The wound in the spine paralysed me to such an extent that I could not move even a finger. I lay in the Moscow Hospital hovering between life and death for some weeks, resembling a log more than a human body. Only my mind was active and my heart full of pain.
Every day I was massaged, carried on a stretcher and bathed. Then the physician would attend me, probing my wound with iodine, and treating it with electricity, after which I was bathed again and my wound dressed. This daily procedure was inconceivable torture, in spite of the morphine injected into me. There was little peace in the ward in which I was placed. All the beds were occupied by serious cases, and the groans and moans must have reached to Heaven.
Four months I lay paralysed, never expecting to recover. My diet consisted of milk and kasha, with which I was fed by an attendant. On many a dreary day death would have been a welcome visitor. It seemed so futile, so hopeless to remain alive in such a state, but the doctor, who was a Jew, and very kindhearted, would not give up hope. He persisted in his daily treatment, praising my stoicism and encouraging me with kind words. His faith was finally rewarded.
At the end of four months I began to feel life stirring once again in my helpless body. My finger could move! What a joy that was! In a few days I could turn my head a little and stretch my arm. It was a wonderful sensation, this gradual resurrection of my lifeless members. To be able to close my fingers after four months of paralysis! It thrilled me. To be able to bend a knee that had been torpid so long! It seemed like a miracle. And I offered thanks to God with all the fervour that I could command.
One day a woman by the name of Daria Maximovna Vasilieva came to see me. I searched my mind in vain for an acquaintance of that name as I asked that she should be brought to my bed. But as I was perhaps the only patient in the ward that had no visitors and received no parcels it may be imagined how pleased I was. She introduced herself as the mother of Stepan, of my Company. Of course, I knew Stepan well. He was a student before the war and volunteered as a junior officer.
“Stepan has just written me,” Madame Vasilieva said, “begging me to come and see you. ‘Go to the Ekaterina Hospital and visit our Yashka,’ he writes. ‘She is lonely there, and I want you to do for her as much as you would do for me, for she saved my life once, and has been like a mother to the boys here. She is a respectable, patriotic young woman and my interest in her is simply that of a comrade, for she is a soldier, and a brave and gallant soldier.’ He praised you so much, my dear, that my heart went out to you. May God bless you.”
She brought me some delicacies, and we became friends immediately. I told her all about her son and our life in the trenches. She wept and wondered how I had borne it. Her affection for me grew so strong that she used to visit me several times a week, although she lived on the outskirts of the city. Her husband was assistant superintendent at a factory and they occupied a small but comfortable dwelling in keeping with their means. Daria Maximovna herself was a middle-aged woman simply dressed and of distinguished appearance. She had a married daughter, Tonetchka, and another son, a youth of about seventeen, who was a student at the high-school.
My friend helped me to regain my spirits, and I made good progress towards recovery. As I gradually regained full control of my muscles and nerves, I used to tease the doctor sometimes:
“Well, doctor,” I would say to him, “I am going to war again.”
“No, no,” he would answer, “there will be no more war for you, my dear.”
I wondered whether I really would be able to return to the front. There was that fragment of shell still in my body. The doctor would not extract it. He advised me to wait until I had completely recovered and have it removed at some future date by means of an abdominal operation, as the fragment is lodged in the omentum. I have not yet had the opportunity to undergo such an operation, and I still have that piece of shell in my body. The slightest indigestion causes me to suffer from it even now.
I had to learn to walk, as if I had never mastered that art before. I was not successful at the first attempt. Having asked the doctor for a pair of crutches I tried to stand up, but fell back weak and helpless on the bed. The attendants, however, placed me in a wheelchair and took me out into the garden. This movement gave me great pleasure. Once, in the absence of my attendant, I tried to stand up alone and walk a step. It was very painful, but I maintained my balance, and tears of joy came streaming down
