The autumn of 1940 unexpectedly turned out a very sad one for us.
Zoya was washing the floor. She dipped the rag into the bucket, bent down and suddenly fainted. That was how I found her, in a dead faint, when I came home from work. Shura, who had entered the room at the same time, dashed off to call up the ambulance, which arrived and took Zoya away to the Botkin hospital. There the diagnosis was: "Meningitis."
It was a difficult time for Shura and me. For whole nights and days we could think only of one thing: Will Zoya live... ? Her life was in danger. The professor who was treating her wore a gloomy troubled expression on his face while he was talking to me. It seemed to me there was no hope.
Shura went to the hospital several times a day. His face, usually clear and open, became more and more troubled and gloomy.
Zoya's illness had taken a critical course. They made injections into her spinal cord—it was an agonizing operation.
Once, alter one of these injections, Shura and I came to find out how Zoya was. The nurse looked at us keenly and said, "The professor will speak to you in a moment."
I went cold.
"What's happened to her?" I asked in what must have been a very frightened voice, because the professor, who had come out that minute, hastened up to me with the words, "Don't worry now, everything's all right! She's on the road to recovery. Everything's going swimmingly. Your daughter is a very brave staunch girl. She has enormous grit, she never groans or cries." And with a glance at Shura he asked good-naturedly, "Are you like that too?"
That day they let me see Zoya for the first time. She as lying quite still and could not even raise her head. I sat beside her, holding her hand, unconscious of the tears that were streaming down my face.
"Don't cry," said Zoya quietly, with an effort. "I feel better."
And indeed the illness was subsiding. Shura and I were greatly relieved. It was as if the pain which had held us fast all through these long weeks had suddenly let us go, leaving in its stead a feeling of utter exhaustion. During Zoya's illness we had become tired, more tired than we had ever been before. It seemed as if an awful weight which had been pressing on us for a long time was suddenly lifted, but we lacked the strength at first to straighten our backs and draw breath.
Some days later Zoya said, "Bring me something to read, please."
After a time the doctor actually did allow me to bring her books, and Zoya was delighted. It was still difficult for her to talk, and she got tired quickly, but she read in spite of it all.
I brought her Gaidar's The Blue Cup and The Fate of the Drummer.
"What a wonderful story!" she said after reading The Blue Cup. "Nothing exciting happens, but you cannot tear yourself away from it!"
Her recovery was slow. At first they let Zoya sit up, and only some time later was she allowed to walk.
She made friends with everybody in the ward. An elderly woman in the bed next to Zoya's said to me once, "We'll be sorry to part with your daughter. She's such a darling. She can cheer up even the worst cases."
And the doctor who was treating Zoya would often jest, "I'd gladly adopt Zoya for my own daughter!"
The nurses were also on the best of terms with Zoya, and would give her books, while the professor himself brought her newspapers which, when she became a little stronger, she read aloud to the patients in the ward.
Soon Shura was allowed to see Zoya. They had not seen each other for a long time. At the sight of her brother Zoya sat up in bed and blushed to the roots of her hair. As for Shura, he bore himself in the ward as he always did among strangers: he looked round in alarm at Zoya's neighbours, went so red in the face that the perspiration broke out on his forehead, wiped his face with his handkerchief, and finally stopped in the middle of the ward, not knowing where else to go.
"Come here, Shura, sit down there," urged Zoya. "Quick, tell me what's happening at school. And don't look so awkward," she added in a whisper. "No one is looking at you."
Somehow Shura pulled himself together, and in answer to Zoya's repeated questioning—"What's going on at school? Tell me, quick!"—he pulled out of his breast pocket a little book with Lenin's profile stamped on it, exactly like the one Zoya had received in February 1939.
"A Komsomol card!" exclaimed Zoya.
"I didn't tell you so that it would be a surprise. I knew you'd be glad."
And forgetting the unusual surroundings Shura plunged into a detailed account of what questions they had asked him at the general meeting, what they had said to him at the District Committee and how the Secretary had asked, "Are you Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya's brother? I remember her. Don't forget to give her my regards!"
Next: Home Again