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'.
280
'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.
CHAPTER FIVE
IN THE ASPEN WOOD
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.
