Their commander, Lieutenant Zubarev, had studied singing at the Conservatory before the war. Sometimes he crept up to the German lines at night and began singing ‘Don’t Wake Me, Breath of Spring’, or one of Lensky’s arias from Eugene Onegin. If anyone asked why he risked his life to sing among heaps of rubble, he wouldn’t answer. It may have been from a desire to prove – to himself, to his comrades and even to the enemy – that life’s grace and charm can never be erased by the powers of destruction, even in a place that stank day and night of decaying corpses.
