Tatiana and Alexander: A Novel(97)

"And you know all this how?"

"Because that describes me," replied Ouspensky.

"All right. So you know the answers to these simple questions because you know yourself."

"What?"

"You know the answers because you've looked inside yourself and you know that though you're marching and though you're holding your rifle high, and though your step is with your fellow soldier, you're tired, you're hungry, and you want to get laid."

"Yes."

"So, you're saying there is something behind what you see, and the reason you're saying there is something else is because you know there is something behindyou. There is something inside you that makes you say one thing and do another, that makes you march yet feel melancholy, that makes you look for whores yet love your wife, that makes you shoot an innocent German yet not want to hurt the rat that's running among the mines."

"There's no such thing as an innocent German."

Alexander continued. "The thing that makes you lie and feel remorse, that makes you betray your wife and feel guilt, the thing that makes you steal from the villagers knowing all the while you're doing wrong, that thing is inside Yermenko, too, and that's the thing science can't measure. Let's go and talk to him, and I will show you how far from the truth you were."

Alexander sent Ouspensky to get Yermenko. He offered both men a cigarette and a glass of vodka and put more wood on the fire. Yermenko was wary at first, but then drank and warmed up. He was young and extremely diffident. He wouldn't look Ouspensky in the eye, kept shifting from place to place, and said, yes, sir, no, sir, to every question that was asked of him. He talked a little about his mother in Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

Kharkov, about his sister who died of scarlet fever at the start of the war, about his farming life. When asked about the Germans, Yermenko shrugged and said he didn't read any newspapers and didn't listen to much news. He didn't know what was going on, he just did as he was told. He made a small joke at the expense of the Germans, he drank another glass of vodka, and shyly asked for one more cigarette before going to bed. Alexander excused him and he left.

Ouspensky raised his eyebrows. "All right--so he's a cipher. He is everyman, he is like Telikov, and like the engineer who just got killed--he is like me."

Alexander was rolling cigarettes.

"He doesn't want to know about the Germans, he just goes and shoots them when you tell him to. He is a good soldier, the kind you want in your battalion. Has some war experience, listens to orders, doesn't complain. What?"

"So you've observed him closely, you've watched him, and now you called him over and you talked to him. We socialized with him. We warmed him up, we chatted, we joked, we know a bit about this person, science has made its conclusions, right?"

"Right."

"Just the same way that science has observed the earth and the motion of the moon and the sun and the stars in the galaxy. The same way the telescope helped science discover the Milky Way and the nine planets, the same way the microscope helped Fleming discover penicillin and Lister discover carbolic acid. Right? We put Yermenko under the telescope when he marched, and under the microscope when he sat with us. We observed him the way science observes the universe--theonly way science can observe the universe. Perhaps for a shorter time, but we have used the scientific principles that scientists use to tell us of the universe and how it was made, of atoms, of electrons, of cells. Perhaps we could find out what Yermenko's blood type is? Perhaps we could find out how tall he is? How many push-ups he can do? Would all that help us, you think, to understand what is behind the man who marches on the field with us?"

"Yes," said Ouspensky. "I think it would."

Alexander lit a cigarette and offered one to Nikolai. "Lieutenant Ouspensky, Valery Yermenko is only sixteen years old. He killed his own father at the age of twelve. Village justice they called it, for the father was beating his mother daily. Yermenko simply got tired of watching it. He beat him to death with a stick. Do you know how hard it is to beat to death a grown man, especially for a small boy? He escaped village justice by running away and joining the army. He lied about his age--said he was fourteen--and they took him. During his training, he constantly had run-ins with his training sergeant, finally accosting him in the woods as the man was coming from mess and breaking his neck for humiliating him earlier at target practice. In Stalingrad, he distinguished himself by killing over three hundred Germans with his hands and his army knife--the army was too afraid to issue him a rifle. The building he took over remained under Soviet control from the beginning of the siege until the end. The Soviets gave up Yermenko to the Germans because they didn't want anything to do with him. When the Germans surrendered, the Red Army got Yermenko back. They sent him to the Gulag where he sliced open the guard on duty, took the guard's uniform and rifle and walked out of the camp compound, walking a thousand kilometers through the Soviet plains before coming to Lake Ladoga. Do you know where he was headed? To Murmansk. He wanted to get on one of the Lend-lease ships. Turns out he read just enough papers to learn about American Lend-lease: what they're sending, what they're producing, and in what numbers the ships are coming into the port. He was apprehended at Volkhov and our General Meretskov, not knowing what to Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html