A month passed after Shura's departure. There were no letters. I was afraid to go to the letter box-I always feared I would find some terrible news there…Those were very difficult days, full of a painful foreboding such as I had not experienced even after Zoya left. For then I did not know what it meant to lose one's child. Now I knew.
At times my alarm would become so acute that I tried to run away from it, as if it were possible to run away from oneself, from one's thoughts. I used to walk about the streets, trying to make myself tired enough to fall asleep when I came home. But I rarely succeeded in this. No matter how many streets I passed through, and how many miles I covered, I would still lie awake and wide- eyed through the night.
I would often go to the Novodevichy Cemetery to visit Zoya's grave. Once as I was approaching the grave I saw a broad-shouldered army officer standing near it. As I came up he turned round. He was a man of about thirty- five, with a fine open face and clear penetrating grey eyes. It seemed that he was about to address me. I looked at him questioningly, but after a moment's indecision he walked away. I dismissed him from my mind, but as I was leaving I again saw him at the bend of the path; he was coming towards me.
"Lyubov Timofeyevna?" he asked hesitantly.
"Yes," I answered, surprised.
Then he introduced himself.
"My name is Lidov."
I had not forgotten that name. It was Lidov who had written those memorable lines in Pravda—the story of how Tanya, the young partisan, had died ....
I shook his hand gratefully. We walked slowly along the path to the gate.
"I am very glad we've met," I said warmly. "I have wanted to meet you for a long time…
And we began to talk just as if we had known each other for years. He told me how he had first heard about Zoya. He was spending the night in a tiny half-destroyed hut near Mozhaisk. When nearly all the soldiers had gone to sleep an old man came into the hut to warm himself. He lay down on the floor beside Lidov.
"The old man could not get to sleep," related Lidov. "He was groaning and sighing as if very upset. 'Where are you bound for?' I asked him. 'What's the trouble?'
And then the old man told Lidov what he had heard about the girl whom the Hitlerites had hanged in Petrishchevo Village. He did not know the details. He just kept repeating, "They were hanging her, and she made a speech…
Lidov got up at once and went to Petrishchevo. And from that night and for the next ten days he did not rest until he found out everything about the death of the unknown girl who had called herself Tanya. He used only facts because he knew that facts would speak louder than anything a journalist or writer 'could invent.
"Why did you never come to see me?" I asked.
"I was afraid it would be too difficult for you," he answered simply.
"Have you been at the front long?"
At that he smiled for the first time, a broad clear smile which lit up the whole of his face.
"I've been at the front since the first 'hour of the war," he said. "When they did not even know about the war here in Moscow. June 22 found me in Minsk, as a correspondent of Pravda…
And again he smiled as he recalled how in the cellar of the telegraph office where he had taken refuge during a heavy bombing he had been handed a telegram from Moscow, sent the day before.
It was a very peaceful telegram. The editors wanted Lidov to write about the preparations for the harvesting campaign. He stuffed the telegram in his pocket and dashed off in his car to a unit which was preparing for defensive action. The streets of Minsk were already wrapped in flames and bombs were falling everywhere.
That day Lidov did send a dispatch to Pravda, but it was not about the harvesting campaign.
He told me all this very simply, in a few words. And as I walked on I thought, "You may know a man for years and be unable to say anything about him. I have spent less than an hour with Lidov, and he has said very little about himself, but I know a lot about him. I know the main thing. I know that he is straight and honest, level- headed and brave, that under any conditions he will keep himself in hand and never lose his head. I know that at the front it is not by words, but by deeds, by his whole conduct that he teaches those around him to be calm and steadfast."
"I am off to the front again today," he said to me as we parted, and added quietly, "And after the war I will definitely write a book about Zoya."
Next: Five Photographs