Two Captains (53 page)

"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 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.

*Voentorg-a retail organisation of army and navy stores.- Tr.

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 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 unbearable. Romashov made a crutch for him out of a tree branch. But Sanya could not walk all the same, so Romashov went alone-not forward, but back to the train in the hope of finding those Stanislav girls. But he did not get to the train, the Germans opened fire on him on the edge of the marsh. He went back.

"I got back in an hour, maybe a little more," Romashov said, "and I didn't find him. It was a small wood and I searched the length and breadth of it. I was afraid to shout but nevertheless I did, several times. There was no answer. I searched all night until finally I dropped down and fell asleep. In the morning I found the spot where we had parted. The moss was torn up and trampled down, and the crutch lay under a tree..."

Afterwards Romashov had got caught in an encirclement, but broke through to our troops with a detachment of sailors off the Dnieper Flotilla.

He never heard about Sanya again.

I had pictured to myself a thousand times how I would get to know about this. A letter would come, an ordinary letter without a stamp, and I would open it-and the world would be blotted out. Or Varya would come-Varya, whom I had tried so many times to comfort-and she would try to break the news to me gently, starting from afar with: "If he were killed, what would you do? "

And I would answer:

"I wouldn't survive it." Or I would be standing in a queue with other women at the Military Registration Office, and we would be looking at one another, all thinking the same thing: "Who would it be today? " I had thought of everything, but never had it entered my mind that I would hear about this from Romashov.

It was all nonsense, of course. He had made it up or read something like it in a magazine. Most likely he had made it up. The calculated cunning so characteristic of him was evident in his every word. But how unfair, how painful it was to have this stupid, this harrowing game played out at my expense! To have this man turn up in Leningrad, where life was hard enough without him, in order to deceive me so meanly!

"Misha," I began very calmly, "all this is a lie and you know it. If you don't admit it and ask my forgiveness, I'll drive you out like the cad you are. When did this happen-all you've been telling me? "

"In September."

"There, you see-in September. And I received a letter dated the twentieth of October in which Sanya writes that he is alive and well and may fly in to Leningrad for a day or two if his chiefs permitted. Now what do you say to that, Misha? "

I don't know where I got the strength to lie at such a moment! I had received no letter dated October twentieth. I had not heard from Sanya for over a month.

Romashov smiled wryly.

"It's a good thing that you didn't believe me," he said. "Never mind, it's all for the best."

"So it was all a lie, then? "

"Yes," said Romashov, "it's a lie."

He should have argued with me, should have tried to convince me, lost his temper, he should-like that time in Dogs'Place-have stood before me with trembling lips. But he said impassively: "Yes, it's a lie."

My heart sank, went cold and leaden within me.

He must have sensed it. He came up and took my hand-easily and boldly.

I wrenched it free.

"If I wanted to deceive you I would simply have shown you the newspaper, which reports in black and white that Sanya was killed. But I told you what nobody else in the world knows. It is ridiculous," he said haughtily, "to think that I did this for base personal motives. Or that I believed that such news could help me win your favour? But it's the truth, and I dare not conceal it from you."

I still sat motionless, but everything around me began to drift away-Sasha's table with the brushes in the tall glass and that red-haired soldier at the table, whose name I had forgotten. I was silent, I didn't want anything, but the soldier for some reason hastily left the room and came back with a grey, elegant little woman, who clutched her head when she saw me and cried: "Katya, my God! Give me some water! What's the matter, Katya? "

December 30, 1941. Bertha died a fortnight ago, on one of our "alert"

days, when the bombing started first thing in the morning, or rather continued from overnight. She did not die from starvation-poor Rosalia repeated a dozen times that starvation had nothing to do with it.

She wanted to have her sister buried the same day, as the ritual required. But it was impossible. So then she hired a long, mournful Jew, and he read prayers all night over the dead woman, who lay on the floor in a shroud made from two separate bedsheets-this, too, was in accordance with the ritual. The bombs were falling very near, not a single pane of glass was left whole that night in Maxim Gorky Prospekt, and the streets were bright and ghastly with the lurid glow of conflagrations, while that mournful man sat mumbling prayers, then quietly fell asleep. Coming into the room at daybreak I found him peacefully sleeping next to the dead woman with his prayer-book under his head.

Romashov managed to obtain a coffin-at that time, a fortnight ago, it was still possible-and when that thin little old woman was laid into that huge, roughhewn box, it looked as if even there, in the coffin, she were cowering with terror in a corner.

One had to dig the grave oneself-the grave-diggers, Romashov thought, demanded an "outrageous" price. He hired boys to do it- the same boys whom Rosalia had taught to paint.

Very animated, he ran downstairs ten times, held whispered conferences with the house manager, patted Rosalia on the shoulder, and ended up by getting angry with her for insisting on having Bertha buried in a shroud of two separate bedsheets.

"Sheets can be bartered for bread! " he shouted. "She doesn't need them. In any case somebody will take them off her in a day or two."

I sent him about his business and told Rosalia that everything would be the way she wanted it.

It was early morning. Tiny brittle snowflakes eddied in the air, then suddenly, as if in a hurry, fell to the ground, when Romashov and the boys carried the coffin out, bumping against the walls and turning awkwardly on the landings, and placed it on a hand sled in the yard. I wanted to give the boys money, but Romashov said he had arranged to pay them with bread.

"A hundred grams per head in advance," he said gaily. "Okay, boys? "

The boys nodded consent without looking at him.

"Are you going upstairs, Katya? " he went on. "Will you please fetch the bread. It's in my coat."

I don't know why he put the bread in his coat-maybe to conceal it from Rosalia or that Jew. The coat hung in the hall.

I remember thinking as I went upstairs that I ought to dress warmer. I had been feeling a bit feverish in the night and I daresay it would be better for me not to go to the cemetery, which was said to be a good seven kilometres away. But I was afraid that without me Rosalia would drop on the way.

The piece of bread, wrapped in a bit of paper, was in the coat pocket.

Together with the bread I pulled out what felt like a soft little bag. It dropped on the floor and I opened the door on the landing to pick it up, it being dark in the hall. It was a yellow chamois-leather tobacco-pouch: among other gifts, we sent such tobacco-pouches to the front for the soldiers.

After a moment's thought I untied it. Inside lay a photograph broken in half and some rings. "Trucked them somewhere," I thought with disgust. The photograph was an old one, and had some writing on the back, which was hard to make out, as the letters had completely faded. I was about to put the photo back but some odd feeling restrained me, a feeling that I had once held this tobacco-pouch in my hand.