We made it safely to Sturdzovsky Lane, and then stopped at the corner, listening and peering into the inky darkness for a long time to make sure the coast was clear. On the one hand, the darkness helped us to hide. On other hand, it also helped the enemy to hide. There was the danger of walking straight into a trap.
Everything was quiet, so quiet we could even hear the faint rumble of the surf. We crept stealthily down the lane. Before we set out, I had told Yasha that we should make our way down the side of the street with the doorway, stop before we reached it, and then quickly and quietly dart past it. I had worked it out mathematically. If anyone was hiding in the doorway, they might well not see us coming. If we went down the other side of the lane, however, they could see us from a good way off. According to my calculation, if we walked on the other side, we would be in sight of the enemy five times longer. Thus, the danger to us would be five times greater.
But Yasha had countered my theory with his own, namely that it’s always better to face danger head-on. Even though we had been whispering, I didn’t argue with him for the simple reason I didn’t want to risk being discovered, and so we set off down the side of the street opposite the doorway.
Yasha counted the seconds to himself. We knew it took seven minutes to walk from Sturdzovsky Lane to Dr Landesman’s. We always felt safe once we were back at the sanatorium, behind its high wall and iron gates, especially if we made sure not to light the oil lamps. As we were passing the doorway, Yasha stumbled. Whenever we talked about this incident later, Yasha always insisted that the more you concentrate on doing something perfectly, the more likely you are to make some foolish mistake. As for me, I was convinced it was all due to his absurd way of walking. But I never told him this to spare his feelings. Anyway, Yasha stumbled, and he was so shocked that instead of cursing silently to himself, he blurted out ‘Sorry!’ in a loud, embarrassed voice.
‘Don’t move!’ shouted a husky voice from the doorway. The sharp beam of an electric torch hit us squarely in the face. ‘Hands out of your pockets! Now! You bastards!’
Several armed men came up to us. It was a Cossack patrol.
‘Papers!’ said the man with the husky voice.
I handed him my identity card. The Cossack shone his torch on it and then on me. ‘Damned foreigner! Greek, most likely,’ he said. ‘Mackerel with a slice of lemon, that’s what you are. This is obviously fake. Here, take it.’
He handed back my identity card and then shone the light on Yasha. ‘Don’t even bother showing me your papers,’ he said. ‘Anyone can see you’re a general in the Jerusalem army. Go on, get out of here!’
We walked on a few paces.
‘Stop!’ the same Cossack shouted suddenly in a shrill voice. ‘Don’t move!’
We stopped.
‘What are you dawdling for? Didn’t I tell you to get a move on?’
We started walking again, slowly, trying to hide our fear. Every nerve in my body was stretched tight. I could feel the barrels of their guns trained on our backs even though I hadn’t heard the clicking of the bolts. I realised now they were playing a deadly game of cat and mouse with us. They were going to kill us, and any moment might be our last.
‘Stop! You motherf——rs!’ the Cossack screamed again.
The other men snickered.
We stopped again, this time alongside the wall. I couldn’t see it in the dark, but I knew it was made of rough stone and so there must be places to grab hold of.
‘Over the wall,’ I whispered to Yasha. ‘In one go. Otherwise we’re dead.’
I was thin and light. It was easy for me to climb over the wall. But Yasha, with his big, heavy roller-skate shoes, nearly fell off. I grabbed his hand and pulled. We threw our legs over the top of the wall and jumped. Shots rang out behind us, and chunks of rock exploded along the top of the wall. We raced through the dark garden. The tree trunks had been treated with white lime, which helped us to find our way. The Cossacks had climbed the wall by now and were on our tails. A bullet whistled past my ear. We made it to the wall on the far side of the garden. There was a gap in it. The Cossacks were now running through the garden, but they wasted time aiming and firing their rifles and so we managed to squeeze through the gap. Another three paces and we were on the edge of a steep cliff over the sea.
We scrambled down the cliff and took off running along the shore. The Cossacks kept firing from up above but had lost us by now in the darkness. We picked our way for some time down the shoreline, over large rocks and past dark caves. The surf drowsily rolled up on the shingle. It was hard to believe that a man could kill another man just like himself for no good reason on such a warm autumn night filled with the scent of thyme and the gentle sounds of the whispering sea. I was still naïve enough to believe that beauty could appease evil and that murder was impossible before the Sistine Madonna or atop the Acropolis.
I was dying for a smoke. The shooting had stopped, so we climbed into the first cave and lit our cigarettes. Never in my life have I enjoyed a cigarette more. We sat in the cave for about three hours before coming out and walking stealthily along the rocky shore towards the sanatorium. All was quiet. Clinging to the rocks and bushes, we climbed up the cliff to the high fortress-like wall of the sanatorium. We located a culvert, slithered through it, stuffed it full of rocks behind us, even though this was completely unnecessary, and went inside.
Nazarov was not asleep. He was stunned by our tale. We went into the windowless bathroom, lit the oil lamp and got our first look at ourselves. Our clothes were all torn, our hands cut and bleeding, but on the whole, we were lucky to be alive. We gulped down lots of tea and got drunk. Not from the tea, of course, but from an amazing, incomparable feeling of lightness that came from being safe. If perfect happiness exists, we experienced it that night.
I wanted to hold onto this feeling as long as possible. I changed my clothes, grabbed a blanket and went out to the loggia – a deep bay with a projecting balcony on the first floor. It was dark there and protected from the wind. No one could see me from the street below. I lay down on a wicker chaise longue, wrapped the blanket around me and stayed there until dawn, listening to the sounds of the night.
The sea murmured without end. The sound of the large breakers rose and fell. So did the wind in the bare branches. It rose and fell, becoming as quiet as me, listening throughout the night. But the wind never left, it remained with me. I could tell by the smell of the wet shingle and the subtle trembling of the last leaf on the plane tree. I had noticed that stubborn grey leaf the day before, but now, at night, it seemed a tiny living creature, my one friend, keeping vigil beside me.
Now and then gunshots echoed in the dark from somewhere off in the city. After each shot, dogs barked for a long time. Once a faint light flickered far out at sea and then vanished. Everything around me slept. I too dozed off occasionally, but my sleep was fitful. It was the kind of half-sleep when one can clearly see large white flowers floating on a dark sea or hear the sound of a violin, soft as a child’s hand. In that half-sleep I felt completely different from my usual self – extremely calm, trusting, accepting of the world. From the darkness of the sea, I was certain I could hear a woman whispering:
So, what does my name mean to you?
It’s certain to die like a mournful roar,
Like waves splashing on a distant shore,
A forest noise before the night is through.fn5
88
The Last Shot
With each passing day, life in Odessa became more alarming. Soviet forces had almost reached Voznesensk by now.