A bunch of submachine-gunners popped up out of a dug-out and I slowed down purposely so they would see I had a major with me.
They started shouting and waving their arms to show me I mustn't go on, but I pretended not to understand and roared off at about eighty.
Before they realised what was happening and opened fire I was on no man's land, weaving round the shellholes no worse than any hare.
"There were the Germans firing from behind, and then our own chaps got fierce and had a smack at me from the front.
Put four bullets through the wind-screen and riddled the radiator. But not far away I spotted a little wood near a lake, and some of our chaps running towards the car, so I drove into. wood and got out. Then I fell on the ground and kissed it. I could hardly breathe.
"A young fellow, with a kind of khaki shoulderstraps on his tunic I'd never seen before, reached me first and says with a grin:
'Aha, you Fritzy devil, lost your way, eh?'
I tore off my German tunic, threw the German cap down at my feet, and I says to him:
'You lovely young kid.
Sonny-boy!
Me a Fritz when I was born and bred in Voronezh!
I was prisoner-of-war, see?
And now unhitch that fat hog sitting in the car, take his briefcase and escort him to your commander.'
I handed over my pistol and was passed from one person to the next until by the evening I had to report to the colonel in command of the division.
By that time I had been fed and taken to the bath-house and questioned, and given a new uniform, so I went to the colonel's dug-out in ptoper order, clean in body and soul, and properly dressed.
The colonel got up from his table, and came over to me, and in front of all the officers there, he kissed me and said:
'Thank you, soldier, for the fine gift you brought us.
Your major and his briefcase have told us more than any twenty Germans we might capture on the front line.
I shall recommend you for a decoration.'
His words and the affection he showed, moved me so much I couldn't keep my lips from trembling, and all I could say was:
'Comrade Colonel, I request to be enrolled in infantry unit.'
"But the colonel laughed and slapped me on the shoulder.
'What kind of a fighter do you think you'd make when you can hardly stand on your feet?
I'm sending you off to hospital straightaway.
They'll patch you up there and put some food inside you, and after that you'll go home to your family for a month's leave, and when you come back to us, we'll think out where to put you.'
"The colonel and all the officers that were in the dug-out with him shook hands and said good-bye to me, and I went out with my head spinning because in the two years I'd been away I'd forgotten what it was like to be treated like a human being.
And mind you, mate, it was a long time before I got out of the habit of pulling my head down into my shoulders when I had to talk to the high-ups, as if I was still scared of being hit.
That was the training we got in those fascist camps.
"As soon as I got into hospital I wrote Irina a letter.
I told her in a few words all about how I was taken prisoner and how I escaped with the German major.
Just what made me boast like a kid, I couldn't tell you.
Why, I couldn't even hold back from saying the colonel had promised to recommend me for a medal.. ..
"For a couple of weeks I just slept and ate.
They fed me up a little at a time, but often; if they'd given me all the food I wanted, so the doctor said, I might have gone under.
But after two weeks was up, I couldn't look at food.
There was no reply from home and, I must admit, I began to get mopy.
Couldn't think of eating, sleep wouldn't come to me, and all kinds of bad thoughts kept creeping into my head. In the third week I got a letter from Voronezh.
But it wasn't from Irina, it was from a neighbour of mine, a joiner.
I wouldn't wish anyone to get a letter like that.
He wrote that the Germans had bombed the aircraft factory, and my cottage had got a direct hit with a heavy bomb.
Irina and the girls were at home when it dropped. There was nothing left, he wrote, only a deep hole where the house had been .... At first I couldn't finish reading that letter.
Everything went dark before my eyes and my heart squeezed into a tight little ball so that I thought it would never open up again.
I lay back on my bed and got a bit of strength back, then I read to the end.
My neighbour wrote that Anatoly had been in town during the bombing.
In the evening he went to the spot where his home had been, took one look at the hole and went back to town the same night.
All he told my neighbour, before he went, was that he was going to volunteer for the front.
"When my heart eased up and I heard the blood rushing in my ears, I remembered how Irina had clung to me when we parted at the station.
That woman's heart of hers must have known all along we were not to see each other again in this world.
And I had pushed her away .... Once I had a family, a home of my own, it had all taken years to build, and it was all destroyed in a flash, and I was left all alone.
It must be a dream, I thought, this messed-up life of mine.