Solovyov and Larionov

17

Solovyov worked intensively in the archives throughout September and October. After finishing a section about events during the first half of 1920, he turned to the second half of that same year. On October 1, the young historian reached the October period of the Civil War; that seemed like a good sign to him. He and his material were beginning to resonate with one another.

October (one of Russia’s most unfortunate months) turned out to be unlucky for the White Movement in Crimea, too. The White Army was retreating. After suffering defeat near Kakhovka, the army left Northern Taurida, fighting. The army’s path lay toward Perekop, for which General Larionov had specific plans.

Solovyov estimated the White Army’s numbers taking part in defensive battles at approximately 25–27,000 (by comparison, Dupont’s The Enigma of the Russian General raises them for no reason, speaking of 33–35,000). In Solovyov’s opinion, the Reds’ forces totaled around 130,000 (Dupont writes of 135–140,000). These figures, however, did not fully take into account the losses the Whites incurred in defending Northern Taurida, something Solovyov particularly noted. He emphasized that only statistics for certain army units could be vouched for with any degree of certainty:

Solovyov explained the Reds’ four- or five-fold superiority over the Whites by the separate peace treaty that the Reds and Poles had concluded behind the general’s back. The agreement untied the Reds’ hands: after withdrawing their large forces from the western front, they moved them south, against the White Army. The Whites’ position was becoming critical.

All that remained for the White Army of the entire, huge country was a patch of land surrounded by sea. It was connected to the mainland by the narrow isthmus for which the retreating army was striving. The White Army’s fate depended on who reached the isthmus first: if cut off from Crimea, the White Army would not have the slightest chance of being saved. This did not just affect the army, though. The downfall of the White troops would subject to mortal danger thousands of others who had retreated to Crimea with those troops. They would not have time to evacuate.

The general was in a hurry. He had a slight time advantage that he was afraid of losing. After the battles near Kakhovka, he moved his troops southeast through Northern Taurida without giving them respite. He was still not giving up. As he reviewed episodes of the Kakhovka combat in his mind, he was still relying on the power of his soldiers’ desperation and the special courage of the doomed. After that strange forced march began, however, the general sensed the beginning of the end for the first time.

This was not an army advancing toward Perekop, it was an unorganized column of sleepwalkers traveling along the ice-bound expanse of Northern Taurida. Leaning from his saddle, the general peered into his soldiers’ faces and saw an expression of mortal exhaustion on those faces. He knew this expression. He had seen it on the faces of those who froze in snow banks. Of those who stood up straight and walked into machine gun fire. But never before had he seen this expression on every face. The general was beginning to understand that he had lost more than just an individual, if very important, battle. It was becoming clearer to him with every minute that the war, as a whole, had been lost.

His army could no longer fight. The reason was not the poor uniforms (though they truly were poor) and not the lack of ammunition (which was, indeed, lacking). This was not even about the army’s demoralization: the general had managed to restore his soldiers’ fighting spirit even after worse defeats. The reason was that the army had depleted its entire reservoir. It was this very expression that the general used in the telegram he sent to foreign envoys when he was halfway to Perekop. In their response, the envoys requested an urgent meeting. They needed the general’s explanations. But what was the point of a meeting like that? What, in actuality, could he explain to them?

After dropping the reins, the general took a sheet of paper and a pencil from his map case. His horse slowed to a walk. He thought a bit and wrote to the envoys that there was no more rage in his soldiers’ eyes. There was no joy. There was no fear. There was not even suffering. There was nothing there but an endless wish for repose. How does it happen, the general asked, that an object suddenly loses its qualities? Why does a magnet demagnetize? Why does salt stop being saline? After reading what he had written, the general folded the sheet in neat quarters and ripped it to pieces. They fell behind his back like large snowflakes.

The soldiers could not warm up. They stuffed straw under the thin broadcloth of their military overcoats but it did not help. Sometimes the soldiers burned tumbleweeds so they could at least hold their numbed fingers over them for a minute. Gusts of wind carried off the tumbleweeds; small fiery balls scattered along the steppe when dusk was falling. That wind flung prickly bits of ice into the marchers’ faces and the wind got under their overcoats, removing the last bit of warmth radiated from the soldiers’ fatigued bodies.

The soldiers wanted to sleep. After two days of uninterrupted battle, some fell asleep on their feet. Lulled by the column’s even pace, they closed their eyes involuntarily and continued walking in their sleep. The artillerymen began sitting on the gun carriages but the general forbade that. As they drifted into sleep, they fell from the gun carriages and under the wheels.

The general did not allow them to lie down on the carts. He pulled from the carts those wounded but still capable of traveling and forced them to walk. Cursing the general and his orders, they walked. They held the sides of the carts and left a bloody trail in the snow, but they walked. Their bandages trailed behind them. And they remained alive. The gravely wounded, unable to move, could not warm up. They shouted that they were freezing. Someone covered them with coats, mattresses, and rags, but still they could not warm up. The majority of them had frozen by the end of the march.

As the general straightened an overcoat that dangled from one of the carts, he touched the firm, oblong object that was holding the overcoat. It was a frozen soldier’s arm. It held the overcoat in a death grip. The general rode off abruptly and observed the overcoat trailing behind the cart for a while.

The field kitchens had no provisions. The general ordered that what little still remained be given to the wounded. But only thin soup remained. This soup could not satiate the wounded; it could not even warm them. They looked upward incessantly as they lay on the carts, feeling nothing but the cold. This was a cosmic cold, emanating from distant, indifferent stars.

It was the kind of cold that made the soldiers think they would never warm up now. Not warm up and not get a good sleep. Many wanted to die and the general knew that. He forbade his soldiers to daydream about death.

‘Whoever of you dies,’ said the general, ‘will end up in the grave unwarmed.’

There was no answer.

‘He will freeze eternally,’ said the general.

The soldiers walked in complete silence. They were afraid that their last remnants of warmth would leave, along with the words they uttered. All that sounded were the even clatter of horse hoofs, the creak of carts, and the crunch of frost under the gun carriages’ wheels. And the groans of the wounded. A while later (their sense of time was dulled, too) a quiet glass-like sound blended in with those other noises. The general rode off to the side and saw ice chafing against rocks by the water. They had retreated to the Sivash. The salt-water lake was covered with a thin icy crust.

An explosion rang out somewhere in the distance. And then closer. Again in the distance. This was the Reds’ artillery shelling. It created the impression that the Reds were shooting at random. The retreating troops did not slow their pace. Sometimes the shells landed a few dozen meters from the column. They raised pillars of water in the sea that flashed briefly and gloomily in the moonlight. At times they exploded with a deafening dry bang; the general understood then that the Sivash had frozen solid in places. This discovery made him feel uneasy.

‘General Winter,’ whispered General Larionov. ‘He’s made his appearance a month earlier than usual.’

They saw distant campfires at around two in the morning. This did not bode well at all for those retreating and the general knew it. Those campfires meant that isolated Red units had managed to go around his army from the east and enter the isthmus first. It was also possible that the Sivash had frozen so much in places that the Reds could cross from the side of the village of Stroganovka. Now they awaited the general’s troops along their retreat route. Movement continued, though those campfires meant death.

The general did not dismiss the idea that events could develop that way, though he considered it improbable. He surmised that the Reds would want to intercept him, but here he was counting on the Sivash, which did not usually freeze. His calculation did not hold true. He was left hoping that only the Reds’ vanguard had managed to cross.

The general could not imagine that the cavalry—particularly the artillery weapons—could have crossed the first thin ice. He could not imagine that much of any significant enemy force could have made its way here during the time the Whites were on their inhuman forced march. Even so—regardless of how many of them there were—the Reds had arrived on the isthmus first. Despite the cold. And the barely frozen Sivash. The general’s army was like a worn-out horse. He had worn it out in hopes of saving it. It was the first time in his life that the general had subjected soldiers to an ordeal like this. It was the first time in his life that he felt the inevitability of defeat.

He scrutinized the soldiers’ faces yet again, as if searching for clues. The cold had smoothed the features of those faces, depriving them of expression. Frost lay on their mustaches and eyebrows. There was nothing in his soldiers’ eyes but the campfires burning up ahead. Did they surmise what those campfires meant? Even if they did, the pull of that flame was so strong that it was already impossible to stop their motion toward it.

And the general did not even try. Stopping here would have been tantamount to death. On this bare and completely unprotected plain, his troops would be swept away by the Reds’ superior forces. Occupying positions on the well-fortified Perekop remained their only chance of salvation. For that, they now needed the impossible: an attack.

‘Prepare for battle,’ said the general, his words drowning in the beginnings of a blizzard.

The general said it loudly and nobody heard him. He knew it was useless to repeat. He spurred his horse and galloped off to the leading column.

Why had the Reds lit the campfires? Why did they not continue moving toward Perekop? Were they unable to? Had they made a quick stop to warm up? This will remain one of the war’s enigmas. In Solovyov’s opinion, the Reds also did not suppose the enemy was capable of ending up in this sector so early. According to all their mental calculations, the general and his army could not have turned up here until at least the next morning. It is possible the Reds did not expect the general to accomplish the unthinkable, so had calmly lit their campfires. Even if they had not lit them calmly, though, they simply could not have survived on a night like that without fires.

Solovyov attributed the Reds’ mind-boggling carelessness to their being completely frozen. To the narrowing of blood vessels in the brain as a result of hypothermia. This was how the historian explained the fact that the Reds did not even have an outpost. They glimpsed the White Army only when the figure of a horseman emerged in front of them, out of the blizzard, which was finally running wild.

‘Who goes there?’ they asked by a campfire.

‘Friend,’ answered the general.

He slowly rode up to the nearest campfire, where those sitting recognized him. It was impossible not to recognize him. Even in 1920, in the absence of television and glossy magazines, the general was one of several faces everyone knew. When seen from below, he seemed huge. He looked like a monument.

Nobody stirred by the fire. People hold their breath like this when lightning balls appear: they feign nonexistence, hoping it will disappear. But the general was not disappearing. He and his horse grew each time the fire blazed.

The Red commander emerged from the darkness. Stood still. His hand extended on its own to salute.

‘Your Excellency…’

‘At ease,’ said the general.

The general’s army was passing by behind his back but he was watching those seated at the campfires. For their part, they were still sitting motionlessly, watching the general. How his horse stamped its feet, how its flanks occasionally trembled. The bay horse was turning white before their eyes. The general was turning white: his military overcoat, his hood, and the reins in his hands. His face was also white. Never before had they seen such a white general. The cavalry was slowly floating past their very eyes in the drifting snow, as if it were surmounting sediment at the bottom of the sea. The infantry passed by. The heavy weaponry rode by. This went on for a long time, but nobody could grasp how long. Time had stopped. When the last infantryman had passed, the general nodded silently and vanished in the darkness.

They approached Perekop at dawn. The general ordered they demolish all remaining structures there and build campfires with them. A train with foodstuffs and firewood was already on its way from Dzhankoy. The general checked the condition of the fortifications and ordered they stretch barbed wire where there were breaks. At first he wanted to set up camp with tents but he knew that was already impossible. He commanded only that nobody lie in the snow. An instant later, everyone was sleeping but the posted sentinels.

The sentinels needed to be relieved every hour. People simply had no strength for more.

The foreign envoys awaited the general in Dzhankoy. The general felt nothing but contempt for the envoys. He placed no great hopes in his meeting with them but decided to go anyway. The thought of evacuating the army had made his decision. He headed for Dzhankoy after leaving General Shatalov in his place.

The general rode his armored train car along the tracks he had laid. The warmth in the car and the clacking of the wheels made his head spin. The general felt something he had felt only in childhood. This was a feeling of joy and immortality.

‘Joy and immortality,’ he uttered.

This feeling had come to him several times recently, so the general thought he would most likely die soon. That was the last thing he had time to think before falling asleep.

A locomotive’s drawn-out whistle awakened the general. It came from a passing train. They had stopped at a station.

‘Dzhankoy?’ the general asked the valet.

‘Dzhankoy,’ replied the valet.

He was holding a soap dish in one hand, a towel in the other.

The general went over to the washstand. For some reason, the water was cold even in the warm train car, and the general remembered how he had doused himself with water every morning in the cadet corps. How his body and his comrades’ bodies had been covered in goosebumps. He had a different body then. He took the towel from the valet and used it to rub his face until it was red. It was completely different.

The foreign diplomatic mission employees had gathered in a small chamber at the city council. They were sitting on bentwood chairs along both sides of a threadbare runner rug. The rug began at the doorway and led to a long oak table. Everyone rose when the general appeared, accompanied by an escort. The escort remained by the doorway and the general walked through the chamber, without glancing at anyone. He unbuttoned his military overcoat and half-sat on a chair.

‘We are leaving Crimea,’ the general said, in a silent whisper. ‘We will hold Perekop as long as required to evacuate everyone.’

The diplomatic mission employees looked at the general, expressionless.

‘I need to save my army,’ the general went on. ‘I need your help.’

‘How splendid that you take your decisions without consulting your allies,’ said the British envoy.

The general took a cigarette case from his pocket and opened it with a melodic sound.

‘I appealed to your king, asking how many people he would accept in the event of our evacuation.’

Seeing the general had taken out the cigarette, an orderly brought him a match.

‘He did not even respond to me,’ the general’s words blended with the cigarette smoke, sounding indistinct.

The British envoy wanted to object but the general raised his hand as if to save him the trouble.

‘I’m appealing to all of you: accept my soldiers. The comrades will not spare anyone’s life,’ the general crushed the cigarette in a massive marble ashtray. ‘Not anyone’s. I shall take my leave.’

He walked slowly along the runner rug but stopped just short of the door.

‘Half a year ago, England prevented me from planting minefields in Odessa’s water zone. Why?’

He was standing, with his head lowered. He did not turn.

‘I do not know,’ said the British envoy.

‘Well, I do know. British transports are now exporting grain from there, purchased for nothing from the Bolsheviks. That grain is soaked in Russian peasants’ blood.’

The general returned to Perekop late that evening. The reconnaissance chief reported to him that the enemy had managed to move significant forces toward Perekop during the day. The general nodded. He already felt the Reds’ pace and expected their offensive in the morning.

The general gave the wake-up signal an hour before dawn. He did not announce formation after they played reveille. He ordered only that the fires be stoked to blazing.

‘Jump over the fires!’ the general shouted and his voice came back to him in the regiment commanders’ shouts, like a weak echo.

‘Jump over the fires!’ he shouted again in the quiet that had set in.

Several people hinted at slight movement then immediately dissolved into the overall motionlessness. The army had fallen into lethargy in an obvious way. The general rushed to the closest fire and began shaking those who were sitting there. One after the other they stood and looked at him with vacant, weepy eyes. Never before had he seen his army like this. The general was genuinely frightened for the first time in his life.

He tore around among the campfires, attempting to bring his army back to life. Pounded soldiers on the face and in the gut. Shouted that they would be slaughtered like pigs.

Larionov distributed a half-glass of vodka to each but it had only a sedative effect. He ordered that a march be played, but the musicians’ fingers would not move in the cold. He buried his face in his hands and disappeared into the commander-in-chief’s tent.

When the other generals approached him in the tent, he said, ‘This army has died. And will never rise from the dead.’

A distant thundering sounded as he spoke. The Red artillery was beginning to shell. The Reds shelled often but poorly. Their shells fell either in front of the fortifications or far behind them. The lack of clustering in their shelling showed the Red grenadiers’ complete failure. If there was anything the general needed to watch out for, it was only a rogue shell.

The general calmed down once the battle had begun. It was as if he had forgotten his momentary outburst: he led using calculations from the artillerymen, who had determined the direction for a counterstrike. Their only reliable reference point was the Reds’ heavy weaponry. Using that reference point to the fullest, the Red artillery was suppressed twenty minutes later.

In the quiet that set in, the general again walked along the fortifications and made certain that his order to repair them had been carried out. In some spots, they had dug out broken stakes. In their places they had installed intact ones that had just been brought from Armyansk. They had not bothered to remove the cut barbed wire: they just unwound new wire alongside it.

‘Everything is ready for hosting the comrades,’ said the general.

The comrades did not make them wait. Their first wave arose in the distance as if it had coagulated out of drifting snow; it began nearing the line of defense. The Whites did not shoot. Nor did the Reds. They walked, stooped, like someone still incapable of straightening up early in the morning. On a cold, early morning by a putrid gulf. This is how they would have walked to the factory in their previous life. Their ashen sleep-deprived faces were already visible. (As before, nobody was shooting.) Some had pliers in their belts for cutting barbed wire; this gave the approaching men even more resemblance to a crowd of workmen. But they were not workmen.

Behind the first wave was a second and a third and a fourth after that… The general lost count. It seemed those waves were moving from the horizon itself. They were creeping in with the indifference of volcanic lava. With the indivisibility of a locust swarm. This was a solid, unified force. The revolutionary masses in their highest manifestation. They were being created somewhere in the depths of a large country and had been pressed forward, to this narrow isthmus. The general knew these masses were enough for ten White Armies and, in the end, would engulf both his barbed wire and his machine guns.

He felt the defenders’ gazes and their expectation of his command. He even seemed to think his troops had perked up a little, in light of the mortal danger. The machine gunners had already sat down by their Maxim guns. They were straightening the ammunition belts and stroking the barrels. There was no tension in their movements: on the contrary, there was something proprietary, and that irritated the general. He looked at his watch but could not figure out what time it was. That was not actually important anyway.

The machine guns could hit from two thousand paces and the Reds were already much closer. They were walking with an uncoordinated, hobbled gait, staring at the frozen grass. The soldiers were trying to deceive death, which had already taken up its position beyond the barriers. So as not to attract its attention, they were not looking it in the eye, just as one does not look into the eyes of the possessed. Death awaited the young and, thus, seemed insane to those soldiers. They saw it and deflected their gazes. The barrels of their rifles were half-lowered. They were not fighting, they were here for something else. They simply walked, bobbing on the hillocks. From north to south.

The general knew this wave was doomed. He wanted to give these soldiers an extra minute. Wanted to see them alive one last time. Could not look at them enough. Or enjoy, enough, observing their awkward forward motion. Their motion was a sign of life. Even their wooden strides and even the spasmodic waving of their arms differentiated life from death. That would be taken away from them in a minute. Replaced with the full repose that differentiates death from life.

Everything would happen upon his order. Several dozen waves destined for the passage from life to death were following behind the first. The speed of their passage depended on the speed of the shooting from his Maxim guns. Which were stilled in readiness. Everything would happen even without his order. These armies could no longer exist without one another.

The general feverishly tried to remember which side he was fighting on. He knew this was a useless trick of the consciousness and a withdrawal from another question—the most important one—but he just could not remember. Those around him watched with surprise crossing into alarm. The cavalry and infantry were watching. The artillerymen were watching. Only the wind could be heard.

‘Fire,’ whispered the general.

His command was just a cloud of steam. It contained no voice. The next second, though, machine guns hit the Reds’ forward waves. The artillery began working on the rear guard. It seemed strange to the general that these consequences could be reached with one brief word. That they had not even heard. That they had uttered to themselves. He saw how deftly the machine gunners handled the ammunition belts. How the servicemen brought crates of ammunition with a calm, almost ant-like, focus. Volley followed volley. It was not uplifting for him. There was no more joy of battle in him. He knew (volley) that he already had another army now. Or maybe (volley) it was he who was different. Maybe his own (volley) sense of devastation had spread to the army and the army had ceased to exist. Died.

Everyone in the first wave fell in his own way. Some flapped their arms. Others grasped their bellies. Writhed on the ground with inhuman shouts. Some stopped moving then fell to the ground silently after standing in an already unearthly calm. Other people entered the gaping chasms that had formed. It had been a long time since this first wave had been the first. The machine guns became ever more precise as another wave approached, mowing down an entire wave at once. A new, live wave arrived where the first had perished; to the general’s mind this was a very strange celebration of life.

Some broke ranks and ran over to the barbed wire. They attempted to get their pliers so they could at least sever one strand of barbed wire before dying. They did not manage to do so. They were killed by shots aimed from several rifles at once. Those who shot nodded approvingly to one another. They understood these dead were heroes.

The machine gunners’ faces were sweaty and stern. Angels of death must have faces like that, thought the general. The machine gunners played first violin in this dreadful orchestra. They poured water into the cooling tanks of their Maxim guns, dipper after dipper, but the water was not fast enough to cool the metal. They could sense its temperature even through their gloves.

The Reds had many men—they did not need to count their losses. Never before had the general seen commanders sacrifice their own soldiers with such calm. The Reds had been carrying out a frontal attack for several hours already. From a military science perspective, the attack was pointless. What could they accomplish? Take all the bullets themselves? Cover all the barbed wire with their bodies? From the perspective of dreadful reality, this attack was indisputable. An attack like this could not be countered forever.

The Reds, who had set out for unprecedented sacrifices, knew this. The general, who would never allow himself to have victims of that sort, knew this. He saw that a new reality constructed on other fundamentals was arriving, along with the Reds. He already had trouble understanding it and thus rejected it with ever greater passion. And continued resisting it.

The Reds’ attack ceased with the early autumn twilight. It dissolved in the semi-darkness. It subsided like water during ebb tide. Unnoticed. Soundlessly. Revealing everything preserved on the ocean floor. Bodies lay everywhere the Red waves had been, as far as one could see in the approaching darkness. Each lay alone. They lay on top of one other. They hung on wires. Some were stirring. The general sent a medical team to gather the living. He left burying the dead to the Reds. The general was preparing to hand over Perekop.

Solovyov made a very detailed description of the general’s preparation for his final military operation. The operation consisted of securing the troops’ retreat to the port. In this case, the issue no longer concerned organizing a brilliant victory, as before. The general was working to save his soldiers’ lives. According to historian Solovyov, this was about organizing a defeat with the fewest losses: a defeat no less brilliant, in its own way, than the previous victories.

The general first dictated a special instruction turning over to the White Army the entire fleet of ships assigned to Crimean ports. He also designated five ports from which the evacuation would be implemented. They were Sevastopol, Yalta, Yevpatoria, Feodosia, and Kerch. But the main order, which stunned everyone, concerned the White Infantry’s southerly march.

They had to act rapidly, without making too much noise, without extinguishing the fires, and taking a minimum of uniforms. The main and less maneuverable part of the army headed toward the ports in secret and began loading onto transports. The cavalry, machine gun detachments, and some artillery remained. They covered the departure of the White Army’s infantry regiments. Perekop’s defenders would need to abandon their positions and rush off, at a trot, to the ports at the very moment the last regiment reached the port. That was the general’s plan. He set it out for those close to him and nobody objected. They never objected to what he said.

The general walked slowly along the line of defense and peered into the faces of those left hanging on the wires. Suffering was still present on those faces. The general knew this expression would leave them in a few days. Any expression would leave them. Especially if the weather warmed.

This was a strange inspection and a strange formation. The formation had been disrupted at each step. Those being inspected stood, their knees bent back, heels not aligned, and arms cast on the wire. They stood however they could and there was no reason to demand more from them. To the general, these people did not seem quite dead yet. Decomposition had not yet touched them. He still hoped to detect in their facial features at least a shadow of what separates life from death.

The general stopped next to a cadet who had been killed, a boy of around sixteen. The collar of his military overcoat had caught on the wire’s barb, not allowing him to fall. The general straightened the cadet’s collar as if this were a real inspection. The collar looked almost natural now: it was raised all around. The cadet’s cheek and chin had been torn off: he had fallen on the wire face-first before being suspended by his collar. He continued pressing the pliers in his right hand.

The general immediately recognized the person standing beside the cadet. He could not help but recognize him, despite not having seen him in decades. He remembered his voice as deliberately quiet and remembered his gaze as condescending. That gaze was now more likely one of surprise. It was a one-eyed gaze because this man had no second eye. A bloody hollow gaped in its place. The general remembered the winter Petersburg night, the vodka in the tavern. The sense of weightlessness, the coziness of people who had escaped everyone. The intense unity of co-conspirators. The unbearable shame of one who had neglected his duty. Before him stood Lanskoy.

Lanskoy stood, his head pressed to a post. Both his arms were cast upon the wire. The general thought they hung with genuine lifelessness. There was something reminiscent of a puppet theater. Of a puppet conversing with a spectator. The comparison appeared to the general to be improper but precise.

What could Lanskoy tell the public? That he was a hero? That he despised death and threw himself on the wire? But that would be an untruth… Lanskoy despised life and threw himself on the wire. That was probably the reason he had gone to the Reds. The general walked right up to Lanskoy and attempted to close his only eye. His eyelashes fell with a barely audible crunch but the eye would not close. The general embraced Lanskoy. He pressed himself to his intact cheek. A tear ran down Lanskoy’s cheek and froze in place. It was the general’s tear.

‘Bury him,’ ordered the general.

His troops left almost soundlessly. The squeak of boots, muffled by gusts of wind. A farewell symphony, it occurred to the general. The only difference being, he thought, that his people were not extinguishing the fires: the number of campfires needed to remain the same, unlike in Joseph Haydn’s version. A reduction in the number of performers should not be revealed to the viewer too early. That was the essence of the general’s composition.

He approached one of the fires. Kologrivov, a captain in the medical services, was maintaining the fire. The captain was one of those who was staying on Perekop until the end.

‘Good day, Your Excellency,’ said Kologrivov, standing at attention before the general.

‘At ease, Captain.’

He sat across from Kologrivov. He pushed a log that had burned through on one side closer to the center of the fire.

‘The transition from life to death interests me,’ said the general.

‘It is, Your Excellency, inevitable.’

Patches of light from the fire changed the color and contours of Kologrivov’s face.

‘I do know that. How does it happen?’

‘There are two ways: natural and unnatural. Natural…’

‘Natural isn’t a threat to us now,’ the general interrupted. ‘Tell me about the second way. Let’s go.’

He took Kologrivov by the elbow and led him to the wire. As they walked past the staff tent, the general took the kerosene lantern that hung there. A broad but dim circle now preceded their motion.

The attackers had managed to upend one of the supports at the part of the barrier they had reached. It hung on the wire, almost touching the ground. Three bodies hung alongside it. They belonged to Red cadets (no longer belonged, thought the general). The bodies of several more cadets lay on the ground. Things had come to single combat in this defense sector.

The general cast light on one of the bodies on the wire. Somehow, this body was hanging particularly inconsolably: arms spread, head nearly touching the ground. Kologrivov took the dead man’s shoulder and turned him on his back. With a squeak, the two other bodies began swaying.

‘Aorta chopped in two,’ Kologrivov said, showing it on the corpse. ‘More than one liter of blood flowed out.’

‘More than one? How much is that?’ asked the general. ‘Three? Five? Ten?’

‘A person has only five or six liters of blood. At least two and a half flowed out of him.’

The general directed the lantern at the ground underneath the wire. It was crimson. The blood had frozen as it flowed out. In concentric circles. Like lava. It was still warm in the body but had frozen on the ground.

‘Blood is a special liquid tissue,’ said Kologrivov. ‘It moves through the circulatory vessels of the living body.’

‘What does this body lack for being alive?’ asked the general.

‘Blood, I suppose. Approximately two and a half liters. I’ll use this opportunity to point out that one-thirteenth of the weight of the human body is blood.’

‘One can come to understand the combined action of the organs, but for me that still doesn’t add up to life,’ said the general. He outlined a circle with the lantern. ‘Life as such.’

‘And one hundred grams of blood contains approximately seventeen grams of hemoglobin.’

‘But even if you gave that cadet two and a half liters of blood, he still wouldn’t come back to life.’

‘He wouldn’t come back to life,’ said Kologrivov. He crouched in front of one of those lying on the ground. ‘And this person was struck on the skull by a saber. Shine the light, Your Excellency… As I thought, the right temporal lobe is cut in two.’

‘You’ve explained the causes of their deaths but I still have no clarity,’ agonized the general, seeking the right words. ‘Maybe the whole trouble is that you haven’t explained the causes of their life to me.’

‘A person’s life is inexplicable. Only death is explicable,’ said Kologrivov. He stroked the dead man’s hair, which stood like wire. ‘The saber entered about five centimeters into the temporal lobe. In my view, he had no chance. It’s interesting that the right temporal lobe is responsible for libido, sense of humor, and memory of events, sounds, and images.’

‘Does that mean that when the soldier was dying he no longer remembered events, sounds, or images?’

‘He did not even have a sense of humor. And his libido was missing. This death belongs in the “unnatural” category.’

A cannon struck somewhere in the distance; indistinctly, as if groggy. Its echo rolled through the sky and went quiet.

‘Come to think of it,’ said the general, ‘who among us knows what’s natural and what’s not?’

‘I’ll note, à propos, that the human brain weighs an average of 1,470 grams.’

‘Maybe death is natural if it comes to a person in the prime of his life?’

‘And has a volume of 1,456 cubic centimeters.’

‘Maybe there’s a certain logic to death at that highest point?’

‘And it consists of eighty percent water. That’s just for your information.’

‘Then why bother to wait for the point when the body’s becoming decrepit and almost disintegrated?’

The captain stood up.

‘Because, Your Excellency, by then nobody begrudges the loss of the body, when it’s like that.’

The general looked closely at Kologrivov. He walked over to him and embraced his shoulders.

‘Well, of course: death comes only to a person’s body. I’d simply forgotten the most important part.’