The woman marched away. The men on the platform, and those who still could raise themselves on their elbows, watched the scene in silence. Everything was quiet. Colleagues looked at the man with contempt, turned around, and followed Vera without saying a word.
Three soldiers stood near the car, smoking. The one with the bandaged shoulder took a deep drag, extinguished his cigarette, and threw the stub with two fingers. Akim was walking quickly along the train when the men blocked his way. Their sullen, threatening looks terrified the orderly, and he stepped back like a shivering hyena. The soldier swung at Akim and struck him with all his strength. The mighty fist of the soldier fell on the bridge of the medic’s nose. The hit man rolled down the slope. The soldier spat in his way and climbed into the car.
The Break Through
An elderly master’s assistant came running from the station. He took the stationmaster aside and, panting, said:
‘Bad news, Leonid Yegorych. The Germans occupied the next station,’ a man was trying to catch his breath, holding his hand at his heart. He took off his cap, wiped his sweaty bald head, and freckled face. ‘We just heard about it. People say we’ve beaten the Krauts off, but these must have been sent there for us, seven or eight of them. They’re informed that train is coming.’
The commandant frowned, and his face grew black as thunder. He told Vera and the locomotive crew the grave news.
‘We’ll fight our way through,’ the old machinist stated firmly, ‘pump water into the boiler at full capacity, and you, Grishka, stoke the fire hotter than hell, make the devils sweat.’
‘All right, uncle,’ the muscular guy answered briskly.
The train had started off and began gaining speed. In the ninth car, Vera and Konstantin Gavrilovich were preparing for the operation. The red army man was put on the operating table. The doctors were getting to work.
The train rushed along the rails, overtaking the wind. More and more often, the soldiers cast their glances at the scenery outside of the windows. A boy of about eighteen leaned against the window, flattening his nose against the glass.
‘Mushroom! Mushroom! We’ve passed su-u-uch a big boletus there!’ spreading his arms, the guy demonstrated.
The soldiers laughed.
‘And he di-i-id get a look at that,’ a man with an amputated leg drawled his words, ‘we’re rushing so fast you won’t see a big-boobed woman.’
The laugh echoed through the car.
In the locomotive, the fireman Grishka threw the coal with a shovel into the stoke. Hellishly heated air of the furnace burnt his body. He worked hard without stopping. The striped t-shirt on his body was wet as if it had been held in water. The drops of sweat sprayed all around. Salt sweat trickles rolled down from his forehead, getting into his eyes, blinding and stinging them, but he had no time to wipe his face. The train was approaching closer and closer to the occupied station. On the platform, the machinist noticed a group of Nazis.
‘Come On, Grishka! Come On!’ he yelled to the stoker, ‘We’ll get through! You’ve crossed the wrong guy! You don’t know uncle Vasya yet! Petka!’
The machinist’s assistant dumped the bucket of coal and ran to the master.
‘Open the blow-off valve!’ uncle Vasya yelled to the assistant with all his might.
Fascists took off running towards the train. A hellishly hot mixture of water vapor gushed out of the tap and drenched the German soldiers. They clapped their hands to their faces, and one by another, fell on the ground. In agony, they rolled on the platform, kicking their legs and yowling.
‘We’ve broken through! We did it!’ Grishka threw a shovel and dashed to hug the machinist. The old man’s brittle bones cracked.
‘You’re, uncle Vasya, Gorynych! Scorched Fritz with the vapor! Genius!’ the excited stoker couldn’t calm himself down from joy and continued squeezing the machinist in his arms.
‘Oh, come on! Ease up!’ Uncle Vasya quieted him.
The train scorched ahead, and the boy with his nose pressed against the window observed the fascists fall on the ground. He watched them and couldn’t understand why they were falling because there was no shooting seen or heard.
Since then, uncle Vasya was called Gorynych, and the train was called the Russian Dragon. After the war, Vasily’s wife would ask one day, ‘Why do they call you like that?’ ‘Well, there were times,’ the old man would answer.
Death
Vera carefully changed a medicated gauze dressing on the burned back of the machinist.
‘Hold on, dear. I’ll give you a needle, you’ll feel better.’
‘Vera, please, sit with me,’ Palych’s words were barely audible.
The man was lying on his stomach. Vera crouched down in front of him, and their eyes met.
‘No need,’ Palych whispered, ‘Don’t waste your medicine on me. I don’t have long. Don’t get mad at me.’
‘Hey, Palych, what d’you talking about?’ Vera lay her hand on the machinist’s arm and began stroking it. Involuntarily, her eyes became wet, ‘Why should I be angry with you?’
‘Well, it was wretched – our first meeting. And now you’re saving my life. You said the dog was kind of special. Tell me about it,’ the dying man asked.
Vera tried to smile, but her face only contorted into the grimace of pain. She looked into Palych’s haggard eyes and called the story to her mind:
‘Under Rzhev it was. There I got into a real meat grinder. I lay in the forest. Bullets whistled over my head, sideways, behind my back. I thought, so, that’s it: now the stray bullet, the bloody fool, will get me. Abruptly everything went quiet. Still, I didn’t get up. Some time had passed, and I heard someone breathing so fast, right into my ear. I looked up and saw a dog standing next to me, and the earth was covered with blood all around. There were more corpses on the ground than there were trees. I got up and wandered, the dog followed me. Abruptly, the dog stopped and walked in the opposite direction. I followed it. It led me to a severely wounded soldier. I raced to help him, but he only said, ‘Save the dog. I beg you. He’s special. He’d saved about five hundred men. Delivering a field first-aid kit to the wounded soldiers, that’s all that the dogs do. But this one by himself had dragged the injured men on sled-drags to the dugout during this winter. Totally white, he stays unseen on the snow. Bullets whistle, but he keeps crawling forward. Nothing can get him. His name’s Rudy.’ I gave him my word that I’ll keep this dog. And by that evening, the soldier had died.
There was so little life in Palych’s body that Vera could not hear him breathing – therefore, she did not notice and missed his last breath. Man’s tortured look stared fixedly somewhere in the distance. Vera observed his frozen gaze but continued muttering something inaudible, trying to understand at what second of her story his life ended. She touched his face with her hand and closed the man’s eyes. As a doctor, Vera must state the time of death, but still, instead, she continued babbling and squeezing his thin, lifeless hand with her trembling fingers.
Vera
Night. Vera came back into her nook, enclosed by a multicoulored patched bedsheet. On the floor, there were boxes with dried sphagnum moss, which was used as cotton wool. There lay a stack of folded blankets and the suitcase, hidden under the narrow sleeping place and covered with rags.
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