The lieutenant-colonel made a speech.
My Anatoly's friends were wiping their tears, but I couldn't cry. I reckon the tears dried up in my heart.
Perhaps that's why it still hurts so much.
"I buried my last joy and hope in that foreign German soil, the battery fired a volley to send off their commander on his long journey, and something seemed to snap inside me. When I got back to my unit I was a different man.
Soon after that I was demobbed.
Where was I to go?
To Voronezh?
Not for anything!
I remembered I had a friend who had been invalided out of the army back in the winter and was living in Uryupinsk; he had asked me to come and live with him once. So I went.
"My friend and his wife had no children. They lived in a cottage of their own on the edge of the town.
He had a disability pension, but he worked as a driver in a lorry depot and I got a job there too.
I settled with my friend and they gave me a home.
We used to drive various loads about the suburbs and in the autumn we switched over to grain delivery work.
It was then I got to know my new son, the one that's playing down there in the sand.
"First thing you'd do when you got back from a long trip would be to go to a cafe for a bite of something, and, of course, you'd put away a glass of vodka to get rid of your tiredness.
It's a bad habit, hut I had quite a liking for it by that time, I must acimit. Well, one day I noticed this lad near the caf', and the next day I noticed him again.
What a little ragamuffin he was! His face all smeared with watermelon juice and dust, dirty as anything, hair all over the place, but he'd got a pair of eyes like stars at night, after it's been raining!
And I felt so fond of him that, funny though it may seem, I started missing him, and I'd hurry to finish my run so I could get back to the cafe and see him sooner.
That's where he got his food, he ate what people gave him.
"The fourth day I came in straight from the state farm with my lorry loaded with grain and pulled in at the caf'.
There was my little fellow sitting on the steps, kicking his legs, and pretty hungry by the look of him.
I poked my head out of the window and shouted to him:
'Hi, Vanya!
Come on, jump aboard, I'll give you a ride to the elevator, and then we'll come back here and have some dinner.'
My shout made him start, then he jumped down from the steps, scrambled on to the running board and pulled himself up to the window.
'How do you know my name's Vanya?' he says quietly, and he opens those lovely eyes of his wide, waiting for my answer.
Well, I told him I was just one of those chaps who know everything.
"He came round to the right side. I opened the door and let him in beside me, and off we went.
Lively little fellow he was, but suddenly he got quiet, and started looking at me from under those long curly eyelashes of his, and sighing. Such a little fellow and he'd already learned to sigh.
Was that the thing for him to be doing?
'Where's your father, Vanya?' I asked.
'He was killed at the front,' he whispered.
'And Mummy?'
'Mummy was killed by a bomb when we were in the train.'
'Where were you coming from in the train?'
'I don't know, I don't remember ... .'
'And haven't you got any family at all?'
'No, nobody.'
'But where do you sleep at night?'
'Anywhere I can find.'
"I felt the hot tears welling up inside me and I made up my mind at once.
Why should we suffer alone and separate like this!
I'd take him in as my own son.
And straightaway I felt easier in my mind and there was a sort of brightness there.
I leaned over to him and asked, very quiet like:
'Vanya, do you know who I am?'
And he just breathed it out:
'Who?'
And still as quiet, I says to him:
'I'm your father.'