The Titian

by BENJAMIN KAVERIN

OF THE seamen I met while visiting the Northern Fleet, Lieutenant Captain Guramishvili especially interested me. We saw a good deal of each other. In command of a division of patrol boats, he was, it goes without saying, very busy. But a Georgian always finds time for a friend.

Evenings we would sit in his small cabin and smoke and talk. Sometimes we would smoke and not talk — which was also pleasant. I liked him — he had a courteousness about him which is now considered somewhat old-fashioned. Quietly puffing his pipe, he would relate incredible stories which, before the war, could have happened only in one’s dreams.

He was the first man I had ever met who had such a fine understanding of war. He got to know it on land and sea, in the Pinsk swamps and the Arctic heights. He spoke of war with nicety, without passion, and frankly.

“Life is “worth exactly — what it is worth in this struggle,” he once said to me. “I sometimes remind myself of that when I get excited.”

He was a man of war in the full sense of the word. It seemed to me that he did not even wish to think of what he would do after the victory, to which he was devoting all his energy. I once asked him about this, and suggested that people who were bearing firearms and facing death every day, every hour, did not think of the future. There was no time, no desire.

“You’re mistaken,” he replied. “They do think about it, and even very much. What does the word ‘future’ signify? Everyone has his hopes and plans. But for everybody it signifies victory, the return home, rest, a new life. The future will be magnificent,” he added with emotion. “It can’t be otherwise after all that the people have suffered. They know it and are concerned about the future, perhaps instinctively so. Shall I tell you a story? You can judge for yourself whether I’m right or not.”

1

IT WAS the spring of 1942. We were fighting on land, defending P-, an ancient city with national gardens and crooked lanes, and overflowing with delicate rose-white cherry blossoms which abound there in that season. The front line ran along one of these lanes, called Lower Zamkovo. My headquarters— I was in command of a detachment — were on the eastern outskirts among the ruins of an ancient fortress of the time of Stephen Báthory.

Once, very early in the morning, when I was still not altogether awake after a short, fitful sleep, and was studying my map, putting crosses on the houses from which the Gormans had been driven out, a little old man in a wide-brimmed hat was brought before me. Gray-haired, pale, unshaven, wearing a long coat covered with plaster dust, he gave me the impression of being half-mad. But that was far from the case. On the contrary, he explained to me clearly who he was and what the business was “on account of which I make so bold as to disturb you,” as he politely said.

He was the head of the city museum in P-. By the way, it was a very good museum and I had heard about it long before the war forced us to fire at it with our heavy artillery.

“My name is Perchikhin,” he said, “and I am a descendant of the Perchikhins, those merchants in whose ancient premises the museum was founded.’

He went on to state his business.

“Quite a number of valuable works of art have remained in the museum,” he explained. “But among them there is one inimitable masterpiece which must be saved, for history will never forgive us if it falls into the hands of such barbarians as the Germans.”

I asked what this masterpiece was, and he replied that it was a Titian, “The Awakening of Spring.”

A Titian in P-! I was about to escort this descendant of the Merchants Perchikhin politely to the door. But he stopped me.

“You seem to think it very unlikely,” he said, “for P—— to have a Titian. But, you know, P—— is not far from the old frontier. In 1918 when the frightened bourgeoisie ran abroad, they were often detained at the frontier, and the art treasures which they were carrying out were turned over to the city museum. Needless to say, Leningrad claimed the Tit ian. I protested and Lunacharsky sided with me, expressing his famous opinion: ‘Small towns have a right to great art.’”

Just imagine the scene where this conversation was taking place. The Germans had already begun their methodical tank fire, coming up quite close. Clots of dirt and pieces of stone kept flying into our blindage, and this tiny mushroom in his widebrimmed hat kept quoting ancient and modern authors and indignantly telling us about Titian.

I thought it over. In the last analysis, there was nothing impossible here. It so happened that the evening before, our doctor had asked me to send someone for medical supplies which, like the Titian, had remained with the Germans and which we needed no less than the Titian. What if we get them with one blow — the medical stuff and the Titian!

I summoned Lieutenant Norkin of t he reconnoitering detachment. I knew him. He was a Leningrad man, had studied at the Frunze Military School; he was a dark, short fellow who looked a bit like the stay-at-home kind but who, at work, was a daring, quick-witted scout. He sketched beautifully, by the way, and was just the man to save this immortal Titian from harm.

That night the lieutenant set out for the front line in a trophy automobile, taking with him the head of the museum, who emphatically refused to change his broad-brimmed hat for a helmet. At dawn the lieutenant came back a little perplexed. He brought back the medical supplies and the Titian, but the head of the museum unfortunately remained in P—— forever.

“The picture was in his house,” the lieutenant reported, “and we drove up and took it. But then he began to pull out some of his own junk and they shot him. We had to fight our way back.”

At the time, I was wearing a fine German pistol which I took off then and there and gave to the lieutenant. Half a year later in Moscow we ordered an inscription plate made for it: “For exemplary fulfillment of a military assignment.”

Rolled up into a tube, the large canvas lay in the car among bandages, alcohol, packages of cotton and antiseptics. We unrolled it and oh-ed and ah-ed. Devil, but it was fine! There in a garden under blossoming apple trees stood large tables covered with mounds of mea t, bread, and game. Men and women peasants were dancing in a circle and singing, happy, healthy, perspiring in their festive, varicolored attire. To one side, at a barrel, surrounded by torches, sat a soldier in huge jackboots; he was drinking wine, and a red stream poured over his leather uniform. Lanterns had been hung in the trees. It was a village ball, the festival of spring, a magnificent thing which immediately made you feel gay. You felt like joining that crowd, dancing and drinking from the barrel of wine, and biting into an onion and a chunk of bread.

2

AT THE end of May we left P——. Before we left we gave the Germans “a good drink,” as you might say — not in vain had General Zegret, Corps Commander, promised in his orders a week’s leave for every dead seaman, and a two weeks’ leave for every live one.

We had to make our way through to our unit, through the Berezansk forests and across the Borschchevsk swamp. I won’t go into detail about that march — the newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda [Red Star — organ of the Commissariat of Defense] and others wrote abou t it at the time. We had to battle our way through for more than 1000 kilometers. We had no bread. We roasted horsemeat over bonfires and even ate it raw when it was impossible to make a fire. Unfortunately the forest was still bare — no mushrooms or berries.

But to get back to the Titian.

It was just a piece of canvas for which we seemed to have absolutely no use. We couldn’t eat it, we couldn’t shoot with it. While we still had horses, the Titian was tied to a saddle. When we ate our horses, we had to carry the Titian in our arms — devilishly awkward. The boys swore. What if we simply threw it away in the forest — this large, heavy canvas with some dancing figures painted on it?

But once Lieutenant Norkin unrolled the picture and showed it to the men. My, what happened! My detachment consisted of simple fellows, hardly one of whom had ever before heard of Titian. Nor was I in any mood for art in those days. But it was exactly as if a light laid fallen on those grim faces, which were now so haggard. Everything seemed to vanish — hunger, dirt, their deathly fatigue, and the danger that lurked behind each bush. Before us was a wonderful life with health and happiness such as these happy, dancing people were full of.

It was quite clear that the dancing people were on our side, and that with us, too, was the artist who had drawn that funny mustachioed soldier drinking wine and spilling it over his uniform, and those beautiful girls who led the dancing and singing, and that magnificent fowl which we were still to eat, no matter how miraculous that might seem.

We’d eat it yet, devil take it! And we’d drink wine and dance under blossoming apple trees with lanterns hanging on them. In our dirty battle cars we’d ride the streets of Moscow, and girls as pretty as those painted by the artist would greet us with flowers. There would be flowers —flowers everywhere. Beneath our bullet-riddled banners we’d deliver our final report to our Commander: “The war is over. We have won!”

I seem to have waxed poetic. But that’s just what happened, I assure you. It was not a dream, not a vision that the tired fighter saw there when he came to a halt in that dense forest right after a 25kilometer hungry march. No! This thought of the future seemed exactly as real as a military order which has to be fulfilled no matter how hard it is.

Those were difficult days. The Germans kept after us, trying to surround us, to lay ambuscades. We had not yet established contact with the partisans, and consequently we were desperately hungry. There were wounded men in our detachment and we dragged them along, almost dropping from fatigue and exhaustion. But it no longer even occurred to anyone to get rid of that clumsy, heavy roll of canvas, which was now wrapped up in one of our few rubber tents. When we detailed a sentry for the night, we also set someone to guard the Titian. It was our banner, and we guarded it as a banner.

I said it was difficult for us. But it would very likely have been harder if we had not had that painting. Once, when crossing the Desna River, we almost lost it. The sailor who had been ordered to take the Titian was killed and the painting remained on the left shore, while our detachment was already on the right. I called for a volunteer and three of the boys, with Lieutenant Norkin at their head, went back for the picture.

There was no doubt that they went to certain death — it was already quite light and we had crossed in darkness. But what the devil! Leave the Fritzes that soldier in the leather uniform, those healthy dancing girls, that fowl, and generally all that wonderful rich life? Make the Nazis a present of our future, which was so magnificently depicted in that painting? Nothing doing. So four of our boys, under cover of a light fire, crossed the river in a leaky rowboat and launched a frontal attack on the Germans. It was a landing just to their liking.

In two hours they were back with the picture. True, it had been shot through. A bullet had got the mustachioed soldier in the hand which lifted the mug to his lips, and one of the girls and some other spots were hit because, as I have said, the canvas was rolled up in a tube. But the lieutenant, who understood this business, said that in Moscow they would find artists and that everything would be exactly as before.

“We call it restoration,” he explained, “and I give you my word that later you won’t even find where the holes were.”

In autumn we rejoined our own unit not far from Tula. We were wearing bast sandals by then, and our feet were bound up in cloths cut from our horse blankets. All of us had heavy growths on our chins. I wore these breeches. I began the war in them and I’ll finish it in them. The last German — if by that time there is still even one German left on earth — will see me in these breeches on the streets of Berlin!

“But the Titian?” I asked, as my lieutenant captain ended his tale.

“ We took it to Moscow,” he replied, “and a whole platoon of museum workers appeared to transfer it to a safe place. Incidentally, the commander of the platoon was an old man who reminded me of that poor fellow, Perchikhin — just such a mushroom in a wide-brimmed hat. He wept on seeing the picture and said to me: ‘Captain, you have performed a great deed! ‘ By the way, I have a photograph somewhere. Before turning the Titian over to the museum we had our pictures taken with it. As a memento.”

He found the photo and showed it to me: sailors holding their hands at their caps were standing before the Titian. They were saluting their wonderful future pictured in that painting, which was bulletriddled like a banner.