r two if his chiefs permitted. Now what do
you say to that, Misha? "
I don't know where I got the strength to lie at such a moment! I had
received no letter dated October twentieth. I had not heard from Sanya for
over a month.
Romashov smiled wryly.
"It's a good thing that you didn't believe me," he said. "Never mind,
it's all for the best."
"So it was all a lie, then? "
"Yes," said Romashov, "it's a lie."
He should have argued with me, should have tried to convince me, lost
his temper, he should-like that time in Dogs'Place-have stood before me with
trembling lips. But he said impassively: "Yes, it's a lie."
My heart sank, went cold and leaden within me.
He must have sensed it. He came up and took my hand-easily and boldly.
I wrenched it free.
"If I wanted to deceive you I would simply have shown you the
newspaper, which reports in black and white that Sanya was killed. But I
told you what nobody else in the world knows. It is ridiculous," he said
haughtily, "to think that I did this for base personal motives. Or that I
believed that such news could help me win your favour? But it's the truth,
and I dare not conceal it from you."
I still sat motionless, but everything around me began to drift
away-Sasha's table with the brushes in the tall glass and that red-haired
soldier at the table, whose name I had forgotten. I was silent, I didn't
want anything, but the soldier for some reason hastily left the room and
came back with a grey, elegant little woman, who clutched her head when she
saw me and cried: "Katya, my God! Give me some water! What's the matter,
Katya? "
December 30, 1941. Bertha died a fortnight ago, on one of our "alert"
days, when the bombing started first thing in the morning, or rather
continued from overnight. She did not die from starvation-poor Rosalia
repeated a dozen times that starvation had nothing to do with it.
She wanted to have her sister buried the same day, as the ritual
required. But it was impossible. So then she hired a long, mournful Jew, and
he read prayers all night over the dead woman, who lay on the floor in a
shroud made from two separate bedsheets-this, too, was in accordance with
the ritual. The bombs were falling very near, not a single pane of glass was
left whole that night in Maxim Gorky Prospekt, and the streets were bright
and ghastly with the lurid glow of conflagrations, while that mournful man
sat mumbling prayers, then quietly fell asleep. Coming into the room at
daybreak I found him peacefully sleeping next to the dead woman with his
prayer-book under his head.
Romashov managed to obtain a coffin-at that time, a fortnight ago, it
was still possible-and when that thin little old woman was laid into that
huge, roughhewn box, it looked as if even there, in the coffin, she were
cowering with terror in a corner.
One had to dig the grave oneself-the grave-diggers, Romashov thought,
demanded an "outrageous" price. He hired boys to do it- the same boys whom
Rosalia had taught to paint.
Very animated, he ran downstairs ten times, held whispered conferences
with the house manager, patted Rosalia on the shoulder, and ended up by
getting angry with her for insisting on having Bertha buried in a shroud of
two separate bedsheets.
"Sheets can be bartered for bread! " he shouted. "She doesn't need
them. In any case somebody will take them off her in a day or two."
I sent him about his business and told Rosalia that everything would be
the way she wanted it.
It was early morning. Tiny brittle snowflakes eddied in the air, then
suddenly, as if in a hurry, fell to the ground, when Romashov and the boys
carried the coffin out, bumping against the walls and turning awkwardly on
the landings, and placed it on a hand sled in the yard. I wanted to give the
boys money, but Romashov said he had arranged to pay them with bread.
"A hundred grams per head in advance," he said gaily. "Okay, boys? "
The boys nodded consent without looking at him.
"Are you going upstairs, Katya? " he went on. "Will you please fetch
the bread. It's in my coat."
I don't know why he put the bread in his coat-maybe to conceal it from
Rosalia or that Jew. The coat hung in the hall.
I remember thinking as I went upstairs that I ought to dress warmer. I
had been feeling a bit feverish in the night and I daresay it would be
better for me not to go to the cemetery, which was said to be a good seven
kilometres away. But I was afraid that without me Rosalia would drop on the
way.
The piece of bread, wrapped in a bit of paper, was in the coat pocket.
Together with the bread I pulled out what felt like a soft little bag. It
dropped on the floor and I opened the door on the landing to pick it up, it
being dark in the hall. It was a yellow chamois-leather tobacco-pouch: among
other gifts, we sent such tobacco-pouches to the front for the soldiers.
After a moment's thought I untied it. Inside lay a photograph broken in half
and some rings. "Trucked them somewhere," I thought with disgust. The
photograph was an old one, and had some writing on the back, which was hard
to make out, as the letters had completely faded. I was about to put the
photo back but some odd feeling restrained me, a feeling that I had once
held this tobacco-pouch in my hand.
I went out onto the landing, where there was more light, and began to
spell out the writing. "If it's worth..." I read. A white sharp light
flashed before my eyes and stabbed my very heart. The writing on the
photograph read: "If it's worth doing at all, do it well."
I don't know what happened to me. I screamed, then found myself sitting
on the landing, groping about for that photograph. Through a darkness that
clouded my eyes I read the inscription and recognised C. in a flying helmet,
which made him look like a woman. C. with his large eagle-like face and kind
sombre eyes looking out from under his heavy eyebrows. It was the photograph
of C., which Sanya had always carried about with him. He kept it in his
pocket-book together with other documents, though I had told him a thousand
times that the photograph would be worn away in his pocket and that it
should be framed and placed on his desk.
In a fury, I rushed back into the hall, tore the coat off the hanger
and flinging it out on to the landing, turned the pockets out. Sanya was
dead, killed. I don't know what I was looking for. Romashov had killed him.
The other pocket contained some money. I crushed the notes and threw them
down the stair-well. Killed him and taken the photograph. I did not cry.
Stole the documents, all the papers, maybe the disk as well, so that nobody
should know that this dead man in the wood, this corpse in the wood, was
Sanya. "Other papers, very important ones, in the dispatch-case"-the words
rang in my ears and it seemed as if someone had lighted a lantern in front
of every word of Romashov's.
This photograph had been in the dispatch-case. Other papers and the
newspaper Red Falcons had been there, too, but they had got soaked and were
ruined-hadn't Romashov said, "The newspaper had become wet pulp"? But the
photograph was intact, maybe because Sanya had always carried it wrapped in
tracing-paper.
Voices could be heard below. Rosalia was calling me. I slipped the
photograph in my bosom and put the tobacco-pouch back into the pocket. I
hung the coat up again, went downstairs and gave the bread to Romashov.
"What's the matter?" he said. "Aren't you well?"
"No, I'm all right."
There was nothing. No empty, soundless streets through which people
walked in silence, slowly dragging their feet as in a frightful slow dream.
No ice-encrusted tramcars stranded in the middle of the streets with thick
ledges of snow hanging from them like from the eaves of country cottages. No
narrow tracks running away behind us as we dragged the hand sled on which,
swaddled like a child, lay a small body. I recollected then that Romashov
had had the coffin left behind because there was no room for it on the sled.
"That's all right, we'll sell it," he had said.
As for Rosalia, she must have gone mad, because she said it was the
proper rite to have no coffin. I remembered this, then immediately forgot
it. A little girl with a tiny old woman's face stepped into the snow to let
us pass-there was no room for two on the narrow path trodden down
Pushkarskaya Street. Someone passed us in an oddly loose dangling overcoat-a
man with a briefcase slung across his shoulder on a string. This, too, I saw
and immediately forgot it. I saw everything-the snowed-up streets, the
swaddled body on the little sled, and another body some woman was towing on
the other side of the road, and who kept stopping and finally dropped
behind. Like traceless shadows that glide noiselessly across glass, the
freezing city passed before me all white, buried in snow.
I was seeing another scene, one that smote my heart cruelly. Legs
stretched out in dirty bandages yellow with blood, lay Sanya with his cheek
to the ground and his murderer standing over him-alone, all alone in a wet
little aspen wood. Shoulders hunched, blue with cold, my arm in that of
Rosalia's, who could barely move-she had so many clothes on-I trudged along
behind the sled which moved far ahead, then, drew near when the boys stopped
to have a smoke. Two lonely pathetic old women-we looked much the same, she
and I. The similarity must have struck Romashov, too, for he caught up with
us and said irritably: "Why did you have to go? You'll catch your death of
cold. Go back, Katya, go home!"
I looked at him-alive and hale. In his white new sheepskin coat,
shoulder harness and holster at his belt. Alive! I caught the air with open
mouth. And hale! I bent down and put some snow in my mouth. The spade tied
to the body glinted, and I stared and stared at its hypnotic glitter.
The cemetery. We waited for a long time in a small, dirty office with
white strips of hoarfrosted tow running between the logs of the timbered
walls. The clerk, a woman with a bloated face, sat by an iron little stove,
her feet, wrapped in rags, thrust out close to the fire. Romashov for some
reason was shouting at her. Then they called us- the grave was ready. The
boys, leaning on their spades, stood on a mound of earth and snow. What a
shallow resting-place they had made for poor Bertha! Romashov sent them for
the body. Soon they came back with her. The long mournful Jew walked behind
the sled and from time to time commanded a halt to read a short prayer.
Romashov laid ropes out on the snow, deftly lifted the body and kicked the
sled away. Now she was lying on the ropes. Rosalia gave her sister a last
kiss. The Jew sang, now raising his voice with surprising stresses, now
dropping to a low tone, like a mournful old bird.
We went back to the office to warm up-1 and Romashov. He made
mysterious signs to me and slapped his pocket as we approached the door.
Inside he drew out a bottle.
"Have some?" he said.
Oh, how my heart began to burn and swell, what hot waves surged through
my arms and legs! I felt hot. I undid my coat, threw off my warm shawl. I
walked, walked about the office, on light, springy feet.
"Some more?"
The woman with the bloated face looked at us hungrily, and I told
Romashov to pour some out for her. He did so-"Ah well, in for a penny!"-gay,
pale, with red ears, fur cap tilted back at a rakish angle. I, too, felt
gay, in jocular mood. I picked up from the desk one of the black painted
grave plates and held it out to Romashov.
"This is for you."
He laughed.
"Now that's more like my old Katya!"
"Not yours!"
He came over and took hold of my hands. His mouth began to quiver, a
small, childlike mouth that revealed his teeth-strange that I never noticed
before what sharp small teeth he had.
"Yes, mine," he said huskily.
I drew my right hand away. There was a hammer on the window' sill-I
suppose it was used for nailing the plates to the crosses. Very slowly I
picked up the hammer. It was a small but heavy one, with an iron handle.
Had the blow struck his temple, I daresay I would have killed him. But
he recoiled and the hammer slid down and cut open his cheek-bone. The woman
sprang to her feet, screaming, and made a dash for the door. Romashov leapt
after her and hustled her back into the room, slamming the door. Then he
went up to me.
"Leave me alone!" I said with despair and loathing. "You're a murderer!
You killed Sanya."
He was silent. The blood was gushing from his gashed cheek. He rubbed
it with his hand, but it kept dripping down onto his shoulder and chest, and
his sheepskin coat was covered with wet pink stains.
"I must stanch it," he muttered without looking at me. "Have you a
clean handkerchief, Katya?"
"All right, let's say I killed him! In that case why should I have
saved that photograph of his? We wanted to bury the documents. Sanya was
holding them in his hands and the photo must have dropped out. I didn't tell
you I had found it-1 was afraid you wouldn't believe me. My God, you can't
imagine what war is like! What a crazy idea- to think that I could have
killed one of our own men! No matter who it was, how I felt about him! To
kill a wounded man-Katya! Why, it's crazy, nobody would believe it!"
This was not the first time Romashov had repeated those words:
"Nobody would believe it." He was afraid that I would write of my
suspicions to the Military Tribunal or the Procurator. He gave all his money
and bread to the woman in the cemetery office, and I heard him say to her:
"Not a word to anybody." He did not go to the hospital. Rosalia stopped the
blood and put a plaster on the big gash in his cheek.
"I had no love for him, it's true, and I don't intend to conceal the
fact," Romashov went on. "But when I found him with those crippled legs,
with the pistol at his head, lying in that filthy truck, it wasn't him I was
thinking of, it was you. No wonder he was glad to see me-he realised that I
was his salvation. And it wasn't my fault that he strayed away when I went
to fetch someone to help with a stretcher."
He paced the little kitchen, talking and talking without a stop. He
clutched his head and when he did that two funny big-nosed faces grew out of
the shadows which flitted across the wall. A forgotten memory of childhood
touched me like a muted string. "And here's a cow with horns"-that was
Mother speaking. I was lying in my cot, and Mother was sitting beside me,
holding her hands up to the wall and laughing because I was looking at her
hands instead of at the wall. "And here's bearded Billy Goat..." My eyes
were wet, but I did not wipe the tears away-it was too cold to take your
hands out of all those blankets, overcoats and the old fox fur.
"Just my rotten luck-I had to meet him on that train! I could have
killed him easily. Several corpses were carried out of the trucks every day
and no one would have been surprised if that airman, who was so miserable
that he wanted to shoot himself, had been found one morning with a bullet
through his head. But I couldn't kill him," Romashov shouted, "I couldn't
because it would have been you, and not him, who would have been found in
the morning with a bullet in your head! I realised this when he asked one of
the girls what her name was and she answered 'Katya'. His face lighted up. I
realised what a paltry, petty figure I was in contrast to him, with my
thoughts about the happiness I was to win through his death. And I decided
to do everything I could to save him for you. And now you dare to accuse me
of having killed him! No." Romashov said solemnly, "I swear by the mother
that bore me for this life of pain and misery! I swear by what I hold most
sacred-my love for you. If he has died, I am not guilty of his death either
in word or deed."
He started to do up his sheepskin coat but couldn't get the hooks into
the eyes, his hands were trembling so.
If only I could have believed him, if only I could have dared believe
him again! I gazed dispassionately at that gaunt face with the sunken eyes,
at the yellow matted hair falling over his forehead, and the ugly patch of
plaster which disfigured and tightened his cheek.
"Go away!"
"You're not feeling well, let me stay."
"Go away."
I don't know whether he had ever cried before, but his face now was wet
with tears as, sinking on his knees, he buried it in the bedclothes, his
body shaken with smothered sobs. "Sanya is alive," came the sudden thought,
and my heart leapt with joy. "Unless this man standing on his knees before
me is not human, but a fiend? No, no. It's impossible, unthinkable, that
anyone can dissemble like that."
"Go away."
I don't know where I expected him to go. He had been living with us for
nearly a month now-Rosalia having registered him for some reason as a
resident. It was night time, too, and an alert was on. But he went out, and
I was left alone.
"Tick-tock" went the metronome. I remember someone telling me that it
was only in Leningrad that they broadcast the sound of a metronome during an
alert. The window-panes shook together with the yellow tongue of the
"blinker" standing on the table. What had really happened out there, in the
wet little aspen wood?
Lying under the heap of sheepskins and blankets, I did not hear the
all-clear. Almost immediately, it was followed by another alert. "Tick-tock"
the metronome started again. "Believe-not believe".
It was my heart beating and praying on a wintry night, in the starving
city, in the tiny kitchen of a freezing house barely lit up by the yellow
flame of an oil "blinker", which flickered feebly, battling with the shadows
that crept out of the comers. May my love keep you alive! May my hope be
yours. May it stand beside you,
look into your eyes, breathe life into your blanched lips! Press its
face to the blood-stained bandages on your legs. Say: It is I, your Katya! I
have come to you, whereveryou may be. I am with you, whatever happens to
you. That somebody else who tends you, supports you, gives you food and
drink-is me, your own Katya. And should Death bend over your couch and
should you have no strength left to fight him, only a tiny flicker of
strength remaining in your heart-that, too, will be me, and I will save you.
PART EIGHT
TOLD BY SANYA GRIGORIEV
TO STRIVE. TO SEEK
CHAPTER ONE
HE
With an odd sense of poweriessness to convey the things I see, my mind
drifts back to fragmentary scenes from the early days and weeks of the war.
The old life had gone for good and its place was instantly taken by a quite
different life, which took command of everything, of me and Katya, of all
our thoughts, feelings and impressions. This different life was the war, and
I would probably not have written about it merely because it was different,
had it not been for the fact that what happened to me in the war was
interwoven in such a surprising way with the affair of Captain Tatarinov and
the St. Maria.
I see a large, dark room in a peasant cottage, a table dimly lit by a
candle-end, and windows curtained off with ground-sheets. The door opens,
and a man comes in, his tunic undone. He rummages about in the stove and
eats hungrily. He is Grisha Trofimov. Another man gets up from the bunk and
joins him at the table. He is Luri. I hear their quiet talk, which makes my
heart beat slow and strong.
"Been over to Ladoga?"
Grisha nods and goes on eating.
"Well?"
"Nothing new."
"Been at Zvanka?"
He goes on eating. Says nothing. He's been over to Zvanka too.
The two Leningraders look into each other's faces. It is the first
night of the Leningrad blockade.
I see the message-bag dropping over the side of my plane-that's the way
we saved men who mistakenly believed that they were surrounded.
I see the first grave, which we decorated with dud shells laid out to
look like iron flowers. We flew over them as low as we could when returning
from missions.
The lake, too, appears before me-that same lake, in whose sleepy
morning frame I had seen the last vision of the old life. Now it is sombre
and sullen. The water, filled to the brim of its shores, glints dully, and
grey-blue smoke creeps across the misted mirror of its surface. The forest
is burning, set alight by the Germans.
In the evenings we come out of the dugout built into the hillside.
Patrol boats lay hidden among the bushes. We race across the dark water amid
spray and foam. Planes come out of the forest like huge sea birds. This is
Lake L., our third and fourth base.
I see lots of things. But everything I see passes before me, as it
were, against the backcloth of the map which unfolds every day beneath the
wings of my plane-a map with the breaking lines in the front and the
widening black wave of the German offensive.
Every day new pilots arrived, most of them from the Civil Air Fleet.
With some of them I had worked together in the North, with others in the Far
East. They were experienced. First and Second Class pilots, and three of
them even "millionaires", that is, men who had notched up over a million
kilometres, and it was amusing to watch the comical blunders these civilians
made in the process of becoming fighting flyers. We talked about this very
often, both in the canteen and at home, in the dugout, where the three of us
lived together -I, Luri and mechanic. Perhaps the reason we talked about it
so often was because we had tacitly agreed not to talk about "other things".
The newspapers did that for us.
In September my crew and I were ordered to report for duty to the Air
Force Command of the Southern Front.
It was just an ordinary fight as air fights go, and I do not intend to
describe it, the more so as it was very soon over. We succeeded right away
in bringing down one of the Messers-he crashed in the very act of making a
stall-turn. The two others hoicked and got in each other's way as they tried
to settle on our tail. It was smart of them but not smart enough; we were
not the kind to let someone get in behind us. They tried it once, but it
didn't work. Then they came in again and very nearly got caught in our gun
sights. To cut a long story short, we kept them at bay until they gave up
and I headed straight for the front-line, which was not far off.
This was easier said than done, what with a quarter of my port wing
shot away and the tanks being holed. I was wounded in the leg and in the
face, and the blood was running into my eyes.
I suddenly felt strangely weak. It was at that moment, I believe, that
I recalled the fearful dreams of childhood in which I was being killed or
drowned-and the joyous sense of relief when you wake up to find yourself
alive.
"But now"-the thought was a very calm one-"now I won't wake up."
I must have lost consciousness, but not for long, because I came to at
the sound of my own voice. It was as though I had started to speak before I
had regained consciousness. I ordered the crew to bale out. The radio
operator-gunner complied immediately, but Luri grumbled:
"Oh, all right!", as though I were suggesting some tiresome jaunt to
which he reluctantly agreed in deference to me.
The hardest thing was to fight this mist which made my eyes close and
my arms go limp and helpless. Only once in a thousand years, it seemed, did
I manage to fight it off and become aware that something, something most
important, had to be put right immediately. A thousand years-and only a
moment in which to regain control of my machine, struggling only with my
left hand. Another thousand-and far below me I saw the Junkers, two Junkers,
lumbering towards me like large, heavy bulls. This was the end, of course.
And they took their time about it-1 saw that at a glance.
Luri baled out, and they started shooting at him. Killed, I suppose.
Then they came back and drew alongside me.
What did that German look like? Was he handsome or ugly, old or young?
Who cares. This was no soldier flying alongside me, but a murderer.
I don't know how to explain it, but it seemed to me that I saw both him
and myself as from a distance. Myself, clutching at the controls with feeble
hands, the blood streaming down my face, in a plane that was falling to
pieces. And he, goggles raised, studying me with cold curiosity and a sense
of his complete power over me. I may have said something to Luri, forgetting
that he had baled out and they had probably killed him. The German passed
under me, and the wing with the yellow cross on it appeared on my left. I
pulled the stick over, trod on the pedal and hurled myself at that wing.
I don't know where the blow struck-probably on the cockpit, because the
German didn't even open his parachute. I had killed him outright. Was I
happy!
I found myself in the grip of an overwhelming, glorious feeling. To
live! To live! I was wounded, I knew that they had got me, but no, my one
thought was-to live! I saw the earth-it was quite close now- the ploughfield
and the white dusty road.
Some part of me was burning-my jacket and my boots, but I felt no heat.
Incredibly, I somehow managed to flatten out just above ground-level. I
undid the straps-it was the last thing I managed to do that day, that week,
that month, those four months... But let us not forestall events.
CHAPTER TWO
ALL WE COULD
I was very thirsty, and all the way to the village I kept asking for a
drink and about Luri. When we got to the village I was given a bucket of
water, and I couldn't understand what made the women cry when I put my head
into the bucket and began to drink, seeing -^ and hearing nothing around me.
My face was singed, my hair matted, my leg crippled and I had two gaping
wounds in my back. I must have been a sight. A blissful feeling stole
through my body, waxing bigger and stronger. I was lying on some hay in a
farmyard, by the wall of a barn, and it seemed to me that this feeling came
from the prickly touch of the grass, from the scent of the hay, from the
earth, where no one could kill me. I had been carted down, and the old white
horse was now tied to a paling a little way off, and the tears gathered in
my eyes at this sense of bliss, at the happiness I felt looking at that
horse. We had done all we could, I thought. I wasn't worried about the radio
operator-gunner and the aerial gunner. I only asked them not to move me from
here until they had all turned up-Luri was alive, too, I thought happily, he
must be, seeing how lucky we had been in beating them off. He was alive and
I would soon see him.
I did. The horse snorted and shied when they brought him in, and an
austere old woman-the only person whom I remember-went up to it and punched
it on the nose.
His face was serene and quite untouched, but for a scratched cheek,
caused, no doubt, by the parachute dragging him along when he landed. His
eyes were open. At first I couldn't understand why all the men took their
hats off when he was laid on the ground. The old woman knelt beside him and
began to arrange his arms...
Afterwards I was jolting along in a cart on my way to the casualty
clearing station. Some other woman now, not a countrywoman, was holding my
hand, feeling my pulse and repeating: "Careful, careful."
I was wondering, "Why careful? Am I dying then?" I must have said it
aloud, for the woman smiled and answered: "You'll live."
And again the cart jolted along, bumping. My head was lying in
somebody's lap, I saw Luri lying near the doorstep with dead, folded arms,
and I tried to go to him, but they held me back.
CHAPTER THREE
"IS THAT YOU, OWL?"
We travelled in railway trucks, and there were only two passenger
coaches in front. I must have been in a bad way if that little doctor with
the intelligent harassed face ordered me after Ms first round to be
transferred to one of those coaches. I was swathed in bandages-my head,
chest and leg-and lay motionless like a fat white doll. Orderlies were
talking outside our window on the station platform: "Get some of it from the
dangerous car." I was a dangerous case. Something was beating inside me, I
couldn't make out whether it was in my head or heart. It seemed to me that
this was life beating and stirring in me, busy building something with hands
which were tenacious, though still weak.
Only a few days had passed since I had looked out from my plane on what
no other combatant in this war, I thought, had ever seen. Our retreat had
appeared to me in terms of algebraic formulas as it were, but now these
formulas had been translated into real living facts.
I was no longer viewing our retreat from a height of eighteen thousand
feet. I was retreating myself now, tormented by my wounds, my thirst, the
heat, and not least by the dismal thoughts, which were as persistent as
those blue, hard flies which settled on my bandages with revoltingly loud
buzzings.
Evening was drawing in, and evidently we were no longer standing still,
because my "cradle" was swinging rhythmically in time with the carriage's
movement. The setting sun glanced through the window and the dusty, heavy
air laden with the smell of iodine could clearly be seen in its slanting
rays. Somebody was moaning in a low but harrowing manner, or rather droning
monotonously through clenched teeth like a buzzer. Where had I heard that
dreary voice before? And why was I trying so hard to remember where I had
heard it?
Then suddenly school desks ranged themselves in rows before me and, as
in a waking dream, I saw a lot of lively laughing children's faces. The
lesson was an interesting one-about the manners and customs of the Chukchi
people. But who cared about the lesson when a bet had been made and a ginger
boy with wide-set eyes was holding my finger and coolly sawing it with a
penknife?
"Romashka!" I said aloud.
The droning stopped.
"Is that you, Owl?"
He took a long time threading his way under the suspended cots and
between the wounded lying on the floor until he emerged at last amidst
protruding bandaged legs.
"What is it?" he said guardedly, looking straight at me without
recognising me.
I thought he looked a little more human, though he was still "no oil
painting", as Aunt Dasha would have said. At any rate, the lordly manner he
had lately assumed was now gone. He was scrawny and pale, his ears stuck out
like Petrushka's and his left eye squinted warily.
"Don't you recognise me?"
"No."
"Try again."
He had never been able really to conceal his feelings, and I could now
read them in the order, or rather disorder, in which they appeared.
Bewilderment. Dismay. Horror, which made Ms lips quiver. Then again
bewilderment. Disappointment.
"But you were killed, weren't you?" he mumbled.
CHAPTER FOUR
OLD SCORES
The Destiny theme figures largely in old Russian songs, and though I am
no fatalist, the word came to my mind despite myself when I read a report of
my own death in the newspaper Red Falcons. I remember it word for word:
"While returning from a mission the aircraft piloted by Captain
Grigoriev was overtaken by four enemy fighter planes. In the unequal combat
Grigoriev shot down one lighter and put the other to flight. Though his
machine was damaged, Grigoriev flew on. Not far from the front-line he was
attacked again, this time by two Junkers. Grigoriev, his machine in flames,
rammed one of the Junkers. The men of the X air unit will forever cherish
the memory of their brave comrades, Captain Grigoriev, Navigator Luri, Radio
Operator-Gunner Karpenko and Aerial Gunner Yershov, who fought for the
country to their last breath."
What happened was this: A war correspondent came to the village -1
learned of this only in the summer of 1943-soon after I had been removed
from there. The farmers had witnessed the air fight and he questioned them
about it. He photographed the wreckage of the burnt-out aircraft. He was
told that I was in a hopeless condition.
Whether it was because I had escaped death by nothing short of a
miracle, or because it was the first time in my life that I had occasion to
read my own obituary, but this report had the effect of an insult on me. My
thoughts ran off at a tangent. I pictured Katya-not the Katya, who, as I
knew, would suddenly wake up and wander about the room, thinking of me, but
a different Katya, a sad and aged one, who, upon reading this report, would
put the newspaper down on the table, and go on doing things for a while as
though nothing had happened, perhaps plaiting or letting down her hair with
a stony face, and then suddenly topple over like a doll.
"Ah, well," I said. "These things happen."
And I crushed the newspaper and flung it out of the window. Romashov
gasped. While we were talking the train had been standing. Afterwards he
picked up the paper-apparently it gave him pleasure at least to read that I
was dead, now that he had seen evidence to the contrary.
"So you're alive! I can't believe it! My dear chap!"
That was what he said-"dear chap".
"Christ, am I glad! Is it just a coincidence? Somebody with the same
name? But what does it matter! The thing is you're alive."
He began to ask me where I had been hit, whether badly, whether any
bones were broken, and so on. I disappointed him again, saying that I was
wounded lightly and a doctor of my acquaintance had fixed me up in this
passenger coach.
"I can imagine how upset Katya will be," he said. "She may have read
this report."
I said, "Yes, she may," and began to ask him about Moscow. Romashov
mentioned in passing that it was less than a month since he had left Moscow.
I daresay I ought to have given him to understand straight away that
nothing had changed between us instead of talking to him in such a peaceful
way. But man is a strange animal-that's stale news. I looked at his
strained, unnaturally pale face, and nothing stirred in me beyond habitual
contempt mixed with a faint interest. Needless to say, he was to me the same
cad he had always been. But at that moment I thought of him as a familiar
cad of long standing, one who sort of "belonged".
And he realised it; he realised everything. He began to talk about
Korablev; did I know that the old fellow, despite his sixty-three years, had
joined the People's Guard and this had been reported in a Moscow evening
papers? He spoke about Nikolai Antonich, saying (with a touch of irony) that
he had received not only a new flat but an academic degree. That of Doctor
of Geography. And without presenting a thesis, mind you. To Romashov's mind
it was almost impossible.
"And d'you know who made his career for him?" Romashov added viciously,
with a gleam in his eye. "You." "Me?"
"Yes. He's a Tatarinov, and you've made that name famous." He meant
that it was my studies of the St. Maria expedition that first drew attention
to the person of Captain Tatarinov and that Nikolai Antonich had cashed in
on this, seeing that he bore the same name. In all justice to Romashov I
must say that he expressed this thought most succinctly.
This, however, was the last subject I wanted to discuss with him. He
understood and switched the conversation.
"Do you know who I met on the Leningrad front?" he said. "Lieutenant
Pavlov." "Who's he?"
"I like that!. He says he knows you since a child. A big
broad-shouldered chap."
How was I to guess that this big, broad-shouldered chap was that boy
Volodya with the baby-blue eyes, who wrote poetry and took me for sled rides
behind his dogs Buska and Toga. "His father came to see him, an old doctor."
"Ivan Ivanovich!"
It gave me pleasure, even from Romashov's lips, to hear that Ivan
Ivanovich was well and was even serving in the Navy. There was a man for
you!
Romashov mentioned several times that he had been on the Leningrad
front. Katya had stayed in Leningrad and I was worried about her. But I just
couldn't see myself asking Romashov about Katya!
By this time, now more or less reconciled to the fact that I was alive,
he was all eagerness to talk about himself. He was already proud, I think,
that he had met me on a hospital train, that he, too, was wounded, and so
forth.
The war had found him in Leningrad, manager of the supplies department
of one of the institutes of the Academy of Sciences. Though listed as
reserved occupation he declined to take advantage of this, all the more so
as the whole institute to a man had joined the People's Guard. Wounded near
Leningrad, he had remained in the ranks. His former chief, now a
high-ranking army man, had summoned him to Moscow. He was given a new
assignment, but did not reach destination. His train was bombed near
Vinnitsa. The blast had hurled him against a telegraph pole, and since then
the whole of his left side gave him "terrible pains" from time to time.
"I was moaning in my sleep, you know, when you heard me," he explained.
"And the doctors just don't know what to do about it."
"Now own up," I said sternly, "how much of this you have invented and
how much of it is true?"
"It's the absolute truth, every word of it!"
"Is that so?"
"I swear it is! Those days are past when we had to play the fox with
each other."
He said "we" and "each other".
"That's all over now, old chap. I have my life to live, you have yours.
What is there to come between us now? You won't believe me again, but
honestly, I'm amazed sometimes when I remember what it was we quarrelled
over. Compared with what is happening now before our eyes it's so trivial."
"I should say it is!"
"Let's be done with it!"
He looked at me questioningly. Evidently he was not sure whether I
would accept the offer.
But I did. Nothing could be further from my mind these days than the
old scores of ours. I felt sick at heart, pitiable and helpless as I was
with my crippled leg in face of the gigantic Shadow that was advancing on
our country and was even now pursuing us, gaining on our lost train. At
other times I would imagine life in a hospital, and day dragging endlessly,
monotonously, the nurse coming in soft-footed and placing flowers on the
bedside table, and God knows how I longed with all my heart and all my
strength for anything but this peace and quiet, these flowers on the table,
that noiseless hospital tread!
Or else there came to me a chilling thought, more dreadful than
anything I could think of, the thought: "I shall never fly again." I would
go hot over and start to breathe through an open mouth, and my heart would
sink, sink so low that I never believed it would rise again.
CHAPTER FIVE
IN THE ASPEN WOOD
I lay by the window, with my back to the engine. The receding
countryside opened out before me, and I did not see the three tanks until we
had passed them. Nothing out of the ordinary, just three tanks. The tankmen
were looking at us from their open hatches. They had no helmets on, so we
took them for our own men. Then the hatches were closed down and that was
the last moment when we could still believe that no able-bodied men were
capable of gunning a hospital train carrying no fewer than a thousand
wounded.
The carriages clashed with a metallic grating sound, and I was flung
forward violen