Twenty years have passed since that sunny morning when the Felix Dzerzhinsky steamed into the port of Mariupol.
The sailors darted about round the windlass preparing to drop anchor, the passengers came out of their cabins, and we, gathering on the upper deck, sang loudly: O'erthrown the night. The sun is rising
What a fine song that is! It has engraved itself on my memory for ever.
Even now, twenty years later, as I sit in this little room reading some old newspapers and listening to the rain lashing on the windows, that song is still ringing in my ears.
I can see wet chestnut-trees through the window. Their big, broad leaves are drooping dejectedly. The rain has knocked all the blossom out of them and exposed their little prickly pods.
I arrived here last night from Leningrad. When I went to bed, I had made up my mind to go into town and visit the Old Fortress first thing in the morning.
My hostess, Elena Lukyanovna, is a nerve specialist. She lost all her family in Leningrad, during the first winter of the blockade, and after demobilization came to work in my home district. We got talking on the train. The mere fact that we had both lived for ten years in Leningrad at once drew me towards this thoughtful, prematurely grey-haired woman in a green army tunic with the marks of shoulder-straps that had only recently been discarded. My father had suffered the same fate as her parents. Not long before the war he had come to Leningrad from Cherkassy to work at the Printing-House. He died in my arms of starvation, in December 1941.
"I'm afraid you won't find anywhere to live," said Elena Lukyanovna towards the end of the journey. "The town's just a heap of ruins... If you like, you can stay with me." Since I had no longer any relatives in the town, I gladly accepted her invitation.
And overnight it started raining. The rain is still pelting down now, although it is four o'clock in the afternoon and high time I went out to see the town I have not seen for over twenty years.
When Elena Lukyanovna went out to the hospital, I asked her if she could let me have something to read.
"All my books are about medicine," she said. "My library hasn't arrived yet.. . But there are some books and magazines up in the attic. They've been there ever since the occupation. Have a look through them. Perhaps they need burning."
And now for two hours I have been turning the gaudy pages of Die Woche, Signal, and other Nazi magazines. Hitler's frenzied face glares at me from every page—meeting Mussolini, receiving the Spanish ambassador, admiring Warsaw destroyed by German bombs. Petrified ranks of Hitlerite troops line the deserted squares, banners with the sign of the swastika wave over the stricken city. . . But what is this?. .
I pull a heavy bundle of newspapers out of the bottom of the basket. Its title, the Podolian, sends my thoughts racing back to the days of my childhood. The Russian newspaper that was published in our provincial town in the time of the tsar used to be called the Podolian. But why is it in Ukrainian?
I look for the date: 1942. As I turn the pages of this Nazi Podolian, I seem to see the invaders' chronicle of the war turned inside out. I see Hitlerites driving through the deserted streets of Kiev, I read the screaming head-lines about the inevitable fall of Leningrad and Moscow, and other Nazi announcements. One reads them now with the laughing contempt that one feels after a bad dream. And suddenly a familiar name leaps to my eye—"Grigorenko." I read hastily: "On the 12th of this month, by order of the District Commissar Baron von Reindel, a Ukrainian Committee was set up in the town. It is composed of the following persons: Evgen Vikul, Tser (interpreter), Yuri Ksezhonok (chairman of the committee), Kost Grigorenko. The committee will supervise collection of taxes and help the German authorities to levy contingents. The committee is an organ of the District Commissar and acts under the Commissar's orders."
Grigorenko! The Petlura boy scout, the doctor's son, serving Petlura and the Germans! So this was where he had turned up again!
"I see you've found an interesting pastime?" Elena Lukyanovna says entering the room.
"I've just traced some old acquaintances, Elena Lukyanovna, and there are one or two whom I wish I had handed over to justice when I was young."
"Yes, I met some old acquaintances today, too," Elena Lukyanovna replied, missing the point of my remark. "One of them was a boy from Siberia, Dima. He was wounded in the fighting' when our town was liberated. He's a very difficult case. For over a year now he hasn't been able to say a single word. We've got to decide whether to operate on him or not," she went on, seeming to think aloud as she took off the hospital gown she has been wearing under her great-coat. "Today I called up Lvov and asked them to send a consultant. There's an old friend of mine working there, a professor of neuropathology from Leningrad. . ."
" 'I called up a professor in Lvov!' " I repeated. "It sounds so simple nowadays, Elena Lukyanovna. But if only you knew how much that phrase means to a person like me, who was born here! It sums up the immense changes that have taken place in the Ukraine. Twenty years ago Lvov was very far away from us, like Paris, London, or Madrid. Now it will take your professor only two hours to fly here."
"Yes, not more than that," Elena Lukyanovna agreed.
It is the second morning of my stay. I open my eyes. Good! Blue sky is shining through the window and the dark green leaves of the chestnut-trees, still dripping with last night's rain, are looking up to greet the sun.
I dress quickly and dash off to the town.
Weeds and flowers are sprouting everywhere from the stone walls at the side of the road. Rattling the old tin cans that have been tied round their necks instead of bells, the goats are having a fine time in this profusion of green. That is familiar enough, I remember that from the days when I was a boy.
But I can't understand why the road leading down to the New Bridge is overgrown with weeds. Surely people still drive over these cobble-stones! This used to be the main road through town to the Dniester.
A sorry picture confronts me as I reach the cliffs. All that remains of the beautiful New Bridge are the tall stone piles at the foot of which the Smotrich gleams in the sunlight. They are spanned by a narrow wooden strip whose planks creak and sag underfoot.
No one crosses the bridge now. Nearly all the buildings of the old town perched on its high cliff above the river are in ruins.
With great difficulty I guess from the shattered walls what part of the town I am in. This must be Post Street. That's where we used to buy scraps of sausage on the days we received our factory-school grants...
And over there, that's where the Venice Restaurant used to be, where Monus Guzarchik held that rowdy party after his grandmother died...
Where is he now, our rowdy Monus, "non-Party" man, builder of electric locomotives? The last letter "I had from him was in 1940, when I was in Leningrad. Guzarchik wrote me that he was chief foreman at the Kharkov Locomotive Works, and sent me a booklet about his method of converting plants to assembly line production. . .
Many of the cottages round the huge Stephen Bathori Tower look as if they had been struck by a hurricane.
The tower was" built here on the orders of a Hungarian king, the usurper of the Polish throne who was seeking to conquer the Ukrainian lands of Podolia. And in 1943, (I heard this from Elena Lukyanovna), the Hitlerites shot more than seven thousand of the finest people in Hungary, who had refused to help the German invaders. The Gestapo officials had been afraid to slaughter them in Budapest, so they sent them to their death in this little Ukrainian town. Not far away I noticed the ruins of the building where Shipulinsky's cafe with its broad windows used, to stand. I remembered how I had invited Galya Kushnir to that tempting cafe. There we sat, Galya and I, chatting and sipping our coffee like grown-ups, when Father on his way home from the print-shop glanced in and saw us. The trouble I had then!...
And where is Galya Kushnir now? She and I were separated by the war. I received my last letter from her in the spring of 1941, from Odessa. She wrote that her thesis for a degree in history had been successful, and that she was continuing her studies on the history of the Black Sea Straits. Had she managed to get out of Odessa in time? And would I ever meet her again, my first love, a working girl who had become a historian?
As of old, a few women were selling flowers by the low wall at the entrance to the fortress bridge—red, white, and yellow peonies, bunches of wild daisies, bright-red poppies...
A stocky, broad-shouldered lieutenant-colonel standing with his back to me was buying flowers. He took the women's bunches in armfuls and carried them to the seat of a light army truck. From the number of petrol tins in the back of the truck I guessed that the lieutenant-colonel and his driver had come from afar and were just as much chance visitors to this town as I.
What does he need all these flowers for, I wondered, then looking up and noticing the Old Fortress towering above me, I at once forgot the soldiers.
The fortress still stood there on its steep cliffs guarding the entrance to the town from east, south, and west, just as it had for centuries. Its thick stone walls built in ancient times, strong and indestructible as the grey weather beaten cliffs on which it stood, had often saved the inhabitants of the town from enemies.
As before the square and round watch-towers with their narrow embrasures and pointed moss-grown roofs rose above the zigzagging walls of the first ring of fortifications. Green tree-tops could be seen peeping over the fortress walls. Big bushes of honeysuckle and pink heather grew on the edge of the cliffs, their roots firmly embedded in the stonework that Turkish cannon-balls had never shaken.
By the wide-open gates hung a red notice-board that seemed to have been put up only recently: Historical Reservation and Museum.
Deeply moved and excited I walked under the arch of the fortress gates.
"Our fine, dear, old lady!" I thought, surveying the fortress. "Neither time, nor the Turks, and not even Hitler's bombs could destroy you. As you have stood for centuries, an invincible stronghold on the south-west border of Podolia, you still stand, bringing joy to our people and striking terror into the hearts of the enemies that have been driven for ever from our ancient Ukrainian soil!"
As soon as I entered the grassy yard, however, I realized that even our old lady had suffered pretty badly in the' recent battles.
The watch-towers, whose loop-holes looked out on all sides, were riddled with shell-holes. The roof of the Ruzhanka Tower had disappeared altogether. The Commandant Tower was a heap of rubble. But the fortress, evidently a museum now, had been restored. Its new window-frames and fresh plaster work told me that the building had been raised from the ruins only recently.
. The noise of a car made me turn round. The same army truck with its array of petrol cans came into view. Apparently the lieutenant-colonel who was so fond of flowers had decided to look over the museum.
I saw the truck pull up near the guard-house, and turning away followed a narrow path that led to the green ' bastion behind the Black Tower.
But in vain I sought for the grey marble obelisk that had been erected' to Timofei Sergushin, the Bolshevik who had been shot by the Petlura bandits a quarter of a century ago.
Enemies and traitors in their hatred of Soviet power had tried to destroy the memory of that fine man, the first Communist to enter our little cottage in Zarechye.
But in the thick grass under the Black Tower I found a piece of marble bearing the last word of the inscription that had been written over the grave.
The base of the obelisk—a simple square of stone—was still there, so was the grave-mound. The hump of earth under which lay Sergushin's remains was thickly carpeted with periwinkle.
I stopped by the mound and my memory carried me back to those far-off days when Soviet power had only just been established in Podolia.
I remembered the evening after Sergushin had been shot, when Weasel and I and Petka Maremukha had come to this spot. In accordance with Cossack custom, Weasel had spread a red flag over the grave-mound and we had sprinkled fragrant lilac branches over it. Over the murdered man's grave we had sworn that evening to stand up for one another, like true friends, and to take vengeance on the enemies of the Soviet Ukraine for the murder of one of its finest sons.
I stood there lost in thought, my head bowed over the unkempt grave, and the words of Sergushin's favourite song came clearly to my mind:
This song that I sing would soar up like a lark
But a heart full of sorrow has given it birth.
Like a bird in a cage it rings out in the dark,
Borne down by the weight ofthe earth...
And soon, very soon, never sung to the end,
In the twilight ofautumn this song will fall still,
And replacing myself in the mine, a new friend
Will finish my song, yes he will!
Lost in thought, I did not notice that someone else had come up to the grave until crimson peonies scattered into the thick grass.
The stocky, broad-shouldered lieutenant-colonel was sprinkling flowers over Sergushin's grave, paying no attention to me at all. I glanced at him closely, and suddenly, under the stubbly beard that fringed his sunburnt face, I recognized the familiar features of Petka Maremukha... "Comrade..." I began excitedly.
Turning at the sound of my voice, the lieutenant-colonel at first looked at me very sternly, almost with annoyance, then his face changed suddenly and he shouted: "Vasil!... Good old friend!..."
Half an hour later we were sitting on the dewy grass under Karmeluk's Tower, deep in conversation.
Maremukha's driver, a red-cheeked tank corporal, spread out a cape-tent on the grass and piled it with good things. "But look here, Vasil," Petka interrupted me, "why didn't you answer my letters when you were in Leningrad? I bombarded you with them. I even wrote to the staff department of that aircraft factory you were working at. Where's your engineer Vasily Mandzhura, I said. And they just wrote back once that you'd been sent off on a job, and nothing more. Where did you get to?"
"They sent me to the Bolshevik Works..." At. that moment we heard an old man's voice behind us: "Comrades! Aren't you ashamed of yourselves! This is a historical reservation, and you scatter your rubbish about here!"'
We swung round at the sound of the voice, as if we had been schoolboys caught here by the care-taker in the old days.
On a mound close by stood a grey-haired old man in an old-fashioned canvas blouse with a black bow-tie and gold pince-nez. He had appeared silently, like a vision from one of our childhood dreams, and the mere fact of his appearance had made us a good quarter of a century younger.
Were it not for the old man's familiar pince-nez, we might not have recognized him as Valerian Dmitrievich Lazarev. But he. it was—our favourite history master and the first head-master of the Taras Shevchenko People's School. Leaping to his feet, Petka brought up his hand in salute. "Our deepest apologies, Valerian Dmitrievich! We were so excited we forgot where we were. This rubbish shall be removed at once."
"I beg your pardon! But how do you come to know my name?" Lazarev responded, obviously a little confused as he stepped down from the mound.
How could he have recognized in this grizzled officer with medal ribbons on his chest that short little chap who had once run barefooted after a lot of other little boys with a lantern, all of them longing to go down the underground passage!
Lazarev had seen thousands of pupils like him in his many years as a schoolmaster—could he remember them all!
"How do you know my name?" Lazarev repeated, planting himself in front of Maremukha.
Then I intervened: "
"When shall we be going down the underground passage with you again, Comrade Lazarev?"
"Just a moment!.., What's all this about?" The old man took off his pince-nez and wiped them with his handkerchief. "You aren't from the regional education committee, are you, comrade?"
"I'm from the Taras Shevchenko People's School, Valerian Dmitrievich. And so is the lieutenant-colonel. We both left in 1923. You haven't forgotten us, have you?"
And with these words I warmly embraced our old head-in aster.
We had talked of many things. . . "You want to know about everything that happened here?" Lazarev asked, rising from the cape-tent. "Let's make it a demonstration lesson then. I think the last one was about the rebel, Ustim Karmeluk, wasn't it?"
"Quite correct, Valerian Dmitrievich!" Petka rapped out in military style. "Remember how we found those fetters of one of Karmeluk's or Gonta's friends..."
"Those fetters are still in the museum today," Lazarev said. "Now I'm going to tell you about some other heroes of the struggle against the oppressors of the Ukrainian people.... But just tell me this to start with, Colonel," Lazarev glanced slyly over his pince-nez at Maremukha," "do you know what the general military situation was in this area in the early months of last year?"
"More or less," Maremukha replied evasively. "In that case you'll be able to help me out if I go wrong."
And he began his story.
"When Soviet troops captured Volochisk in March 1944, the Nazis lost the direct railway to the West. Then all their forces that were left in the Podolia bag made a dash in this direction. Thus the Soviet forces had to cut off the Hitlerites way of retreat through our town into Bukovina and the Western Ukraine. At the beginning of March the Soviet artillery ripped open the German defences at Shepetovka. The tank forces of Generals Lelushenko, Rybalko, and Katukov poured through the gap in an offensive that was heading South, towards the Dniester... What are you smiling at, Maremukha? Have I said something wrong?"
"I'm smiling because I had something to do with the offensive you mentioned," Petka said quietly. "I served with Lelushenko."
"Oh, you did, did you, you rascal!" Lazarev exclaimed. "I suppose it was you who put up such a fight here? Come on, out with it!"
"No, not here—over there!" Maremukha pointed to the North-West. "We took Skalat."
"Well, listen to me then," Lazarev went on reassured. "After you had captured Skalat, a tank brigade of the Urals volunteer corps was sent here..."
"Yes, they were Guards, weren't they?" 'Maremukha added. "The tanks of that corps were the first to break through into Lvov, and it was them who saved Prague from destruction."
"You're probably right," Lazarev agreed. "When our forces struck in the direction of Ternopol, this brigade was given the task of paralysing the enemy's rear by cutting through Gusyatin, Zherdye, Orinin, and capturing our town... And then what happened, my lads..." At this point Lazarev's voice trembled and he spoke more quietly, pausing now and then to take deep breaths. "On the twenty-fifth of March 1944, the inhabitants of Podzamche, for the first time after two and a half years of Nazi occupation, saw Soviet tanks! They wept for joy, they rubbed their eyes and thought it was a dream. . . I wept too, my boys, like a child, when one of those tanks stopped in the village where I was hiding from the Hitlerites.
A tank man jumped down and asked for a drink. He was covered with dust and grease.. . I kissed him as if he had been my own son..."
Lazarev started coughing and turned his thin face away, as if to look at the fortress gates, but we realized that he wished to hide the tears that had welled into his tired, old eyes.
". . . At the head of the brigade," Lazarev went on after a moment's pause, "in that lightning swoop from Dolzhok to Podzamche was a heavy tank called 'Suvorov.' The banner of the brigade flew from its turret. Its driver was Junior Lieutenant Kopeikin, later to become a Hero of the Soviet Union. And the commander of the forward detachment was Senior Lieutenant Ivan Stetsuk, an orphan brought up in a children's home in the town of Dnepropetrovsk. His detachment was given the task of taking the Old Fortress district at all costs and blocking the road out of town.
"After capturing Podzamche, Stetsuk and his men crossed the fortress bridge and stormed the town.
"The attack was so sudden that the Germans came running out of the houses in their underwear. Later they recovered their wits and started counter-attacking the town on all sides.
"Stetsuk was given the task of defending the Dolzhok and Podzamche approaches to the town. By that time he had only four tanks and sixty infantrymen left. The whole day he and his men held the road-fork near the tinning factory, while the Nazi Panthers and Tigers assailed him from all directions. Although the Soviet soldiers showed exceptional bravery, they were pressed back to the bridge. Just at that time, in the last days of March, General Katukov had forced the Dniester in the region of Zaleshchik and reached the northern approaches of Chernovitsy. When, the Hitlerites got word of this, they started attacking our town even more fiercely, to force a way of escape for themselves into Bukovina.
"The roads were jammed with troops and the Germans were making their way across country straight to the Dniester and the Zbruch. But the spring thaw held them up and forced them to abandon their heavy equipment and even their wounded. Over fifteen Hitlerite divisions tried to dislodge our brigade. Of course, the tank men could have retreated and let the enemy through, for what is one brigade against fifteen divisions!... Are you smiling again, Colonel? Have I made a mistake?"
"Not one, Valerian Dmitrievich! You're quite right about everything!" Maremukha assured our old teacher gently.
". . . The tank men decided to hold their defences here because they knew that if the Hitlerites recaptured our town the Soviet Army's offensive operations would be held up for several weeks,.." Lazarev continued. "And now kindly follow me."
On coming out of the fortress gates, Lazarev halted.
The cobbled road led steeply down to the bridge.
Lazarev tapped his stick on the big round cobbles and said triumphantly:
"This is where Stetsuk stationed his last tank commanded by Junior Lieutenant Kopeikin. You see where the stones have been torn up. That's where the tank swung round and faced the bridge. 'Do what you like, Kopeikin, but don't let a single Hitlerite reach the gates!' Stetsuk said to his second-in-command... "
Lazarev pointed his stick towards the bridge.
The entrance to the underground passage poked up out of the ground near the wooden bridge like a ship's hatchway. According to legend this passage led into Bessarabia, to another fortress like ours—the Khotin Fortress.
"In the underground passage," said Valerian Dmitrievich, "Stetsuk stored a supply of fire-bottles. His plan was simple. While the enemy tanks tried to force the bridge, our men stationed in the passage would throw fire-bottles at them. . . Captain Shulga mined the bridge under enemy fire and was killed in doing so. He was born in Krasnodon. . ."
"Perhaps he knew Oleg Koshevoi and his friends of the Young Guard underground organization?" I said, remembering that one of the Young Guards had been called Shulga.
. "Yes, he may have been a relative of Matvei Shulga. Anything is possible," Lazarev agreed. "I must check that.
In any case, Stetsuk told me that Captain Shulga was a very brave officer..."
... I have seen many museums in my lifetime and listened to a good many museum guides, but none of them ever moved me so much as Valerian Dmitrievich. We had known every stone of the Old Fortress since childhood, every moss-covered wall; we had tapped and explored every tower in search of hidden treasure. Now the new history of this Podolian stronghold, as described by Lazarev, came to life in every detail. It was the history of how Soviet people had defended our native land. As we listened to Lazarev, we seemed to see the sturdy broad-shouldered commander of the fortress, Ivan Stetsuk.
Towards evening Stetsuk comes into the fortress. His face under the leather helmet of a tank soldier is grimed with dust and oil. He keeps his wounded hand behind his back. Blood is oozing from it. He shows no sign of the intense pain he is suffering, lit would be wrong for the garrison if it knew their commander was wounded.
Before him in the snow-damp yard surrounded by watch-towers his men have formed up—Siberians, men from Moscow, from Odessa. They are the remnants of the advanced detachment that staggered the Hitlerite rear on the line of the Zbruch and forced its way through the dark forests round the Dniester to the rocky banks of the Smotrich.
Senior Lieutenant Stetsuk regards his men and officers in silence. They scan his face hopefully. Tired and gaunt, they are wondering what reassurance their commander will bring them, cut off as they are from their own forces.
Stetsuk says simply:
"We are going to hold this fortress to the last shot. Understand? If necessary, we shall die for our great cause, but we shall not let the enemy through!"
.. . Before Stetsuk stood the last man of the garrison to receive his orders—Dima Bezverkhy.
Many of the men did not even know the surname of this bright blue-eyed lad, and simply called him Dima.
Dima had been with the brigade since its formation and had fought his way to the foot-hills of the Carpathians. Before the war he had planned to enter a mining institute when he left school. "The only thing I want to be is a mining engineer," he often said" to Stetsuk. "I want to look for coal under the earth."
That March evening Dima shifted from one foot to the other in the cold and looked up at his commander with clear boyish eyes—he was only just fourteen.
"What shall I do with you, Dima?" said Stetsuk. "Perhaps you'll stay with me?" But seeing the disappointment in the boy's eyes, he said: "You know what? See that tower over there, on the ledge? Take a machine-gun and get inside it."
It was the round tower behind the museum. Dima picked up the light machine-gun and dashed across the yard.
A few minutes later Stetsuk noticed Dima's cheerful face in the top window of the tower. The boy had taken off his helmet and was waving it to attract the attention of his commander. Stetsuk pointed out the direction Dima was to cover—enemy tanks might approach the bridge from Orinin. Dima realized the meaning of his commander's gestures and took his machine-gun over to the loophole on the opposite side. . . Thus the young Siberian lad became defender of the Archbishop Tower.
... Artillery rumbled dully near the station. Up the line the village of Shatava was in flames. As darkness fell the glow spread across the horizon. But the old town still stood firm on its impregnable cliffs surrounded by the river Smotrich.
"... And in the morning it started!" Lazarev continued his story. "Not only the Tigers and Panthers advancing from the road-fork kept the fortress under fire. It was bombarded by batteries in concealed positions that were out of range of Stetsuk's guns. The gun crews of the batteries mounted on Otter Bank could see the fortress perfectly. Several times the German tanks attempted to break through to the bridge, but every time the garrison barred their advance... And it was very difficult to fight mobile forces from towers. Quite often Stetsuk stationed his men on the walls and earthworks round the fortress and fought the enemy from there. The next day the Hitlerites tried to get into the town from the Karvasar side, but again they were thrown back..."
"By a counter-attack?" Petka asked. "That's right," said Lazarev. "Part of the garrison left the fortress and mowed them down before they could reach that little bridge."
Valerian Dmitrievich led us to the ruins of a tower near the guard-house.
"You see the remains of this tower?" he said. "Still haven't forgotten its name?... This is the Commandant Tower. On the fourth day of the siege a direct hit on the tower killed soldier Krasnuk... That day the artillery bombardment was ceaseless. The position of the garrison had become very serious. They had no more bread, no more sugar and their water supply had run out. And suddenly at that critical moment, Dima came running up: 'Comrade Senior Lieutenant! There's a live goat up there in the attic!
Can I bring it down?' Stetsuk, of course, consented willingly and gave Dima his sheath-knife. A few minutes later, Dima climbed back down the drain-pipe, scared to death, and shouted: 'The place is full of animals but none of them move! They must be bewitched, or something!.. .' And you know, it was I who had hidden my zoological collection of stuffed animals in the tower when, the town was evacuated. . . You'd have thought the men would have been too tired to laugh at a thing like that, but the joke about Dima and the goat flashed round every post and raised their spirits. And then they found water..." "In the Black Tower?" I asked.
"Yes, in the Black Tower," Lazarev said. "You see, it wouldn't have been difficult for us to find water here, we're natives of the place. But for them it was harder. The fit ones among them had given the last of their bread and sugar to the wounded. But that was not enough. The wounded men lay in one of the rooms of the museum, suffering terribly from thirst. You can imagine their joy when water was discovered!
"The Hitlerites had surrounded the fortress and would not allow any of the local population to approach it.
"But on the fifth day of the defence, one local man did manage to reach the fortress by climbing the almost sheer cliffs above Karvasar. He told Stetsuk that he could show him the exact positions of the enemy batteries bombarding the fortress. Stetsuk trusted the man as a Soviet patriot. He sent with him Corporal Myshlyaev and another soldier from the motorized infantry whose full name we still have not been able to discover. All we know is that people called him Sashko. He was nineteen and in spite of his youth he had already been decorated with the Order of Lenin.
"It was getting dark when they left the fortress. The local man borrowed Sashko's submachine-gun and disposed of an enemy sentry, thus providing himself with a weapon.
"The three of them made their way through the back yards to Orlovsky's Mill, where a German battery was stationed. They wiped out its crew and threw the breechblocks from the guns into the river. That happened half an hour after they had left the fortress. After that they put eight guns which had been shelling the fortress out of action. First they would deal with the crew, then smash the breech-blocks, and on they went!
"In one of the skirmishes the guide was wounded in the arm. Then the three made their way to a hut in the forest where this local man was living, bandaged his arm, picked up some food, and moved on... On the second of April all three of them were found dead near a shattered German machine-gun.'.."
'"Did you find out the name of the guide, Valerian Dmitrievich?" Maremukha asked. "He must have come from round here."
"He certainly did, he was a pupil of mine... His name was Yosif Vikentievich Starodomsky!" Lazarev said proudly. "I don't suppose you remember him. He was away from the town for a long time."
"Not remember Starodomsky? Yuzik, Weasel!" I exclaimed.
"But Starodomsky was 'a sailor," Maremukha put in, also surprised. "How did he come to be here, so far from the sea, and in war-time too?"
"He was a sailor, you're right there," Lazarev replied, "perhaps I am in a better position than anyone else in this town to confirm that. Come into the museum for a minute. . ."
A clear smiling face looked down at us from a photograph draped with mourning. Yuzik wore a smart naval cap. His face had remained almost as thin and dark and stubborn as on that July morning twenty years ago when Yuzik and I stood on the captain's bridge as our ship steamed into Mariupol.
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 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 good fortune to see Academician Pavlov. From Pavlov personally, after a lecture, he had heard the famous words that the great physiologist afterwards included in his behest-letter to the youth of the country: "Consistency, consistency, and still more consistency!"
... As Maremukha and I walked round Zarechye, I recalled yet another incident in my life—the argument I had had long ago with engineer Andrykhevich.
From my far-off youth, on that sunny post-war day, crowded with so many chance encounters, the angry, bitter face of the old engineer floated into my mind. Even then he had been connected with spies and counter-revolutionaries of the industrial party who were waiting for the collapse of the Revolution and hoping to trick Soviet rule. And again I seemed to hear his cunning question: "Where will you get your educated people from? Going to teach yourselves, are you? 'One, two—see how she goes!' I doubt it... I doubt it very much!..."
Petka and I walked to the Old Estate where he had spent his childhood. But there, too, we found only ruins. The little house where Petka's father and mother had lived before the war was a heap of reddish rubble. Goose-foot and thistles watched over the ruins. Evidently the house had been destroyed by artillery fire in the first year of the war, when Hitler's armies, after capturing Ternopol, had advanced through our town towards Proskurov.
And the tall gates outside Yuzik's cottage had gone too. How many times had we stood by those gates yelling: "Yuzik! Yuzik! Weasel!"
At last he would appear, our stern quick-footed ataman, tapping a long stick as he walked, and we would set out for a raid on the orchards of Podzamche or to bathe near Paradise Gate. Never again would he respond to our call, our dear Yuzik...
Where their cottage had once stood a grey enemy blockhouse, quite recently built, rose from a deep clay pit. Twisted wire protruded from the concrete. The narrow horizontal embrasure of the blockhouse looked out to the East.
Evidently it had been one of the strong points built by the enemy on the Volyno-Podelian plateau.
Neither this blockhouse, nor hundreds of others like it had been able to save the Nazis!
Maremukha climbed on to the roof of the blockhouse, glanced down the ventilator that stuck out of the top like a railway engine's whistle, spat down it, and tapping his heel on the concrete, said: "Our guns have blasted out bigger things than this. Ever seen tree stumps being stubbed in the woods? That's just about what they did with these blockhouses."
Depressed by the sight of the ruins that surrounded us, we wandered in silence back to the Old Fortress through the suburb of Tatariski. It was guarded by a tall watch-tower rising on the bank of the Smotrich.
In the purple light of the sunset the Old Fortress looked particularly impressive silhouetted against the evening sky. Half way across the bridge we stopped. Resting his elbows on the oak rail, Maremukha gazed down at Zarechye. From this high point the grey blockhouse looked quite small, like the turret of a tank buried in the earth.
"I say, Vasya," Petka said suddenly. "Do you remember our neighbour, the daughter of the chief engineer at the works? You were rather interested in her at one time... She went away to Leningrad, didn't she? You didn't see anything of her there, I suppose?"
"Of course I did, Petka!" I replied, " I don't mind admitting to you frankly that after I had got to know Angelika I did everything I could to help her become a new person. In the days when she broke with her family and went away to Leningrad against their will, I helped her. When H went into the army, we wrote to each other. In her letters she suggested I should come to Leningrad when my service was over. And that's what I did. I took a job at a plant there and' settled down. We met as friends. I remember it as if it were yesterday; we went to the Philharmonic Hall together and heard Chaikovsky's Sixth Symphony.
Angelika had nearly finished at the conservatoire at that time. She married just before the war."
"Is her father still alive?"
"You know he was transferred from our place to the Agricultural Machinery Works in Rostov. She told me he had been arrested in Rostov for having contact with the industrial party, but he was released soon afterwards. He atoned for his guilt towards the country by good work. When war broke out, he was evacuated with his plant to the Urals. All through the war he worked as an engineer in the mortar shop. He's a very old man now."
"Perhaps he had Polevoi as his director?" Petka said. "You know Polevoi went to the Urals to manage a very big works after graduating from the Industrial Academy."
"I saw his name in the papers once or twice. I meant to write to him, but couldn't find out his exact address."
"Did Lika survive the starvation in Leningrad, do you know?" Maremukha asked.
"Of course she did!" I exclaimed. "Do you know where I met her during that winter of the siege? It makes me shudder to remember it. In the Wiedeman Hospital, on Vasilevsky Island! I was being treated there for starvation. One day 'I heard someone in the corridor say quietly: 'Vasya!' I looked round—and there was Angelika! She was terribly thin. There were black circles under her eyes. Her hands were so thin you could nearly see through them... 'Lika, dear, haven't you left?' I shouted. And she said, quietly: 'How can I leave my own city? My husband is still here, fighting on the Pulkovo Heights.' And she told me how she had refused to be evacuated with the Philharmonia... I remember how she looked at me and whispered: 'Heavens, Vasil, how you've changed! You must be having a bad time too, dear?' I was ashamed to say yes, because II was a man. So I passed it off with a joke: 'You'll be telling me next I haven't got the same look in my eye as Lieutenant Glan?' I said. 'What's Lieutenant Glan got to do with it!' she exclaimed. 'Don't you remember,' I said, 'one evening you compared me with a chap called Glan? And because I didn't know much about literature I asked you whether this Lieutenant Glan was a Whiteguard, by any chance. I wasn't far wrong, you know. At any rate, the man who wrote about him has become an out-and-out fascist...' We had a long talk. It was there, Petka, that 'I realized Angelika had changed right through and become a new person. And do you remember at one time we used to think her a useless creature?"
"Yes, time and environment change people," Maremukha said and glanced down over the bridge rail.
Below us, harnessed to the turbines of a power station, roared the fortress waterfall. It was calmer now that it gave most of its force to the machines housed in the white power house under the fortress cliffs. Soon—so we had learnt from one of the local people—some of the station's power would be used to supply a new trade school for metal workers. The new school was being built on the spot where our factory-training school had stood until it was blown up by the Germans.
I looked down and remembered my childhood years in this town. How many times after the spring floods had we searched the muddy banks of the river hoping to find the crown of some Turkish vizir, or at least a few gold ducats!
We had found no gold, but we had found great happiness, the happiness of having a country to live in that is the envy of honest working people throughout the world.
"Yes, time and environment change people. Those are true words of yours, Petka!" I said after a thoughtful pause. "And I'm sincerely glad that not only people like us who were brought up by the Komsomol and the Party, but even those like Angelika, who in the twenties were still wavering over what path to take, have found the experience of the past twenty-five years so beneficial."
"Is Angelika's husband alive?" Petka asked.
"Killed at Gatchina, when the siege of Leningrad was broken. He never came back after volunteering for the front in the first months of the war. He was a major when he was killed... By the way, you can hear her playing the piano on the radio sometimes from Leningrad. If you like it, write to her. Tell her, Tm Petka, that neighbour of yours whom Vasil introduced to you on the shore of the Azov Sea.' She'll be so glad to hear from you. She often speaks of that meeting. You see, it's our youth, Petka, those fine stirring days of our youth!..."
"How grateful we should feel to our Party and the Komsomol for that youth!" said Maremukha, gazing at our ancient town spread out before us, so small but still so pretty even now amid its green orchards and boulevards.
The west wind was bringing up a great grey-black cloud from the Dniester forests. Slowly it mounted to a peak, like the smoke of a distant fire, and its summit was purple and threatening in the light of the setting sun.
"How did that get here!" I said in surprise. "It was so sunny this morning... You know what that cloud reminds me of? The smoke from the fire of the Badayev warehouses in Leningrad. That was the biggest and, I think, about the worst raid we had. The smoke was so thick and heavy we thought at first it was a bank of cloud. Perhaps we'd better make a move, Petka? It looks like a storm."
"No hurry," Petka said, smiling and glancing westwards. "Rain's nothing to be afraid of! We've seen worse storms than this. They can't frighten us now. We're grown up..."
March 1935, Leningrad October 1951, Lvov
Printed in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics