When the Runner started up out of his sleep, it was night already. The dressing-station seemed deserted. Only from one tent was there the sound of foreign words and drunken laughter. He was cold. His bare feet were frozen. The coat, which stank of disinfectant, only covered his top half. Far in the distance, flares were playing about in the sky. He felt abandoned, and wanted to get up. When he heard tapping steps, he pulled the coat over his face. The steps came closer. Someone stopped next to him. He held his breath. Straight away, he felt the pain at the back of his head come back. There was a burning in his chest. He was afraid. A hand fingered his coat, and peeled it back.
‘Zostchenko?’ whispered a woman’s voice. It sounded like a sob.
He held his breath, and tried not to make a sound. The sobbing went away. Crazy woman, he thought. Up in the sky, the flares beckoned. Since no one was guarding him, he stood up. With difficulty and pain. The foreign sounds in the tent told him what to do. He wanted to go back. Back where they spoke his language. He tottered rather than walked. With every step, spikes drilled into his knees. His breath pounded. He had to take his time. In the blackness, the railway embankment whose course he followed was his only guide. It was like a black wall. His bare foot banged into metal. He jumped, and then remembered the cannon that had to be positioned hereabouts. The danger of being discovered caused him to forget his pain. He wondered whether he should throw away his coat. If he fell into their hands wearing the coat, he was done for. But he didn’t have his tunic any more, and it was cold. Perhaps in the Russian coat they wouldn’t spot him for an enemy immediately. He had to consider all the possibilities.
The sky began to pale. Now he had to redouble his caution. When he recognized the guns, he felt some relief: at least he was going the right way. He heard footsteps. Once, he saw a little light as well. He crawled along the ground, and had the feeling he would never reach the end of the position. The row of guns was going on for ever. His worry made him foolish. He stood up and ran. Even though he had the salty taste of sweat on his lips, he felt cold shudders of panic across his back. He had felt the same way when he’d had to take messages across the swamp at night.
‘Stoi!’
The sentry’s call struck him like a blow. His feet stuck to the earth. With a jerk, he moved off. He conquered every obstacle. Shrubbery, barbed wire, a pile of ammunition. He cursed the pallor of the sky and waited for the bullets that must surely come. When he noticed that he had no more strength, he gave himself up to his fate. Mechanically he pitched one foot in front of the other. He walked very slowly. But everything behind him remained quiet, no one was coming after him. At last, he dared to stop and rest. With panting breath, he hunkered down on the ground. His hands trembled. Then a fresh shock: the play of the flares was stopped. Lost, then; hopelessly, irredeemably lost. Suddenly he giggled like a child. He’d forgotten about the embankment. In the lee of the slope, it wasn’t surprising that he couldn’t see the flares. He crawled stubbornly up it. When he saw the flickering lightnings again, he calmed down. It was like the promise of home after a stormy sea-crossing. With relief, he slithered back down the slope. The wounds on his legs had opened up again. Blood dripped caressingly on his feet. He didn’t take the time to see to them. He had the feeling he could hear a stream. Suspiciously, leaking in all directions, he ran on. The water sounds grew louder. A river must cross this path. He wanted to be certain. But then he realized it was no water-rushing, but the stifled murmuring of many men. He listened. He wanted to yell out: German voices! But straight away his suspicion was alerted again. He could be mistaken. Another word he understood! He crept on, doubled over. A bush blocked his view. He pushed the branches aside: a sluggishly moving crowd of men. Tired, swaying figures, talking in his language. He felt miserable. Prisoners. Living dead, disappearing into the darkness.
He decided to stop playing the hunted animal, and bring a bit of method into his escape. First of all, he had to get hold of a weapon. He climbed back up the steep slope. The place where they had thrown him down must be somewhere around here. Also the shelter where they interrogated him couldn’t be far. If he managed to surprise a sentry . . .
‘Kto a kto!’
The Runner recalled a shout he had once heard. ‘Si! Ajo!’ he called back. His coat and the dark made him safe.
‘Ajo!’ the sentry’s voice came back like an echo.
The sentry stood directly above him on the slope. Instinctively, his hands groped upwards, grabbed two ankles and pulled, hard. The body above him fell. He sprang aside, not wanting to roll down the slope with the Russian. All he cared about was the weapon. He got up the little promontory where the sentry had stood, and felt all over the ground. There was no hurry in his movements. He had time. He was certain he would find a rifle here. And he found it. He thought, now I have the gun, and the sentry is at my mercy. If I kill him now, it’s murder, because the gun is already in my possession. If I didn’t have it yet, it would be self-defence. As he inspected the rifle, the sentry came crawling back up the slope. Silently, oddly enough. Presumably, he had failed to understand. In the darkness, the Runner could see no more than an unclear shadow approaching him. He took aim. It would be a lesson to him. He shot past him. The Russian started yelling out loud. Let him shout . . .
The Runner turned: the hollow lay before him like a dark carpet. Lightnings flashed across it. Red and white lights lit up and went out, and changed places. They reminded him of station platforms at night. He felt as if he were on a railway overpass, facing the forest of signals. The yelling sentry recalled him to reality. They’re not going to get me, thought the Runner.
He looked back over to the sector where the flares were going up. He noticed that there was part of it that always remained dark. A gap in the system of signal lights. As if part of the line were out of commission. That was the part he made for. Dropping from the ridge into a wilderness of brush. The ground gave way under his feet. He pattered across a thick carpet. A sign that he was nearing the swamp. Among the shrubbery, he thought he recognized the outline of a ruined hut. Then another, squatter, outline. Suddenly he knew what they were: tanks. He had stumbled into an outpost. There must be a sentry standing somewhere in the darkness. A tingling feeling of unease warned him. Cautiously he approached one of the monsters, to wait in its shelter for the sentry to betray his presence by a sound. Leaning against the chill metal, he heard the deep breathing of a sleeping man, coming from inside the colossus. A flap must have been left open. Strange that he could wait here so calmly, his hand on the steel of a weapon whose apparition had always thrown him into panic. He had the feeling he had better do something to the sleeping monster. Like a child out for revenge, he stuffed some earth into the exhaust pipe. He was too enfeebled to do anything worse. In spite of that, he felt great satisfaction.
In the dim light of a flare, he had his first view of the height from the enemy’s point of view. A great formation of earth, leaning menacingly over them. He understood how they could have fought over it so desperately. It wouldn’t be long till he reached the front line. Craters gaped in the ground. There was a sweetish corpse smell in the air. His feet sank into the mire. He remembered the coat, and tossed it in a puddle. A few steps further, and he was in the wire entanglements. No sound. His own position was abandoned, the trench, the sap-labyrinth, the machine-gun nests. He clutched his rifle to his chest, and crept forward. Finally, the trench. With the feeling of liberation, he leaped into it. The only men lying around were dead. He was too exhausted to check whether the NCO was among them. He had the feeling he might have suffered in vain – fear, flight, humiliation, wounds, more flight. If the NCO had escaped with his life, he could have saved himself the trouble . . .
He took the coat off a dead man, the tunic and the boots. Tricked out in a complete suit of dead men’s clothes, he reeled on his way. To where he guessed the front line was presently.