Two Captains (56 page)

"I can imagine how upset Katya will be," he said. "She may have read this report."

I said, "Yes, she may," and began to ask him about Moscow. Romashov mentioned in passing that it was less than a month since he had left Moscow.

I daresay I ought to have given him to understand straight away that nothing had changed between us instead of talking to him in such a peaceful way. But man is a strange animal-that's stale news. I looked at his strained, unnaturally pale face, and nothing stirred in me beyond habitual contempt mixed with a faint interest. Needless to say, he was to me the same cad he had always been. But at that moment I thought of him as a familiar cad of long standing, one who sort of "belonged".

And he realised it; he realised everything. He began to talk about Korablev; did I know that the old fellow, despite his sixty-three years, had joined the People's Guard and this had been reported in a Moscow evening papers? He spoke about Nikolai Antonich, saying (with a touch of irony) that he had received not only a new flat but an academic degree. That of Doctor of Geography. And without presenting a thesis, mind you. To Romashov's mind it was almost impossible.

"And d'you know who made his career for him?" Romashov added viciously, with a gleam in his eye. "You." "Me?"

"Yes. He's a Tatarinov, and you've made that name famous." He meant that it was my studies of the St. Maria expedition that first drew attention to the person of Captain Tatarinov and that Nikolai Antonich had cashed in on this, seeing that he bore the same name. In all justice to Romashov I must say that he expressed this thought most succinctly.

This, however, was the last subject I wanted to discuss with him. He understood and switched the conversation.

"Do you know who I met on the Leningrad front?" he said. "Lieutenant Pavlov." "Who's he?"

"I like that!. He says he knows you since a child. A big broad-shouldered chap."

How was I to guess that this big, broad-shouldered chap was that boy Volodya with the baby-blue eyes, who wrote poetry and took me for sled rides behind his dogs Buska and Toga. "His father came to see him, an old doctor."

"Ivan Ivanovich!"

It gave me pleasure, even from Romashov's lips, to hear that Ivan Ivanovich was well and was even serving in the Navy. There was a man for you!

Romashov mentioned several times that he had been on the Leningrad front. Katya had stayed in Leningrad and I was worried about her. But I just couldn't see myself asking Romashov about Katya!

By this time, now more or less reconciled to the fact that I was alive, he was all eagerness to talk about himself. He was already proud, I think, that he had met me on a hospital train, that he, too, was wounded, and so forth.

The war had found him in Leningrad, manager of the supplies department of one of the institutes of the Academy of Sciences. Though listed as reserved occupation he declined to take advantage of this, all the more so as the whole institute to a man had joined the People's Guard. Wounded near Leningrad, he had remained in the ranks. His former chief, now a high-ranking army man, had summoned him to Moscow. He was given a new assignment, but did not reach destination. His train was bombed near Vinnitsa. The blast had hurled him against a telegraph pole, and since then the whole of his left side gave him "terrible pains" from time to time.

"I was moaning in my sleep, you know, when you heard me," he explained.

"And the doctors just don't know what to do about it."

"Now own up," I said sternly, "how much of this you have invented and how much of it is true?"

"It's the absolute truth, every word of it!"

"Is that so?"

"I swear it is! Those days are past when we had to play the fox with each other."

He said "we" and "each other".

"That's all over now, old chap. I have my life to live, you have yours.

What is there to come between us now? You won't believe me again, but honestly, I'm amazed sometimes when I remember what it was we quarrelled over. Compared with what is happening now before our eyes it's so trivial."

"I should say it is!"

"Let's be done with it!"

He looked at me questioningly. Evidently he was not sure whether I would accept the offer.

But I did. Nothing could be further from my mind these days than the old scores of ours. I felt sick at heart, pitiable and helpless as I was with my crippled leg in face of the gigantic Shadow that was advancing on our country and was even now pursuing us, gaining on our lost train. At other times I would imagine life in a hospital, and day dragging endlessly, monotonously, the nurse coming in soft-footed and placing flowers on the bedside table, and God knows how I longed with all my heart and all my strength for anything but this peace and quiet, these flowers on the table, that noiseless hospital tread!

Or else there came to me a chilling thought, more dreadful than anything I could think of, the thought: "I shall never fly again." I would go hot over and start to breathe through an open mouth, and my heart would sink, sink so low that I never believed it would rise again.

I lay by the window, with my back to the engine. The receding countryside opened out before me, and I did not see the three tanks until we had passed them. Nothing out of the ordinary, just three tanks. The tankmen were looking at us from their open hatches. They had no helmets on, so we took them for our own men. Then the hatches were closed down and that was the last moment when we could still believe that no able-bodied men were capable of gunning a hospital train carrying no fewer than a thousand wounded.

The carriages clashed with a metallic grating sound, and I was flung forward violently.. A groan escaped me as my weight fell on my wounded leg.

A young fellow, with a clatter of crutches, dashed, yelling, down the carriage. Somebody knocked him down and he slumped in a corner beside me.

Through the window I saw the first of the wounded, who had jumped out of the trucks, running and falling as the tanks sprayed them with shrapnel.

The man lying next to me, also an airman by the name of Simakov, looked out of the window too. His face was white when, turning away from the window, we looked into each other's eyes.

"We must get out!"

"I suppose so," I said. "All you need for that is a pair of legs."

Nevertheless, we ma-naged somehow to crawl out of our berths and the rush of wounded men swept us out onto the platform at the end of the carriage.

I shall never forget the feeling that gripped me with such scorching intensity when, stifling the agonising pain, I descended the steps and crawled under the carriage. It was a feeling of contempt and even hatred for myself such as I had never experienced in my life before. Men lay all round me with arms thrown out in queer attitudes. They were corpses. Others ran and dropped with a cry, while I was sitting under the carriage, helpless, tormented with fury and pain.

I drew my pistol, but not to shoot myself, though the idea may have flitted through my mind together with the thousands of thoughts that swilled back and forth in it. Someone grasped my wrist.

It was one of the nurses. Her name was Katya. I pointed to Simakov, who was lying a little way off, his cheek pressed to the ground. She glanced at him and shook her head.

He was dead.

"Hell, I'm not going anywhere!" I said to the second girl, who had suddenly appeared from nowhere. She was remarkably unhurried amid the din and turmoil. "Leave me alone! I've got a pistol, they won't take me alive."

But the girls grabbed me and the three of us rolled down the embankment. I caught a momentary glimpse of Romashov ahead of me, crawling along on his belly, yellow, looking like a Chinese. He was crawling along the same ditch as we were; a muddy, clayey ditch running parallel with the track. The embankment ran into a marsh.

It was hard on the girls, and I asked them several times to leave me.

Katya, I believe, shouted to Romashov, asking him to stop and help us, but he just looked back and went on crawling forward on all fours like a monkey.

That's how it was, except that it happened a thousand times more slowly than I am telling it.

We managed with difficulty to get across the marsh and lay down in a small aspen wood. "We" were the girls, myself, Romashov and two soldiers who had joined us on the way. They were slightly wounded, one in the right arm, the other in the left.

I sent the two soldiers out to reconnoitre and they came back reporting that there were as many as forty vehicles in various directions and some field-kitchens had even appeared. Apparently the tanks which had gunned our train were part of a large force that had broken through.

"We can get away, of course. But since the captain can't walk, we'd better make use of the railcar."

They had found a railcar under the embankment by a switch-track.

I remember it was while discussing whether the railcar could be raised and placed on the track that Romashov lay down on his back, groaning and complaining of the bad pain. He may really have had an attack, because when the girls undid his tunic we saw that the left side of his body was all red.

Until then I had never heard of such contusions. Anyway, in such a state he obviously couldn't go to the switch-track with the soldiers. The girls went instead, just as unhurried and resolute, carrying on a leisurely conversation in their low, melodious Ukrainian voices.

Romashov and I were left alone in the little, wet aspen wood.

Was he feigning or was he really feeling bad? I wasn't quite sure.

Several times he twitched like an epileptic, then bleated and fell silent.

"Romashov!" I said.

He lay on his back, his chest arched high, with a perfectly white, dead-looking nose. I called him again, and he answered in such a feeble voice as though he had already departed this life and was now returning with great reluctance to this aspen wood in an area where a German tank force was operating.

"Pretty bad this time!" he muttered, attempting a smile.

He raised his eyelids and stood up with difficulty, mechanically removing the aspen leaves that had stuck to his face.

I find it hard to give an account of that day, possibly because, despite the predicament we were in, it was rather dull, especially compared with the events of next morning. We waited and waited without an end. I lay on a heap of last year's leaves beside a scattered wood-stack. Romashov sat Turkish-fashion, with his legs tucked under him, and who knows what he was thinking, with those bird-like eyes half-closed and his hands resting on his bony knees.

The wood was damp and a recent rain had left large drops on the branches and spiders' webs, which quivered under the weight. The glittering raindrops fell to the ground with a plop. At least, we did not suffer from thirst.

Once or twice the sun peeped out at us. At first it was on our right, then, having described a semi-circle, it appeared on our left. That meant that three hours had gone since the girls and the soldiers went off to fix up the railcar.

Before going away the one called Katya had put her knapsack under my head. Judging by the sound it gave off when I punched it up it must have contained rusks. Romashov started to whine that he was dying of hunger, but I silenced him sharply.

"They won't come back," he said nervily after a while. "They've deserted us."

He had recovered from his attack and started to saunter around at the risk of betraying our whereabouts, since the wood was a sparse one and all was open terrain as far as the track.

"It's your fault," he said, coming back and squatting down beside me.

"You sent them all away. One of the girls sinuld have stayed behind."

"As a hostage?"

"Yes, as a hostage. And now you can whistle for them. Catch them coming back for us! That railcar is worked by hand and it can only take four people in any case."

I must have been in a bad temper, for I drew my pistol and told Romashov I'd kill him if he didn't stop whining. He shut up. His ungly face twisted and it was all he could do to keep from blubbering.

The outlook was pretty blue. Dusk was beginning to creep through the wood, but there was no sign of the girls. Of course, I never for a moment believed that they could go away in the railcar without us, as Romashov suspected.

Lying on my back, I looked up at the sky, which was darkening and receding from me among the thin, trembling aspens. I was not thinking of Katya, but something light and tender went through me. I felt: "Katya." It was half-dream, half-sleep, and but for Katya I would have driven it away, because I dare not sleep, I felt that I dare not, though I couldn't yet say why. I dreamt of Spain or of the letter I had written from Spain-something very youthful and muddled, not about the fighting, but about the tiny orchards near Valencia, where the old women, when they learnt that we were Russians, did not know where to seat us, how to regale us. "Whatever happens," I had written to Katya, though I had felt her beside me, "remember that you are free, without any obligations."

I dreaded having to part with this dream, though my drenched leg felt cold and my greatcoat had slipped far down from my shoulders and was crumpled under me. I was holding Katya's hands, not letting go off my dream, but already something frightful had happened and I had to force myself awake.

I opened my eyes. A mist, lit up by the early rays of the sun, was drifting lazily among the trees. My face was wet and so were my hands.

Romashov was sitting a little way off in the same pose of drowsy unconcern.

Everything looked the same as before, but in fact everything was quite different.