The Orderly

IV

“Prilukhov with a kha” managed to find out that Wladyslaw Piech, the recent inheritor of Dwor Kruczewski, far to the south, was aware that his younger brother was alive and had been notified the day that he was brought in.

Kostya brought the captain a letter and remained as he read it.

“Well, I’m not going back,” Piech said, firmly, without taking his eyes off the page. “I want to go back out there. We’re not finished – not remotely. Kubice hasn’t even fallen and already he wants me home. Damn him, the arrogant, cowardly sod. That witch-wife of his probably hid away all papa’s medals in the hope that that might jinx the war into grinding to a halt. Not a chance.”

Piech then asked Kostya whether he wanted to go back to the front or go home.

“I won’t lie, sir. The hospital’s a kinder place to be than the the workhouse or the brewery. The food’s better, and since I’ve been looking after you I haven’t been teased by the others. Gives me a bit of…”

“Teased?”

“They’d all ask me when I’m going to walk off with an officer and make an honest woman of myself. They called me ‘Nurse Kostya’ and worse. They do it to some of the other young lads who haven’t been elsewhere and got their hands dirty, sir, but I really wanted to fight when I joined up.”

Piech laughed at the insults Kostya was getting, but stopped when he saw the young man go red around the ears.

“I was told during my training I’d make a fine corporal if the war lasted long enough.”

“You’re certainly organised enough, and you don’t carry yourself like someone from a workhouse.”

Kostya found the last comment slightly stinging, as if his background was something to be ashamed of. However, Piech was at least ten times more respectful of him than others like him. Still, he mustn’t get above himself. This was a brief encounter in the scheme of things. He had a brewery to go back to, a trade that might bring him more dignity than some of his fellows, and he’d been lucky to miss ending up in a ditch with his brains or entrails strewn across the countryside.

“Kubice could be freed within a couple of months. They’re saying the end of Sychen.”

Piech pulled the curtain across just enough to see the whirling snow outside filling the courtyard with wind-whipped drifts. “Pah. The winters up there are so bad we could still be digging ourselves out of Wieloryb in the spring. You really aren’t a fighter yet.”

The captain’s barbs were certainly finding their target. “I’d like to be. They’re talking about pushing on into Lenkija and subduing Saulepilis, even occupying the country.”

“You keep your ears to the ground too.”

“I hear enough people talking. But they also say that we need specialist fireteams and veteran mobile troops.”

There were people needed to staff the railways, but Kostya hadn’t applied – if he couldn’t fight, he wasn’t going to leave the hospital, where at least it was warm and there was always enough food. He kept this back from Piech, eager not to show the captain he valued his security over a winter spent up to his knees in snow trying to get the front moving before the Lenks used their advantage to counter-attack.

He heard from some privates who had come back from the front wounded and put to orderly work once recovered that their lot was hardest. Ordinary soldiers shivered in barracks while their officers commandeered hotels and guesthouses and the deserted homes of those who had fled the fighting. It would be worth it to fight, but not just to be a signalman or telegraphist, and those jobs were done by skilled civilians rather than clumsy recruits. The engine drivers and firemen had almost gone out on strike when the railways had been militarised, and the army, who could not afford such protest, had accepted their right to continue in their jobs rather than give them to soldiers.

Captain Piech seemed to have something else in mind. “Would you like to be one of those veterans?”

Kostya simply smiled and nodded, and began to clear away the captain’s discarded plate, asking if he needed anything more. He said, rather hoarsely, that if the sergeant asked him, he wouldn’t mind, but it wasn’t up to him.

“Well, a fine lad like you should have that choice. You’ve only got one life to live, Kha.”

After that first introduction, Piech had regularly called him “Kha”, finding it terribly funny, and Kostya might have taken offence from anybody else.

But the captain made it sound like a pet name when he said it.