Kristina was unconscious for an hour while we tried to stifle our gnawing anxiety with banalities like, ‘It must be just a touch of sunstroke.’ I had a feeling like lead in the pit of my stomach. I was frightened.
She was quite cheerful when she came round. ‘I am becoming a nuisance,’ she said. ‘What can be the matter with me?’ We fussed around her.
Kristina got to her feet. ‘Come on. We are wasting time.’
I walked alongside her. She stopped suddenly and glanced down at her legs, her attention attracted by the flapping of slit trousers about her legs.
‘My legs are getting quite thick, Slav.’
‘Do they hurt you, Kristina?’
‘No, not at all. They must be swelling because I have walked so far.’
The time was afternoon on the fifth day. She walked on for hours without more than an occasional small stumble and was still keeping up with Kolemenos and I when the sun had gone and we stopped for the night. Sitting there among us she stole frequent looks at her legs. She said nothing and we affected not to notice.
It was a disturbed night. All except Kolemenos seemed too weary and worried for sleep, Kristina lay still but I sensed she remained awake. I chewed on the pebble in my mouth. My teeth ached, my gums were enlarged and tender. Thoughts of flowing water constantly invaded my mind. I had clear pictures of the sampans I had seen on those northern rivers. I had little fits of shivering that made me stand up and walk around. My head felt constricted. I ached from head to foot.
For the first two hours of the sixth day the air was cool and walking was as pleasant as ever it can be in the desert. But soon the sun began to blaze at us out of a sky empty of clouds.
I took Kristina’s elbow. ‘Can you keep going in this?’
‘Yes, I think so.’
Five minutes later she had folded up and was out, face down in the sand. Again we ministered to her and waited for her to open her eyes. She appeared to be breathing quite normally, like a tired child.
I stood a few steps away from her and the others came over to me. ‘She is very swollen,’ I said. ‘Do any of you know what that means?’ Nobody knew the symptoms. We went back to her and waited. I flapped my cap over her face to make some air.
She smiled at us. ‘I am being a trouble again.’ We shook our heads. ‘I am afraid you had better leave me this time.’
We all broke into protest at once. Kolemenos dropped down on his knees beside her. ‘Don’t say that. Don’t be a silly little girl. We shall never leave you.’ She lay there for another half-an-hour and when she tried to force herself up on her elbows she fell back again.
I spoke to Kolemenos. ‘We must give her a hand.’ We lifted her to her feet. ‘I can walk if you stay near me,’ she said.
Amazingly she walked, Kolemenos and I lightly holding her elbows. After a quarter of a mile we felt her start to fall forward. We steadied her and she went on again. She pulled herself erect and there was not a sound of distress, not a whimper. The next time she slumped forward we could not hold her. She had played herself utterly out and even the gallant will in that frail body could not produce another torturing effort. We were all in a bunch around her as the sun climbed up over our heads. Kolemenos and I each put an arm about her and, half-carrying, half-dragging her, set off again. A mile or so of that and I had no reserve of strength to give her. We stopped and I bent double fighting for breath.
‘Stick beside me, Slav,’ said Kolemenos. ‘I am going to carry her.’ And he lifted her into his arms, swayed for a moment as he adjusted himself to the weight, and staggered off. He carried her for fully two hundred yards and I was there to ease her down when he paused for a rest.
‘Please leave me, Anastazi,’ she begged. ‘You are wasting your strength.’ He looked at her but could not bring himself to speak.
We made a shelter there and stayed for perhaps three hours through the worst heat of the day. She lay still — I do not think she could move. The ugly swelling was past the knees and heavy with water. Kolemenos was flat on his back, restoring his strength. He knew what he was going to do.
The sun began to decline. Kolemenos bent down and swung her into his arms and trudged off. I stayed with him and the rest were all about us. He covered fully a quarter of a mile before he put her down that first time. He picked her up again and walked, her head pillowed on his great shoulder. I can never in my life see anything so magnificent as the blond-bearded giant Kolemenos carrying Kristina, hour after hour, towards darkness of that awful sixth day. His ordeal lasted some four hours. Then she touched his cheek.
‘Put me on the ground, Anastazi. Just lay me down on the ground.’
I took her weight from him and together we eased her down. We gathered round her. A wisp of a smile hovered about the corners of her mouth. She looked very steadily at each one of us in turn and I thought she was going to speak. Her eyes were clear and very blue. There was a great tranquillity about her. She closed her eyes.
‘She must be very tired,’ said Sergeant Paluchowicz. ‘The poor, tired little girl.’
We stood around for several minutes, dispirited and at a loss to know what to do next. The shoulders of Kolemenos were sagging with exhaustion. We exchanged glances but could think of nothing to say. I looked down at Kristina. I looked at the open neck of her dress, and in a second I was down at her side with my ear over her heart. There was no beat. I did not believe it. I turned my head and applied the other ear. I lifted my head and picked up her thin wrist. There was no pulse. They were all looking at me intently. I dropped her hand and it thumped softly into the sand.
The American spoke, hardly above a whisper. I tried to answer but the words would not come. Instead the tears came, the bitter salt tears. And the sobs were torn from me. In that God-forsaken place seven men cried openly because the thing most precious to us in all the world had been taken from us. Kristina was dead.
I think we were half crazy there beside her body in the desert. We accused ourselves of having brought her here to her death. More personally, Makowski, speaking in Polish, blamed me for having insisted on leaving the shelter of the oasis.
The American intervened, his voice cold and flat. ‘Gentlemen, it is no use blaming ourselves. I think she was happy with us.’ The talk ceased. He went on, ‘Let us now give her a decent burial.’
We scraped a hole in the sand at the base of a dune. Little pieces of stone that we sifted from the grains as we dug deeper we laid apart. I slit open a food sack and laid the double end gently under her chin. We lowered the body. On her breast lay her little crucifix. We stood around with our caps in our hands. There was no service, but each man spoke a prayer in his own language. Mister Smith spoke in English, the first time I had heard him use it. I opened out the sacking and lifted it over her face and I could not see for tears. We covered her with sand and we dotted the mound round with the little stones.
And Kolemenos took her tall stick and chopped a piece off it with his axe and bound the one piece to the other with a leather thong to make a cross.
So we said goodbye to her and went our empty way.
17. Snake Meat and Mud
THE AWFUL thing was that there was so little but the girl to think about. Walking was sheer painful habit — it required no thought to perform. The sun beating down hour after hour would addle my brains and check the orderly sequence of thinking. I found I could imagine she was still there, just behind my shoulders and I could scuff along for miles seeing her. But there always came a time when the idea of her presence was so strong that I must turn my head, and bitter grief would knife at me all over again. I came slowly out of a troubled, thirst-ridden sleep that night and I was sure once more that she remained with us. And each fresh realization of her death renewed dumb agony.