“A very interesting question. I’ll get to it later. Right now the thing is this. There’s ferment in the camp. The fate of the moonshiners arouses sympathy. Many are also worried about the fate of families who flee the villages from the Whites. Some of the partisans refuse to leave the camp in view of the approaching train of carts with their wives, children, and old people.”
“Yes, we’ll have to wait for them.”
“And all that before the election of a joint commander over our units and others not subordinate to us. I think the only real candidate is Comrade Liberius. A group of young men is putting up another, Vdovichenko. He’s supported by a wing alien to us, which has sided with the circle of the moonshiners—children of kulaks and shopkeepers, deserters from Kolchak. They’re especially noisy.”
“What do you think will happen with the orderlies who made and sold moonshine?”
“I think they’ll be sentenced to be shot and then pardoned, the sentence being made conditional.”
“Anyhow, we’re just chattering away. Let’s get down to business. The reorganizing of the infirmary. That’s what I’d like to consider first of all.”
“Very good. But I must say that I find nothing surprising in your suggestion about psychiatric prophylaxis. I’m of the same opinion myself. Mental illnesses of a most typical kind have appeared and spread, bearing definite features of the time, and directly caused by the historical peculiarities of the epoch. We have a soldier here from the tsarist army, very politically conscious, with an inborn class instinct—Pamphil Palykh. He’s gone mad precisely from that, from fear for his family in case he’s killed and they fall into the hands of the Whites and have to answer for him. Very complex psychology. His family, it seems, is following in the refugee train and catching up with us. Insufficient knowledge of the language prevents me from questioning him properly. Find out from Angelyar or Kamennodvorsky. He ought to be examined.”
“I know Palykh very well. How could I not! At one time we kept running into each other at the army council. Dark-haired, cruel, with a low brow. I don’t understand what you find good in him. He’s always for extreme measures, strictness, executions. And I’ve always found him repulsive. All right. I’ll see to him.”
7
It was a clear, sunny day. The weather was still, dry, as it had been the whole previous week.
From within the camp the vague noise of a big human settlement came rolling, like the distant rumble of the sea. One could hear by turns the footsteps of men wandering in the forest, people’s voices, the blows of axes, the ding of anvils, the neighing of horses, the yelping of dogs, and the crowing of cocks. Crowds of tanned, white- toothed, smiling folk moved about the forest. Some knew the doctor and nodded to him; others, unacquainted with him, passed by without greeting.
Though the partisans would not agree to leave Fox Point until their families running after them in carts caught up with them, the latter were already within a few marches of the camp, and preparations were under way in the forest for quickly pulling up stakes and moving further to the east. Things were repaired, cleaned, boxes were nailed shut, wagons counted, their condition inspected.
In the middle of the forest there was a large, trodden-down glade, a sort of barrow or former settlement, locally known as the stamping ground. Military meetings were usually called there. Today, too, a general assembly was set up there for the announcement of something important.
In the forest there were still many trees that had not turned yellow. In the deepest part it was almost all still fresh and green. The sinking afternoon sun pierced it from behind with its rays. The leaves let the sunlight through, and their undersides burned with the green fire of transparent bottle glass.
On the open grass next to his archive, the liaison officer Kamennodvorsky was burning the looked-over and unnecessary paper trash of the regimental office inherited from Kappel, along with his own partisan accounts. The bonfire was placed so that it stood against the sun. It shone through the transparent flames, as through the green of the forest. The fire itself could not be seen, and only by the undulating, mica-like streams of hot air could it be concluded that something was burning.
Here and there the forest was gaily colored with ripe berries of all sorts: the prettily pendant berries of lady’s- smock, brick-brown, flabby elderberries, the shimmering white-crimson clusters of the guelder rose. Dragonflies, their glassy wings tinkling, floated slowly through the air, speckled and transparent, like the fire and the forest.
Since childhood Yuri Andreevich had loved the evening forest shot through with the fire of sunset. In such moments it was as if he, too, let these shafts of light pass through him. As if the gift of the living spirit streamed into his breast, crossed through his whole being, and came out under his shoulder blades as a pair of wings. That youthful archetype, which is formed in every young man for the whole of life and serves him forever after and seems to him to be his inner face, his personality, awakened in him with its full primary force, and transformed nature, the forest, the evening glow, and all visible things into an equally primary and all-embracing likeness of a girl. “Lara!”— closing his eyes, he half whispered or mentally addressed his whole life, the whole of God’s earth, the whole sunlit expanse spread out before him.
But the immediate, the actual, went on, in Russia there was the October revolution, he was a prisoner of the partisans. And, without noticing it himself, he went up to Kamennodvorsky’s bonfire.
“Destroying the records? They’re still not burnt?”
“Far from it! There’s stuff enough for a long time yet.”
With the toe of his boot the doctor pushed and broke up one of the piles. It was the telegraph correspondence of White headquarters. The vague notion that he might run across the name of Rantsevich among the papers flashed in him, but he was disappointed. It was an uninteresting collection of last year’s ciphered communiques in incomprehensible abbreviations, like the following: “Omsk genquasup first copy Omsk stareg map Omsky thirty miles Yenisei never received.” He scattered another pile with his foot. Out of it crawled the protocols of old partisan meetings. On top lay a paper: “Highly urgent. On furloughs. Re-election of members of the review committee. Current business. In view of insufficient charges of the Ignatodvortsy schoolmistress, the army council thinks …”
Just then Kamennodvorsky took something from his pocket, handed it to the doctor, and said:
“Here’s the schedule for your medical unit when we come to breaking camp. The carts with the partisan families are already close by. The dissension in the camp will be settled today. We can expect to leave any day now.”
The doctor cast a glance at the paper and gasped:
“That’s less than they gave me last time. And there are so many more wounded! Those who are ambulant or
