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.
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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
by a quite different life, which took command of everything, of me and
Katya, of all our thoughts, feelings and impressions. This different life
was the war, and I would probably not have written about it merely
because it was different, had it not been for the fact that what happened
to me in the war was interwoven in such a surprising way with the affair
of Captain Tatarinov and the St. Maria.
I see a large, dark room in a peasant cottage, a table dimly lit by a
candle-end, and windows curtained off with ground-sheets. The door
opens, and a man comes in, his tunic undone. He rummages about in
the stove and eats hungrily. He is Grisha Trofimov. Another man gets up
from the bunk and joins him at the table. He is Luri. I hear their quiet
talk, which makes my heart beat slow and strong.
'Been over to Ladoga?'
Grisha nods and goes on eating.
'Well?'
'Nothing new.'
'Been at Zvanka?'
He goes on eating. Says nothing. He's been over to Zvanka too.
The two Leningraders look into each other's faces. It is the first night
of the Leningrad blockade.
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I see the message-bag dropping over the side of my plane-that's the
way we saved men who mistakenly believed that they were surrounded.
I see the first grave, which we decorated with dud shells laid out to
look like iron flowers. We flew over them as low as we could when
returning from missions.
The lake, too, appears before me-that same lake, in whose sleepy
morning frame I had seen the last vision of the old life. Now it is sombre
and sullen. The water, filled to the brim of its shores, glints dully, and
grey-blue smoke creeps across the misted mirror of its surface. The
forest is burning, set alight by the Germans.
In the evenings we come out of the dugout built into the hillside.
Patrol boats lay hidden among the bushes. We race across the dark
water amid spray and foam. Planes come out of the forest like huge sea
birds. This is Lake L., our third and fourth base.
I see lots of things. But everything I see passes before me, as it were,
against the backcloth of the map which unfolds every day beneath the
wings of my plane-a map with the breaking lines in the front and the
widening black wave of the German offensive.
Every day new pilots arrived, most of them from the Civil Air Fleet.
With some of them I had worked together in the North, with others in
the Far East. They were experienced. First and Second Class pilots, and
three of them even 'millionaires', that is, men who had notched up over
a million kilometres, and it was amusing to watch the comical blunders
these civilians made in the process of becoming fighting flyers. We
talked about this very often, both in the canteen and at home, in the
dugout, where the three of us lived together -I, Luri and mechanic.
Perhaps the reason we talked about it so often was because we had
tacitly agreed not to talk about 'other things'. The newspapers did that
for us.
In September my crew and I were ordered to report for duty to the Air
Force Command of the Southern Front.
It was just an ordinary fight as air fights go, and I do not intend to
describe it, the more so as it was very soon over. We succeeded right
away in bringing down one of the Messers—he crashed in the very act of
making a stall-turn. The two others hoicked and got in each other's way
as they tried to settle on our tail. It was smart of them but not smart
enough; we were not the kind to let someone get in behind us. They
tried it once, but it didn't work. Then they came in again and very nearly
got caught in our gun sights. To cut a long story short, we kept them at
bay until they gave up and I headed straight for the front-line, which
was not far off.
This was easier said than done, what with a quarter of my port wing
shot away and the tanks being holed. I was wounded in the leg and in
the face, and the blood was running into my eyes.
I suddenly felt strangely weak. It was at that moment, I believe, that I
recalled the fearful dreams of childhood in which I was being killed or
drowned-and the joyous sense of relief when you wake up to find
yourself alive.
'But now'—the thought was a very calm one—'now I won't wake up.'
I must have lost consciousness, but not for long, because I came to at
the sound of my own voice. It was as though I had started to speak
before I had regained consciousness. I ordered the crew to bale out. The
radio operator-gunner complied immediately, but Luri grumbled:
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