The Orderly

III

Captain Zbigniew Piech of the Krovt Household Guards was in the hospital a month before he realised where he was. Kostya was not always a regular to his room, but a bit before Yule, when he sat up and began to take notice of his surroundings, and ask whether his family knew where he was, Kostya just happened to be in there. Notwithstanding that most of the orderlies spoke Deutsch with the patients, the Captain alternately preferred to speak in his own language, Salvat, or in the Krovot language that of his adopted home. Kostya was obviously grateful to find someone who could speak Krovot, and Piech spared him any harsh words about his role in the hospital or that he didn’t have the drawn, haunted look of a soldier who had seen action.

Typhus leaves the body quite suddenly, almost overnight. Kostya had brought him bouillon as soon as he understood that the captain’s agonies had passed over, and Piech requested permission from the supervising officer for Kostya to sit with him for a bit and attend to him directly. He explained he wanted a companion while he was convalescing.

His hair had grown back, at least to the point where it might be called hair again rather than stubble, and it had reappeared as red as the day it had had to be cut off. Others had not been so lucky, being sent white with horror or with the ravages of disease or serious injury in Mogilyovka.

“What might I call you?” he answered to Kostya’s first inquiries after his welfare.

“Konstantin,” Kostya said. “Konstantin Aleksandrovich Prilukhov. People call me Kostya. Prilukhov is spelled with a kha” – a letter, written in the Krovot alphabet as X, which represented a cross between K and H.

“How else might it be spelled?” Piech asked.

“That was what was written on my birth certificate,” Kostya answered, averting his gaze to the floor. Piech understood Kostya’s reluctance to meet his gaze. It wasn’t done to look one’s social or military superior in the eyes.

“That’s good enough for me,” Piech said. “Private, are you? May I ask…”

“…I was told that I had to come here, that there was no use for me at the front. I turned eighteen in Lipien” – the seventh month, Linden – “and I enlisted as soon as I could, but it’s too bad I…”

“Don’t panic,” Piech said. “I was only going to ask whether you knew if my family know I’m here.”

Kostya went red with embarrassment and apologised for his selfish behaviour. Piech could tell his familiarity might have induced the young man to speak out of turn, and did not particularly care to admonish him or report him to his sergeant. Alone in the hospital and without other company, having a someone to talk to regularly was a blessing. He might as well get to know him.

“But it must have been very frustrating. I do know boys who lied about their age, but I sent them back to their mothers. It’s not a place for …a teenager.” He used the Salvat word nastolatek, which could mean anything from eleven to nineteen.

Kostya queried the word, out of place in their mutual language. When Piech explained, “But some of my friends look older than they actually are.”

“I can always tell a man’s age almost to the minute. Thirteenth of Lipien, ‘fifty-fifth, am I right? Good grief, my nephew Michal was born in the ‘fifty-ninth, almost exactly four years younger than you. What a difference that makes at your age – the irritating little brat’s barely out of short trousers.”

“Yes, sir.” The young man’s eyes widened, impressed.

“There wasn’t a temptation for you to do the same?”

“I had to get the permission of my master, sir. I did think about running away, but I wanted somewhere to go back to when the war was over.”

“Yes, of course. That was good of you – too few young men in your position consider either their future prospects or the feelings of their masters. So – do my family know or not?”

Kostya replied to Piech’s last question that he would make inquiries. He picked up the enamel mug of soup and handed it to the frail captain, saluted, and left the room.