At the end of his second day of walking, he went down toward a river, and on the bank, at the entrance to a bridge demolished by shelling, saw a complete battlefield: dozens of soldiers to whom death had lent poses that were sometimes extremely banal, like the one of a body with its legs buckled beneath it, sometimes touching, like that of a young infantryman, his hand outstretched in an orator's gesture. Hiding in the undergrowth, Alexeï waited, listening intently, but could hear no moaning. The evening was still light; the faces of the dead, when he finally dared to approach them, were exposed in defenseless simplicity. He noticed that there were no German soldiers; these had presumably been carried away by their own side.

He looked into eyes, often wide open, noted the color of hair, the build. From time to time his fascination with death led him to forget the purpose of his search, he sank into a robotlike torpor, transforming himself into a hypnotic camera, focused on these truncated lives one after another. Then he took a grip on himself, resumed the search for his double. Hair color, shape of the face, build.

Very close to the river he found a face similar to his own, but the soldier's hair was dark brown, almost black. He said to himself that he could shave off his blond hair and that in the photo on an identity document this difference in color would hardly be visible. With trembling fingers, he unbuttoned the soldier's tunic pocket, seized the little book embossed with a red star, and hurriedly put it back again. In the photo the soldier did not look like him at all, and his hair framed his face like a charcoal line.

Pausing close to another, he noted the similarity of their features. But he suddenly observed that the soldier's left ear had been cut to pieces by a bullet. He moved on quickly, realizing at once that such a wound in no way undermined the resemblance, but lacking the courage to go back to that bloodied head.