Voloshin walked quietly down the slope towards the marsh. It was dark as before, with a brisk easterly wind plucking nervously at the dry stalks of the tall weeds and whistling softly in the frozen branches of the thicket. Moving his holster forward, Voloshin glanced warily from side to side - after all he was walking alone, and anything might happen in the dead of night, half a kilometre from the Germans. They, too, were presumably not asleep, but were organising their defensive positions and protection, looking for his scouts, and possibly already roving about somewhere nearby, at the rear of his battalion.
There'd be nothing worse in war than to die by chance, far from one's own people, without witnesses. In such a case, it was not death itself that seemed repugnant, but rather the way in which it might be interpreted. There would undoubtedly be those who would say: "He went over to the Germans", as had happened in the autumn after the disappearance of their regimental commander, Bulanov, and his adjutant, Aleksiuk. They had arrived on horseback at the observation post of the Second Battalion at dusk, had a chat and a smoke and then set off for the Third, which was about two kilometres away, down a broad gully covered with low shrubs. However they never reached the Third. They disappeared without trace, before you could blink, just as if they'd never existed. Then various rumours began circulating, each of which was entirely probable - apart from what was surely the most absurd: that they had deliberately given themselves up as prisoners to the Germans. And nonetheless the most probable explanation of all was that both officers had fallen into the hands of German scouts.
Yes, you could get into trouble without even trying in a war: even now, for instance, while he was wandering along in the dark, alone, without his orderly or a radio-operator, and without even his loyal Jim. With Jim, of course, it was safer. In such situations as this the dog's sense of smell and extraordinary devotion were indispensible.
He had come by the dog six months before, towards the end of summer, near Selizharovo, where the remnants of their devastated army were fighting their way out of an encirclement. The breakthrough, spearheaded by a small shock troop, lost momentum for some incomprehensible reason, and the Germans managed to seal the breach they had made. Since early morning, German mortar fire had been splintering the ancient pine trees at the edge of the forest, where the combined battalions of the second were deployed . The forest had started to burn, and a dense pall of smoke gradually enveloped the undergrowth. Just after sunrise, Voloshin had been wounded in the head by a piece of shrapnel from a mortar bomb exploding in the branches. After hurriedly binding the wound, he had lain under a pine tree until noon, waiting for the signal to advance, which hadn't come. Exhausted by the oppressive heat, faint with thirst and tormented by pain, he had set off into the depths of the the forest in search of water, and soon stumbled across a small gully overgrown with hazel, where a little streamlet murmured faintly over the stones. There he'd found the dog.
Heaven knows where he'd come from. With his emaciated hindquarters twisted crookedly to one side and his front paws propped wide apart, Jim was sitting on the bank of the rivulet, watching the man with a look of painful expectation in his eyes. Voloshin had a drink, filled his captured water bottle with the warm water, then walked quietly up to the dog and stroked him cautiously. The dog didn't even draw back from his touch, and Voloshin soon realised that his hind paw had been fractured by shrapnel. Voloshin carefully bound up the fracture with a left-over length of bandage that he had in his pocket, then, breaking off two slender but strong hazel twigs he placed them on the paw as splints and again bound it tightly with the bandage. The dog cautiously took one step, then another, and with a sense of new-found hope set off after Voloshin.
He didn't leave Voloshin's side until evening. During the flurry of the break-out that night, in the din and confusion of the tracers, Jim temporarily disappeared, but in the morning when the remainder of the group had broken through the German positions, Voloshin, to his astonishment, found him at his side. The lame dog stubbornly refused to be parted from his rescuer. Voloshin fed him at the first field kitchen they encountered, ate something himself for the first time in several days, bandaged Jim's paw at the medical unit where his own wound was being dressed, and took the dog with him to the rear, to the assembly point and to the centre where the men were being assigned to new units. The dog's paw knitted surprisingly quickly, and he wouldn't let his protector out of his sight. Occasionally Voloshin's superiors had taken exception to his having the dog, but things had always sorted themselves out somehow or other - until this evening.
A great deal had happened in the dug-out that day to give him cause for reflection. Preoccupied with the fate of the battalion and the morrow's attack, at first Voloshin hadn't been particularly conscious of Jim's absence. But as time passed he missed the dog more and more, with an almost desperate intensity. Surprising as it might seem, Jim had become something deeply personal for him, almost intimate; something belonging to that part of a man that war tended to destroy, and which could be sensed more readily than it could be formulated in words. Nevertheless he could not oppose the general, for whom this magnificent creature had been the object of a momentary passion, an imperious whim - nothing more.
The Eighth was deployed lower down at the foot of the slope, spread out along the raised perimeter in a row of foxholes. Situated among them was the cramped dug-out of the company commander, covered by a tarpaulin, in which Muratov sheltered and the men took turns at warming themselves. Treading carefully in the darkness, Voloshin quietly approached the rear of the scarcely discernible mound, from beneath which issued the sound of voices. He was expecting to find Markin and Muratov there, but instead there were a number of privates in the dug-out, dimly lit by the tiny, guttering flame of a captured lampion. Two men sitting close to it with greatcoats thrown over their bare shoulders were absorbed in searching their shirts, which they'd turned inside out and draped across their knees. Voloshin thrust his head into the narrow chink at the side of the groundsheet, and the men glanced round, shyly covering their clothing with their elbows.
"What's the matter, have the little beasties been having a nibble?"
"Yeah, bugger 'em."
"Where's the company commander?"
"He's gone. With the adjutant," replied the soldier closest to the exit, tugging the flap of his greatcoat onto his thin white shoulder.
Voloshin lowered the groundsheet and rose to his feet, reflecting with satisfaction that Markin had already begun to take action. Generally speaking, the adjutant was a dependable fellow, even diligent. Having entrusted a matter to him, one could rest assured that he wouldn't dawdle over it, although the extent of his activity, it was true, usually fell strictly within the limits of a given command. If the situation required him to take the responsibility for something upon himself or to risk demonstrating his initiative, then it wasn't prudent to expect a great deal from Markin. he would always do exactly as much as was indicated by the command of a senior officer, and no more. On the other hand, you could understand Markin's attitude. Not every man could go through such a cruel mill as he had done in this war without cracking. Voloshin had already learned, from life and from his experience as an officer, that people are people and to make demands on somebody without regard for his capacities was foolish, to say the least. One had to take people as one found them, turning whatever qualities they possessed to good account as the situation required.
Standing in the excavated passageway, Voloshin listened carefully for any sound, and glanced to either side - he thought he could make out somebody looming indistinctly against the faintly lightening sky. Apparently the man recognised him and began to speak in a hoarse voice:
"The company commander and the adjutant are over there with the sergeant."
Voloshin gradually made his way down the line from one foxhole to the next. There was movement in almost all of them. In some, the men were in twos - getting together to have a smoke and warm themselves up. It appeared that none of them were sleeping, though it would have been difficult to get any sleep in such bitter cold. Still, it was relatively early yet. Voloshin knew that just before dawn they would nevertheless succumb to sleep, and doze as much as their nerves and the cold would let them. Even at war, with the Germans camped half a kilometre away, a man could not do without sleep altogether.
At last, near the fifth or sixth foxhole, he caught the sound of a discreet conversation, which was instantly broken off. Several dark forms were visible on the ground beside the parapet, and Voloshin drew nearer and stopped:
"Well then, Lieutenant Markin?"
Markin rose hastily, followed by Muratov and somebody else from the Eighth Company.
"We've dispatched them, sir. Three men. They should return in an hour to an hour and a half."
"Right. And nothing's been heard from the Seventh?"
"No, nothing."
"Send a man to Lieutenant Samokhin. Have him pass on the message that I'm waiting to hear the results of the reconnaissance."
"Sir."
Muratov turned on his heel and started to run off somewhere. This displeased Voloshin: where was he running off to like that? Didn't he have an orderly or even a radio-operator to summon the man he wanted? However, the fact that he himself had come here alone prevented Voloshin from rebuking the company commander. Markin was standing opposite awaiting orders.
"You proceed to the CP," said Voloshin. "If there's anything to report, I'll be here."
The adjutant turned away, but as if he were afraid that Voloshin might see something amiss in his actions, he explained before leaving:
"I gave the scouts a thorough briefing. They've put a couple of inspectors in the company, so everything has to be done properly."
"Good."
Anxious and impatient, Markin set off up the rise and soon disappeared in the darkness. Without turning in his direction, Voloshin could still hear the sound of his footsteps on the frozen earth for some time. Once he even heard a heavy thud - probably Markin had stumbled - then all sound died away. Markin had never really let him down; he was obedient, not in the habit of questioning orders, and he would painstakingly carry out everything that regimental staff demanded of him. On the whole he was quite a good adjutant, but left alone with him Voloshin always felt weighed down by a distressing feeling of tension. Something about Markin invariably put one on one's guard. Voloshin always had the impression that Markin was expecting something from him, but what that might be was beyond his comprehension. Voloshin had not given the matter a great deal of thought, it was true, and tried to avoid noticing the awkwardness between them, but none the less, this unacknowledged tension in their relationship had become almost habitual - although Voloshin tried not to reveal it in front of Markin.