short of a miracle."
It was the truth, for me a shocking truth, but I listened to him
carelessly, with a long-forgotten sense of my power over him.
"We retreated towards Kiev. We didn't know that Kiev was cut off. We
thought the Germans were God knows where, but they met us near
Khristinovka, within two hundred kilometres of the front. It was hell,"
he added with a laugh. "But that's another story. Now I wanted to tell
you that I saw Nikolai Antonich in Moscow. Strange to say, he stayed in
Moscow, didn't evacuate."
"Is that so?" I said indifferently.
We were silent for a while.
"Didn't you want to talk to me about something, Misha?" I said at
length. "If so, come into my room."
He stood up and straightened his back. Drew his breath and adjusted
his belt.
"Yes. Do you mind if I take some wine with us?"
"No."
"Which one?"
"Anyone you like, I won't drink."
He took a bottle and some glasses from the table, thanked Rosalia and
followed me out. We settled down-I on the sofa, he at the table, which
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had once been Sasha's. Her paint brushes in a tall glass still stood on it
untouched.
"It's a long story."
He was agitated. I was calm.
"A very long and... Do you smoke?"
"No."
"Lots of women have started smoking during the war."
"I know. They're waiting for me at the hospital. You have exactly
twenty minutes."
"Very good," Romashov enunciated slowly. "I won't tell the story of
how I came to be in the South. We fought near Kiev and were defeated."
He said "we".
"At Khristinovka I joined a hospital train which was making for
Uman, bypassing Kiev. They were ordinary goods trucks with the
wounded lying in them on bunks. A lot of them badly wounded. We
travelled three, four, five days, in stuffy heat and dust..."
Bertha was praying in the next room.
He got up and shut the door.
"I was shell-shocked a couple of days before I joined the hospital
train. True, just lightly-stabs once in a while in my left side. It still gets
sort of brownish, you know," he added with a strained smile.
Varya, who had changed his clothes that night, had said that his left
side was burnt-I suppose that is what he called "gets brownish".
"I found myself taking things in hand on our train-managing the
household, you know. The first thing to be done was to organise meals,
and I'm proud to say that throughout the journey-we were a good
fortnight travelling-no one died of starvation. But I'm not talking about
myself."
"About whom then?"
"Two girls, students from a Teachers' College at Stanislav, were
travelling with us. They carried meals to the wounded, changed
dressings, did everything they could. Then one day one of them called
me to an airman, a wounded airman lying in one of the trucks."
Romashov poured out some wine.
"I asked the girls what it was about. 'Talk to him.' 'What about?' 'He
doesn't want to live, says he'll shoot himself, cries.' We went to see him-
it so happened that I had never been in that particular truck before. He
was lying on his face, his legs bandaged, but very carelessly, clumsily.
The girls sat down next to him, called him..."
Romashov fell silent.
"Why don't you have a drink, Katya?" he said in a voice that had gone
husky. "I'm drinking all by myself. I'll get drunk-what will you do then?"
"Turn you out. Finish your story."
He tossed off the glass, took a walk round the room, and sat down
again. I took a sip. After all, the world was full of airmen!
Here is the story as Romashov told it.
Sanya had been wounded in the face and legs. The lacerated wound in
the face was healing. He had said nothing about the circumstances in
which he was wounded-Romashov got that quite by accident from the
army newspaper Red Falcons, which carried a paragraph about Sanya.
He was bringing me that newspaper, and would have brought it but for
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that stupid accident, when he almost got drowned in the basement
trying to save the children. But that didn't matter, he remembered the
paragraph by heart:
"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 Fighter, and put the others 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 their country to their last breath."
This might not be the exact text, the words might be in a different
order, but the substance of it was correct-Romashov was prepared to
vouch for it with his life. He had kept the copy of the paper in his
dispatch-case together with other papers, very important ones, but the
dispatch-case had fallen into the water, the newspaper had become wet
pulp, and when he had dried it he found that the column containing the
paragraph was missing. But that did not matter.
Sanya, then, was considered killed, but he was only wounded—
wounded in the face and legs. In the face only lightly, but in the legs
evidently seriously. At any rate, he couldn't go about unaided.
"How did he come to be in the train?" "I don't know," said Romashov,
"we didn't speak about it." "Why not?" "Because an hour after our talk,
twenty kilometres short of Khristinovka our train was shot up by
German tanks." That's what he said, "shot up."
It was unexpected, running into German tanks behind our own lines.
The train stopped-the locomotive was put out of action by the first shell.
The wounded started to jump out onto the embankment, scattering, and
the Germans used shrapnel on them, firing through the train.
First thing, Romashov ran to Sanya. It was no easy job-dragging him
out of the truck under fire, but Romashov did it and they hid behind the
wheels. The badly wounded screamed in the trucks:
"Brothers, help!" and the Germans kept on firing. It was getting close to
where they lay and Sanya said: "Run, I have a pistol, they won't get me."
But Romashov did not leave him. He dragged him aside into a ditch,
knee-deep in the mud, though Sanya struggled with him and swore.
Then a lieutenant with a burnt face helped Romashov to drag him
across the swampy ground, and there left them, the two of them, in a
wet little aspen wood.
It was terrifying, because a big German tank-mounted force had
seized the nearest railway station; fighting was going on all round, and
at any moment the Germans might make their appearance in the wood,
which was the only defensible spot in a stretch of open country. They
had to move on, there wasn't a minute to be lost. But the wound on
Sanya's face had opened, and he kept telling Romashov: "Leave me,
you'll never make it with me!" And once he said: "I thought that in my
position I'd have to fear you." When he put his legs down the pain was