Throughout the war he had received only two brief letters from Tatyana. At the end of each of them she wrote: "My comrades-in-arms, Lolya and Katya, send you warm greetings." He kept these letters, wrapped in a scrap of canvas, at the bottom of his knapsack. From time to time he reread them so that he came to know their naive contents by heart. What he particularly cherished was the handwriting itself and the mere sight of those regulation folded triangles of creased writing paper.

When victory came he was in Czechoslovakia. On May 2 the red flag was hoisted over the Reichstag. On May 8 Keitel, his eye furious behind his monocle, signed the deed of Germany 's unconditional surrender. The next day the air resounded with Victory salvos and the postwar era began.

Yet on May 10, Hero of the Soviet Union, Guards Staff Sergeant Ivan Demidov, was still seeking out the dark silhouettes of tanks in his sights and urging on his soldiers, yelling his orders in a cracked voice. In Czechoslovakia the Germans did not lay down their arms until the end of May. And, like stray bullets, the death notices kept winging their way back to a Russia that might have expected that after May 9 no one else would die.

Finally this war, too, came to an end.

Two days before demobilization Ivan received a letter. Like all letters written on behalf of someone else, it was a trifle dry and muddled. Furthermore it had taken more than a month to reach him. He read that in April Tatyana had been seriously wounded, had recovered, following an operation, and was currently in the hospital in Lvov.

Ivan studied the hastily handwritten note for a long time. "Seriously wounded…" he repeated, feeling something grow tense within him. "The arm? The leg? Why not spell it out clearly?"

But along with pity he felt something else that he did not want to admit to himself

He had already exchanged the hundred Austrian schilling gold pieces for rubles, had already breathed the air of this Europe, devastated but still well ordered and comfortable. On his tunic the Gold Star shone, and the deep red enamel of the other two orders and the bluish silver of the medals "For gallantry" glittered. And, passing through liberated towns, he was aware of the admiring looks of young women throwing bunches of flowers on the tanks.