The Story of a Life

54

Over Bombed-Out Roads

More than a month before our trip to Odessa, Romanin and I had put in a request to Moscow for a transfer from the train to a field hospital unit. We wanted to be closer to the war.

Romanin had his own particular reason for wanting the transfer. He told me in secret that he had been writing stories about the war for a radical newspaper in Vyatka and the train was not providing him with enough material. He showed me a few of his published stories. I liked them for their simple and precise language. Romanin talked me into writing two or three stories for this newspaper. I wrote only one. I called it ‘Blue Overcoats’, and it was published. It described how the entire garrison of several thousand Austrian soldiers at the fortress of Pshemysl had been taken prisoner. We had seen these prisoners in Brest. There was one incident, however, one that had struck not only me but all of us orderlies as strange, that I had not been able to write about.

The prisoners were being led through Brest. A sluggish stream of dingy blue overcoats, thousands of Austrian soldiers and officers shuffled along the city streets in their broken boots. At times the flow came to a halt, and the men, unshaven and dejected, stared at the ground and waited. Then they were ordered to march on, bent under the heavy weight of their unknown destiny. All of a sudden, Hugo Lyakhman grabbed me by the arm. ‘Look!’ he yelled. ‘Over there! Look at that Austrian soldier!’ I looked and felt a shiver run down my spine. Walking towards me, in tired yet steady steps and wearing an Austrian uniform, was my very self. I had heard much about doubles but had never actually encountered one. And now here I was face to face with my double. We were each other’s duplicates in every last detail, down to the small birthmark on our right temples.

‘What the devil!’ said Romanin. ‘That’s downright terrifying.’

What happened next was equally strange. One of the guards looked at me, then at the Austrian, ran up to him, tugged on his sleeve and pointed me out. The prisoner looked, appeared to stumble and then stopped dead. So did the rest of the Austrians. We stared into each other’s eyes for what could not have been more than a minute, but what seemed to me like an entire hour. An excited murmur ran through the crowd of prisoners. I detected a look of surprise in the Austrian’s dark eyes, which in an instant was replaced by fear. He quickly recovered himself, and, raising a pale hand, he waved at me. There was a shy smile on his sad face.

‘March!’ the guard bellowed at last.

The blue overcoats swayed and moved on. The Austrian turned round to wave at me several times as he walked. I waved back. So we met and parted, never to see each other again.

There was a lot of talk about this strange incident back on the train. Everyone agreed this Austrian soldier must have been a Ukrainian. And since I was part Ukrainian, our striking similarity was easily explained.

While still in Odessa, a few days after the sinking of the Portugal, Romanin and I received a telegram from Moscow informing us that we were both being transferred to the same field hospital unit and were ordered to leave for Moscow immediately, and from there to our assigned unit. After the recent incident with the Portugal, I had been only too glad to stay on the train and was not at all pleased by this new assignment. But there was no getting out of it. I did, however, draw some comfort from the fact that I’d still be working alongside Romanin.

Our friends gave us a noisy send-off at Odessa station. As a joke, someone hired a small Jewish orchestra, naturally with the help of Lipogon. The musicians, old Jews in dusty frock coats who had seen everything in their lives, stood calmly on the platform, fiddling away at the maxixe and the cakewalk, and then, after the third whistle, struck up the old military march ‘Longing for the Homeland’. The hundreds of passengers, as well as the hundreds of family and friends who had come to see them off, cheered along with our lively farewell.

At the last moment, Lëlya hugged me tightly, kissed me, and made me promise to write to her. She whispered in my ear that she too wanted to transfer to a field unit or hospital and so we would probably see each other again somewhere in Poland.

The train started. Lipogon lifted his cap high off his head and held it there until our train disappeared around a bend. The violins sobbed, repeating their familiar tune over and over again. I stuck my head out of the window and watched Lëlya waving her white scarf until she faded from view. And, as always when one phase of my life had ended and another was about to begin, longing filled my heart. Longing, and regret, for the past, and for the friends I was leaving behind.

I lay down on the upper berth and, staring at the ceiling, recalled every single day of this long and troubled year. I knew only one thing for certain: that I had to live as I had this past year – always seeking out new people and places. This was the way to live if I wanted to become a writer.

Nothing had changed in Moscow – the flat permeated with kitchen smells that clung to the very walls, Galya worrying endlessly about nothing, and Mama silent and tight-lipped. I was given a simple uniform and an overcoat with strange silver shoulder straps and a single star, and went off to report to the head of the field hospital units, a man by the name of Chemodanov. Romanin had already left and written me a note to say that Chemodanov was a decent man, a connoisseur of music and the author of many articles on musical matters. I recalled what Captain Bayard had said about how no one in this incomprehensible country did the job they should be doing. Now it occurred to me that the captain had a rather odd understanding of doing what one should. At the moment, given we were at war, everyone should be defending Russia. That I knew for certain.

Chemodanov, a tall, dark-haired and exceptionally polite man in a field jacket, greeted me kindly but with a trace of distrust. ‘I’m afraid you’ll find it difficult in the unit,’ he said.

‘Why?’

‘You seem to me rather shy, and in these circumstances, that’s a liability.’

There was nothing I could say to that.

The unit was somewhere near Lublin. I had to go to Brest to find out where exactly. And so I left. I travelled in a first-class carriage crowded with officers. I was ill at ease in my uniform with its shoulder straps and their little star and its shiny sword hilt. A captain, chain-smoking in the seat next to me, noticed my discomfort and asked me just who and what I was, and then he gave me some practical advice: ‘My son,’ he said, ‘salute as often as you can and remember to repeat just two things: “May I?” to your superiors and “Certainly” to your subordinates. That will spare you a lot of trouble.’

It turned out this gruff captain was wrong. The next day I went to the dining car for dinner. All the tables were full. The only empty seat was at a small table opposite a fat, grey-whiskered general. I approached, bowed slightly, and said: ‘May I?’

The general was munching on a piece of roast beef. He mumbled some kind of answer. His mouth was stuffed with meat, and so I had not been able to understand just what he had said. I thought I had heard him say, ‘Certainly.’

I sat down. The general, finally finishing with his piece of beef, stared at me for a long time, his bulging eyes filling with rage. Finally, he said: ‘What’s with this fancy dress, young man? What sort of uniform is that?’

‘This is what they gave me, Your Excellency.’

‘Who, who gave it to you?’ the general shouted.

The dining car suddenly fell silent.

‘The Union of Cities, Your Excellency.’

‘Holy Mother of God!’ the general thundered. ‘I have the honour of being a member of the Supreme Commander’s General Staff, but I never could have imagined such a thing possible! Anarchy in the Russian army! Anarchy, debauchery, utter breakdown!’

He got up, snorting loudly, and left the dining car. Only then did I notice his aiguillettes and the imperial cypher on his epaulettes.

Dozens of officers were now looking at me and laughing.

‘Bad luck!’ said a tall cavalry officer at the table next to me. ‘Do you know who that was?’

‘No.’

‘General Yanushkevich, on the staff of Supreme Commander Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich. His right-hand man. You’d best go back to your compartment and don’t show your face until we reach Brest. The next time might be your last.’