Yaroshchuk's machine-gun platoon had taken up positions in old bomb craters somewhere between the Ninth and the forest, but now, in the impenetrable darkness of night, Voloshin walked the length and breadth of almost the entire slope, to no avail: it was as if Yaroshchuk had vanished into thin air. Voloshin had already begun to worry that something might have happened to his additional platoon, when he remembered that not far from Yaroshchuk's position there was a small bushy ridge, which had now also vanished in the night. So he had lost his way. After a brief pause to reflect and take his bearings, Voloshin went higher and got entangled in a patch of some sort of thornbush, scratching his face and hands. Once out of the thornbush, he crossed a hollow, where the crisp snow lay blue-grey in the shadows and crunched underfoot. At the risk of spraining his ankles, he charged blindly across a lightly ploughed field, and then he caught the sound of a low voice nearby. Shortly after, he was challenged, and he thought for a moment that he had found what he was looking for, when he was challenged again:
"Stop! Who goes there?"
"Friends."
"Password?"
"Firing-pin."
"Halt!"
"What's the matter?"
"Password?"
What the hell? thought Voloshin. Have I wandered into the sector of the neighbouring battalion, where of course there was a different password for today? He stopped with an unpleasant sensation in front of the submachine gun trained on him by a man wearing a groundsheet, who had already shouted into the darkness:
"Sergeant Mateichuk, sir!"
"What is it?"
Voloshin almost swore with annoyance - this was Ivanov's battery. He recognised the voice of his orderly, who meanwhile was on his way from somewhere in the darkness - probably from the dug-out.
"Who is it?"
"Mateichuk, it's me."
"Ah, Captain Voloshin? Pass," said Mateichuk, who had recognised him easily. As he came up to Voloshin in his shirt sleeves, the smell of smoke and an agreeable odour of food were wafted along with him. The sentry silently and impassively shouldered his submachine-gun.
"Is the captain here?"
"Yes. Come through."
He squeezed through the narrow passage-way into the dug-out, where it was so stiflingly hot it was almost suffocating. On the floor by the entrance the leaping flame of a blow lamp was emitting hoarse sounds beneath a dark blue coffee pot. Opposite, on planks covered with pine boughs, lay Ivanov, commander of the battery, with a book in his hands. The dug-out was full of petrol fumes, mingled with the pleasant aroma of coffee. A small electric light bulb below the ceiling illuminated this snug retreat.
"Greetings, God of War!"
"Salutations, Lord of the Fields!" The battalion commanders exchanged jocular greetings, and Ivanov said:
"You're just in time for coffee."
"You've still got coffee to drink? I'm envious, I'm envious." Bending his head, Voloshin perched himself at the battery commander's feet. "Well, I've lost my heavy machine-gun platoon. I've been all over the place…"
"But it's here, in front of our position. A hundred metres below us," said Mateichuk, who was squatting nearby. "I can show you."
"Fine, but I'll warm myself up a bit here first," said Voloshin, rubbing his chilled hands together. "So how's your morale, God of War?"
"Appropriate to the circumstances, my friend, appropriate to the circumstances."
Voloshin had been acquainted with Captain Ivanov since before the war, when they were platoon commanders in the same garrison and used to compete together in track and field events. They had met subsequently while trapped in an encirclement, and had survived it relatively well, although Ivanov had come out of it with only four men and no guns. Ivanov's howitzer battery, detached from the artillery regiment, had been supporting Voloshin's battalion since the first day of the offensive. Voloshin never missed an opportunity of seeing his old friend whenever he could, to discuss the situation, to coordinate certain matters affecting their cooperation, and simply to have a chat with an equal, something Voloshin could not permit himself in the battalion, where he was everybody's superior, nor in the regiment, where, on the contrary, almost everybody was his superior.
"What are you reading?" he asked Ivanov, glancing at the cover of the book. "Ah, Esenin!"
"Yes, Esenin. Just imagine, the boys found it on a German. A dead one. What he was doing with it, I've no idea."
"Perhaps he could read Russian."
"Perhaps… But I tell you, this is a real poet! Poetry, music, feeling! It's a pity I didn't read him properly before the war."
"Before the war nobody read him. People only read about him: the kulak poet and so on."
"A kulak to the cross-eyed. But to my mind, the most human of them all. Listen to this:
I hear you're still alive, my dearest lady:
So greetings to you, greetings! So am I.
I hope that old elusive glow of evening -"
" 'Still lights your cottage as in years gone by'," concluded Voloshin. "Even I know that one."
"Or what about this one. It could almost be about us:
Sweetly flowing fragrances,
my thoughts a drunken whirl…
Here's to the start of a fine romance
with a beautiful soldier-girl…
Well, what do you think?"
"Just the thing," said Voloshin. "All we need is a romance. Have you heard the attack's at six-thirty?"
With a suppressed sigh Ivanov put the book aside, and the look of artless animation faded instantly from his face.
"Of course, of course. They just phoned me from HQ."
He lowered his feet over the side of his plank bed and began pulling on his chrome leather boots over his captured woollen socks. The orderly doused the lamp and stood the coffee pot on the ground.
"How are you off for shells?" asked Voloshin.
"Almost out of them. We were ordered to borrow some from our neighbours. I've sent the boys, they should bring back about forty rounds. That means there'll be only twenty rounds per howitzer."
"Yes. Enough for moral support," observed Voloshin glumly.
"That's about it. And I can't fire them all off at once either. I need some myself in case something else happens. For self-defence."
"Sure…"
Meanwhile the hospitable Mateichuk had poured coffee into two enamel mugs and put the tripod in the corner out of the way. Instead of a table, Ivanov pushed his square map board in its canvas case forward on the planks, and the orderly placed the coffee on it. Then Ivanov took a few broken rye rusks out of his kit bag.
"Well, let's sit back and enjoy it," he invited hospitably. "You know, I love the little luxuries that I can permit myself."
"Exactly, they're just the thing to keep your spirits up. We've got nothing like that in the infantry! Not like you, the aristocrats of war: feather beds, coffee - probably campaign wives as well. Every comfort!"
"No, campaign wives I'm afraid we don't have, as you can see. But as for the rest - why not? All you need's the transport for it."
"Well, you've got plenty of that - tractors, lorries. All I've got back there is four old nags for the battalion. Before you can saddle any of them, you have to think of somewhere to hide the load."
"But then you've got Jim," Ivanov retorted.
"Did have. Not any more."
"Why, has he been wounded?"
"The general took him. Jim happened to catch his eye."
"Well, you've only yourself to blame! You clown! You don't go showing a dog like that off to generals, surely? You wouldn't let me have him when I asked you. And now you see the result…"
The coffee was scalding hot and stank of petrol. Voloshin chewed on a couple of rusks and warmed himself. He felt at home in the cosy atmosphere with his old friend. If it hadn't been for his constant thoughts about the morrow, which weighed so heavily on him, he would gladly have sat there until morning.
"More coffee?" asked Ivanov. "Mateichuk!"
"No thanks. Actually I prefer tea. Listen, what about the registration of your guns?"
"All fixed," said Ivanov. "You've got nothing to worry about there. Accuracy is guaranteed."
"Don't overdo it with the guns in the beginning. At first I'll manage somehow or other myself. I'll need your help later, when we're gaining a toehold there on the hill."
"I'd be delighted to oblige. But the chief will want it his way. You know as well as I do that for him the main thing is to make as much noise as possible at the start. He'll be expecting a proper bombardment."
"That's for sure. But it's not what I need. I'd rather you aimed a couple of shells at each of their machine-guns. They're quite capable of coming back from the next world, you know. You think you've blasted them to kingdom come with two direct hits, but five minutes later they open up again."
"Interchangeability of gun numbers, what else do you expect!" said Ivanov, starting on his second mug of coffee. "Part of their weapon training."
"I know what their training's like. We took a German sniper prisoner near Zvonovo. Two crosses on his jacket, you can imagine how many of our people he'd shot. And the training courses he'd done lasted only a month. I asked him how he'd learned to shoot. Simple, he said. Six hours' weapon training every day on the range. That's practice for you!"
"Yes, and then look at what they cram into our training programmes. Take the gunners, for example. What they don't do! Anti-chemical protection, square-bashing! As if we had parades at the front every day!"
"We shouldn't give credit to the enemy, but sometimes you have to hand it to them," agreed Voloshin. He had long been aware of Ivanov's critical approach to things, which testified to his friend's powers of observation, and his frequent readiness to speak his mind.
"Why not? Say what you like, where war's concerned the Germans are experts. It's no disgrace to pick up a few tips."
"To pick up a few tips, yes," conceded Voloshin. "That certainly goes for the infantry. Before the war we had I don't know how many different manuals on tactics, and they all went by the board. Now they've put out two new infantry training manuals in short order: ITM-one and ITM-two. On a different basis, of course: dictated by this war."
"Yes, I know. But that's in the infantry. In the artillery everything's the same as it used to be before the war."
"Yes, but then you're dealing with mathematics. The functions of angles are one and the same for us and the Germans."
"If only the mathematics would run to a few more shells," sighed Ivanov. "As things stand, it's such a tedious business - asking the divisional commander's permission for every round we fire. And you have to be as frugal as the covetous knight. You have to worry yourself sick over every shell."
"That's for sure. Well old chum, it's nice here, but I must be going. I despatched some scouts and I'm waiting for the results. I hope they haven't mined the hillside. Otherwise we're in for a shock tomorrow."
Voloshin peered at his Swiss watch. It was two-thirty.
"God forbid!" Ivanov said. "I know what you mean. You can imagine us trying to clear them under fire. Those damned Springen mines - fiendish invention! The commander of my headquarters platoon was blown to pieces by one. Mateichuk's in command of it now."
Voloshin rose and fastened the hook on his greatcoat collar. The little volume of Esenin's verse lay open on the flattened pine boughs at a dog-eared page, and Voloshin scooped it up with his large hand.
"Look - you'll be getting some sleep soon, but I'm in no mood for sleeping. Perhaps this would help me to take my mind off things," he said. Ivanov made a wry face, but consented.
"Only if you return it. I've got a waiting list here as it is."
They both emerged from the dug-out into the bitter cold of the windy night and silently looked towards the hill, which was hidden from view. A short distance away the rigid form of the sentry stood out darkly. All around them lay the somnolent expanse of night, filled with remote and indistinct sounds and noises, and the wind soughing in the bushes.
"Well then, thanks for the coffee and chat," Voloshin said, shaking his friend's warm hand with quiet melancholy. "Tomorrow will be a different story."
"I'll say," agreed Ivanov. "Well, we'll manage somehow. Best of luck. But why am I wishing you luck? - We're going to be in it together."