without fear of Franco's gendarmes...'
'If you do see his grave one day,' Lazarev said, 'be sure to bring me a handful of soil from it. I shall exhibit in the museum and write: 'Soil of Spain for whose freedom Alexander Bobir of Podolia shed his blood.'
'Valerian Dmitrievich,' Maremukha said after a pause, 'get in touch with the Lvov historians. They'll tell you how the defenders of the Old Fortress liberated Lvov from the Nazis. The Urals tank men were the first to break through into the city. A tank man from the Urals, Alexander Marchenko, hoisted the red flag over the city hall of Lvov. All those facts would be very interesting for your museum. Make a special exhibition: 'Liberators of Podolia!' '
'Yes, that's quite a good idea,' Lazarev agreed. 'But as a matter of fact there were very few defenders of the Old Fortress left. Most of the garrison that Senior Lieutenant Stetsuk commanded were either killed or wounded. Those who were still fighting up to the last moment, when the First and Second Ukrainian fronts joined each other, were so tired that they had to go to the rear for a rest. Stetsuk, for example, as soon as he heard that the main forces of the Soviet Army had reached Podolia land the Nazis were shouting kaput, said to his comrades: 'Well, that'll do for now. We've done our job.' Then he
just dropped down on the wet earth under Karmeluk Tower and slept for fifteen hours without stirring. People tried to wake him, but it was no good. The brigade commander arrived, glanced at the sleeping man and said: 'Don't bother him, let him sleep. Even an eagle must rest sometimes.' '
'And what happened to Dima, Valerian Dmitrievich?' I asked.
'Dima was very unlucky,' Lazarev replied. 'On the last day of the defence a shell from a Tiger tank smashed the Archbishop Tower. Dima fell into the yard with the rest of the rubble, badly shell-shocked. He still can't say a word...'
'So it's for him the professor has been called in from Lvov?' I exclaimed. 'Why didn't I think of it before!'
'Has he been called already? Oh, I am glad to hear that!' Lazarev said gladly.
'It may have been him who flew over just now,' I said.
'Let's go and see Dima, what about it, Vasil?' Maremukha suggested suddenly.
'Yes, let's,' I agreed. 'If you're going to stay in town overnight, we've got plenty of time. Besides I know Elena Lukyanovna. She's in charge of his case, so I think she'll let us see him.'
Lieutenant-Colonel Maremukha's truck whisked us down to the market, where we bought Dima some good things to eat—home-made pork sausage with a delicious smell of garlic and wood-smoke about it, eggs, a loaf of caraway bread, several fresh prickly cucumbers, butter wrapped in a damp pumpkin leaf, a bar of chocolate, and a bunch of fragrant dewy jasmine.
When Elena Lukyanovna saw us with all this she looked worried.
'What am I to do with you, I really don't know!' she exclaimed, spreading her arms. 'The professor started examining Dima half an hour ago. Now he's gone out to telephone. He wants to get in touch with Leningrad. I can let you see the patient, but only for a minute.'
We had expected to find a tough young dare-devil when we went to see Dima. That was how we had pictured the youngster from Siberia from the way Lazarev had described him. But before us, propped on his pillows, lay a very quiet, round-faced Russian lad smiling at us shyly.
The young hero looked at us with surprise and hope. Perhaps he thought we were professors from Leningrad, who had arrived so quickly on some specially fast plane.
To clear up the lad's bewilderment, Maremukha started telling him in an impressive bass voice who we were and why we had come to see him.
Dima's round face glowed with pleasure when he heard that Petka was lieutenant-colonel from the same tank corps in which Dima had fought his way into Podolia. He struggled into a sitting position and offered first Maremukha then me an unnaturally pale but still boyish hand with blue veins showing through the skin. To make us understand that he could not speak, Dima waved his hand in front of his mouth.
'Everything'll be all right, Dima, don't get downhearted!' I comforted him. 'Scientists nowadays can restore the sight of people who have been blind for years, they'll find a way of curing you.'
'Well, will you mistake a stuffed model in a museum for a live goat next time?' Maremukha asked smiling.
The lad wrinkled his smooth forehead in an effort to remember. A stubborn line appeared over the bridge of his nose... And suddenly Dima remembered the funny incident and laughed.
Steps sounded in the corridor. A tall man in a white gown entered the ward with the manner of one who feels himself at home in any hospital atmosphere, lit was the professor from Lvov. We moved away from the bed.
The professor glanced sideways at us and started examining an X-ray photograph. Elena Lukyanovna, who had followed him into the ward, stood respectfully at the head of the bed, holding cotton wool and test tubes.
'Now we shall test his responses,' said the professor in a voice that sounded very familiar to me.
'Where have I seen that man before?' I thought, wracking my brains.
Paying no attention to Maremukha and me, the professor made a long and careful examination of the patient.
Elena Lukyanovna closed the windows looking out on to Hospital Square. The glass muffled the sounds coming from the Motor Factory that had just got going again after the war. I suddenly remembered how I had once lain in this hospital after being wounded by bandits. '
How trivial my old wound now seemed in comparison with what this lad had experienced. What courage it must have needed to crouch over a captured machine-gun at that loop-hole in the Archbishop Tower, watching the road and firing until a heavy shell struck the tower and threw him down among dust and rubble at the foot of the ruined tower!
'Well, old chap,' the professor said when he had finished his examination. 'We're going to operate on you. There are some pieces of bone and some small shell splinters pressing on your brain. That is what's depriving you of speech. I've called up the best surgeon in Leningrad. He'll be coming to Lvov on the first plane. So I'm going to take you with me to our clinic there. When we've removed those splinters, you'll be singing songs. Agree?'
We could not see Dima, he was concealed behind the tall figure of the professor. But apparently Dima nodded to him, for the professor gave a sigh of relief.
'Splendid! I knew you were a good lad.'
When we called in at the office to see Elena Lukyanovna we found the professor pacing the polished parquet floor. He had removed his gown and I noticed two rows of medal ribbons on his grey suit.
The professor swept his hand down sharply, interrupting the conversation he had started before we came in. The gesture told me where I had first met him.
'I should like to introduce you, Professor,' said Elena Lukyanovna. 'This comrade is an engineer from Leningrad. . .' she motioned towards me.
'But we know each other already,' I said smiling. 'The professor's brief case brought me a lot of luck on one occasion. . .'..'.
'Do we know each other?...' the professor asked in a puzzled voice. 'What brief case are you talking about?'
'Twenty years ago, in this very town, the pupils of the factory-training school elected a delegate to go to Kharkov. The delegate had to go there and save the school from being closed down by the Ukrainian Nationalist Zenon Pecheritsa. But the trouble was that the delegate had ho brief case to keep all his papers in. So a request was made to the head of the instructors' department Panchenko, and he gave the delegate to the Central Committee his brief case... You're Panchenko, aren't you?'
'Yes, I am,' said the professor. 'And you... Just a minute. . . You must be Vasily Mandzhura!'
And although a friend of mine had once advised me that if I wanted to keep healthy I should always avoid all contact with doctors, I threw myselfjoyfully on the broad chest of the professor...
It was some time since the yellow aeroplane had roared away over the town and turned in the direction of Lvov, taking with it the professor and his new patient, but I still could not get over my unexpected encounter. Who would have thought that our favourite speaker and perhaps the most active of all the Komsomol members, Dmitry Panchenko, would twenty years later become a professor of medicine!
In the short time we had spent together in the office, the professor had managed to tell me quite a lot about himself. At the end of the twenties he had left his post as Regional Komsomol Secretary in a town on the Volga and with a Komsomol authority in his pocket gone to Leningrad to study at the Army Medical Academy. It had been his
