik sternly, "the regimental commander must be treated with respect. I am jointly responsible for all his decisions. Unless you withdraw your imputation at once, I shall report this incident through official channels."

Seaman Stassik, who had captured two enemy guns at Valki in the thick of a fusillade, looked as sheepish as a scolded schoolboy. He started to say something, but the CO brushed his apology aside with a negligent gesture and resumed his post at the window. Just then the telephone rang. He picked it up.

"3rd Red Rifle Regiment, Penza Division. Commanding officer speaking."

He stood motionless with the receiver to his ear, staring at the coats and caps on the wall as if they were the source of the voice addressing him. A minute went by. Then he squared his shoulders and repeated the orders he had just been given:

"At 0600, fresh troops advancing from the direction of Yamnoye-Sobolevsk will mount a flank attack on the White Markov Brigade deployed between Zirky and Ivanovka. The 3rd Red Rifle Regiment will distract the enemy's attention by launching a diversionary attack at 0545."

The CO replaced the receiver. Turning to the regimental commissar and his two subordinates, he said, "You heard that. We must now make the necessary preparations. Your battalion, Comrade Stassik ..."

The three men bent over the map without a word.

Trees and bushes detached themselves from the nocturnal gloom. Gradually, the sky above the paling hills became tinged with the light of dawn. Red Guards in sodden greatcoats crouched in their shallow, hurriedly dug foxholes, which were knee-deep in turbid yellow rainwater. The rifle bullets whistling over their heads made a sound like a whiplash whenever they struck stones or embedded themselves in tree-trunks. Artillery fire probed the terrain. First came a distant rumble like thunder, then a banshee wail that prompted everyone to hug the ground, and somewhere among the ploughed fields a brown geyser of earth would spurt into the air.

Vit¬torin peered over the low breastwork with his mud-caked entrenching tool held protectively above his head. An artillery duel was raging in the west. The enemy's heavy guns set up a continuous roar. Puffs of black and sulphurous yellow smoke appeared above the ridge. They belched forth fire and steel, but still the line of riflemen advanced. There was little to be seen but an endless succession of cotton wool cloudlets dispersed by the wind. Sometimes, too, tiny figures could be discerned. They raced down the slope, flung themselves to the ground and disappeared from view.

The issue would be decided over there, Vit¬torin knew. He shut his eyes, and his thoughts were instantly pervaded by dreamlike confusion. The scurrying figures were all in league with him. They had made his cause their own, so he could lie here and rest. A telegram bearing the Kremlin seal had arrived from Moscow at noon. "Message to all fronts: The following man is to be detained ..."

Forward! There he stands in his riding breeches and patent leather boots, quirt in hand. He stands there all alone, but his face is invisible. No one can tell it's Selyukov because his shoulders are enveloped in a huge, sulphurous yellow cloud. "To be detained ..." There they are already, the Red Guards, sprouting from the earth like mushrooms! They recognize him at last, converge from all directions and hem him in. He stands fast, though - he doesn't retreat. His breath is like fire, and the cloud around his shoulders emits a thunderous roar:

"Pashol!"

The thread of Vit¬torin's daydream snapped. He jumped as a piece of shrapnel whistled over his head: the shell had landed only ten yards short of his foxhole. A fierce fusillade was lashing the breastwork. When the rifle fire slackened for a moment or two, a figure materialized among some juniper bushes not far away. It sprinted, flung itself down, vanished into a furrow, reappeared. The man's face could now be seen.

It was Berezin. He sprinted another few yards, vaulted over the breastwork, and stretched out beside Vit¬torin, panting hard.

Berezin had been reconnoitring the approaches and knew the terrain. He got his breath back and proceeded to outline the situation.

"It doesn't look too good," he shouted above the din of battle. "We've pulled back on the right - the Whites are counterattacking. See those flares? Our people are calling for artillery support."

Berezin produced a notebook from his pocket and jotted down a message. He drew a rough sketch-map and marked the position of two enemy machine-guns he'd spotted, then tore out the sheet and handed it to Vit¬torin. His men were waiting for him in a nearby shell crater. Cautiously, he climbed out of the foxhole and crawled across the bullet-lashed ground until he vanished among the juniper bushes as suddenly as he had appeared.

The platoon commander had dug in behind the point at which the firing line formed an obtuse angle. He was a flaxen-haired youngster with a soft and girlish complexion that had earned him the nickname "Sonyechka" in the regiment, but he had spent seven months at the front and risen from the rank of bugler to that of platoon officer.

Vit¬torin handed him Berezin's message. Sonyechka read it and refolded the slip of paper. Then he scanned the enemy lines through his binoculars.

"We must silence those machine-guns," Vit¬torin urged him in a hoarse voice.

Sonyechka deposited the binoculars on the ground beside him and shook his head.

"That's a job for the artillery," he said. "You look like Satan on Christmas Eve, comrade. Are you sick?"

"Fever, but the MO and I have jointly decided to ignore it," Vit¬torin replied. He made a feeble attempt to smile, but the next moment his features resumed their tense, fanatical expression. His feverish brain had become obsessed with the idea that his platoon must occupy the village and cut off Selyukov's line of retreat. "We can't just go on lying here," he went on. "Our offensive has been checked. Why don't we take the initiative and attack?"

"I've received no such order," Sonyechka replied. "The lie of the land isn't good: three hundred yards of rising ground and no cover. We'll stay put till the rain washes us away, you mark my words. Hey, comrade!" He beckoned to a man in the firing line. "Take this and run like hell. Deliver it to battalion headquarters."

He rose and handed the man the slip of paper.

Vit¬torin had also risen. "So you won't advance?" he hissed between his clenched teeth. "You're scared. No wonder they gave you a girl's nickname!"

But Sonyechka didn't hear. A ricochet had severed the great artery in his thigh. His face went limp and he collapsed, scrabbling at the ground.

"Battalion headquarters," he repeated in a whisper. "I'm done for, comrade, take command. Don't waste ammunition, return fire only when attacked. Our present line ..."

The breath began to rattle in his throat. He tried to tear open his coat with both hands. Then his head fell back and he lay still.

"Stretcher-bearer!" Vit¬torin shouted, but the medical orderly and his assistant were nowhere to be seen.

The soldier bent over Sonyechka and unbuttoned his greatcoat and tunic. "No need for a stretcher, comrade," he said. "He'll never dance at another wedding. His troubles are over."

And he proceeded to pull off the dead man's boots. The bullet that had hit Sonyechka decided the fate of the entire platoon. Vit¬torin sprang to his feet.

"Comrades," he cried, "I'm in command now. We're going to advance - we're going to annihilate those traitors over there. The proletarian Fatherland demands it. The proletarian Fatherland is in danger. Comrades, save Russia!"

There was no answering voice. The Red Army veterans surveyed the open country ahead of them with an experienced eye. Any movement, however small, would be spotted by the enemy, yet they obeyed. Silently, they prepared to advance.

"Fix bayonets!" Vit¬torin commanded.

A faint rattle ran down the line. Silence fell, broken only by the whine of bullets. And then, quite suddenly, a song went up from the doomed men's ranks. One of them softly hummed it and the others joined in. Their voices gained strength, rising
heavenward like a chorale, until they were all singing in unison:

Where are you rolling, little apple? You will ne'er come back again. There'll be listed dead tomorrow a hundred more Red Army men.

"Forward!" yelled Vit¬torin, and their voices were drowned by the roar of exploding shells.

Very few of the attackers managed to penetrate the enemy's withering fire. Half-way to the village, the insane assault collapsed. Hemmed in on both sides, the Reds held out for a while behind the hedges and trees of a small orchard. When their cartridges were gone they withdrew to a shell-shattered farmhouse with the carcass of a big, shaggy dog sprawled outside the door. Here they fought off the enemy one last time with hand-grenades and rifle butts. A few minutes later, when the roof caught fire, they decided to surrender.

One of the prisoners who staggered out of the building, half stupefied by the smoke from the smouldering debris, was Vit¬torin.

He was now lying in the yard of the devastated sugar factory whose smoke-blackened walls, when they loomed out of the mist that morning, had seemed so mysterious and unattainably remote, as if they marked the boundary of another world. So there he lay, and huddled against the wall with weary, despairing or apathetic faces lay the other survivors of the charge. Two sentries in the uniform of the Kuban Cossacks stood leaning on their carbines in the middle of the yard while a third sat perched on the shaft of a farm cart, playing his accordion.

Vit¬torin's adventure was at an end. He had planned to confront Selyukov as a free man with his head held high, but no, fate had forbidden it and flung him back into Chernavyensk Camp. The wheel had come full circle: he was a prisoner and Selyukov his master once more. It was inevitable, preordained. A sick, prostrate, defenceless prisoner - that was what fate wanted him to be on the day of reckoning.

But no, he wasn't as defenceless as he'd been at Chernavyensk. There his thoughts had centred on his home and family and a grand reunion, but that was all behind him and had come to nothing. Now that he had sampled all the terrors of the age, life meant nothing to him any more. If Selyukov came now, he was ready for him.

He pictured his confrontation with Selyukov. There he was with the Order of Vladimir and St George's Cross on his chest. Do you remember me, Mikhail Mikhailovich? Yes, Selyukov remembered him. He knew what awaited him and turned pale. Vit¬torin drove his fist into Selyukov's arrogant face, imprinted as it was with all the vices in the world and all the evils of an atrocious age. Another blow, and another. Selyukov staggered back and drew his sabre, but he, Vit¬torin, was no longer there. Chernavyensk Camp had been abolished long ago, so where was he now? In a farmhouse with sunflowers and white roses painted on its wooden shutters. Before the door, denying access to all comers, lay a shaggy dog. "He's dead, and he guards the dead," said a voice that sounded strangely like an accordion. What was the source of this pain that kept boring into his head and chest? Bullets were zipping past. He knelt down behind a wood-pile and fired back, and suddenly Berezin was beside him, his face convulsed with anger. "Who gave the order to advance, you? Why did you do it?" - "Why? Because I had to. It was preordained, don't you see? All the vices in the world are imprinted on that face ..."

Vit¬torin's leaden eyelids drooped. Dreams came and bore him off. They hauled him through icy torrents and across burning desert sands, swept him up into whirlwinds and down into murky depths. Then, wearying of him, they released their grip and he drifted up into the light of day.

An order rang out across the factory yard.

"On your feet! Fall in!"

Sleep and pain deserted Vit¬torin like leeches that have drunk their fill. T^ time had come. He stood up ramrod straight. The other prisoners formed a line on either side of him.

"Commissars, Red officers and enrolled Communists, forward march!" ordered the sergeant.

Vit¬torin and four others stepped forward. A sixth man followed after a moment's hesitation. The remaining prisoners closed up behind them.

"Halt!"

They halted. The man beside Vit¬torin muttered, "They're going to shoot us, all six of us, that's for sure. So be it. Let them plough me over if they must." He nudged Vit¬torin in the ribs. "There he is!"

"Who?" Vit¬torin whispered.

"The Whistler. Here he comes, the swine, don't you see him?"

"Twenty-seven prisoners, Your Excellency," they heard the sergeant say. "Six of them are enrolled Communists."

A curtain of red mist descended on Vit¬torin's eyes, and through it he saw the face of his devilish quarry. He uttered a cry and lurched forward.

"Mikhail Mikhailovich, do you remember me?"