The Story of a Life

50

Beyond the Muddy San

The molten ball of the sun was sinking into a sparse pine forest on the far side of the river San. Scattered among the stumps and bushes stood single pine trees – tall and thin, bent under the weight of their crowns. The sun’s crimson flame caressed the trunks, spread out over the sand around their roots, and reflected off the fast, rippling waters of the San. Bluish in the evening fog, a plain stretched out beyond the forest’s edge. The air had the bitter-almond smell of marsh flowers.

This was Galicia. Our train had been held up at the frontier post next to a wooden bridge over the San. Troop trains were coming from the opposite direction. I was leaving the country for the first time. On the far side of the San lay Austria. I felt as if everything on the other side of the frontier must be different from life at home – and not only the people, villages and cities, but even the sky and the trees. That’s how I had imagined the world outside Russia as a child, and this stupid notion had somehow remained with me all these years. But for now everything looked just as it did at home. The same dry chicory grew along the paths. My feet still sank into the sand just like in Russia, and even the water in the San was muddy despite my expecting it to flow in a clear, gurgling torrent.

We crossed the bridge over the San during the night and arrived in Galicia. We stopped at the small town of Melets in the morning. I had no time to explore it. There was fighting up ahead near Dembitsa, and we were sent on immediately. All I managed to see from my window were pleasant green hills, tiled roofs, walls covered with hops and roads, white as chalk and lined with poplars. Soon we heard heavy, continuous artillery fire and saw dark clouds of dust stretching across the entire southern horizon. It may not have been dust, but the smoke of burning villages.

Wagons filled with refugees trotted past our train, heading north to cross the San. Ragged groups of worn-out infantrymen straggled by. The ground shook and rolled. The glass in the carriage windows rattled. The train eventually stopped in a large clearing. Yellowish clouds of shrapnel exploded here and there on the surrounding leafy slopes. The cavalry galloped past. A field battery concealed in some nearby undergrowth fired with deafening intensity. Dr Pokrovsky ordered us to raise two Red Cross flags on top of the train.

We were moved forward a little way towards a bombed-out crossing keeper’s hut. Beside it on the dirty grass lay dozens of injured men in makeshift bandages. We immediately began loading the wounded onto the train. Soon the carriages were full, but the wounded kept coming. We laid them down in the corridors, in the vestibules, in the staff room. Their low, painful groans echoed throughout the entire train. The fighting was getting closer, but we couldn’t see it. All I noticed was a shattered window on the train and the occasional piercing ring of bullets bouncing off the rails. One of our orderlies was wounded in the shoulder. Romanin was knocked to the ground by a heavy blast. We barely noticed any of this since we were all consumed by one thought, namely getting the wounded aboard as fast as possible.

A sweaty officer rode up to the train and shouted for Pokrovsky. His epaulettes were so covered in dust you couldn’t even tell his rank. ‘Hurry up!’ he yelled, straining to be heard over the noise. ‘Get this bloody train out of here. In fifteen minutes it’ll be too late. You’ve got a double load. Get moving!’ Shaking a whip in his hand, the officer pointed to the north, while his horse spun in circles as if possessed.

‘We can take more wounded up on the roof,’ Pokrovsky shouted back.

‘Load them on as you’re heading out,’ he yelled, and then jerked his horse and galloped towards the engine. Just then the train moved. A few more wounded managed to grab hold of the handrails and the orderlies pulled them onto the platforms.

Only now did I notice it was getting dark. The flashing explosions had become clearer and the dust cloud on the horizon had turned an ominous crimson colour. For several minutes we could hear the sound of bullets ricocheting off the train. Soon we were going very fast. Once we finally slowed down we realised that we had barely escaped from the ‘pocket’.

The train was carrying several hundred wounded men, their field dressings soaked with blood and falling off, their faces darkened by thirst. All the bandages had to be changed. We had to find the most seriously wounded among them who required immediate surgery. We set to work at once, and from that moment on, time stood still. We had ceased to notice it. Every fifteen minutes I swabbed the blood off the linoleum floor of the operating room, threw away the crusted bandages, and was then called to the operating table, where, not fully realising what I was doing, I held a wounded man’s leg, trying not to look, as Pokrovsky cut through the sugar-white bone with his hard steel saw. In an instant the leg became heavy in my hand and I became dimly aware through the fog in my head that the operation was over, and then I carried the severed leg to a zinc chest, to be buried later at the next stop.

Everything smelled of blood, essence of valerian and burning alcohol. The instruments were constantly being boiled on spirit lamps. Ever since, the bluish flame of a spirit lamp has reminded me of unbearable pain covering men’s faces with a deathly, grey sweat.

Some of the wounded screamed, others gritted their teeth and cursed. And then there was one man whose fortitude amazed even the imperturbable Pokrovsky. His pelvis had been shattered, and the pain must have been beyond description, yet somehow he managed to walk to the operating room by himself, holding onto the walls as he went. All he asked for while his wound was being dressed was permission to smoke to help ‘take the edge off’. Not once did he let out a moan or a cry; instead he tried to reassure Pokrovsky and Lëlya, who was helping the doctor pick out the shrapnel fragments and apply a complicated bandage.

‘It’s nothing!’ he was saying. ‘I can handle it. Not bad at all. Don’t you worry.’

His eyes alone gave away the pain. They twitched and dimmed with each passing minute behind a yellowish film.

‘We’ve never seen a braver warrior than you. Where’re you from?’ Pokrovsky asked gruffly.

‘My people are from Vologda, Your Excellency,’ the man replied. ‘My mother birthed me in a dark wood. All alone she was. She washed me clean in a puddle. We’re all like this back there, Your Excellency. ’Course a wounded animal will scream, but it ain’t right for a human being.’

I no longer remember how long it took for these endless operations and dressings. During especially complicated operations, the train would stop at a station. All I recall is that I was either switching on the bright electric lights (the carriage had its own generator) or switching them off, I assume because the sun was shining. But it never seemed to shine for long, an hour or so, before it was time for me to switch the blindingly bright lights back on again. Once Pokrovsky took me by the arm, led me to the window and forced me to drink a glass of some thick brown liquid.

‘Be strong,’ he said. ‘It’s almost over. I can’t spare a single one of you.’

And I stayed strong and stuck it out, stopping only to change my blood-soaked smock from time to time. The wounded kept coming and coming. By now we could no longer tell them apart. They all seemed to have the same unshaven, greenish faces, and the same eyes, white and bulging with pain, the same rapid, helpless breathing, and the same prehensile steel fingers, which they jabbed into our arms when we tried to hold them down during surgery. All of our arms were covered with scratches and bruises. I left the train only once at some anonymous Polish station for a cigarette. It was evening and it had just stopped raining. Puddles glittered on the platform. Like a giant bunch of grapes, a storm cloud, tinged pink by the afterglow of the setting sun, hung in a greenish sky. A crowd of women and children had gathered around the train. The women were wiping their eyes with the edges of their kerchiefs. ‘Why are they crying?’ I wondered, confused, until I heard the faint moans coming from the carriages.

The entire train was ceaselessly, wearily moaning. No mother’s heart could hold out against this muted cry for help and pity without bursting into tears. Every wounded man became a child again, and it is no surprise that during their fevered nights and amid their agonising pain they called for their mothers. Their mothers weren’t there, however, and no one could replace them, not even the most selfless nurses. Compassion flowed from these women’s warm and gentle hands as they lovingly touched the men’s torn flesh, their rotting wounds, their matted hair.

I don’t recall how many days and nights we travelled before reaching Lublin one morning at dawn. Three empty hospital trains were waiting for us there. They took our wounded and left with them for Russia, while we remained in Lublin. We were given three days’ leave.

I walked along the tracks to the station pump and washed myself for a long time under the spout’s heavy, foaming stream. It was a long shower because I kept dozing off. Fleeting dreams of the smell of water and Marseilles soap filled my head. I changed my clothes and went out. In front of the station stood a tall row of lilacs. And there were flowers whose names I didn’t know; they reminded me of girls in calico dresses of violet and white. I sat down on a wooden bench, leaned back and began to drift off while gazing at the town. It stood before me on a small green hill, surrounded by fields and bathed in morning light. The sun sparkled in a pure blue sky. I could hear the sound of the town’s silver church bells. It was Good Friday. I fell asleep. The sun beat down on me, but I didn’t notice a thing.

A little old man in a stiff collar yellow with age had sat down on the bench next to me. He opened his umbrella and held it over me to shield my eyes from the sun. I don’t know how long he had been sitting there before I awoke. By then, the sun was already quite high in the sky. The kind old man stood up, tipped his bowler, said ‘Przepraszam’ – ‘Excuse me’ – and left.

Who was he? A retired schoolmaster or railway booking clerk? A church organist? Whoever he was, I have remained grateful to him for not forgetting the claims of ordinary human kindness in wartime. He appeared like some benevolent ancient ghost out of the shady streets of Lublin, the same streets that were home to retired civil servants, living out their poor and tidy lives, and where a man might find his last bit of remaining joy in a bed of scarlet geraniums blooming along a wooden fence or in a box of cigarettes smelling of fragrant Crimean tobacco. This was all that was left to him. His children had grown up and moved away, his wife had died long ago, and the old copies of The Planted Field and Illustrated Quarterly on the shelf had been read and reread several times over. Everything had passed on. All that remained was silent wisdom, the trail of smoke from a cigarette, and the distant, unchanging sound of church bells ringing on feast days and for funerals.