The 'senior tenant' on the first floor, Lieutenant Batrakov, had under his command an observer, Bunchuk, and a plotter, Lampasov. Katya saw them all several times a day: sullen Lampasov, cunning yet simple-hearted Bunchuk and the strange lieutenant with glasses who was always smiling at his own thoughts. When it was quiet, she could even hear their voices through the hole in the ceiling.

Lampasov had reared chickens before the war; he loved telling Bunchuk about the intelligence and treacherous ways of his hens.

Peering through his telescope, Bunchuk would report in a sing-song voice: 'Yes, there's a column of vehicles coming from Kalach… a tank in the middle… Some more Fritzes on foot, a whole battalion… and then three field-kitchens just like yesterday… I can see smoke and some Fritzes with pans…' Some of his observations were of greater human than military interest: 'Now there's a German officer going for a walk with his dog… the dog's sniffing a post, it probably wants to pee… Yes, it must be a bitch… The officer's just standing there, he's having a scratch… Now I can see two girls chatting to some Fritzes… they're offering the girls cigarettes… One of them's lit up, the other's shaking her head… She must be saying: "I don't smoke".'

Suddenly, in the same sing-song voice, Bunchuk announced: 'The square's full of soldiers… and a band… there's a stage in the middle… no, a pile of wood…'

He fell silent. Then, in the same voice, now full of despair, he went on: 'Comrade Lieutenant, I can see a woman in a shift… she's being frog-marched… she's screaming… the band's struck up… they're tying the woman to a post… Comrade Lieutenant, there's a little boy with her… Ay… they're tying him up… Comrade Lieutenant, I can't bear to look… two Fritzes are emptying some cans of petrol…'

Batrakov hurriedly reported all this by telephone to the left bank. Then he grabbed the telescope himself.

'Ay, comrades, the band's playing and the whole square's full of smoke…'

'Fire!' he suddenly howled out in a terrible voice and turned in the direction of the left bank.

Not a sound from the left bank…

A few seconds passed, and then the place of execution was subjected to a concentrated barrage by the heavy artillery. The square was enveloped in dust and smoke.

Several hours later, they were informed by their scout, Klimov, that the Germans had been about to burn a gypsy woman and her son whom they suspected of being spies. The day before, Klimov had left some dirty washing with an old woman who lived in a cellar together with her granddaughter and a goat; he had promised to come back for it later when it was ready. Now he intended to ask this woman what had happened to the two gypsies – whether they had been burned to death on the pyre or killed by the Soviet shells.

Klimov crawled through the ruins along paths known to him alone – only to find that the old woman's dwelling had just been destroyed by a Russian bomb. There was nothing left of the old woman, her granddaughter or the goat – or of Klimov's pants and shirt. All he found among the splintered beams and lumps of plaster was a kitten, covered with dirt. It was in a pitiful state, neither complaining nor asking for anything, evidently believing that life was always just a matter of noise, fire and hunger.

Klimov had no idea what made him suddenly stuff the kitten into his pocket.

Katya was astonished by the relations between the inmates of house 6/1-. Instead of standing to attention to give his report, Klimov simply sat down next to Grekov; they then talked together like two old friends. Klimov lit up from Grekov's cigarette.

When he had finished, Klimov went up to Katya. 'Yes, my girl,' he said, 'life on this earth can be terrible.'

Under his hard, penetrating stare, Katya blushed and gave a sigh. Klimov took the kitten out of his pocket and placed it on a brick beside her.

During the course of the day at least a dozen men came up to Katya and started to talk about cats; not one of them spoke about the gypsies, though they had all been deeply shocked. Some of them wanted a sentimental, heart-to-heart conversation – and spoke coarsely and mockingly; others just wanted to sleep with her – and spoke very solemnly, with cloying politeness.

The kitten trembled constantly, evidently in a state of shock.

'You should do away with it right now,' the old man in charge of the mortars said with a grimace – and then added: 'You must pick off the fleas.'

Another member of the mortar-crew, the handsome, swarthy Chentsov, also a former member of the militia, urged: 'Get rid of that vermin, my girl. Now, if it were a Siberian cat…'

The sullen Lyakhov, a sapper with thin lips and an unpleasant-looking face, was the only man to be genuinely concerned about the kitten and indifferent to the charms of the radio-operator.

'Once, when we were in the steppe,' he told her, 'something suddenly hit me. I thought it must be a shell at the end of its trajectory. But guess what? It was a hare. He stayed with me till evening. Then things quietened down a bit and he left.

'Now, you may be a girl,' he went on, 'but at least you can understand: that's a 108 millimetre, that's the tune of a Vanyusha, that's a reconnaissance plane flying over the Volga… But the poor stupid hare can't make out anything at all. He can't even tell the difference between a mortar and a howitzer. The Germans send up a flare and he just sits there and shakes – you can't explain anything to him. That's what makes me sorry for these dumb animals.'

Recognizing that he was in earnest, Katya responded in the same tone. 'I don't know… Take dogs, for example – they can tell different planes apart. When we were stationed in the village, there was a mongrel called Kerzon. When our ILs flew over, he just lay there without even raising his head. But as soon as he heard the whine of a Junkers, he went straight to his hiding-place. He never once made a mistake.'

The air was rent by a piercing scream – a German Vanyusha. There was a metallic crash, a cloud of black smoke mixed with red dust, and a shower of rubble. A minute later, when the dust began to settle, Katya and Lyakhov resumed their conversation – for all the world as though it was two different people who had just fallen flat on their faces. The self-assurance of these soldiers seemed to have rubbed off on Katya. It was as though they were convinced that everything here, even the iron and stone, might be weak and fragile – but not they themselves.

A burst of machine-gun fire whistled over their heads, then another.

'This spring we were stationed near Sviatogorsk,' Lyakhov told her. 'Once there was a terrible whistling right over our heads, but we couldn't hear any shots. We didn't know what on earth was happening. It turned out to be the starlings imitating bullets… The lieutenant had even put us on alert – they did it perfectly.'

'When I was at home,' said Katya, smiling, 'I imagined that war would be a matter of lost cats, children screaming and blazing buildings. That seems to be just how it is.'

The next man to approach her was the bearded Zubarev.

'Well,' he asked sympathetically, 'and how's our little man with the tail?'

He lifted up the scrap of cloth that had been laid over the kitten.

'Poor little thing. You do look weak!' As he said this, his eyes gleamed insolently.

That evening, after a brief skirmish, the Germans managed to advance a short distance along the flank of the building; now their machine-guns covered the path leading back to the Soviet lines. The telephone link with Battalion Headquarters was severed again. Grekov ordered a passage to be blasted to link up with a nearby tunnel.

'We'll use the dynamite,' said Antsiferov, the sergeant-major – a stout man with a mug of tea in one hand and a sugar-lump in the other.