The Story of a Life

59

In the Marshy Woods

Beyond Slonim lay vast, monotonous wooded marshlands. Row after row of thin silvery aspens stood partly veiled behind a fine, bleak shroud of rain. In the afternoon the sky finally cleared. It was green and cold. A biting wind chased dark, ragged clouds. Romanin rode at the head of the column, I at the back. I saw a young Belorussian peasant in sandals walk out of the woods. He removed his cap, caught hold of Romanin’s stirrup, walked along beside his horse, and seemed to be humbly pleading for something. Tears shone in his eyes.

Romanin stopped and called me over. ‘Over there in the woods,’ he said without looking at me, ‘a refugee is giving birth. It’s this man’s wife. Everyone’s gone and it’s just the two of them. He says his wife’s in trouble.’

‘Sir, she’s in terrible pain,’ said the peasant, wiping his eyes with his cap.

Romanin was quiet.

‘Go and deliver the baby,’ he said, fidgeting with his bridle and still refusing to look at me. ‘None of us know how, including you, but at least you’ve got clever hands, and that’s worth something.’

Something in his voice made me think he was making fun of me. I felt the blood drain from my face. ‘All right,’ I said, trying to control myself.

‘We’ll wait for you in Baranovichi.’ Romanin offered me his wet hand. ‘Need an orderly?’

‘I don’t need no damned orderly,’ I said.

I took our bag of medicines and a simple surgical instrument – the only one we had – and turned off along the forest track.

The peasant – his name was Vasil – ran alongside, holding onto my stirrup. Mud from my horse’s hooves splattered his face. He kept wiping it off with his wet cap. I trotted on at a good pace. I tried not to think about what was happening. I kept my mouth shut and my eyes fixed straight ahead. I was terrified. Never in my life had I been anywhere near a woman in labour. Suddenly I heard an angry wail and pulled up. Someone was crying very close by.

‘Sir, hurry!’ said Vasil, now beside himself with worry.

I whipped my horse and crashed through a thicket of hazel. Vasil had let go of my stirrup and was soon far behind me. I came out in a small clearing. I saw a young boy, about the age of ten with a black cap pulled down over his ears, sitting next to a small, dying fire. Hugging his knees, he sat rocking back and forth and chanting softly in a dull monotone: ‘Oy, Zosya! Oy, Zosya! Oy, Zosya!’

Smoke from the fire filled the clearing and hung in the low branches of the thicket, making it difficult to see. I dismounted. There was a cart on the other side of the fire with a woman on it. At first all I could make out was her distorted black face and huge white eyes. She was howling, her mouth stretched so wide it nearly split her lips. Her hands were dug in to the sides of the cart. One moment thrusting forward, the next throwing herself back, she howled and howled without stopping like some sort of animal. A mangy dog with chattering teeth lay under the cart. My heart froze. Then the cold rose to my head, and suddenly my fear vanished.

‘Quick, stoke the fire!’ I yelled at the boy.

The boy jumped up, stumbled, fell and then bolted into the trees for more wood. Vasil came running up. I had no idea what to do. I could only guess. First of all, I threw off my greatcoat and washed my hands. Vasil poured water on them from a pitcher. His hands were shaking so badly that most of the water missed. The boy came back with wood and got the fire going again. It was almost dark by now.

‘Get the boy out of here,’ I said to Vasil. ‘He shouldn’t see this.’

‘But she’s his sister,’ Vasil replied in a hurry. ‘There’s a spring in the woods. He could go and fetch some water.’

‘Yes, water, water!’ I stammered. ‘And a clean towel or some rags.’

‘Zosya has two clean shirts,’ said Vasil, trying to be helpful. ‘Mikolaichik, run and fetch some water, I’ll find the shirts.’

I had another sudden moment of doubt as I began to pull my tunic over my head. Everything became dark in an instant, and I stopped. I wanted to try to calm down and collect my thoughts. But what thoughts? What was I thinking about? Nothing. I was aware of nothing other than despair.

I finally pulled myself together, slipped off my tunic, rolled up my shirtsleeves, pulled my electric torch from my pocket and handed it to Vasil. ‘Hold this!’

I walked over to the cart. It seems I went deaf from fear, for I no longer heard the woman’s screams, and I tried not to look at her. I saw something pink and pitiful. I quickly yet carefully reached out and took hold of it and then pulled hard. I didn’t know whether or not this was the right thing to do. It all happened as if in a dream. To this day I can’t recall if the baby came out then or only after more pulling. All I remember is the feel of its little shoulders, or what I think were shoulders. I squeezed them and carefully, yet forcefully pulled the baby towards me.

‘Sir!’ cried Vasil, grabbing me. ‘Sir!’

I was standing and swaying back and forth. Something warm and wet lay in my outstretched hands. Suddenly, this mysterious something sneezed.

Everything that needed to be done after this I did with more composure, although my head was still spinning. Vasil and I washed the baby and then we swaddled it tightly in towels and rags. I held the child in my arms, afraid to drop him. Vasil had dug his teeth into his coat sleeve and was shaking his head and sobbing. I snapped at him, approached the woman and carefully laid the baby down alongside her. She gave a slow, easy smile as she looked at her baby and then touched it ever so slightly with her thin, dark hand. This was her first child.

‘My dear little one,’ she cooed, ‘My light, my poor little son.’

Tears poured from her wide eyes. Just then, the woman grabbed my hand and pressed it to her hot, dry lips. I left it there so as not to upset her. Soon my hand was wet from her tears. The infant squirmed and mewed feebly, like a kitten. I took my hand away, and the woman reached for her baby and then shyly pulled out a breast.

Vasil had by now stopped crying and just stood there wiping his eyes with his sleeve. The boy squatted on his heels and stared at the fire with a happy expression on his face. A few gunshots crackled in the distance beyond the woods. I washed my hands, threw my coat over my shoulders and sat down by the fire. I gave Vasil a cigarette and then lit one for myself. Never before had I enjoyed a cigarette more than on that gloomy night.

My sense of relief didn’t last long. I was worried about the woman. I got up and went over to the cart. In the flickering light of the fire, I thought her face looked feverish. She appeared to be asleep, lying on her side and holding her baby to her breast. Her thick eyelashes cast a shadow on her cheeks.

I looked at the woman closely for the first time and was amazed by the happy and tender expression on her face. At the time I did not know that after childbirth, if only for a short while, women’s faces are almost always calm and beautiful. It must have been this beauty of motherhood that inspired the great painters of the Renaissance – Raphael, Leonardo, Botticelli – when they painted their Madonnas. I gently took the woman’s hand and felt her pulse. It was weak but steady.

Without opening in her eyes, the woman took my hand again and gently stroked it, as if in her sleep. But this time she was not trying to thank me but to reassure me. It was as if she were saying: ‘Don’t worry. I’m fine. Go and rest.’

How could I have imagined an hour ago as I rode along that muddy road, my heart empty, that someone would treat me so kindly this very night? Day after day of war dragged on like a night without shelter. I never could have believed that in the utter loneliness of that night I would be so soon, and so fleetingly, comforted by a smile of such human tenderness.

Brief crackles of gunfire erupted again beyond the woods along the dark horizon. It sounded as if they were chasing after each other.

‘Sir,’ Vasil called out to me, ‘the Germans are coming. What should we do?’

Against all common sense I felt strangely calm. ‘Nothing,’ I muttered. ‘We’ll stay here a few more hours. It would bad for her to be tossed about on the road.’

‘You won’t leave us, will you, sir?’

‘No, I won’t.’

Vasil calmed down and went to cook some gruel with the boy. I knew it was dangerous to stay in the woods. Given the sound of the gunfire, I could tell the Germans were close. Maybe they had broken through again, and when that happened, the front always crumbled, vanished or just melted away in an instant. But I simply did not want to leave.

I sat down by the cart and stared at the fire. Nothing makes time move faster than the sight of fire by night. I watched every last stick ignite, and the sparks flying from the dry kindling, and the flaming, grey ash. The woman’s breathing was quiet and steady. ‘No,’ I said to myself, ‘you can’t escape this war, no matter how much you want to. You’re not the only one in this world.’ I looked at my watch. I had been staring at the fire for two hours.

‘Time to get ready,’ I told Vasil.

We had some of the gruel. Zosya woke up and Vasil fed her. She ate slowly and little and never took her eyes off the baby. Vasil kept trying to get her to eat, but she gently pushed him away: ‘I don’t want any.’

Dawn was a fair way off. Vasil harnessed the horses. We made Zosya as comfortable as we could, covered her with two sheepskin coats, and then the cart slowly headed out of the woods onto the main road. We were all alone. The wind blew. The pines made a mournful sound. The gunfire had died down.

I rode a few steps ahead and pointed my torch now and then at potholes and puddles so Vasil could avoid them. I knew from Romanin that we were a few kilometres from Baranovichi’s old garrison camp. I hoped to find one of the retreating field hospital units still there and get them to take Zosya until she got her strength back. We were in luck. A field hospital had been using one of the wooden huts and was getting ready to pull out. We had arrived just in time.

I went to see the head doctor. He was sitting in an empty hut, drinking tea from a tin mug. An unshaven old man with the red eyes of a rabbit, he took off his glasses and listened to me without saying a word. One of the ties from his gown had dropped into his tea and got wet, and he sat there squeezing it as he heard me out.

‘So you delivered the baby?’ he asked and gave me a disapproving look.

‘Yes.’

‘You mean, just like that?’

‘I had no choice,’ I replied in my defence.

‘No, there was nothing else you could do,’ the doctor agreed, dipping a lump of sugar into his tea and popping it in his mouth. ‘Although the baby seems to have come out on its own, so don’t bother putting on airs, lieutenant.’

‘I’m not putting on airs.’

‘But you should. I would if I were you. Would you like some tea? You probably should, because that’s all there is. We’re leaving soon. For now put your refugee in the theatre. Tell the duty nurse I said so.’

‘Theatre? What theatre?’ I asked.

‘The Imperial Opera House in Petrograd,’ he said angrily. ‘Don’t be such a fool. There’s a summer theatre here in the camp. Or rather there was. For the officers. Take her there.’

We carried Zosya over to the rotting hut that had served as a theatre. The duty nurse was nowhere to be found, so we laid Zosya down ourselves in a camp bed.

At the far end of the hut was a stage. It was hidden behind a torn canvas curtain crudely painted with a landscape of the Monk and the Devil’s Gate at Simeiz. It was impossible to know why someone had chosen to depict such a landscape – with these rock formations, this bright, blueprint-blue sky and these black cypress trees – for this of all places.

‘Where’s the mother?’ asked a female voice from outside.

I involuntarily moved away from the bed and into the shadows along the wall. I recognised Lëlya’s voice.

She walked in quickly. As always, a strand of curly hair had escaped from under her scarf. Coming from the daylight into the dark barracks she couldn’t immediately make out the woman on the bed or us men either.

‘Who brought her here?’ asked Lëlya.

‘He’s right here, the officer,’ muttered Vasil, pointing at me with his cap.

Lëlya turned toward me.

‘You?’ she asked.

I came out of the shadows and approached her. ‘Yes, Lëlya,’ I said, ‘I did.’

She turned white, stepped back, sat down on an empty bed and raised her frightened eyes at me. ‘Oh my Lord,’ she whispered. ‘Hello there! Well, don’t just stand there like some stuffed dummy.’

Without getting up, she held out her hand. I bent over to kiss it, but Lëlya grabbed me around the neck, pulled me towards her, and kissed me on the lips.

‘At long last,’ she said. ‘You and I must have been born under a lucky star.’