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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
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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
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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.