And so I lived for ten years without noticing how the time went by.
It was like a dream.
But what's ten years?
Ask any man over forty if he's noticed how the years are slipping by.
You'll find he hasn't noticed a damned thing!
The past is like that distant steppe way out there in the haze.
This morning I was crossing it and it was clear all round, but now I've covered twenty kilometres there's a haze over it, and you can't tell the trees from the grass, the ploughland from the meadow.
"Those ten years I worked day and night.
I earned good money and we lived no worse than other folk.
And the children were a joy to us. All three did well at school, and the eldest, Anatoly, turned out to be so bright at mathematics that he even got his name in one of the big papers.
Where he inherited this great gift from, I couldn't tell you, mate.
But it was a very nice thing for me, and I was proud of him; mighty proud I was!
"In ten years we saved up a bit of money and before the war we built ourselves a little cottage with two rooms and a shed and a little porch.
Irina bought a couple of goats.
What more did we want?
There was milk for the children's porridge, we had a roof over our heads, clothes on our backs, shoes on our feet, so everything was all right.
The only thing was I didn't choose a very good place to build.
The plot of land I got was not far from an aircraft factory.
If my little place had been somewhere else, my life might have turned out different.
"And then it came- war.
The next day I had my call-up papers, and the day after it was 'Report to the station, please'.
All my four saw me off together: Irina, Anatoly, and my daughters:Nastenka and Olyushka.
The kids took it fine, though the girls couldn't keep back a tear or two.
Anatoly just shivered a bit as if he was cold; he was getting on for seventeen by that time. But that Irina of mine .... I'd never seen anything like it in all the seventeen years we'd lived together.
My shirt and shoulder had been wet all night with her tears, and in the morning it was the same. We got to the Ntation and I felt so sorry for her I couldn't look her in the face. Her lips were all swollen, her hair was poking out from under her shawl, and her eyes were dull and staring, like someone who's out of his mind.
The officers gave the order to get aboard but but she flung hersrelf on my chest, and clasped her hands round my neck. She was shaking all over, like a tree that's being chopped down. The children tried to talk her round, and so did I, but nothing would help.
Other women chatted to their husbands and sons, but mine clung to me like a leaf to a branch, and just trembled all the time, and couldn't say a word.
'Take a grip on yourself, Irina dear,' I said.
'Say something to me before I go, at least.'
And this is what she said, with a sob between every word,
'Andrei ... my darling ... we'll never ... never see each other again ... in this world ... .'
"There was I with my heart bursting with pity for her, and she says a thing like that to me.
She ought to have understood it wasn't easy for me to part with her. I wasn't going off to a party either.
And I lost my temper!
I pulled her hands apart and gave her a push.
It seemed only a gentle push to me, but I was strong as an ox and she staggered back about three paces, then came towards me again with little steps, arms outstretched and I shouted at her,
'Is that the way to say good-bye?
Do you want to bury me before my time?!'
But then I took her in my arms again because I could see she was in a bad way."
He broke off suddenly and in silence that followed I heard a faint choking sound.
His emotion communicated itself to me.
I glanced sideways at him but did not see a single tear in those dead, ashy eyes of his.
He sat with his head drooping dejectedly. The big hands hanging limply at his sides were shaking slightly; his chin trembled, and so did those firm lips.
"Don't let it get you down, friend, don't think of it," I said quietly, but he seemed not to hear me. Overcoming his emotion with a great effort, he said suddenly in a hoarse, strangely altered voice:
"Till my last, dying day, till the last hour of my life I'll never forgive myself for pushing her away like that!"
He fell silent again and for a long time.
He tried to roll a cigarette, but the strip of newspaper came apart in his fingers and the tobacco scattered on to his knees.
In the end he managed to make a clumsy roll of paper and tobacco, took a few hungry pulls at it, then, clearing his throat, went on:
"I tore myself away from Irina, then tookherface in my hands and kissed her. Her lips were like ice.
I said good-bye tot he kids and ran to the carriage, managed to jump on the steps as it was moving.