In a glass case there were several exhibits. The first that caught my eye was a rusty Turkish dagger. Above it I read the same faded notice, written a quarter of a century ago: 'Presented by a pupil of the Town School, Yosif Starodomsky.'
I remember one cloudless Sunday when Yuzik and I were walking round the Old Fortress. Searching for the nest of a linnet that had flown up out of some hawthorn bushes under the Donna Tower, Yuzik poked about for a long time and at last came out of the bushes, beaming with pleasure and carrying in his hand this Turkish weapon —relic of a cruel and bloody age.
With what pride he afterwards watched Lazarev, our chief adviser on the history of the town, peer down at the rusty sheath of the curved dagger, almost touching it with his pince-nez. 'This weapon dates from the second half of the seventeenth century,' Lazarev said at last. 'It is just possible that this dagger was dropped by one of the Turkish janissaries fleeing from Podolia as the Russian troops advanced.'
Beside Starodomsky's dagger there now lay a long thick note-book in strong binding. The white label bore an inscription in Indian ink: 'Log-book of the Slava.'
'You know what a log-book is, don't you?' Lazarev asked, noticing that I was staring at this exibit in some surprise. 'It's a document that every sea captain must bring ashore if his ship is sunk. It's the living history of the ship and its voyages. It records everything that happens on board.'
'But how did it come to be here?' Petka asked.
'Starodomsky picked it up just before his ship was sunk and brought it ashore,' Lazarev replied.
'And after that he brought it home with him.'
'May I see what's written there?' I asked.
'Why not?' Lazarev replied, 'You are close friends of the owner.'
The director of the museum opened the case and handed me the thick note-book. It had been started in the winter of1939 and the first entries were made in an unfamiliar hand.
From the hurried entries made during the first days of the war we could picture the situation in the southern theatre of operations during the second half of1941.
'15.02. Enemy aircraft sighted in the North-East.
Maintaining course.
15.08. 80° to starboard German aircraft attacked one of our neighbours. Force composed of 10-15 torpedo aircraft and bombers.
15.17. Chief Engineer Voskoboinikov wounded.
15.20. Attack weakening. Bombing from high altitude. Guns still firing, I have ordered Kostenko to
take over from Voskoboinikov in the engine-room. Voskoboinikov has been put in the saloon and is being attended...'
I turned over several pages of the log and read an entry made in Yuzik's handwriting, but in very big, sprawling letters:
'It is getting light. I am on a spit of land. Surely it isn't the Belosaraiskaya Kosa? How I got here I don't know. Near me a life-boat is lying on the sand. There's a terrible row in my head all the time. Must be concussion. My hands are scalded. Did the boilers burst? I'm only writing down what I remember clearly.
'Yesterday, October 7, 1941, the market was still open at ten in the morning and I sent Grisha Gusenko there with all the cash we had. The other ships were taking wounded men and machinery on board. We were anchored in the bay waiting for our turn to go in for loading. At approximately 13.00 a column of enemy tanks and submachine- gunners suddenly broke through into the harbour itself.
'Seeing that the other ships had nearly finished loading, I started the engines at half speed to avoid running aground and engaged the enemy advance guard with all the fire power at my disposal. 'I wanted to draw enemy's fire and give our chaps a chance to get away. I saw several ships cast off and steam out into the bay. The Slava was hit eight times by fire from the enemy's tanks. We burnt two enemy tanks on the quay. I saw Nazi submachine-gunners falling under my machine-gun fire. Just as we were getting away, a direct hit in the engine- room put the ship out of action. I continued to engage the enemy while the ship sank.
'We didn't stop firing until our guns were under water. Then there was an explosion and I don't remember anything more...'
'The concussion was very serious,' Lazarev said. 'Starodomsky could scarcely hear anything even when he got here. And his face was scalded. His uncle, a forester, told me about that. It was his uncle who gave me this logbook. At the very end there is another remarkable entry. . .'
At the back of the log-book, separated from the official entries by a few clean pages, we read a passage scrawled in the unsteady hand of an old man.
'I curse myself for not being able to get through to the East because of this concussion. When I found myself in Yasinovataya I got a lift on a coal train and decided to hide with my family until I got better.
'The front is moving farther and farther away towards Moscow. Those dirty Hitlerite hirelings are trying to put the rumour round that we are beaten. It's not true! Russia can't be beaten. And neither can the Ukraine while she is with Russia! The gravestones of our ancestors will rise and fight if there are no Soviet people left alive.
'Whatever side you come from, you Hitlerites, you can't win! You'll drown in your own blood sooner or later...'
'Those lines were written in the winter of 1941-42,' said Lazarev, and looked at the photograph from which our old friend smiled down on us.
In the glass case lay the mangled remains of the German machine-gun. There were dull spots on its black steel. Perhaps they were from the blood of Yuzik Starodomsky and his comrades who had been found dead beside the gun.
'When Starodomsky realized that he couldn't break through to the station,' said Lazarev, 'he and his friends mounted that machine-gun in the bushes by the fork and kept the enemy's motorized infantry back from the fortress. Think of it! Three of them alone, with hardly any cover, held up an avalanche of enemy troops! The people living round there say that the Germans had to use two batteries and their regimental mortars to crush them...'
We walked along the honeysuckle-covered fortress wall to the place where Yuzik had climbed into the fortress for the last time.
A yellowish biplane appeared over Dolzhetsky Forest and' flew over our heads, deafening us with the roar of its engine. 'That must be the professor flying here from Lvov in answer to Elena Lukyanovna's call,' I thought.
The sight of the aeroplane in the sky brought Maremukha's thoughts to something he had told me before we met Lazarev.
'There'll come a time,' Petka said dreamily, 'when you, Valerian Dmitrievich, will make a place of honour in your museum for yet another of our old school-friends.'
'Who?'' Lazarev asked with interest.
'Alexander Bobir.'
'I don't remember anyone of that name.'
'How could you remember Bobir, if you could hardly remember us!' said Maremukha. 'Bobir used to study at your school, then went on to the factory-training school. After that he went to the Azov Sea with us. While he was there, he got interested in flying. An airman came to their flying club and helped them put a damaged training plane in order, then up they went! Before we knew what was happening, Sasha was waving to us from the sky...'
'But that's hardly enough to gain him a place of honour in the museum,' Lazarev said cautiously. 'Hundreds of thousands of young people go in for flying nowadays.'
'We don't mean that he ought to be remembered just for that first risky flight,' Petka replied. 'Sasha distinguished himself apart from that. In 1936 he volunteered to fight in Republican Spain. He flew in the 'snub- noses,' shot down two Savoias and three Junkers, I think, and was killed in an air battle over Teruel. There was an obituary about him in the Mundo Obrero. Some time afterwards I met a Spanish airman. A chap called Fernandez. Sasha had taught him to fly. Fernandez even showed me his photograph. There was our Sasha with his arm round that dark Spanish chap. Both of them in flying kit on the airfield. They were laughing. And there were mountains in the distance. What a pity I never asked Fernandez for that photograph! I could have given it to you.'
'Don't frown, Petka,' I said. 'People meet each other in all kinds of places nowadays. Your Fernandez may be commanding a guerilla detachment somewhere right under Franco's nose. Perhaps he's still got that photograph with him. And perhaps there'll come a day when Fernandez and his guerillas will be able to show us Sasha's grave
