He had said this in such a kind, fatherly voice that it was all she could do not to burst into tears.

She had then been taken to Battalion Headquarters. They had a gramophone there; the commander, a redhead, offered Katya a drink and invited her to dance to a record of 'The Chinese Serenade'.

The atmosphere there had been terrifying. Katya had felt that the commander was drinking not to enjoy himself, but simply to stifle some unbearable fear, to forget that his own life was now as fragile as glass.

And now here she was – sitting on a heap of bricks in house 6/1. For some reason she didn't feel any fear at all; instead, she thought of the wonderful, fairy-tale life she had enjoyed before the war.

The men in the surrounded building seemed extraordinarily strong and sure of themselves. This self-confidence was very reassuring – like that possessed by firemen, by tailors cutting some priceless cloth, by skilled workers in a metal-rolling mill, by old teachers expounding beside their blackboards, by eminent doctors.

Before the war Katya had always believed that her life was doomed to be unhappy. When she had seen friends of hers going anywhere by bus, she had thought them spendthrifts. As for people coming out of restaurants – however bad – they seemed like fabulous beings; sometimes she had followed a little group on their way home from some 'Daryal' or 'Terek' and tried to listen to their conversation. Returning home from school, she would announce solemnly: 'Guess what happened today! A girl gave me some fizzy water with syrup – real syrup that tasted of blackcurrants!'

To live on what remained – after the deduction of income tax, cultural tax and the State loan – of her mother's salary of 400 roubles had been far from easy. Instead of buying new clothes, they had always refashioned their old ones. The other tenants had paid Marusya, the caretaker's wife, to clean the communal areas, but they had done their share themselves; Katya herself had cleaned the floors and carried out the rubbish. They had bought milk at the State shop – the queues were enormous but it saved them six roubles a month; if there wasn't any milk in the State shop, then Katya's mother had gone to market late in the afternoon – the peasant women would be in a hurry to catch the evening train and would sell off their milk at almost the same price as in the State shop. They had never travelled by bus, and they only went by tram if they had to go a very long distance. Instead of going to the hairdresser's, Katya had always had her hair cut by her mother. They had done their own laundry and the light-bulb in their room was almost as dim as those in the communal areas. They had cooked for three days at a time. They had soup, and sometimes kasha with a little oil; once Katya had had three plates of soup one after the other and said: 'Well, today we've had a three-course meal.'

Her mother had never talked about how things had been while her father still lived with them; she herself couldn't remember. Once, Vera Dmitrievna, a friend of her mother's, had watched the two of them preparing a meal and said: 'Yes, we too had our hour of glory.' This had made her mother angry; she hadn't allowed Vera Dmitrievna to enlarge on how things had been during their hour of glory.

One day Katya had found a photograph of her father in a cupboard. It was the first time she had seen a photograph of him, but she knew immediately who it was. On the back was written: 'To Lida -I am from the tribe of Asra: when we love, we die in silence.' [30] She said nothing to her mother, but from then on, when she returned from school, she would often take the photograph out and gaze for a long time into her father's dark, melancholy eyes.

Once she had asked: 'Where's Papa now?'

Her mother had just said: 'I don't know.'

It was only when Katya left for the army that her mother at last told her about him; she learned that he had married again and that he had been arrested in 1937.

They had talked right through the night. Everything had been reversed: her mother, usually so reserved, had told her how she had been abandoned by her husband; she had talked about her feelings of jealousy, of humiliation and hurt, of love and pity. Katya had been quite astonished: the world of the human soul suddenly seemed so vast as to make even the raging war seen insignificant. In the morning they had said goodbye. Her mother had drawn her head towards her, but the pack on her shoulders had pulled her away. Katya had said: 'Mama, I'm from the tribe of Asra: when we love, we die in silence.'

Then her mother had gently pushed her away.

'Go on, Katya. It's time you left.'

And Katya had left – like millions of others, both young and old. She had left her mother's house, perhaps never to return, perhaps to return only as a different person, cut off for ever from her harsh and beloved childhood.

And now here she was, sitting next to Grekov, 'the house-manager', looking at his large head, at his frowning face and thick lips.

58

That first day, the telephone was still working; there was nothing for Katya to do. The feeling of being excluded from the life of the building became increasingly oppressive. Nevertheless, that day did much to prepare her for what lay in store.

She learned that the observation-post for the artillery on the left bank was situated in the ruins of the first floor. It was commanded by a lieutenant in a dirty tunic whose spectacles kept slipping down his snub nose.

The angry old man who swore a lot had been transferred from the militia; he was very proud indeed to be in command of a mortar team. The sappers were installed between a high wall and a heap of rubble; they were commanded by a stout man who groaned and grimaced when he walked, as though he was suffering from corns.

The single piece of artillery was in the charge of Kolomeitsev, a bald man in a sailor's tunic. Katya had heard Grekov shout: 'Kolomeitsev! Wake up! You've just slept through yet another golden opportunity!'

The infantry and the machine-guns were commanded by a second lieutenant with a blond beard. The beard made his face seem very young – though he no doubt imagined it made him look mature, perhaps in his thirties.

In the afternoon she was given something to eat – bread and mutton-sausage. Then she remembered she had a sweet in her tunic-pocket and slipped it quietly into her mouth. After that – in spite of the firing nearby – she felt like a nap. She soon fell asleep, still sucking her sweet; but even in her sleep she still felt a sense of anguish, of imminent disaster. Suddenly she heard a slow, drawling voice. Her eyes still closed, she listened to the words:

'Past sorrow is to me like wine, Stronger with every passing year.' [31]

In this stone well, lit by the amber evening light, a dirty young man with dishevelled hair was sitting reading out loud from a book. Five or six men were sprawled around him on piles of red bricks. Grekov was lying on his overcoat, resting his chin on his fists. One young man, probably a Georgian, listened with an air of suspicion. It was as though he were saying: 'Come on now – you won't get me to buy this rubbish.'

An explosion close by raised a cloud of dust. It was like something from a fairy-tale; the armed men, sitting on blood-coloured bricks and surrounded by this red mist, seemed to have sprung from the day of judgment recorded in the Lay of Igor's Campaign. Suddenly Katya's heart stirred in an absurd expectation of some future happiness.

The following day, an event took place which appalled even these hardened soldiers.

[30] A quotation from a poem by Heine.

[31] From a short lyric of Pushkin's.

[32] An anonymous twelfth-century epic poem.