9510. An Unexpected Meeting
On New Year’s Eve 1942, I was transferred to a hospital on Borodin
Street, a building which, before the war, had housed a school.
I was still weak, the stitches had not yet closed up the gap in my
stomach following the operation, and the wound in my arm was
not healing well. But by the middle of January I could already sit
up, and then I began to get up and gingerly move around.
The small ward of the hospital’s surgical department, where
I had been put, was bright and cosy. There were three others there
with me. One of them was Major Pyotr Antonovich Glukhikh,
investigating magistrate of the Leningrad Military District. The
second was the principal surgeon of this hospital. He was slowly
dying from emaciation and physical exhaustion. The third bed in
the ward was occupied by a faircomplexioned lad of sixteen, a
civilian. They had recently amputated his left leg, which had been
injured in an artillery bombardment on the city. Restless like all
boys of that age, our Sergei cheerfully hopped around the ward
from bed to bed on one leg without crutches and even managed
to get out into the corridor in this way, against doctors’ orders.
Sometimes he forgot that his other leg was not there and fell down,
losing consciousness. The stitches, which had not had time to heal
properly would burst open and blood would flow. We were amazed