The bells were dinging, buzzing, like only copper does, drawlingly, absorbing the whole plain. Silver distance was swinging, and the sun was mercilessly blazing in the eyes. It was so low that even the smell of burnt could be felt. But then, little by little the bells calmed down, as if someone was playing with them, and then completely cut some thin string.
Eugene remembered nothing dut this scene before the surgery. Now those bells woke him up almost every night. On opening his eyes, he mopped cold sweat from the forehead and all the thoughts again returned to the hospital. The day before the surgery professor Phakadze personally examined him. Not very tall, seeming too slow in his movements, he hardly resembled the famous surgeon, surrounded by legends for a long time. At the beginning, Eugene didn’t trust him that much. This time the surgeon took his radiogram in hands, but didn’t even looked at light. His glance fell somewhere outside the window, over the roofs across the street.
Finally he turned to me and if out of boredom:
– You need surgery… Surgery!
– I understand, – Eugene quietly replied.
– Agree?
- Will I get through?
- You will ...
No worrying or concern in Alexander Nazarovych voice. But in the nearby standing doctors’ eyes, in the sisters’ glances Eugene had noticed before: his disease was incurable. And Alexander Stepanovych Smohorzhevskyy, his Head of Department, while visitinh him, asked more about work than about health.
– You must bring it all together, – he said. – Nobody but you will do it. And the science won’t have the keys to a new theory for a long time ...
"Well, maybe Alexander Stepanovych is right – Eugene thought. - Someone did say that the death is placed at the end of life, to make it easier for us to get ready. Maybe, Alexander Stepanovych sees the torments I have to endure, and advised to work to distract a little from the pesky thoughts about the imminent end? .. "
And still there was hope! Somewhere beyond suspicion and conjectures the hope was warming me: it will come right, after the surgery, he will live. And now? Now there is no hope, no expectations. He definitely knows his illness. Nobody hasn’t survived yet with such one. It leads only to death. Hard death, in unbearable agony. And those bells that wake him at night approach it.
Strangely, Eugene’s mother woke him in the childhood . She just touched his chick with her warm hand and e woke up. - Get up, son ... Get up - she asked. - It's high time ...
For a while Eugene is still under the blanket, and the thoughts are far away from the village. Guys, his classmates, playing tags, and he, hiding in the tart wormwood, lays out his books .
In the sixth grade Eugene solved the tenth-grade tasks, and the seventh, he became interested in higher mathematics. Having perused one, than another textbook, he began to reflect on mathematical formulas. One day, together with his father – who was still alive – he visited Kyiv. His father got him to a professor. Professor questioned him on higher mathematics for a long time and finally advised them to apply to the university. There was such a case: Mykola Boholubov was became a student when he was barely fourteen.
Then, during the war, another voice woke Eugene. He broke into his dreams at dawn. A shot came first and then someone cried. And after an unknown was thunking under the windows. The door opened and two burst into the house – a policeman with a rifle and a German in uniform.
- Those who ran away from Kyiv. All of them… – the policeman husked – Get up! - He pulled the blanket off Eugene. – There will be work for you too ...
They were driven in barred carriages farther and farther to the. Just in Germany, at some junction, the cars with the men were detached and driven to the stone quarries. Where his mother and sister were taken, Eugene didn’t know. He only saw the mother desperately waving with her hands and bawling something. But he didn’t catch a single word behind the cries, behind people’s vociferous mourning.
Clinging to the bars, Eugene quietly wept. He wept without being ashamed of his tears. What will happen to them, his mother and sister?
What is waiting for them? It's just talk, about carrying them to some quarries. He heard about other quarries where people were burned. They are bayed to a cell, poisoned and sent to the oven.
– Don’t cry – a teacher from Pereyaslav touches Eugene shoulder. – You will meet once again! .. Anyway, the victory will be ours! You’ll come back home, enter the University, and there, the Academy isn’t far away. You’ll become a scientist, I can see your passion for science ... That’s mine who can’t be returned – may the earth lie light upon them.
– Thank you, Vasyl Myronovych! ..
– And I advise you to keep together - the teacher said. – It will be hard with such health as yours. And I, as you can see ...If only my legs withstand...
The rumors were confirmed: they were indeed brought to a stone quarry. From the car they could see a deep pit and at the bottom there were people, just like in the anthill. They smashed gray granite boulders with heavy hammers, and lifted them up with litters. Hammers knocking was constant. Only when a shrill whistle sounded, everything dyed away in the pit. And in a few minutes the quarry came to life again.
There were several pits nearby. But in this very one Eugene had to taste hellish toil. Two boys like him were taken to the shepherds. Maybe, if he had stood in that column, he would have got something easier. But Eugene followed Vasyl Myronovych. He already deeply respected this tall strong man who once served on the battleship "Sevastopol", and had been teaching Geography in Pereyaslav before the war. Why did Vasyl Myronovych fear for his feet? Because both were wounded. When building the school, the tree fell. But his gait is smooth. You will never say that he spent half a year in plaster. Just the weather makes it feel bad. The thing that excited Eugene the most was Vasyl Myronovych infinite knowledge. He managed to tell him not only about the "Sevastopol" transition from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea, about the ports he had visited, but also about great mathematicians. Evarist Galois’ story impressed Eugene the most. Eugene had had no idea when coming across in the books the name of the great Frenchman that he made his discovery, in fact, created a new theory in mathematics in the books that he had been at the age of twenty. And it was even funny, that Eugene imagined him in curly wig, descending to thin old man shoulders. Eugene didn’t know that Galois lived only for twenty-one year. He was wounded on a duel and soon died.
The work in the quarry began at sunrise. The guards arranged people and rose up to make it easier and safer to follow what is happening below. And below there was such a mess, that you’d better look out, so that the first available stone not hit you in the head. We worked in groups of four: two were waving with hammers, and two lifted the stones up. Then shifted. But you mustn’t be slow, the officers immediately noticed it and wrote down your number. One of them was mope-eyed, he even used with binoculars.
Vasyl Myronovych mostly worked with a hummer. For the first days he lifted several stretchers, and couldn’t sleep at night, the legs were hurting so badly. Eugene, on the contrary, couldn’t work with the hummer for long: something compressed his breast compressed and didn’t allow to breathe.
– Do not worry, guys, – Vasyl Myronovych said – I will squeal instead of you. You just lift. Don’t take a lot. Better to turn back once again.
Respite passed only when the blasting was carried out. Then all of us were taken out on top, and allowed to mend the clothes, talk to each other.
Once during such a break Eugene asked Vasyl Myronovych:
– Did you hear today, while separating?
– What?
– How the officers talked to each other?
– You know, I’m not good at German. As I can see, they were beaten bitterly in Stalingrad.
– They retreat...
– Really?! – I told you, the victory would be ours! Faster, faster to finish them ... but I also learned something. You remember, the last month they took somewhere thirty people from the fifth barracks? To some underground chemical plant. They say there is no return. Listen, maybe we will have to...
Then Eugene complained about his health for the first time. He told Vasyl Myronovych about the pain under the breast, in the stomach.
–The hardest is in the morning... Sometimes I can’t stand up.
– What can I advise you, – Vasyl Myronovych said sympathetically - try chewing a cracker, maybe it’s hunger pains. And load stretchers less.
After about six months, in the rainy autumn morning, a car drove straight to the barracks. A low, lumpy camp commandant, translator, and then, slowly, some serviceman quickly appeared. Tinted glasses sat firmly on his nose, a lit cigar stock out of his mouth. Only the cap showed that he was an officer, from head to toes he was covered in shiny black coat.
The camp commandant immediately ordered to line up everyone who lived in the barracks. As he commanded, it was felt: the one with a cigar in his mouth had a reason to come here. Who knows if he could see anything through the glasses, on walking twice in front of the line, he seemed to had looked in everyone’s soul. Then, put his hands behind his back, rocking from side to side, he came up to the commandant.
–The same as those thirty, chief lieutenant? – he said as to himself.
–I don’t understand...
– It’s much deeper at our place.
– They are all the same...
Eugene touched Vasyl Myronovych elbow, they were always standing together. Once, twice, and not turning his head, he whispered:
– The factory ...
Vasyl Myronovych whispered on. And at that moment the commandant already ordered:
– Thirty ... Forty ... Fifty – from the head of the column – he showed with his hand – three steps forward ... The rest – back to work.
Then the one in the dark glasses, said:
– Now you’ll work at another place. The cars will pick you up. – And, as if just remembered, he asked: - Maybe there are any engineers among you? Maybe anyone had been studying to be an engineer?
All were silent. Translator repeated the question once more. And then suddenly Vasyl Myronovych pushed Eugene forward.
– Go and tell him...
Confused, Eugene turned around but having met Vasyl Myronovych stern look he understood: it’s an order. He did not know how to get on, but subconsciously guessed – it’s his rescue. Vasyl Myronovych is saving his life
– How old are you? – the sunglasses approached Eugene.
– Sixteen – Eugene answered in German.
– Do you speak German?
– A little.
– Where had you been studying it?
– At school.
– Were you a student?
– No.
– Then what can you do at engineering?
– Calculate ...
– Engineering calculations require knowledge of higher mathematics. And you hadn’t even finished school. I’ll order to shoot you for cheating.
– I know higher mathematics ...
– Had you studied it on your own? – the commandant, seething with anger all the time, jumped, and smashed a fist in Eugene’s face as fiercely as he could.
Eugene staggered but did not fall. Blood flowed from the split opened lip .
– Give it up, chief lieutenant. Deliver him to his place, I’ll finish the conversation there.
Stepping the threshold of the commandant’s office, Eugene was still thinking about Vasyl Myronovych, about his forty nine fellows’ fat, for whom a sinister factory was waiting somewhere. Maybe it produces some gases, maybe even some secret weapon, so that no one comes out alive? But what does it change now? He will never see Vasyl Myronovych. Saying goodbye, their looks met once more, and this time there was no rigor in Vasyl Myronovych’s eyes. His large gray eyes were shining with cordial kindness under the fluffy eyebrows. "Goodbye, my friend. I'm happy for you!" – They were saying... "Farewell to you, my oldest friend. I will never forget you! .."
But what was waiting for him, for Eugene, in this office? Shooting for cheating? That could happen at the barracks. The other camp? But here, in these quarries, hard labor was really hard.
The commandant immediately ordered the guard to leave, and to Eugene – to come closer to the table in front of which in wide chair, never taking off his coat, sat the one in dark glasses. On a large sheet of paper he quickly wrote something. Then put the pencil, revised the written once again and raised his red, with sweaty bald spot head.
– You say can you calculate? Well, do you know Taylor’s formula?
– I do.
– Write – he threw the pencil at the edge of the table and slipped the paper.
Eugene remembered this formula well and wrote it in a blink. Suddenly, it seemed to him that he was not in the office of the commandant of the camp, in front of his their enemies, but at the usual examination, where he was asked, and he must answer something.
The dark glasses again stare at him.
– Well, and these tasks? .. – Another sheet appeared at the edge of the table.
These were the tasks on differential calculation. The first two were pretty simple, the third was complicated. But Eugene didn’t think over them for long. The only surprise was his not making any record. Sitting, watching at one spot on the wall, as if there were the solutions. Finally, as if in a dream, he heard:
– Well, too tough? ..
Eugene even flinched from these words. He didn’t understand at first what to do, and as the answers were ready, he wrote them under each task. Meanwhile , the sunglasses watched every figure, every mathematical sign.
– Are you a wunderkind? – the sunglasses asked.
– I don’t know.
– Who is your father? Where is he? At the front?
– There was a village teacher. He had died before the war.
– And your mother?
– Mother is here. We were brought together.
– So who taught you? – Finally the commandant burst, and there was more insult than surprise in his.
– On my own.
In the pause the sunglasses ordered:
Chief lieutenant, send him where I have said. Today ...
Eugene was carried in a closed car. They drove for a long time. There were several hewn granite slabs in the carriage box, it made the engine almost burst at climbs. Here it is again rove, buzzed and hushed. When the door opened, the first thing Eugene saw was the mountains of wire armature, among which, a small puffing locomotive was nimbly running. Behind the mountains, long, like barracks, squat buildings were appearing. All this seemed not to be guarded, because, having crossed almost all the territory of the wire kingdom, Eugene did not meet any soldier. And also he was led be the one in civil clothes. Without a single word, he silently passed Eugene to another one, who just asked, "Rus?". Eugene replied with a nod.
In a few days he realized that in was the plant of steel constructions. The workers here were also “the ostrabayters”, but they were working without guards. Their way to and from work they walked freely, without escort.
Eugene even liked the work. After the quarry it was like a paradise. In a small designing office, he was making the mathematical calculations, given by engineers.
Here at the plant, Eugene also met the departments of the Red Army. For a day or two, a gunfire was banging around, the planes crossed the sky, and the on the third day, with the first rays of the sun, the Soviet tanks passed the barracks.
Freedom! .. Long-awaited, hard won freedom! Perhaps, no feeling is more magical, no feeling brings such excitement, so much happiness. This night, again, maybe it was a dream, or perhaps delusions: Eugene heard a hoarse policeman’s voice: "Come on, get up ..." And now his heart is full of joy. It’s a holiday for him, the feast for all that run from the dump barracks and welcome their soldiers-liberators. But they are free here, meanwhile, a lot of his compatriots are dying of black abuse and injustice. Somewhere around? And maybe, just in a deep dungeon, not far away, Vasyl Myronovych is dying too.
Eugene saw the commander – very young captain, came up. In a nutshell told him about quarry chemical plant. He said that he knew German and would like to help in the search.
On the same day Eugene entered the soldier's family. Yeah, and the war will be over, and he will still remain in the command, helping the officers with his knowledge of German. He will search for his mother and sister, look for Vasyl Myronovych and thousands like them, to send home the true message to their gray-haired mothers.
(To be continued)