COMMLIN - Literature

PART ONE

Chapter Nine

The octopus has a bulging eye the size of a cat's head, a glazed reddish eye green in the centre with a pulsating phosphorescent glow. The octopus is a loathsome mass of tentacles, which writhe and squirm like a tangled knot of snakes, the scaly skin rustling hideously as they move. The octopus stirs. He sees it next to his very eyes. And now the tentacles creep over his body; they are cold and they sting like nettles. The octopus shoots out its sting, and it bites into his head like a leech, and, wriggling convulsively, it sucks at his blood. He feels the blood draining out of his body into the swelling body of the octopus. And the sting goes on sucking and the pain of its sucking is unbearable.

Somewhere far far away he can hear human voices:

"How is his pulse now?"

And another voice, a woman's, replies softly:

"His pulse is a hundred and thirty-eight. His temperature 103.1. He is delirious all the time."

The octopus disappears, but the pain lingers. Pavel feels someone touch his wrist. He tries to open his eyes, but his lids are so heavy he has no strength to lift them. Why is it so hot? Mother must have heated the stove. And again he hears those voices:

"His pulse is one hundred and twenty-two now." He tries to open his eyelids. But a fire burns within him. He is suffocating.

He is terribly thirsty, he must get up at once and get a drink. But why does he not get up? He tries to move but his limbs refuse to obey him, his body is a stranger to him. Mother will bring him some water at once. He will say to her: "I want to drink." Something stirs beside him. Is it the octopus about to crawl over him again? There it comes, he sees its red eyes. . . . From afar comes that soft voice: "Frosya, bring some water!"

"Whose name is that?" But the effort to remember is too much for him and darkness engulfs him once more. Emerging presently from the gloom he recalls: "I am thirsty."

And hears voices saying: "He seems to be regaining consciousness." Closer and more distinct now, that gentle voice: "Do you want to drink, Comrade?"

"Can it be me they are addressing? Am I ill? Oh yes, I've got the typhus, that's it." And for the third time he tries to lift his eyelids. And at last he succeeds. The first thing that reaches his consciousness through the narrowed vision of his slightly opened eyes is a red ball hanging above his head. But the red ball is blotted out by something dark which bends towards him, and his lips feel the hard edge of a glass and moisture, life-giving moisture. The fire within him subsides. Satisfied, he whispers: "That's better."

"Can you see me, Comrade?"

The dark shape standing over him has spoken, and just before drowsiness overpowers him he manages to say: "I can't see, but I can hear. . . ."

"Now, who would have believed he would pull through? Yet see how he has clambered back to life! A remarkably strong constitution. You may be proud of yourself, Nina Vladimirovna. You have literally saved his life." And the woman's voice, trembling slightly, answers: "I am so glad!"

After thirteen days of oblivion, consciousness returned to Pavel Korchagin. His young body had not wanted to die, and slowly he recovered his strength. It was like being born again. Everything seemed new and miraculous. Only his head lay motionless and unbearably heavy in its plaster cast, and he had not the strength to move it. But feeling returned to the rest of his body and soon he was able to bend his fingers.

Nina Vladimirovna, junior doctor of the military clinical hospital, sat at a small table in her room turning the leaves of a thick lilac-covered notebook filled with brief entries made in a neat slanting handwriting.

August 26, 1920

Some serious cases were brought in today by ambulance train. One of them has a very ugly head wound. We put him in the corner by the window. He is only seventeen. They gave me an envelope with the papers found in his pockets and the case history. His name is Korchagin, Pavel Andreyevich. Among his papers were a well-worn membership card (No. 967) of the Young Communist League of the Ukraine, a torn Red Army identification book and a copy of a regimental order stating that Red Army man Korchagin was coinmended for exemplary fulfilment of a reconnaissance rnission. There was also a note, evidently written by himself, which said: "In the event of my death please write to my relatives: Shepetov-ka, Railway Junction, Mechanic Artem Korchagin."

He has been unconscious ever since he was hit by a shell fragment on August 19. Tomorrow Anatoli Stepanovich will examine him.

August 27

Today we examined Korchagin's wound. It is very deep, the skull is fractured and the entire right side of the head is paralysed. A blood vessel burst in the right eye which is badly swollen.

Anatoli Stepanovich wanted to remove the eye to prevent inflammation, but I dissuaded him, since there is still hope that the swelling might go down. In doing this I was prompted solely by aesthetic considerations. The lad may recover; it would be a pity if he were disfigured.

He is delirious all the time and terribly restless. One of us is constantly on duty at his bedside. I spend much of my time with him. He is too young to die and I am determined to tear his young life out of Death's clutches. I must succeed.

Yesterday I spent several hours in his ward after my shift was over. His is the worst case there. I sat listening to his ravings. Sometimes they sound like a story, and I learn quite a lot about his life. But at times he curses horribly. He uses frightful language. Somehow it hurts me to hear such awful cursing from him. Anatoli Stepanovich does not believe that he will recover. "I can't understand what the army wants with such children," the old man growls. "It's a disgrace."

August 30

Korchagin is still unconscious. He has been removed to the ward for hopeless cases. The nurse Frosya is almost constantly at his side. It appears she knows him. They worked together once. How gentle she is with him! Now I too am beginning to fear that his condition is hopeless.

September 2, 11 p.m.

This has been a wonderful day for me. My patient Korchagin regained consciousness. The crisis is over. I spent the past two days at the hospital without going home.

I cannot describe my joy at the knowledge that one more life has been saved. One death less in our ward. The recovery of a patient is the most wonderful thing about this exhausting work of mine. They become like children. Their affection is simple and sincere, and I too grow fond of them so that when they leave I often weep. I know it is foolish of me, but I cannot help it.

September 10

Today I wrote Korchagin's first letter to his family. He writes his wound is not serious and he'll soon recover and come home. He has lost a great deal of blood and is as pale as a ghost, and still very weak.

September 14

Korchagin smiled today for the first time. He has a very nice smile. Usually he is grave beyond his years. He is making a remarkably rapid recovery. He and Frosya are great friends. I often see her at his bedside. She must have been talking to him about me, and evidently singing my praises, for now the patient greets me with a faint smile. Yesterday he asked:

"What are those black marks on your arms, doctor?" I did not tell him that those bruises had been made by his fingers clutching my arm convulsively when he was delirious.

September 17

The wound on Korchagin's forehead is healing nicely. We doctors are amazed at the remarkable fortitude with which this young man endures the painful business of dressing his wound.

Usually in such cases the patient groans a great deal and is generally troublesome. But this one lies quietly and when the open wound is daubed with iodine he draws himself taut like a violin string. Often he loses consciousness, but not once have we heard a groan escape him.

We know now that when Korchagin groans he is unconscious. Where does he get that tremendous endurance, I wonder?

September 21

We wheeled Korchagin out onto the big balcony today for the first time. How his face lit up when he saw the garden, how greedily he breathed in the fresh air! His head is swathed in bandages and only one eye is open. And that live, shining eye looked out on the world as if seeing it for the first time.

September 26

Today two young women came to the hospital asking to see Korchagin. I went downstairs to the waiting room to speak to them. One of them was very beautiful. They introduced themselves as Tonya Tumanova and Tatiana Buranovskaya. I had heard of Tonya, Korchagin had mentioned the name when he was delirious. I gave them permission to see him.

October 8

Korchagin now walks unaided in the garden. He keeps asking me when he can leave hospital. I tell him—soon. The two girls come to see him every visiting day. I know now why he never groans. I asked him, and he replied: "Read The Gadfly and you'll know."

October 14

Korchagin has been discharged. He took leave of me very warmly. The bandage has been removed from his eye and now only his head is bound. The eye is blind, but looks quite normal. It was very sad to part with this fine young comrade. But that's how it is: once they've recovered they leave us and rarely do we ever see them again.

As he left he said: "Pity it wasn't the left eye. How will I be able to shoot now?"

He still thinks of the front.

After his discharge from hospital Pavel lived for a time at the Buranovskys where Tonya was staying.

Pavel sought at once to draw Tonya into Komsomol activities. He began by inviting her to attend a meeting of the town's Komsomol. Tonya agreed to go, but when she emerged from her room where she had been dressing for the meeting Pavel bit his lip. She was very smartly attired, with a studied elegance which Pavel felt would be entirely out of place at a Komsomol gathering.

This was the cause of their first quarrel. When he asked her why she had dressed up like that she took offence.

"I don't see why I must look like everyone else. But if my clothes don't suit you, I can stay at home."

At the club Tonya's fine clothes were so conspicuous among all the faded tunics and shabby blouses that Pavel was deeply embarrassed. The young people treated her as an outsider, and Tonya, conscious of their disapproval, assumed a contemptuous, defiant air.

Pankratov, the secretary of the Komsomol organisation at the shipping wharves, a broad-shouldered docker in a coarse linen shirt, called Pavel aside, and indicating Tonya with his eyes, said with a scowl:

"Was it you who brought that doll here?"

"Yes," Pavel replied curtly.

"Mm," observed Pankratov. "She doesn't belong here by the looks of her. Too bourgeois by half. How did she get in?"

Pavel's temples pounded.

"She is a friend of mine. I brought her here. Understand? She isn't hostile to us at all, even if she does think too much about clothes. You can't always judge people by the way they dress. I know as well as you do whom to bring here so you needn't be so officious, Comrade."

He wanted to say something sharp and insulting but realising that Pankratov was voicing the general opinion he checked himself, and that only increased his anger at Tonya.

"I told her what to expect! Why the devil must she put on such airs?"

That evening marked the beginning of the end of their friendship. With bitterness and dismay Pavel watched the break-up of a relationship that had seemed so enduring.

Several more days passed, and with every meeting, every conversation they drifted further and further apart. Tonya's cheap individualism became unbearable to Pavel.

Both realised that a break was inevitable.

Today they had met in the Kupechesky Gardens for the last time. The paths were strewn with decaying leaves. They stood by the balustrade at the top of the cliff and looked down at the grey waters of the Dnieper. From behind the towering hulk of the bridge a tug came crawling wearily down the river with two heavy barges in tow. The setting sun painted the Trukhanov Island with daubs of gold and set the windows of the houses on fire.

Tonya looked at the golden shafts of sunlight and said with deep sadness:

"Is our friendship going to fade like that dying sun?"

Pavel, who had been gazing at her face, knitted his brows sternly and answered in a low voice:

"Tonya, we have gone over this before. You know, of course, that I loved you, and even now my love might return, but for that you must be with us. I am not the Pavlusha I was before. And I would be a poor husband to you if you expect me to put you before the Party. For I shall always put the Party first, and you and my other loved ones second."

Tonya stared miserably down at the dark-blue water and her eyes filled with tears.

Pavel gazed at the profile he had come to know so well, her thick chestnut hair, and a wave of pity for this girl who had once been so dear to him swept over him.

Gently he laid his hand on her shoulder.

"Tonya, cut yourself loose and come to us. Let's work together to finish with the bosses. There are many splendid girls among us who are sharing the burden of this bitter struggle, enduring all the hardships and privation. They may not be so well educated as you are, but why, oh why, don't you want to join us? You say Chuzhanin tried to seduce you, but he is a degenerate, not a fighter. You say the comrades were unfriendly toward you. Then why did you have to dress up as if you were going to a bourgeois ball? It's your silly pride that's to blame: why should I wear a dirty old army tunic just because everybody else does? You had the courage to love a workingman, but you cannot love an idea. I am sorry to have to part with you, and I should like to cherish your memory."

He said no more.

The next day he saw an order posted up in the street signed by Zhukhrai, chairman of the regional Cheka. His heart leapt. It was with great difficulty that he gained admission to the sailor's office. The sentries would not let him in and he raised such a fuss that he was very nearly arrested, but in the end he had his way.

Fyodor gave him a very warm welcome. The sailor had lost an arm; it had been torn off by a shell.

The conversation turned at once to work. "You can help me crush the counter-revolution here until you're fit for the front again. Start tomorrow," said Zhukhrai.

The struggle with the Polish Whites came to an end. The Red armies pursued the enemy almost to the very walls of Warsaw, but with their material and physical strength expended and their supply bases left far behind, they were unable to take this final stronghold and so fell back. Thus the "miracle on the Vistula", as the Poles called the withdrawal of the Red forces from Warsaw, came to pass, and the Poland of the gentry received a new lease of life. The dream of the Polish Soviet Socialist Republic was not yet to be fulfilled.

The blood-drenched land demanded a respite.

Pavel was unable to see his people, for Shepetovka was again in Polish hands and had become a temporary frontier outpost. Peace talks were in progress.

Pavel spent days and nights in the Cheka carrying out diverse assignments. He was much upset when he learned that his hometown was occupied by the Poles.

"Does that mean my mother will be on the other side of the border if the armistice is signed now?" he asked Zhukhrai.

But Fyodor calmed his fears.

"Most likely the frontier will pass through Goryn along the river, which means that your town will be on our side," he said. "In any case we'll know soon enough."

Divisions were being transferred from the Polish front to the South. For while the republic had been straining every effort on the Polish front, Wrangel had taken advantage of the respite to crawl out of his Crimean lair and advance northward along the Dnieper with Yekaterinoslav Gubernia as his immediate objective.

Now that the war with the Poles was over, the republic rushed its armies to the Crimea to wipe out the last hotbed of counter-revolution.

Trainloads of troops, carts, field kitchens and guns passed through Kiev en route to the South. The Cheka of the regional transport services worked at fever pitch these days coping with the bottlenecks caused by the huge flood of traffic. Stations were jammed with trains and frequently traffic would be held up for lack of free tracks. Telegraph operators tapped out countless messages ordering the line cleared for this or that division. The tickers spilled out endless ribbons of tape covered with dots and dashes and each of them demanding priority: "Precedence above all else . .. this is a military order . . . clear line immediately. . . ." And nearly every message included a reminder that failure to carry out the order would entail prosecution by a revolutionary military tribunal.

The local transport Cheka was responsible for keeping traffic moving without interruption.

Commanders of army units would burst into its headquarters brandishing revolvers and demanding that their trains be dispatched at once in accordance with telegram number so-and-so signed by the commander of the army. And none of them would accept the explanation that this was impossible. "You'll get that train off if you croak doing it!" And a string of frightful curses would follow. In particularly serious cases Zhukhrai would be urgently sent for, and then the excited men who were ready to shoot each other on the spot would calm down at once. At the sight of this man of iron with his quiet icy voice that brooked no argument revolvers were thrust back into their holsters.

At times Pavel would stagger out of his office onto the platform with a stabbing pain in his head. Work in the Cheka was having a devastating effect on his nerves.

One day he caught sight of Sergei Bruzzhak on a truck loaded with ammunition crates. Sergei jumped down, nearly knocking Pavel off his feet, and flung his arms round his friend.

"Pavka, you devil! I knew it was you the minute I laid eyes on you."

The two young men had so much news to exchange that they did not know where to begin. So much had happened to both of them since they had last met. They plied each other with questions, and talked on without waiting for answers. They did not hear the engine whistle and it was only when the train began to move out of the station that they became aware of their surroundings.

They still had much to say to each other, but the train was already gathering speed and Sergei, shouting something to his friend, raced along the platform and caught on to the open door of one of the box cars. Several hands snatched him up and drew him inside. As Pavel stood watching him go he suddenly remembered that Sergei knew nothing about Valya's death. For he had not visited Shepetovka since he left it, and in the unexpectedness of this encounter Pavel had forgotten to tell him.

"It's a good thing he does not know, his mind will be at ease," thought Pavel. He did not know that he was never to see his friend again. Nor did Sergei, standing on the roof of the box car, his chest exposed to the autumn wind, know that he was going to his death.

"Get down from there, Seryozha," urged Doroshenko, a Red Army man wearing a coat with a hole burnt in the back.

"That's all right," said Sergei laughing. "The wind and I are good friends."

A week later he was struck by a stray bullet in his first engagement. He staggered forward, his chest rent by a tearing pain, clutched at the air, and pressing his arms tightly against his chest, he swayed and dropped heavily to the ground and his sightless blue eyes stared out over the boundless Ukrainian steppe.

His nerve-wracking work in the Cheka began to tell on Pavel's weakened condition. His violent headaches became more frequent, but it was not until he fainted one day after two sleepless nights that he finally decided to take the matter up with Zhukhrai.

"Don't you think I ought to try some other sort of work, Fyodor? I would like best of all to work at my own trade at the railway shops. I'm afraid there's something wrong with my head. They told me in the medical commission that I was unfit for army service. But this sort of work is worse than the front. The two days we spent rounding up Sutyr's band have knocked me out completely. I must have a rest from all this shooting. You see, Fyodor, I shan't be much good to you if I can barely stand on my feet."

Zhukhrai studied Pavel's face with concern.

"Yes, you don't look so good. It's all my fault. I ought to have let you go long before this. But I've been too busy to notice."

Shortly after the above conversation Pavel presented himself at the Regional Committee of the Komsomol with a paper certifying that he was being placed at the Committee's disposal. An officious youngster with his cap perched jauntily over his nose ran his eyes rapidly over the paper and winked to Pavel:

"From the Cheka, eh? A jolly organisation that. We'll find work for you here in a jiffy. We need everybody we can get. Where would you like to go? Commissary department? No? All right. What about the agitation section down at the waterfront? No? Too bad. Nice soft job that, special rations too."

Pavel interrupted him.

"I would prefer the railway repair shops," he said. The lad gaped. "Mm. . . . I don't think we need anybody there. But go to Ustinovich. She'll fit you in somewhere."

After a brief interview with the dark-eyed girl it was decided to assign Pavel as secretary of the Komsomol organisation in the railway shops where he was to work.

Meanwhile the Whites had been fortifying the gates of the Crimea, and now on this narrow neck of land that once had been the frontier between the Crimean Tatars and the Zaporozhye Cossack settlements stood the modernised fortified line of Perekop.

And behind Perekop in the Crimea, the old, doomed world which had been driven here from all corners of the land, feeling quite secure, lived in wine-fuddled revelry.

One chill dank autumn night tens of thousands of sons of the toiling people plunged into the icy waters of the Sivash to cross the bay under the cover of darkness and strike from behind at the enemy entrenched in their forts. Among the thousands waded Ivan Zharky, carrying his machine gun on his head to prevent it from getting wet.

And when dawn found Perekop seething in a wild turmoil, its fortifications attacked in a frontal assault, the first columns of men that had crossed the Sivash climbed ashore on Litovsky Peninsula to take the Whites from the rear. And among the first to clamber onto that rock coast was Ivan Zharky.

A battle of unprecedented ferocity ensued. The White cavalry bore down savagely on the Red Army men as they emerged from the water. Zharky's machine gun spewed death, never ceasing its lethal tattoo. Men and horses fell in heaps under the leaden spray. Zharky fed new magazines into the gun with feverish speed.

Perekop thundered back through the throats of hundreds of guns. The very earth seemed to have dropped into a bottomless abyss, and death carried by thousands of shells pierced the heavens with ear-splitting screams and exploded, scattering myriads of minute fragments far and wide. The torn and lacerated earth spouted up in black clouds that blotted out the sun.

The monster's head was crushed, and into the Crimea swept the Red flood of the First Cavalry Army to deliver the final, smashing blow. Frantic with terror, the White-guards rushed in a panic to board the ships leaving the ports.

And the Republic pinned the golden badge of the Order of the Red Banner to many a faded Red Army tunic, and one of these tunics was Ivan Zharky's, the Komsomol machine gunner.

Peace was signed with the Poles and, as Zhukhrai had predicted, Shepetovka remained in Soviet Ukraine. A river thirty-five kilometres outside the town now marked the frontier.

One memorable morning in December 1920 Pavel arrived in his native town. He stepped onto the snowy platform, glanced up at the sign Shepetovka I, then turned left, and went straight to the railway yards and asked for Artem. But his brother was not there. Drawing his army coat tighter about him, Pavel strode off through the woods to the town.

Maria Yakovlevna turned when the knock came at the door and said, "Come in." A snow-covered figure pushed into the house and she saw the dear face of her son. Her hand flew to her heart, joy robbed her of speech.

She fell on her son's breast and smothered his face with kisses, and tears of happiness streamed down her cheeks. And Pavel, pressing the spare little body close, gazed silently down at the careworn face of his mother furrowed with deep lines of pain and anxiety, and waited for her to grow calmer.

Once again the light of happiness shone in the eyes of this woman who had suffered so much. It seemed she would never have her fill of gazing at this son whom she had lost all hope of ever seeing again. Her joy knew no bounds when three days later Artem too burst into the tiny room late at night with his kit-bag over his shoulders.

Now the Korchagin family was reunited. Both brothers had escaped death, and after harrowing ordeals and trials they had met again.

"What are you going to do now?" the mother asked her sons.

"It's back to the repair shops for me, Mother!" replied Artem gaily.

As for Pavel, after two weeks at home he went back to Kiev where his work was awaiting him.