第 31 页

One of the prisoners, with skin as yellow as a lemon, rushed at Pavel in a transport of joy. It was Samuel Lekher, one of the compositors from the Shepetovka printshop.

Pavel's face turned grey as he listened to Samuel's account of the bloody tragedy enacted in his native town and the words seared his heart like drops of molten metal.

"They took us at night, all of us at once. Some scoundrel had betrayed us to the military gendarmes. And once they had us in their clutches they showed no mercy. They beat us terribly,Pavel. I suffered less than the others because after the first blows I lost consciousness. But the others were stronger than me.

"We had nothing to hide. The gendarmes knew everything better than we did. They knew every step we had taken, and no wonder, for there had been a traitor among us. I can't talk about those days, Pavel. You know many of those who were taken. Valya Bruzzhak, and Rosa Gritsman, a fine girl just turned seventeen—such trusting eyes she had, Pavel! Then there was Sasha Bunshaft,you know him, one of our typesetters, a merry lad, always drawing caricatures of the boss. They took him and two Gymnasium students, Novoselsky and Tuzhits—you remember them too most likely. The others too were local people or from the district centre. Altogether twenty-nine were arrested, six of them women. They were all brutally tortured. Valya and Rosa were raped the first day. Those swine outraged the poor things in every possible way, then dragged them back to the cell more dead than alive. Soon after that Rosa began to rave and a few days later she was completely out of her mind.

"They didn't believe that she was insane, they said she was shamming and beat her unmercifully every time they questioned her. She was a terrible sight when they finally shot her. Her face was black with bruises, her eyes were wild, she looked like an old woman.

"Valya Bruzzhak was splendid to the very end. They all died like real fighters. I don't know how they had the strength to endure it all. Ah, Pavel, how can I describe their death to you? It was too horrible.

"Valya had been doing the most dangerous kind of work: she was the one who had contact with the wireless operators at the Polish headquarters and with our people in the district centre, besides which they found two grenades and a pistol when they searched her place. The grenades had been given to her by the provocateur. Everything had been framed so as to charge them with intending to blow up the headquarters.

"Ah, Pavel, it is painful for me to speak of those last days, but since you insist I shall tell you. The military court sentenced Valya and two others to be hanged, the rest to be shot. The Polish soldiers who had worked with us were tried two days earlier. Corporal Snegurko, a young wireless operator who had worked in Lodz as an electrician before the war, was charged with treason and with conducting Communist propaganda among the soldiers and sentenced to be shot. He did not appeal, and was shot twenty-four hours after the sentence.

"Valya was called in to give evidence at his trial. She told us afterwards that Snegurko pleaded guilty to the charge of conducting Communist propaganda but vigorously denied that he had betrayed his country. 'My fatherland,' he said, 'is the Polish Soviet Socialist Republic. Yes, I am a member of the Communist Party of Poland. I was drafted into the army against my will, and once there I did my best to open the eyes of other men like myself who had been driven off to the front.

You may hang me for that, but not for being a traitor to my fatherland, for that I never was and never will be. Your fatherland is not my fatherland. Yours is the fatherland of the gentry, mine is the workers' and peasants' fatherland. And in my fatherland, which will come—of that I am deeply convinced—no one will ever call me a traitor.'

"After the trial we were all kept together. Just before the execution we were transferred to the jail.

During the night they set up the gallows opposite the prison beside the hospital. For the shooting they chose a place near a big ditch over by the forest not far from the road. A common grave was dug for us.

"The sentence was posted up all over town so that everyone should know of it. The Poles decided to hold a public execution to frighten the population. From early morning they began driving the townsfolk to the place of execution. Some went out of curiosity, terrible though it was. Before long they had a big crowd collected outside the prison wall. From our cell we could hear the hum of voices. They had stationed machine guns on the street behind the crowd, and brought up mounted and foot gendarmes from all parts of the area. A whole battalion of them surrounded the streets and vegetable fields beyond. A pit had been dug beside the gallows for those who were to be hanged.

"We waited silently for the end, now and then exchanging a few words. We had talked everything over the night before and said our good-byes. Only Rosa kept whispering to herself over in one corner of the cell. Valya, after all the beatings and outrages she had endured, was too weak to move and lay still most of the time. Two local Communist girls, sisters they were, could not keep back the tears as they clung to one another in their last farewell. Stepanov, a young man from the country, a strapping lad who had knocked out two gendarmes when they came to arrest him, told them to stop. 'No tears, Comrades! You may weep here, but not out there. We don't want to give those bloody swine a chance to gloat. There won't be any mercy anyway. We've got to die, so we might as well die decently. We won't crawl on our knees.

Remember, Comrades, we must meet death bravely.'

"Then they came for us. In the lead was Szwarkowski, the Intelligence Chief, a mad dog of a sadist if there ever was one. When he didn't do the raping himself he enjoyed watching his gendarmes do it. We were marched to the gallows across the road between two rows of gendarmes, 'canaries' we called them on account of their yellow shoulder-knots. They stood there with their sabres bared.

"They hurried us through the prison yard with their rifle butts and made us form fours. Then they opened the gates and led us out into the street and stood us up facing the gallows so that we should see our comrades die as we waited for our turn to come. It was a tall gallows made of thick logs.

Three nooses of heavy rope hung down from the crosspiece and under each noose was a platform with steps supported by a block of wood that could be kicked aside. A faint murmur rose from the sea of people which rocked and swayed. All eyes were fixed on us. We recognised some of our people in the crowd.

"On a porch some distance away stood a group of Polish gentry and officers with binoculars. They had come to see the Bolsheviks hanged.

"The snow was soft underfoot. The forest was white with it, and it lay thick on the trees like cotton fluff. The whirling snowflakes fell slowly, melting on our burning faces, and the steps of the gallows were carpeted with snow. We were scantily dressed but none of us felt the cold. Stepanov did not even notice that he was walking in his stockinged feet.

"Beside the gallows stood the military prosecutor and senior officers. At last Valya and the two other comrades who were to be hanged were led out of the jail. They walked all three arm-in-arm, Valya was in the middle supported by the other two for she had no strength to walk alone. But she did her best to hold herself erect, remembering Stepanov's words: 'We must meet death bravely, Comrades!' She wore a woollen jacket but no coat.

"Szwarkowski evidently didn't like the idea of them walking arm-in-arm for he pushed them from behind. Valya said something and one of the mounted gendarmes slashed her full force across the face with his whip. A woman in the crowd let out a frightful shriek and began struggling madly in an effort to break through the cordon and reach the prisoners, but she was seized and dragged away. It must have been Valya's mother. When they were close to the gallows Valya began to sing. Never have I heard a voice like that—only a person going to his death could sing with such feeling. She sang the Warszawianka, and the other two joined in. The mounted guards lashed out in a blind fury with their whips, but the three did not seem to feel the blows. They were knocked down and dragged to the gallows like sacks. The sentence was quickly read and the nooses were slipped over their heads. At that point we began to sing:

Arise, ye prisoners of starvation. . . .

"Guards rushed at us from all sides and I just had time to see the blocks knocked out from under the platforms with rifle butts and the three bodies jerking in the nooses. .. .

"The rest of us had already been put to the wall when it was announced that ten of us had had our sentences commuted to 20 years' imprisonment. The other sixteen were shot."

Samuel clutched convulsively at the collar of his shirt as if he were choking.

"For three days the bodies hung there in the nooses. The gallows were guarded day and night.

After that a new batch of prisoners was brought to jail and they told us that on the fourth day the rope that held the corpse of Comrade Toboldin, the heaviest of the three, had given way. After that they removed the other two and buried them all.

"But the gallows was not taken down. It was still standing when we were brought to this place. It stood there with the nooses waiting for fresh victims."

Samuel fell silent staring with unseeing eyes before him, but Pavel was unaware that the story had ended. The three bodies with the heads twisted horribly to one side swayed silently before his eyes.

The bugle sounding the assembly outside brought Pavel to himself with a start.

"Let's go, Samuel," he said in a barely audible voice.

A column of Polish prisoners was being marched down the street lined with cavalry. At the prison gates stood the Regimental Commissar writing an order on his notepad.

"Comrade Antipov," he said, handing the slip of paper to a stalwart squadron commander, "take this, and have all the prisoners taken under cavalry escort to Novograd-Volynsky. See that the wounded are given medical attention. Then put them on carts, drive them about twenty versts from the town and let them go. We have no time to bother with them. But there must be no maltreatment of prisoners."

Mounting his horse, Pavel turned to Samuel. "Hear that?" he said. "They hang our people, but we have to escort them back to their own side and treat them nicely besides. How can we do it?"

The Regimental Commissar turned and looked sternly at the speaker. "Cruelty to unarmed prisoners," Pavel heard him say as if speaking to himself, "will be punished by death. We are not Whites!"

As he rode off, Pavel recalled the final words of the order of the Revolutionary Military Council which had been read out to the regiment:

"The land of the workers and peasants loves its Red Army. It is proud of it. And on that Army's banners there shall not be a single stain."

"Not a single stain," Pavel whispered.

At the time the Fourth Cavalry Division took Zhitomir, the 20th Brigade of the Seventh Rifle Division forming part of a shock corps under Comrade Golikov was crossing the Dnieper River in the area of Okuninovo village.

Another corps, which consisted of the 25th Rifle Division and a Bashkir Cavalry brigade, had orders to cross the Dnieper and straddle the Kiev-Korosten railway at Irsha Station. This manoeuvre would cut off the Poles' last avenue of retreat from Kiev.

It was during the crossing of the river that Misha Levchukov of the Shepetovka Komsomol organisation perished. They were running over the shaky pontoon bridge when a shell fired from somewhere beyond the steep bank opposite whined viciously overhead and plunged into the water,ripping it to shreds. The same instant Misha disappeared under one of the pontoons. The river swallowed him up and did not give him back. Yakimenko, a fair-haired soldier in a battered cap, cried out: "Mishka! Hell, that was Mishka! Went down like a stone, poor lad!" For a moment he stared horrified into the dark water, but the men running up from behind pushed him on: "What're you gaping there for, you fool. Get on with you!" There was no time to stop for anyone. The brigade had fallen behind the others who had already occupied the right bank of the river.

It was not until four days later that Sergei learned of Misha's death. By that time the brigade had captured Bucha Station, and turning in the direction of Kiev, was repulsing furious attacks by the Poles who were attempting to break through to Korosten.

Yakimenko threw himself down beside Sergei in the firing line. He had been firing steadily for some time and now he had difficulty forcing back the bolt of his overheated rifle. Keeping his head carefully lowered he turned to Sergei and said: "Got to give her a rest. She's red hot!"

Sergei barely heard him above the din of the shooting.

When the noise subsided somewhat, Yakimenko remarked as if casually: "Your comrade got drowned in the Dnieper. He was gone before I could do anything." That was all he said. He tried the bolt of his rifle, took out another clip and applied himself to the task of reloading.

The Eleventh Division sent to take Berdichev encountered fierce resistance from the Poles. A bloody battle was fought in the streets of the town. The Red Cavalry advanced through a squall of machine-gun fire. The town was captured and the remnants of the routed Polish forces fled. Trains were seized intact in the railway yards.

But the most terrible disaster for the Poles was the exploding of an ammunition dump which served the whole front. A million shells went up in the air. The explosion shattered window panes into tiny fragments and caused the houses to tremble as if they were made of cardboard.

The capture of Zhitomir and Berdichev took the Poles in the rear and they came pouring out of Kiev in two streams, fighting desperately to make their way out of the steel ring encircling them.

Swept along by the maelstrom of battle, Pavel lost all sense of self these days. His individuality merged with the mass and for him, as for every fighting man, the word "I" was forgotten; only the word "we" remained: our regiment, our squadron, our brigade.

Events developed with the speed of a hurricane. Each day brought something new.

Budyonny's Cavalry Army swept forward like an avalanche, striking blow after blow until the entire Polish rear was smashed to pieces. Drunk with the excitement of their victories, the mounted divisions hurled themselves with passionate fury at Novograd-Volynsky, the heart of the Polish rear. As the ocean wave dashes itself against the