The Fate of a Man (Sholokhov)
Short summary
Post-war Soviet Union, spring 1946. A narrator traveling to a district center met a man with a young boy at a river ford. The man shared his life story.
Before the war, Andrei had lived happily in Voronezh with his wife Irina and three children. He worked as a driver and built a small cottage. When war broke out in 1941, he was drafted. At the station, Irina clung to him, trembling and predicting they would never see each other again. Andrei pushed her away in anger, a moment he would forever regret.
In May 1942, while delivering ammunition to the front, Andrei was knocked unconscious by a shell and captured by the Germans. He survived brutal conditions in prisoner-of-war camps, enduring starvation, beatings, and forced labor. He attempted escape but was caught and punished. Once, the camp commandant Müller summoned him for execution after Andrei complained about work quotas. Müller offered him vodka to drink to German victory, but Andrei refused and drank only to his own death. Impressed by his courage, Müller spared his life and gave him bread.
In 1944, Andrei became a driver for a German major. In June, he knocked the major unconscious, tied him up, and drove through enemy lines to Soviet forces. He was hospitalized and wrote to Irina, but received a letter from a neighbor instead: a bomb had killed Irina and their two daughters. His son Anatoly had survived and volunteered for the front. Andrei returned to his unit. Father and son corresponded, and Anatoly became an artillery captain. On Victory Day, May 9, 1945, Anatoly was killed by a sniper.
I buried my last joy and hope in that foreign German soil... When I got back to my unit I was not myself. Something seemed to snap inside me.
After demobilization, Andrei worked as a driver in Uryupinsk. One day he met an orphaned boy named Vanya at a café. Claiming to be the boy's father, Andrei adopted him. They lived together until Andrei lost his driver's license after an accident. Now they were traveling to a new town, where Andrei hoped to work as a carpenter until he could drive again.
Detailed summary
Division into chapters is editorial.
Meeting at the river crossing
In the early spring of the first year after the war, the narrator had to travel to the district center of Bukanovskaya. The journey proved difficult—the roads were nearly impassable, covered in melting snow and mud. After crossing the River Yelanka in a leaky boat, he found himself waiting on the far bank while his driver went back to fetch their companion and belongings.
While waiting alone by the water, the narrator sat down on a broken fence to smoke, but discovered his cigarettes were soaked. As he laid them out to dry in the warm sun, he noticed a tall, stooped man emerge from the village, leading a small boy by the hand. They approached the narrator, and the man greeted him in a deep, husky voice. The stranger sat down beside him, and they began to talk.
A happy life before the war
The stranger introduced himself and began telling his story. He was from Voronezh Province, born in 1900. During the Civil War he served in the Red Army, and during the famine of 1922 he worked in the Kuban to survive, though his entire family back home died of starvation. Left alone, he sold his cottage and moved to Voronezh, where he worked as a carpenter and then learned to be a mechanic at a factory.
Soon he married a woman who had been raised in a children's home. She was good-tempered, cheerful, and remarkably understanding. When he came home from work tired and bad-tempered, she never threw his rudeness back at him, but remained gentle and quiet. Even when he came home drunk on payday, she never scolded him, only laughed carefully and helped him to bed.
Children soon arrived—first a son, then two daughters. Andrei stopped drinking and brought all his pay home. In 1929 he learned to drive and began working on a lorry, which he found more to his liking than factory work. For ten years he lived this way, working day and night, earning good money. The children did well at school, and his eldest son showed exceptional talent in mathematics, even getting his name in a Moscow newspaper. Before the war, they built a small cottage with two rooms. They had everything they needed—a roof over their heads, clothes, shoes, and milk from their goats.
War, capture, and the camps
Then came the war. The day after it started, Andrei received his call-up papers. His entire family saw him off at the station. The children held back their tears, but Irina was inconsolable. That night his shirt was wet with her tears, and in the morning she clung to him, trembling uncontrollably. She told him they would never see each other again in this world. Angered by her words, he pushed her away, though he immediately regretted it.
Till my last, dying day, till the last hour of my life, I'll never forgive myself for pushing her away like that!
Andrei was drafted at Belaya Tserkov and given a three-ton lorry. In May 1942, near Lozovenki, he was transporting ammunition to a howitzer battery when a shell exploded near his lorry. He lost consciousness and woke to find himself behind enemy lines, cut off and captured by the Germans. Weakened and unable to escape, he was taken prisoner.
When I realized that, and I'm not ashamed to say it, my legs just caved in under me and I fell as if I'd been poleaxed, because I realized I was cut off behind the enemy lines.
The Germans marched the prisoners westward. That night they were locked in a church with a smashed dome. In the darkness, a doctor moved among them, helping the wounded. Andrei's dislocated shoulder was set. Near him, two men whispered—one threatened to betray his platoon commander to the Germans the next morning. Andrei strangled the traitor to save the commander's life.
The prisoners were moved from camp to camp across Germany. Andrei worked at a silicate plant in Saxony, hauled coal in the Ruhr, and labored in Bavaria and Thüringen. The Germans beat them constantly, fed them sawdust bread and thin swill. Before the war Andrei had weighed 189 pounds; by autumn he was down to 110. At one camp near Dresden, out of 142 men in his group, only 57 survived after two months.
The test of courage before the commandant
The camp commandant was a German named Müller—thick-set, with bleached hair and pale eyes. He spoke Russian fluently with a Volga accent and could swear expertly. Every day he walked down the line of prisoners, bloodying their noses with his lead-lined glove, calling it an 'inoculation against flu.'
One day after Andrei complained that four cubic meters of quarrying was too much for a starving man, he was summoned to Müller's office. The commandant and his officers were drinking schnapps and eating bacon. Müller told Andrei he would shoot him personally for his words and offered him a glass of schnapps to drink to the triumph of German arms. Andrei refused the toast but agreed to drink to his own death instead.
He drank the first glass in two gulps but didn't touch the bread. Müller poured a second glass, and Andrei drank it too, still refusing food. When offered a third glass, he drank it slowly, bit off a small piece of bread, and put the rest down.
I wanted to show the bastards that even though I was half dead with hunger I wasn't going to choke myself with the scraps they flung me, that I had my own Russian dignity and pride.
Impressed by Andrei's courage, Müller decided not to shoot him. He announced that German armies had reached the Volga and taken Stalingrad, and in celebration, he would spare Andrei's life. He gave him a small loaf of bread and a piece of bacon fat. Back in his hut, Andrei shared the food equally among all the prisoners, each receiving only a matchbox-sized piece of bread.
Later, Andrei was transferred to work in the mines in the Ruhr. In 1944, as Germany weakened, the Germans began using prisoners as drivers. Andrei was assigned to drive a German major of the engineers in an Opel-Admiral. The major was short, pot-bellied, with three chins, and ate constantly. Though conditions were better than in the camp, Andrei never stopped thinking about escape.
Escape and the loss of everything
In June 1944, near Polotsk, Andrei finally made his escape. He prepared carefully—finding an iron weight, telephone wire, and stealing a German uniform. On June 29, while driving the major out of town, he knocked him unconscious with the weight, tied him up in the back seat, and drove at high speed toward the Soviet lines. German troops fired at him from behind, and Soviet forces fired from ahead, but he reached a small wood and fell to the ground, kissing the earth.
Soviet soldiers initially mistook him for a German, but he tore off the uniform and explained he was a prisoner who had escaped. The major and his briefcase provided valuable intelligence. The division colonel embraced Andrei, thanked him for the gift, and promised to recommend him for a decoration. He sent Andrei to a hospital to recover and promised him a month's leave to visit his family.
From the hospital, Andrei wrote to Irina, telling her about his capture and escape, even boasting that the colonel had promised him a medal. For two weeks he slept and ate, slowly recovering. But no reply came from home. In the third week, he received a letter from a neighbor in Voronezh. The Germans had bombed the aircraft factory, and a heavy bomb had fallen directly on Andrei's cottage. Irina and both daughters were at home when it happened—nothing remained but a deep crater.
His son had been in town during the bombing. That evening he looked at the crater where his home had been and returned to town the same night, telling the neighbor he was going to volunteer for the front. Andrei remembered how Irina had clung to him at the station, how her heart had known they would never see each other again. For two years as a prisoner, he had talked to his family every night under his breath, promising to come home. Now he realized he had been talking to the dead.
The death of his last hope
Andrei received a month's leave but couldn't stay in Voronezh. He stood by the crater filled with rusty water, let his soul grieve, and returned to his division the same day. Three months later, he received a letter from his son. Anatoly had graduated from artillery college with honors and was now a captain commanding a battery of forty-fives. He had been awarded six orders and medals. Andrei felt proud—his son had left his old man far behind.
At night, Andrei began having dreams about the future. When the war ended, he would get his son married and live with them, doing carpentry and looking after the grandchildren. Toward the end of the war, near Berlin, father and son were close to each other. Andrei sent Anatoly a letter one morning and received an answer the next day. They were both near the German capital and would soon meet.
On the morning of Victory Day, May 9, Andrei was called before his company commander. A strange artillery officer was waiting. The lieutenant colonel stood up and said, 'Bear up, Father. Your son, Captain Sokolov, was killed today at his battery. Come with me.' Andrei swayed but kept his feet. They drove through rubble-strewn streets to where soldiers stood in line around a coffin covered with red velvet. Inside lay his son—no longer the thin boy with narrow shoulders, but a broad-shouldered, handsome young man.
Finding a new son
After the war, Andrei was demobilized. He couldn't return to Voronezh and went instead to Uryupinsk, where a friend who had been invalided out lived. His friend and wife had no children and gave Andrei a home. He got a job as a driver at a lorry depot. In autumn, while delivering grain, he began stopping at a café. There he noticed a small boy, dirty and ragged, with eyes like stars after rain. The child ate whatever people gave him.
One day Andrei called out to the boy, inviting him to ride along to the elevator. The child's name was Vanya. His father had been killed at the front, and his mother had been killed by a bomb while they were on a train. He had no family and slept wherever he could find shelter. Andrei's heart filled with pity, and he made a decision immediately.
Why should we suffer alone and separate like this? I'd take him as my own son. And straightaway I felt easier in my mind, and there was a sort of brightness there.
Leaning close to the boy, Andrei asked quietly, 'Vanya, do you know who I am?' The child breathed out, 'Who?' And Andrei answered, 'I'm your father.'
He threw his arms around my neck... and started chirping away like a singing bird: 'Daddy dear! I knew it! I knew you'd find me! I knew you'd find me whatever happened!'
The boy pressed himself against Andrei, trembling like a blade of grass in the wind. Andrei's eyes grew misty, and his hands shook. He could barely keep hold of the wheel and had to stop the lorry. They sat together for five minutes, the child clinging to him. Then Andrei turned the lorry around and drove back to the cottage, unable to think about going to the elevator. His friend and his wife understood immediately and began bustling around to help.
Parting at the ford
Andrei's story ended. From the river came the sound of the narrator's friend and the splash of oars. Andrei held out his big, firm hand and said goodbye. He called to his son, and the boy ran to his side, taking hold of his father's jacket. They walked toward the boat together—two orphans, two grains of sand swept into strange parts by the tremendous hurricane of war.
Two orphans, two grains of sand swept into strange parts by the tremendous hurricane of war. What did the future hold for them?
The narrator watched them go, feeling sad. After a few steps, little Vanya twisted around on his stumpy legs and waved his small rosy hand. Suddenly a soft but taloned paw seemed to grip the narrator's heart, and he turned hastily away.
No, not only in their sleep do they weep, these elderly men whose hair grew gray in the years of war. They weep, too, in their waking hours. The main thing is to be able to turn away in time.