Doctor Zhivago - Boris Pasternak [205]
The noise of the distant battle barely reached the thick of the camp. Suddenly several shots rang out in the forest. They followed each other in quick succession and all at once turned into rapid, disorderly gunfire. Those surprised in the place where the shooting was heard dashed off in all directions. Men from the camp reserves ran to their carts. Turmoil ensued. Everyone began to put themselves into military readiness.
Soon the turmoil died down. It turned out to be a false alarm. But now again people began streaming towards the place where the shooting had been. The crowd grew. New people joined those already there.
The crowd surrounded a bloody human stump that was lying on the ground. The mutilated man was still breathing. He had had his right arm and left leg chopped off. It was inconceivable how, with his remaining arm and leg, the wretch had managed to crawl to the camp. The chopped off arm and leg, terrible, bloody lumps, were tied to his back, as was a wooden plank with a long inscription which, among choice curses, said that this had been done in revenge for the atrocities of such-and-such Red detachment, to which the partisans of the Forest Brotherhood had no relation. Besides which, it was added that the same would be done to all of them, unless the partisans submitted by the term stated and laid down their arms before the representatives of the troops of Vitsyn’s corps.
Bleeding profusely, faltering, with a weak voice and a thick tongue, losing consciousness every moment, the mangled, suffering man told of the tortures and ordeals in the court-martial and punitive units to the rear of General Vitsyn. The hanging to which he had been condemned had been replaced, in the guise of mercy, by cutting off his arm and leg and sending him to the partisan camp to terrify them. He had been carried as far as the advance posts of the camp’s sentry line, then put on the ground and told to crawl by himself, while they urged him on from a distance by firing in the air.
The tortured man could barely move his lips. To make out his indistinct mumbling, they bent down and leaned over him to listen. He was saying:
“Watch out, brothers. He’s broken through you.”
“We’ve sent a covering detachment. There’s a big fight there. We’ll hold him.”
“A breakthrough. A breakthrough. He wants to do it unexpectedly. I know. Aie, I can’t go on, brothers. See, I’m losing blood, I’m spitting blood. It’s all over for me.”
“Lie there, catch your breath. Keep quiet. Don’t let him talk, you brutes! You see it’s bad for him.”
“He didn’t leave a living spot on me, the bloodsucker, the dog. You’ll bathe in your own blood for me, he says, tell me who you are. And how can I tell him, brothers, when I’m a real diselter if there ever was one. Yes. I went over from him to you.”
“You keep saying ‘him.’ Which of them worked on you like this?”
“Aie, brothers, my insides are on fire. Let me catch my breath a little. I’ll tell you right now. The ataman Bekeshin. Colonel Strese. Vitsyn’s men. You here in the forest don’t know anything. There’s groaning in the city. They boil iron out of living people. They cut living people up for straps. They drag you who knows where by the scruff of the neck. It’s pitch-dark. You feel around—it’s a cage, a railroad car. More than forty people in just their underwear. The cage keeps opening and a paw comes in. The first one it falls on. Out he goes. Same as a chicken to be slaughtered. By God. One gets hanged, another gets a bayonet, another gets interrogated. They beat you to a pulp, sprinkle salt on your wounds, pour boiling water over you. If you puke or shit your pants, they make you eat it. And what they do with little kids, with women—oh, Lord!”
The wretched man was at his last gasp. He did not finish, cried out, and gave up the ghost. Somehow they all understood it at once and began taking their hats off and crossing themselves.
In the evening more news, much more horrible than this, spread through the camp.
Pamphil Palykh had been