—— The Snipers’ Rally ——107sternly, looking at the invitation. ‘And your papers?’
‘I have no papers, just this... I’m from the hospital. I was invited
by Comrade Zhdanov,’ I tried to explain. ‘You can telephone.
They’ll confirm it!’ And I held out the list of telephone numbers
written in Andrey Alexandrovich’s own hand.
The official began to ring around and, to my delight, everything
was cleared up very quickly – literally in a couple of minutes, I was
handing my overcoat in at the cloakroom. After shedding my
street clothes and tidying myself up in front of the huge mirror,
I went up the stairs.
The corridor was deserted. Only very occasionally some
soldiers who had been held up somewhere would run past me in
tunics which smelled of the smoke of war and disappear behind
the door of the chess hall. I felt uncomfortable before them in my
spick and span new uniform, and I stood there looking around
indecisively.
Then two more soldiers went past me in animated conversation,
heading for the hall. One of them looked familiar.
‘Yuri! Semyonov!’ I cried out in desperation. ‘Wait for me!’
They both stopped and looked in surprise in my direction, then
came up closer, and Semyonov threw himself upon me.
‘Yevgeni! Greetings! Where did you spring from?’ And
suddenly, without hearing my response, he dashed into the hall
and vanished behind the door.
‘What’s the matter with him?’ I asked the other soldier.
‘I don’t understand myself,’ he replied.
We got talking. It turned out that he was a sniper from the 6th
Regiment of our 21st Division. I found out that a big group of our
fellows – about thirty of them – had come to the gathering. And he
began to list familiar names. But he did not finish; out of the hall
came a group of lads whom I recognised immediately.
Swiftly striding at the head of the group was Yuri Semyonov,
and behind him, smiling, followed my true friends and comrades
in arms – Ivan Dobrik, Ivan Karpov, Zagid Rakhmatullin, Sergei
Korchagin, Alexei Shesterik and our other lads.