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
271
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?
272
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, wherever you 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.
273
PART EIGHT
TOLD BY SANYA GRIGORIEV
TO STRIVE. TO SEEK
CHAPTER ONE
HE
With an odd sense of powerlessness 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