Mikulitsyn mentioned the numbers of his forces at the meeting in the underground headquarters in Krestovozdvizhensk, he exaggerated them about ten times. Now they had reached that size.
Yuri Andreevich had assistants, several fresh-baked medical orderlies with appropriate experience. His right- hand men in the medical unit were the captured Hungarian Communist and military doctor Kerenyi Lajos, known in camp as Comrade Layoff, and the Croat medic Angelyar, also an Austrian prisoner of war. With the former Yuri Andreevich spoke German; the latter, born in the Slavic Balkans, just managed to understand Russian.
4
According to the international convention of the Red Cross, army doctors and those serving in medical units did not have the right to armed participation in the military actions of the belligerents. But once, against his will, the doctor had to violate this rule. The skirmish that had started caught him in the field and forced him to share the fate of the combatants and shoot back.
The partisan line, in which the doctor, surprised by enemy fire, lay next to the detachment telephonist, occupied the edge of a forest. At the partisans’ back was the taiga, ahead was an open clearing, a bare, unprotected space, across which the Whites were moving to the attack.
They were approaching and were already close. The doctor saw them very well, the face of each one. They were boys and young men from the nonmilitary strata of the capitals and older men mobilized from the reserves. But the tone was set by the former, the young ones, the first-year students and high school boys recently enlisted as volunteers.
The doctor did not know any of them, but the faces of half of them seemed to him habitual, seen, familiar. They reminded him of his former schoolmates. Could it be that these were their younger brothers? Others he seemed to have met in street or theater crowds in years gone by. Their expressive, attractive physiognomies seemed close, kindred.
Doing their duty, as they understood it, inspired them with enthusiastic daring, unnecessary, defiant. They walked in a strung-out, sparse line, drawn up to full height, outdoing the regular guards in their bearing, and, braving the danger, did not resort to making rushes and then lying flat in the field, though there were unevennesses in the clearing, bumps and hummocks behind which they could have hidden. The bullets of the partisans mowed them down almost to a man.
In the middle of the wide, bare field over which the Whites were advancing stood a dead, burned tree. It had been charred by lightning or fire or split and scorched by previous battles. Each advancing volunteer rifleman cast glances at it, struggling with the temptation to get behind its trunk so as to take aim more safely and accurately, then ignored the temptation and went on.
The partisans had a limited number of cartridges. They had to use them sparingly. There was an order, upheld by mutual agreement, to shoot at close range, from the same number of rifles as there were visible targets.
The doctor lay unarmed in the grass, watching the course of the battle. All his sympathy was on the side of the heroically dying children. In his heart he wished them success. They were offspring of families probably close to him in spirit, to his upbringing, his moral cast, his notions.
The thought stirred in him to run out to them in the clearing and surrender and in that way find deliverance. But it was a risky step, fraught with danger.
While he was running to the middle of the clearing, holding his hands up, he could be brought down from both sides, shot in the chest and the back, by his own as a punishment for committing treason, by the others, not understanding his intentions. He had been in similar situations more than once, had thought over all the possibilities, and had long recognized these plans for salvation as unfeasible. And, reconciling himself to the ambiguity of his feelings, the doctor went on lying on his stomach, facing the clearing, and, unarmed, watched from the grass the course of the battle.
However, to look on and remain inactive amidst the fight to the death that was seething around him was inconceivable and beyond human strength. And it was not a matter of loyalty to the camp to which his captivity chained him, nor of his own self-defense, but of following the order of what was happening, of submitting to the laws of what was being played out before and around him. It was against the rules to remain indifferent to it. He had to do what the others were doing. A battle was going on. He and his comrades were being shot at. It was necessary to shoot back.
And when the telephonist next to him in the line jerked convulsively and then stretched out and lay still, Yuri Andreevich crawled over to him, removed his pouch, took his rifle, and, returning to his place, began firing it shot after shot.
But pity would not allow him to aim at the young men, whom he admired and with whom he sympathized. And to fire into the air like a fool was much too stupid and idle an occupation, contradictory to his intentions. And so, choosing moments when none of the attackers stood between him and his target, he began shooting at the charred tree. Here he had his own method.
Taking aim and gradually adjusting the precision of his sights, imperceptibly increasing the pressure on the trigger, but not all the way, as if not counting on ever firing, until the hammer fell and the shot followed of itself, as if beyond expectation, the doctor began with an accustomed accuracy to knock off the dry lower branches and scatter them around the dead tree.
But, oh horror! Careful as the doctor was not to hit anybody, now one, now another of the attackers got between him and the tree at the decisive moment and crossed his line of sight just as the gun went off. Two he hit and wounded, but the third unfortunate, who fell not far from the tree, paid for it with his life.
Finally the White commanders, convinced of the uselessness of the attempt, gave the order to retreat.
The partisans were few. Their main forces were partly on the march, partly shifted elsewhere, starting action against a much larger enemy force. The detachment did not pursue the retreating men, so as not to betray their small numbers.
The medic Angelyar brought two orderlies to the edge of the forest with a stretcher. The doctor ordered them to take care of the wounded, and went himself to the telephonist, who lay without moving. He vaguely hoped that the man might still be breathing and that he might be brought back to life. But the telephonist was dead. To make finally sure of it, Yuri Andreevich unbuttoned the shirt on his chest and began listening to his heart. It was not beating.
The dead man had an amulet on a string around his neck. Yuri Andreevich removed it. In it there turned out to be a piece of paper, decayed and worn at the edges, sewn into a scrap of cloth. The doctor unfolded its half- detached and disintegrating parts.
The paper contained excerpts from the ninety-first psalm, with those changes and errors that people introduce into prayers, gradually moving further from the original as they recopy it. The fragments of the Church Slavonic text
