'Oh, all right!', as though I were suggesting some tiresome jaunt to
which he reluctantly agreed in deference to me.
The hardest thing was to fight this mist which made my eyes close and
my arms go limp and helpless. Only once in a thousand years, it seemed,
did I manage to fight it off and become aware that something,
something most important, had to be put right immediately. A thousand
years—and only a moment in which to regain control of my machine,
struggling only with my left hand. Another thousand—and far below me
I saw the Junkers, two Junkers, lumbering towards me like large, heavy
bulls. This was the end, of course. And they took their time about it—1
saw that at a glance.
Luri baled out, and they started shooting at him. Killed, I suppose.
Then they came back and drew alongside me.
What did that German look like? Was he handsome or ugly, old or
young? Who cares. This was no soldier flying alongside me, but a
murderer.
I don't know how to explain it, but it seemed to me that I saw both
him and myself as from a distance. Myself, clutching at the controls with
feeble hands, the blood streaming down my face, in a plane that was
falling to pieces. And he, goggles raised, studying me with cold curiosity
and a sense of his complete power over me. I may have said something
to Luri, forgetting that he had baled out and they had probably killed
him. The German passed under me, and the wing with the yellow cross
on it appeared on my left. I pulled the stick over, trod on the pedal and
hurled myself at that wing.
I don't know where the blow struck-probably on the cockpit, because
the German didn't even open his parachute. I had killed him outright.
Was I happy!
I found myself in the grip of an overwhelming, glorious feeling. To
live! To live! I was wounded, I knew that they had got me, but no, my
one thought was—to live! I saw the earth—it was quite close now— the
plough field and the white dusty road.
Some part of me was burning-my jacket and my boots, but I felt no
heat. Incredibly, I somehow managed to flatten out just above ground-
level. I undid the straps-it was the last thing I managed to do that day,
that week, that month, those four months... But let us not forestall
events.
CHAPTER TWO
ALL WE COULD
I was very thirsty, and all the way to the village I kept asking for a drink
and about Luri. When we got to the village I was given a bucket of water,
and I couldn't understand what made the women cry when I put my
head into the bucket and began to drink, seeing and hearing nothing
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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
