14
PARTISAN REVIEW
His conversation about evil with the Italian priest became con–
fused with a number of different memories: with the happiness he
had felt as a boy when it had suddenly begun to pour with rain and
he had rushed into the room where his mother was sewing; with his
wife's bright eyes, wet with tears, when she had come to visit him at
the time he was in exile by the Yenisey; with pale Dzerzhinsky whom
he had once asked at a Party conference about the fate of a young
and very kind Social Revolutionary. "Shot," Dzerzhinsky had an–
swered ... Major Kirillov's gloomy eyes ... Draped in a sheet, the
corpse of his friend was being dragged along on a sledge - he had
refused to accept his offer of help during the siege of Leningrad.
A boy's dreamy head and its mop of hair ... And now this large
bald skull pressed against these rough boards .
These distant memories drifted away. Everything became flat–
ter and lost its color. He seemed to be sinking into cold water. He
fell asleep - to wake up to the howl of sirens in the early-morning
gloom.
In the afternoon he was taken to the sick-bay bath. He sighed
as he examined his arms and his hollow chest. "Yes, old age is here
to stay," he thought to himself.
The guard, who was rolling a cigarette between his fingers,
went out for a moment, and the narrow-shouldered, pock-marked
prisoner who had been mopping the cement floor sidled over to Mos–
tovskoy.
"Yershov ordered me to tell you the news. The German offen–
sive in Stalingrad has been beaten off. The major told me to tell you
that everything is in order. And he wants you to write a leaflet and
pass it on when you have your next bath."
Mostovskoy wanted to say that he didn't have a pencil and
paper, but just then the guard came in.
As he was getting dressed, Mostovskoy felt a small parcel in his
pocket. It contained ten sugar lumps, some bacon fat wrapped up in
a piece of rag, some white paper and a pencil stub. He felt a sudden
happiness. What more could he want? How fortunate he was not to
have his life drawing to an end in trivial anxieties about indigestion,
heart attacks and sclerosis.
He clasped the sugar lumps and the pencil to his breast.
That night he was taken out of the sick-bay by an SS sergeant.
Gusts of cold wind blew into his face. He looked round at the sleep–
ing barracks and said to himself: "Don't worry, lads. You can sleep in
peace. Comrade Mostovskoy's got strong nerves - he won't give in."
They went through the doors of the administration building.
