A Hero's Daughter Read online

  Ivan had become afraid to look at his wife of late. She hardly got up anymore. Lying there with the baby, dipping her finger into a brew of orache and old crusts, she tried to feed him. Her face was marked with dry brown spots; dark rings burned around her eyes. Kolka hardly moved on her breast. He no longer even cried, simply uttering tiny moans, like an adult. Ivan himself had great difficulty in standing upright. At length he woke up one day at the crack of dawn and reflected with mortal clarity, “If I don’t find anything to eat all three of us will die.”

  He kissed his wife, put two gold watches, the spoils of war, into his tunic pocket, hoping to be able to trade them for bread. And set out toward the main road.

  The village was dead. The noontide furnace. Dry, dusty silence. Not a living soul. Nothing but music blaring from the black loudspeaker above the door of the soviet. The radio had been installed by the Secretary of the District Committee, who had ordered that it should be switched on as often as possible, “to raise the political consciousness of the kolkhozniks. 99 But now the radio was simply blaring because there was no one to turn it off.

  And from dawn till dusk, delirious with hunger and hugging the tiny body of her child with his great head, Tatyana listened to rousing marches and the commentator’s voice almost bursting with glee. He was reporting on the industrial achievements of the Soviets. Then the same voice, but now in harsh, metallic tones, began hitting home at those enemies who had perverted Marxism and lambasted the agents of imperialism.

  That day, the last before her long collapse, in the stifling heat of noon Tatyana heard the song currently in vogue that was played every day. The flies buzzed against the windowpanes, the village was mute, poleaxed by the sun, and this song rippled out, as sweet and tender as Turkish delight:

  All the world turns blue and green about us,

  Nightingales at every window sing.

  There’s never love without a touch of sadness….

  Ivan walked along taking great strides. In his old knapsack he carried two loaves of black bread, a paper bag containing millet, twelve onions, and a piece of bacon wrapped in a scrap of cloth. But most precious of all, the liter of milk, that had long since turned sour, he carried in his hands. “With this we can feed the kid and then we’ll see …” he thought.

  A dense, dry heat hovered over the fields, like the exhalation from the mouth of an oven. A burning copper sun was plunging down behind the forest but scarcely any evening cool could be felt.

  He passed through the deserted village flooded with the violet light of the sunset. The radio above the soviet was still blaring away.

  As he crossed the threshold he had a premonition of disaster. He called out to his wife. All that could be heard was the incessant buzzing of the flies. A fine golden ray of light pierced the gloom of the izba as

  Ivan rushed into the bedroom. Tatyana lay there on the bed, the child in her arms, and appeared to be asleep. He lifted the cover in haste and pressed his ear to her breast. Beneath the rough scar he heard her heart beating faintly. He heaved a sigh of relief. “Thank goodness! I’ve arrived in time….” Then he touched the child. The cold, rigid little body already had a waxen sheen to it. Outside the window the sweet voice was unflaggingly pouring out these words:

  All the world turns blue and green about us

  In the forest gaily purls the stream.

  There’s never love without a touch of sadness….

  Ivan bounded out of the house and ran over to the soviet. Blinded with tears, he began hurling stones at the black disk of the loudspeaker, without managing to hit it. Struck at last, the loudspeaker screeched and fell silent. A vertiginous stillness ensued. Only, somewhere at the edge of the forest, like a well-oiled machine, the cuckoo flung out its insistent, plaintive call.

  The next day Tatyana was able to get up. She went out on the doorstep and saw Ivan driving nails into the little coffin’s pine planks.

  After burying their son and gathering together their meager luggage, they took the road to the station. Ivan had heard that in the small town of Borissov, some sixty miles from Moscow, they were recruiting drivers for the construction of a hydroelectric center and providing them with accommodation.

  That was how they came to settle in the Moscow region. Ivan found himself behind the wheel of an old truck, whose side panels bore the inscription in flaking paint: “Next stop: Berlin!” Tatyana went to work at the furniture factory.

  And the days, months, and years followed one another, calmly and uneventfully. Ivan and Tanya were content to see their lives following this ordinary, peaceful course. The same as everyone else, that of decent people. They had been given a room in a communal apartment. There were already two families living there, the Fedotovs and the Fyodorovs. And in the little room next to the kitchen lived Sofia Abramovna.

  The Fedotovs, still a young couple, had three sons whom the father beat frequently and conscientiously. When their parents were out at work these rascals would take their fathers heavy bicycle down from the wall. With a hellish din, running over the other tenants’ shoes, they careered up and down the long, dark corridor, where there hovered a persistent and bitter smell of stale borscht.

  The Fyodorovs were almost twice as old as the Fedotovs. Their son had been killed just before the end of the war and the mother lived in the hope that the death notice had been sent by mistake: there were so many Fyodorovs in Russia! Secretly she hoped he had been taken prisoner and that some day or other he would return. Fyodorov, the father, had himself been in the war from the first day to the last and was under no illusions. Sometimes, when he had been drinking and could stand it no longer, exasperated by his wife’s daily expectation, he would yell right through the apartment: ‘Oh sure, you can count on it. He’ll be coming back. But if he’s discharged from the POW camp he’s not coming back here to you. He’ll be sent beyond the Urals — or even farther!”

  Sofia Abramovna belonged to the old Moscow intelligentsia. In the 1930s she had been sent to a camp and had only been released in 1946, subject to a ban on living in Moscow and some hundred other cities. During her ten years in the camp she had lived through what human language was incapable of expressing. But her neighbors guessed it. When a quarrel broke out in the kitchen Sofia did not try to stand on the sidelines but lost her temper, cursed and swore, using surprising language. Sometimes she hurled turns of phrase at her adversaries contemptuous in their exaggerated politeness: “I give you my most humble thanks, Comrade Fyodorov. You are the very pinnacle of courtesy.” On other occasions she would suddenly come out with expressions she had picked up in the camps: “See here, Fedotov, you keep your damned thieving hands off the stash in my sideboard. You’re wasting your time casing it. There’s no liquor in there.”

  But even at the height of these neighborly quarrels Sofia’s eyes were always staring into space to such an extent that it was clear to everyone: she was still back there beyond the Urals. Which was why arguing with her was not very rewarding.

  Whether they liked it or not, the Demidovs used to find themselves drawn into these conflicts. But their role was generally confined to acting as conciliators between the Fyodorovs and the Fedotovs when they squabbled and calming the wives as they sobbed noisily.

  Life would have been somewhat lacking in savor for all of them without these altercations. For three days after a quarrel the neighbors would edge by when they met without exchanging greetings, glowering at one another. Then they would make up around a communal table and, after drinking a few vodkas, would begin to embrace, swearing eternal friendship and abjectly begging one another’s forgiveness with tears in their eyes. The Fedotovs had an old windup phonograph. They would bring it down into the courtyard, put it on a small stool, and all the inhabitants of their little building would gather in the mauve dusk of spring. They would shuffle around to the strains of a languid tango, forgetting for an hour or two the lines outside the communal toilets every morning, the squabbles over the disappearance of a piece of soap, forget
ting everything that made up their lives.

  The Demidovs enjoyed these evenings. Tanya would put on her white wedding blouse, Ivan threw a jacket over his shoulders with all his medals in a row. And they danced together, smiling at each other, letting themselves be carried away by the sweet dreaminess of the words:

  Do you remember how we whispered,

  On those summer nights so blue,

  Words of tenderness and passion

  O my dearest lover true …?

  The years rolled by at once slowly and rapidly. Imperceptibly the Fedotov sons had grown up, developed into hefty young men with bass voices. They had all married and left in one direction or another.

  Some records had had their day, others came into vogue. And now it was the younger generation who played them on their windowsills, commenting: “That’s Lolita Torrez…. Oh, this one’s Yves Montand.”

  The only event that stuck in Ivan’s memory during those years was the death of Stalin. And, in fact, not the death itself, because on that day they had drunk and wept buckets and that was all. No, it was another day, already under Khrushchev, when they removed the statue of Stalin. Why did they choose him, specifically him, Demidov, for this task? Was it because he was a Hero of the Soviet Union? The head of the motor pool had called him in. Ivan found himself among the local Party bosses. They explained to him what it was all about. He had to take his Zis truck that night and work some overtime.

  This was how the memory of that spring night had stayed with him. They worked in darkness, simply lighting the monument with their vehicle headlamps. A fine rain was falling that had the bitter smell of poplar shoots. The cast-iron statue of the Great Leader glistened like rubber. The pulley on the crane began to do its work: Stalin found himself hanging in midair, somewhat askew, gently swaying, staring hard at the people scurrying about beneath him. And already the workmen were tugging him by his feet toward the Zis s open side panel. The foreman of the team, close beside Ivan, grunted: “Sometimes we were lying there on our bellies at the front and they were throwing so much at us you couldn’t even lift your head up from the ground. The stuff was whistling over. A hail of bullets like a shower. Then the political commissar jumps to his feet with his little revolver, you know, like those kids’ pistols. And once he yells: ‘For our Country, for Stalin, forward!’ … then it grabbed us, you know, goddamn it! We jumped up and went over the top…. All right, you guys! Steer the head toward the corner. Otherwise it won’t fit in. Steady she goes….”

  * * *

  A fresh breeze could be sensed in the air, with something sparkling and joyful about it. In Moscow, it appeared, passions were being unleashed. Things were coming to the boil in kitchens at the highest level. Ivan even acquired a taste for reading newspapers, which he had never looked at before. All about them everything was relaxing, gaining a new lease of life. An endless procession of Fidel Castros, bearded and smiling, marched through the newspapers, as well as drawings of blacks with great white teeth, smashing the chains of colonialism, and the engaging faces of Belka and Strelka, the pioneer dog cosmonauts. All this added savor to life and caused joyful hopes to be reborn. As he sat behind the wheel, Ivan often hummed the song that could be heard everywhere:

  Cuba, my love,

  Isle of purple dawn …

  And it seemed as if both Fidel and the blacks on the posters, breaking free from colonialism, were intimately linked to the life of Borissov, to their own existence. It seemed as if the world was about to be shaken and an endless festival would begin, here and everywhere on earth.

  To crown it all, Gagarin had taken off into space. And at the Party Congress Khrushchev made the pledge: “We shall build Communism in twenty years.”

  At the end of this happy year two important events occurred in the Demidov family. In November they had a daughter and just before the new year they had bought a Zaria television set.

  At the maternity ward the doctor said to Ivan: “Now listen, Ivan Dmitrevich, you may well be a Hero here, all the town knows you. But I’m going to speak frankly. With a war wound like that no one should have children! Her heart missed a beat three times during the birth.

  But it was a time for optimism. They had no thoughts of anything troublesome. On New Year’s Eve Ivan and Tanya sat in front of the television, their arms around each other’s shoulders, to watch Carnival Night, starring the popular actress Gurchenko, then in the flush of youth and trilling away merrily. They were perfectly happy. In the dim light the dark green glint of a bottle of champagne glowed on the table. The snow crunched under the feet of passersby outside. From the neighbors’ rooms could be heard the hubbub of guests. Behind the wardrobe in a little wooden cradle their newborn was sleeping silently and diligently. They had called her Olya.

  In the spring of the following year they were given an apartment of their own with two rooms.

  * * *

  During these years a whole generation who had not known the war came into the world and grew up. Ivan was more and more often invited to the school at Borissov just before the national celebration on May 9, Victory Day.

  Now they addressed him as “Veteran.” This amused him. To him it seemed as if the war had only just ended and he was still that former Guards staff sergeant, recently demobilized.

  At the entrance to the school he was met by a young teacher, who greeted him with a radiant smile and led him into the classroom. He followed her in, his medals tinkling on his chest, and thought: “How quickly time passes! The truth is I really am a veteran now. She’s young enough to be my daughter and she’s a teacher already!”

  As he entered the noisy classroom silence fell. The pupils stood up, exchanging glances, whispering and staring at his decorations. They were impressed by the Gold Star of the Hero of the Soviet Union. A Hero. You don’t meet one of those every day!

  Then the teacher made some appropriate remarks about the great national celebration, and the twenty million lives sacrificed for the sake of the radiant future of these pupils, distracted as they were by the May sunlight, taking as her text: “No one is forgotten, nothing is forgotten.” After that her voice adopted a warmer, less official tone and she addressed Ivan, who was standing somewhat stiffly behind the table: “Honored Ivan Dmitrevich, on your chest shines our country’s highest award, the Gold Star of a Hero of the Soviet Union. We should like to hear about the part you played in the war, your achievements in battle, and your heroic contribution to the Victory.”

  And Ivan cleared his throat and began his story. He already knew by heart what he would tell them. Once he had started receiving invitations he had grasped what he had to say so that the class remained attentive for the regulation forty minutes, much to the delight of the young teacher. He even knew that at the end of his talk — after which there would be a tense silence for several seconds — she would rise nimbly to her feet and pronounce the expected words: “Now then, children, put your questions to Ivan Dmitrevich.” Once again there would be an embarrassing silence. But in obedience to a look from the teacher, a radiant girl would stand up in the front row, wearing a smock as white as whipped cream, who would say, as if she were reciting a lesson: “Honored Ivan Dmitrevich, please will you tell us what qualities of character you valued most in your wartime comrades?”

  After the reply, to which no one paid much attention, the most presentable boy would stand up and ask Ivan, in the same conscientious tones, what advice he would give to future defenders of their Country.

  At the end of this patriotic-military demonstration there would often be an unexpected diversion. Urged on by the whispers of his fellows, a great scruffy youth would rise to his feet in the back row. And without any preliminaries would stammer out: “So how thick was the armor on the German Tigers? Thicker or thinner than on our T-34?” “The gun. Ask him about the gun….” his neighbors prompted him. But the boy, bright red, was already collapsing on his chair, proud of his excellent question. Ivan answered him. Then the bell rang and the much relieved teacher c
ongratulated the veteran once more and gave him three red carnations, taken from a vase that stood on the desk. Impatiently the whole class jumped to their feet.

  On the way, Ivan Dmitrevich always had a few confused regrets. Each time he wished he had told them about a small detail: the wood he went into after the battle and the spring water that had reflected his face back at him.

  Journalists sometimes came to see him as well, most often for the anniversary of the start of the Battle of Stalingrad. The first time, responding to a question about the battle, he began to talk about everything: Mikhalych, who would never know his grandchildren; Seryozha, who looked so serene, so carefree in death, the machine-gunner who had only one digit left on each hand. But the journalist, adroitly seizing the moment when Ivan was drawing a breath, interrupted him: “So, Ivan Dmitrevich, what impression did the ‘Heroic City on the Volga’ make on you in that year of fire, 1942?” Ivan was disconcerted. Admit that he had never seen Stalingrad, never fought in the streets there? “All Stalingrad was burning,” Ivan replied evasively.

  After that he got used to this innocent untruth, which suited the journalists very well, for at that time Stalin was coming back into fashion and “Stalingrad” had a good ring to it. Sometimes Ivan was surprised to realize that even he was increasingly forgetful about the war. He could no longer distinguish between his old memories and the well-worn tales told to the schoolchildren and the interviews given to journalists. And when one day he was speaking of a detail that fascinated the boys: “Oh yes, our seventy-six-millimeter gun was powerful but it couldn’t pierce the Tiger tank’s frontal armor …” he would think: “But was it really like that? Maybe it’s something I read in Marshal Zhukov’s memoirs.