.. Na! Na ... na!" I
replied to him as a nurse to her child. "Na ... na! Na ...
na!" ... Then I heard Nikitin's voice....
Half an hour after my adventure I was watching the dawn
flood the sky from the little garden at the back of the
cottage. It seemed that those stretchers are really heavy
things for any two men to carry.... We had been three hours
on our journey!
Well--I sat in the garden watching the sun rise. To my right
were four dead men neatly laid out in a row under a tree.
Their faces had not been covered but their eyes were closed,
their cheeks, hands, and feet like wax. In front of them the
young man who had sat on the stove in the kitchen all night
and watched us at work was mowing the tall grass with a
scythe. He was going to dig graves. He wore a white shirt
and white trousers and had long black hair.
"Why didn't they take you for a soldier?" I asked him.
"Consumptive," he said.
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