Four Soldiers

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I AM FROM Dorovitsa in the province of Vyatka. When my parents died I left Dorovitsa and moved to Kalyazin, by the river, where I worked for a man named Ovanes.

I harnessed felled tree trunks to a horse to transport them from the riverbank to the sawmill. Then I tied them to a winch and lowered them one by one to Ovanes’ band saw. In the evening I fed the horse with oats and spread out straw for him.

I rented a room from Ovanes at 16 Svevo Street. My window overlooked the river. I had a bed and a rug. I built myself a cabinet where I kept my belongings.

I was alone in the world and in the evening I watched the river as I ate. There were flat-bottomed boats moving upstream. Their hulls gleamed in the setting sun. On the bridge the shadows were like ghosts.

When I left Kalyazin, Ovanes bought the bed, the rug and the cabinet from me. I took the train to join the Red Army and I fought on the Romanian front. We marched a long way. We ate cold kasha and dried fish and we slept in ditches.

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