Konstantin Simonov
The Cricket

We saw death at rather close range,
and perhaps we could have died ourselves,
we walked wherever it was possible to walk,
and looked at everything that one could look at.
We climbed into trenches
drenched with the smell of creosote
and “sake” spilt on the sand,
where our men had only just
been bayoneting the others
and on the bayonet the blood had not yet dried.

In vain we searched for the habitual pity
we had forgotten back home,
here what we got used to was the thought
that to be killed
was part of the enemy’s duty.
At first we simply took this on faith,
but the faith became part of us, flesh and blood,
and so we wrote:
“If he does not surrender —
he must be bayoneted!”

And, I swear, our sleep was peaceful and dreamless
when we’d curl up in a corner,
dozing in a lorry speeding along without headlights,
or lie somewhere on a hard floor.

We had the clear conscience of people
who’d looked war in the eyes.
And we saw too much in the daytime
to see any more in our dreams.
We slept like children, our mouths open,
propping ourselves up somehow in an awkward position...
But I wanted to tell a different story,
it’s about a cricket that I wanted to talk.
A cricket lived right under our roof,
between the insulation and the canvas.
He was reddish and fat,
with enormous whiskers
and with a saberlike, crooked tail.

He knew when to sing and when to be silent,
not for the world would he get things mixed up;
he crawled silently during the hot days
and sadly whistled when it was cold.
We wanted to study him at close quarters
and in the morning carried him over the threshold,
and he was at a loss, like a driver
suddenly confronted with a whole lot of roads.
In surprise he kept moving his whiskers,
like us he did not know the reason
why a big man from the yurt next door
had come up so close to him.

I repeat:
the cricket was fat,
with a crooked, saberlike tail,
yet all of him, all his small form,
an oak leaf
could have covered completely.
But the boot was a large one,
a size forty-three,
with nails in the heel
and, before we could give it a thought,
there it stood already on the cricket.
We decided it would be odd to get angry,
and talked about other matters,
but the man from the next-door yurt
was silently proclaimed an enemy.
Just as in life, I’ve mixed up
important things and nonsense in my tale,
but my comrades will confirm
that all this is true,
from the first line to the last.

Translated by Lubov Yakovleva