He was to be shot at dawn. At dawn — this is great luck. There is still time.
He lay face down in complete darkness. Probably kicked to the door — thrown. The back was torn into meat and sprinkled with salt. The pain brought him out of his trance. Pain was an ally. The hands tied behind were numb.
He rolled onto his back, and the pain razed his mind. He was silent and came to his senses. He just forgot: leg. The left leg got under the horse. A horse was killed under him. He rested his right heel on the dirt floor and crawled his shoulders …
He pushed off again and controlled his breathing. He pulled up his leg, threw back his head, leaning on the top of his head, lifted his shoulders and moved himself.
After the tenth time, he began to roll over on his stomach. His heart was pounding in his throat. He writhed, scratching his knee, the right side of his chest, his head — he crawled.
The sentry sighed, swore, struck metal on the flint, getting a light, close, but outside, where the door is, in the direction of the legs.
He identified the wall of the shed. He moved himself along it. Moved on the right side, clinging to the boards. The point of the nail scratched his forehead.
The nail stuck out half an inch. For a long time he attached himself to him with his strapped wrists. As he turned, the black crack in his consciousness widened, and the pain drew him there. Without feeling with his hands, at the sound, he pulled the rope against the tip of the nail. Adapting himself, he tried to pluck the fibers in one place.
He sank into the roof, it started to rain. Good luck, very good luck.
The strands were worn more often thick. He released the tensed threads, trying to identify one, and tore it …
…Waking up, he continued. The last strand broke, but it was only one turn, and the rope did not weaken.
Now he adapted, it went faster … He managed to pick open, ruffle the rope on a nail, and it gave in more easily.
…He couldn’t tell the past tense when he freed his hands. He bit his swollen hands, licking his blood from his teeth, and his hands came to life.
Water was leaking under the wall. He drank from the puddle. He left some of the water by turning a few holes in the bottom of the puddle with his finger closer to the wall.
On all fours, pulling up his leg, he searched the barn. No pieces of iron, no chips … Fitted boards are durable.
The iron crutch sat dead in the post. Clenching his jaws, he rocked it, chipping his teeth.
With a crutch, he began to loosen the ground under the wall, where water flowed. He loosened the moistened earth with a crutch and raked it out with his hands. The hand could already be put out to the shoulder when the roosters crowed through the village. He had an hour before daylight. With rain — an hour and a half.
The sentry did not walk in the rain, but without sleep, the shag smoke could be felt.
In the dark, peeling off the dried scabs from his back, he climbed out into the wet weeds. Moderating his movements, checking every blade of grass in front of him, he silently crawled to the right to the river. Heading forward on a clayey steep, braking his slide with his outstretched arms, toes of his right foot and chin, he reached the shore.
There were no boats. None.
He moved on all fours along the water. The rain stopped and the cliff line stood out clearly.
He noticed a fragment of a log three sazhens away. I rolled it up, went down without a splash into the September water. Lying on the kolobakh with his chest, clasping it with his left hand, he pushed off from the bottom, quietly raking his right to the middle. Downstream, about a verst and a half, there was a forest on the other bank …
I know this history, and therefore the so-called difficulties are incomprehensible to me. My acquaintances call me an idealist, a naive optimist and a youth who does not know life. But the fact is, this man, a fighter of the 6th squadron of the 72nd Red Cavalry Regiment, was my great-grandfather.
I stole a photograph of him, a pre-revolutionary oval sepia, from my aunt’s family album and keep it on my desk. Those who see her for the first time do not hesitate not to note the similarity and ask who this person is to me. What is the secret (and not entirely secret, to be honest) the subject of some of my pride. He is twenty-one in the photograph, three more than I am now. He did not become much older — he died in the twentieth.