ANDREY PLATONOV
577
as he didn't turn out to be a coward or a fool. "That's bad," thought
Gershanovich. "If it kills me, the bullet won't hit
him
with much force; it
might damage the bone, nothing more--but he'll think he's been killed,
and he'll die from fright and consciousness."
Some time passed. Gershanovich had not yet got any sleep, but the
whole cell was ordered outside. Gershanovich was expecting this; he
knew from the first time that those designated to die were not kept long,
so the Germans would not have to give them food or water, so they
would not have to think about them at all and expend their minds to no
purpose.
For the second time in his life Gershanovich was going down the dark
stone steps to a death in the cellar. Among his comrades, men who were
going with him to destruction, he did not recognize one familiar face, and
from their speech he guessed that these people had recently been brought
from Poland.
A lance-corporal counted off eight men, including Gershanovich, who
was the second in line, and left the rest on the staircase.
The cellar was lit by the timid light of a solitary candle, and near the
light stood the officer who had interrogated Gershanovich. The officer, a
lover of firearms, was inspecting some sort of short-barelled rifle. "They're
always scrinlping and saving," thought Gershanovich. "But we mustn't. If
it takes two bullets to kill each German; it'll still be more than worth it!"
The lance-corporal began arranging the prisoners so the backs of their
heads were in line.
''I'm the seventh," Gershanovich reminded him in good time.
"You don't want to be the first to die?" asked the lance-corporal.
"Want to outsmart us, do you? Be the seventh to die then, as a privilege,
but put a brick under your feet, you're not tall enough."
Gershanovich put a brick under his feet and got up onto his place of
death. He looked at the eighth and last prisoner: in front of him was the
bald patch of an old man, covered with the down of infancy.
"It's going to be death," Osip Gershanovich understood. "But what of
it? I've not had a bad life here. If I end up in the next world, I'll get by as
best I can there, and things will be all right, and I'll see my children. But
if there's nothing there, that means I'll be like my dead children, the same
as them, and that too will be fair and just. Why am I living when my
heart's been killed and it's lying in the earth?"
"Ready?" asked the officer. "Breathe deeply!" he ordered, and then
promised the prisoners: "Now you'll each sleep the sweet sleep of a child!"
Gershanovich did the opposite. He stopped breathing and listened to
the silence that had set in, wanting to hear the shot for his own amuse–
ment, but he did not hear it and fell at once into sweet sleep: his kind
