'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.
266
'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
