"When Starodomsky realized that he couldn't break through to the station," said Lazarev, "he and his friends mounted that machine-gun in the bushes by the fork and kept the enemy's motorized infantry back from the fortress. Think of it! Three of them alone, with hardly any cover, held up an avalanche of enemy troops! The people living round there say that the Germans had to use two batteries and their regimental mortars to crush them..."
We walked along the honeysuckle-covered fortress wall to the place where Yuzik had climbed into the fortress for the last time.
A yellowish biplane appeared over Dolzhetsky Forest and' flew over our heads, deafening us with the roar of its engine. "That must be the professor flying here from Lvov in answer to Elena Lukyanovna's call," I thought.
The sight of the aeroplane in the sky brought Maremukha's thoughts to something he had told me before we met Lazarev.
"There'll come a time," Petka said dreamily, "when you, Valerian Dmitrievich, will make a place of honour in your museum for yet another of our old school-friends."
"Who?"' Lazarev asked with interest.
"Alexander Bobir."
"I don't remember anyone of that name."
"How could you remember Bobir, if you could hardly remember us!" said Maremukha. "Bobir used to study at your school, then went on to the factory-training school. After that he went to the Azov Sea with us. While he was there, he got interested in flying. An airman came to their flying club and helped them put a damaged training plane in order, then up they went! Before we knew what was happening, Sasha was waving to us from the sky..."
"But that's hardly enough to gain him a place of honour in the museum," Lazarev said cautiously. "Hundreds of thousands of young people go in for flying nowadays."
"We don't mean that he ought to be remembered just for that first risky flight," Petka replied. "Sasha distinguished himself apart from that. In 1936 he volunteered to fight in Republican Spain. He flew in the 'snub-noses,' shot down two Savoias and three Junkers, I think, and was killed in an air battle over Teruel. There was an obituary about him in the Mundo Obrero. Some time afterwards I met a Spanish airman. A chap called Fernandez. Sasha had taught him to fly. Fernandez even showed me his photograph. There was our Sasha with his arm round that dark Spanish chap. Both of them in flying kit on the airfield. They were laughing. And there were mountains in the distance. What a pity I never asked Fernandez for that photograph! I could have given it to you."
"Don't frown, Petka," I said. "People meet each other in all kinds of places nowadays. Your Fernandez may be commanding a guerilla detachment somewhere right under Franco's nose. Perhaps he's still got that photograph with him. And perhaps there'll come a day when Fernandez and his guerillas will be able to show us Sasha's grave without fear of Franco's gendarmes..."
"If you do see his grave one day," Lazarev said, "be sure to bring me a handful of soil from it. I shall exhibit in the museum and write: 'Soil of Spain for whose freedom Alexander Bobir of Podolia shed his blood."
"Valerian Dmitrievich," Maremukha said after a pause, "get in touch with the Lvov historians. They'll tell you how the defenders of the Old Fortress liberated Lvov from the Nazis. The Urals tank men were the first to break through into the city. A tank man from the Urals, Alexander Marchenko, hoisted the red flag over the city hall of Lvov. All those facts would be very interesting for your museum. Make a special exhibition: 'Liberators of Podolia!' "
"Yes, that's quite a good idea," Lazarev agreed. "But as a matter of fact there were very few defenders of the Old Fortress left. Most of the garrison that Senior Lieutenant Stetsuk commanded were either killed or wounded. Those who were still fighting up to the last moment, when the First and Second Ukrainian fronts joined each other, were so tired that they had to go to the rear for a rest. Stetsuk, for example, as soon as he heard that the main forces of the Soviet Army had reached Podolia land the Nazis were shouting kaput, said to his comrades: 'Well, that'll do for now. We've done our job.' Then he
just dropped down on the wet earth under Karmeluk Tower and slept for fifteen hours without stirring. People tried to wake him, but it was no good. The brigade commander arrived, glanced at the sleeping man and said: 'Don't bother him, let him sleep. Even an eagle must rest sometimes.' "
"And what happened to Dima, Valerian Dmitrievich?" I asked.
"Dima was very unlucky," Lazarev replied. "On the last day of the defence a shell from a Tiger tank smashed the Archbishop Tower. Dima fell into the yard with the rest of the rubble, badly shell-shocked. He still can't say a word..."
"So it's for him the professor has been called in from Lvov?" I exclaimed. "Why didn't I think of it before!"
"Has he been called already? Oh, I am glad to hear that!" Lazarev said gladly.
"It may have been him who flew over just now," I said.
"Let's go and see Dima, what about it, Vasil?" Maremukha suggested suddenly.
"Yes, let's," I agreed. "If you're going to stay in town overnight, we've got plenty of time. Besides I know Elena Lukyanovna. She's in charge of his case, so I think she'll let us see him."
Lieutenant-Colonel Maremukha's truck whisked us down to the market, where we bought Dima some good things to eat—home-made pork sausage with a delicious smell of garlic and wood-smoke about it, eggs, a loaf of caraway bread, several fresh prickly cucumbers, butter wrapped in a damp pumpkin leaf, a bar of chocolate, and a bunch of fragrant dewy jasmine.
When Elena Lukyanovna saw us with all this she looked worried.
"What am I to do with you, I really don't know!" she exclaimed, spreading her arms. "The professor started examining Dima half an hour ago. Now he's gone out to telephone. He wants to get in touch with Leningrad. I can let you see the patient, but only for a minute."
We had expected to find a tough young dare-devil when we went to see Dima. That was how we had pictured the youngster from Siberia from the way Lazarev had described him. But before us, propped on his pillows, lay a very quiet, round-faced Russian lad smiling at us shyly.
The young hero looked at us with surprise and hope. Perhaps he thought we were professors from Leningrad, who had arrived so quickly on some specially fast plane.
To clear up the lad's bewilderment, Maremukha started telling him in an impressive bass voice who we were and why we had come to see him.
Dima's round face glowed with pleasure when he heard that Petka was lieutenant-colonel from the same tank corps in which Dima had fought his way into Podolia. He struggled into a sitting position and offered first Maremukha then me an unnaturally pale but still boyish hand with blue veins showing through the skin. To make us understand that he could not speak, Dima waved his hand in front of his mouth.
"Everything'll be all right, Dima, don't get downhearted!" I comforted him. "Scientists nowadays can restore the sight of people who have been blind for years, they'll find a way of curing you."
"Well, will you mistake a stuffed model in a museum for a live goat next time?" Maremukha asked smiling.
The lad wrinkled his smooth forehead in an effort to remember. A stubborn line appeared over the bridge of his nose... And suddenly Dima remembered the funny incident and laughed.
Steps sounded in the corridor. A tall man in a white gown entered the ward with the manner of one who feels himself at home in any hospital atmosphere, lit was the professor from Lvov. We moved away from the bed.
The professor glanced sideways at us and started examining an X-ray photograph. Elena Lukyanovna, who had followed him into the ward, stood respectfully at the head of the bed, holding cotton wool and test tubes.
"Now we shall test his responses," said the professor in a voice that sounded very familiar to me.