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18 WWW.UNWLA.ORG “НАШЕ ЖИТТЯ”, ЛЮТИЙ 2015 soldier. When we had to retreat from—Lord for- give me, but I no longer remember the name of that place—I was left behind in the trenches. I was asleep, dead to the world. None of the ones who were retreating woke me up. Because at times like that it’s as if someone had startled a flock of birds—everyone flees wherever his eyes take him, and no one thinks about anybody else. I must have been sleeping on my knees, because when I finally awoke I was kneeling in the trench. It was the silence that woke me. Would to God I had never awoken! Then I crawled farther along the trench- es looking for my comrades. But I did not find anyone; it was deserted and quiet everywhere. I roared with grief, because they had left me by myself. Oh, Mariya, Mariya, you don’t know what it means to be a lone soldier in a war. What grief means... I was left, as it seemed to me, all alone in the country of my enemy. Who was to be my comrade now? Can you not guess? But I’m not complaining. I finally crawled out of the trenches of the reserve army... But... you don’t have to know everything, and I don’t have enough time. I have a little less than two hours to live, and I want to spend my last two hours in this world with you. I wandered around everywhere, without being noticed by anyone; I was searching for my regiment, for my comrades; I went without food, but I avoided the enemy, for I did not want to fall into their hands. But I was not thinking about my life then, just as I was not thinking about it when bullets fell like hail around me. I was accustomed to bullets; I walked about in them as one walks in the rain. But that was nothing, my dear wife. When you were giving birth to our seven children—to our first, our second, our third, and then finally to that seventh one—did you think about your life? You did what you had to do, what could not be done differently. The same is true of a soldier at war. A man does not think. He trembles, deafened by the roar of canons; he goes numb amidst the terrible roaring... shrieking... howling... and nothing mat- ters to him. He only wants to push forward—ever faster and faster—the power that lies in the steel. Always more and more. Here a man is not what he was at home, Mariya. Here, a man is... is—I know this only now, since I have been looking death in the eyes so of- ten, without feeling any fear—a man is nothing, my wife. You don’t know this. Something other than us is at work here. Here steel is at work, and the soldier is nothing, and the man he used to be at home is nothing, and many hundreds and thousands—they are all nothing. And God... Oh, Mariya! Was it I that screamed? Or was it your voice that found its way to my ear... that broke my heart? Mariyka! Later, our soldiers found me in those trenches from which they had been forced to re- treat. I was so weak from hunger I could hardly stand, because for all those days I had eaten al- most nothing. In my chest pocket I had a lump of my na- tive soil; my father had tucked it into the bosom of my coat when we were parting for the last time, saying: “If you should fall in battle in a foreign land, this native soil will lie on your breast and lead you to God himself. It is holy.” Now they have taken my native soil away from me, pulled my weapons from my shoulders, placed me under guard, and brought me before a military tribunal. I did not know what I was guilty of. The hunger and the worry made me as weak and helpless as a child. Was it because I fell asleep when they were retreating from the trenches, and perhaps because, as a result of this, I saved myself from the enemy? I wanted to defend myself, but I did not understand their language too well, just as they could not understand mine. A military tribunal is merciless, swift—like a blazing rifle. It does not ask questions; it only fires. It may strike you, or it may not; that’s why it’s a rifle. And I and my ma- ternal language—we both suddenly felt the ground give way beneath our feet. Something happened; a few words were spoken in a foreign tongue—and both I and my language drowned... Hush, Mariyka, hush! I understood what they told me. I will be shot for treason. No one understood my language. It was so foreign and so neglected. But then, who even lis- tened to it? It means nothing to foreigners. But did I mean anything to them? I will be shot—for treason. I have nothing more to say. I’m prepared. It is a good thing that I will close my eyes. It is your eyes and the eyes of our children that will see what the future will bring, for I have not lived to see anything, except perhaps, that I
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