The Bolshevik soldiers burst out laughing. My pleading appealed to their sense of humour. They joked and made merry.
“Don’t cry, my child,” the General bent over me, patting me. “They are savages. Their hearts are of stone. They would not even let us receive the last sacrament. Let us die like heroes, nevertheless.”
His words gave me strength. I got up, stood erect and said:
“Yes, I will die as a hero.”
Then, for about ten minutes I gazed at the faces of our executioners, scrutinizing their features. It was hard to distinguish in them signs of humanity. They were Russian soldiers turned inhuman. The lines in their faces were those of brutal apes.
“My God! What hast Thou done to Thy children?” I prayed.
All the events of my life passed before me in a long procession. My childhood, those years of hard toil in the little grocer’s shop of Nastasia Leontievna; the affair with Lazov; my marriage to Bochkarev; Yasha; the three years of war; they all passed through my imagination, some incidents strangely gripping my interest for a moment or two, others flitting by hastily. Somehow that episode of my early life, when I quarrelled with the little boy placed in my charge and the undeserved whipping I got from his mother stood out very prominently in my mind. It was my first act of self-assertion. I had rebelled and escaped. … Then there was that jump into the Ob. It almost seemed that it was not I who sought relief in its cold, deep waters from the ugly Afanasy. But I wished that I had been drowned then, rather than die such a death. …
XIX
Saved by a Miracle
The investigation committee finally appeared in the distance. Petrukhin was leading it. There were all the twelve members present, the two absentees apparently having joined the other ten.
“You see, how kind we are,” some of the soldiers said. “We are having the committee present at your execution.”
Not one of us answered.
“We have all been to see Sablin, the Commander-in-Chief,” Petrukhin announced as soon as he approached near enough to Pugatchov. “He said that Bochkareva would have to be shot, but not necessarily now and with this group.”
A ray of hope was kindled in my soul.
“Nothing of the sort!” Pugatchov bawled angrily. “What’s the matter here? Why this delay? The list is already made up.”
The soldiers supported Pugatchov.
“Shoot her! Finish her now! What’s the use of bothering with her again!” cried the men.
But just as Pugatchov guessed that Petrukhin had obtained the delay in the hope of saving me, so the latter had realized that spoken words would not be sufficient to secure the fulfilment of his order. He had provided himself with a note from Sablin.
“Here is an order from the Commander-in-Chief,” Petrukhin declared, pulling out a paper. “It says that Bochkareva shall be taken to my compartment in the railway carriage and kept there under guard.”
Pugatchov jumped up as if he had been stung. But the committee now rallied to the support of Petrukhin, maintaining that orders were orders, and that I should be executed later.
Not the least interested spectator of the heated discussion was myself. The officers followed the argument breathlessly, too. The soldiers grumbled. The forces of life and death struggled within me. Now the first would triumph, now the second, depending on the turn of the quarrel.
“That won’t do!” shouted Pugatchov, thrusting aside the order of the Commander-in-Chief. “It’s too late for orders like that. We will shoot her! Enough of talking!”
At this moment I became aware that one of the two newly-arrived members of the committee was staring at me intently. He took a couple of steps toward me, bent his head sideways and fixed his eyes on me. There was something about that look that electrified me. As the man, who was a common soldier, craned his neck forward and stepped out of the group, a strange silence gripped everybody, so affected were all by the painful expression on his face.
“A‑r‑e y‑o‑u Y‑a‑s‑h‑k‑a?” he sang out slowly.
“How do you know me?” I asked quickly, almost overpowered by a presentiment of salvation.
“Don’t you remember how you saved my life in that March offensive, when I was wounded in the leg and you dragged me out of the mud under fire? My name is Peter. I should have perished there, in the water, and many others like me, if not for you. Why do they want to shoot you now?”
“Because I am an officer,” I replied.
“What conversations are you holding here?” Pugatchov thundered. “She will have to be shot, and no arguments!”
“And I won’t allow her to be shot!” my God-appointed saviour answered back firmly, and walked up to me, seized my arm, pulled me out of my place, occupying it himself.
“You will shoot me first!” he exclaimed. “She saved my life. She saved many of our lives. The entire Fifth Corps knows Yashka. She is a common peasant like myself, and understands no politics. If you shoot her, you will have to shoot me first!”
This speech put new life into me. It also touched the hearts of many in the crowd.
Petrukhin went up, took a place beside Peter and myself, and declared:
“You will shoot me, too, before you execute an innocent, suffering woman!”
The soldiers were now divided. Some shouted, “Let’s shoot her and make an end of this squabble! What’s the use of arguments?”
Others were more human. “She is not of the bourgeoisie, but a common peasant like ourselves,” they argued. “And she does not understand politics. Perhaps she really was going to seek a cure. She was not captured, but came to us of her own accord, we must not forget that.”
For some time the place was transformed into a debating-ground. It was a strange scene for a debate. There were the hundreds of bodies scattered round us. There were the twenty of us in our undergarments awaiting death. Of the twenty only I had a chance
