Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak

In the summer of 1943, after the breakthrough on the Kursk bulge and the liberation of Orel,1 Gordon, recently promoted to second lieutenant, and Major Dudorov were returning separately to their common army unit, the first from a service trip to Moscow, the second from a three-day leave there.

They met on the way back and spent the night in Chern, a little town, devastated but not completely destroyed, like most of the settlements in that "desert zone" wiped off the face of the earth by the retreating enemy.

Amidst the town's ruins, heaps of broken brick and finely pulverized gravel, the two men found an undamaged hayloft, where they made their lair for the night.

They could not sleep. They spent the whole night talking. At dawn, around three in the morning, the dozing Dudorov was awakened by Gordon's pottering about. With awkward movements, bobbing and waddling in the soft hay as if in water, he was gathering some underthings into a bundle, and then, just as clumsily, began sliding down the hay pile to the doorway of the loft on his way out.

"What are you getting ready for? It's still early."

"I'm going to the river. I want to do me some laundry."

"That's crazy. We'll be in our own unit by evening; the linen girl Tanka will give you a change of underwear. What's the rush?"

"I don't want to put it off. I've been sweating, haven't changed for too long. The morning's hot. I'll rinse it quickly, wring it out well, it'll dry instantly in the sun. I'll bathe and change."

"All the same, you know, it doesn't look good. You must agree, you're an officer, after all."

"It's early. Everybody around is asleep. I'll do it somewhere behind a bush. Nobody will see. And you sleep, don't talk. You'll drive sleep away."

"I won't sleep any more as it is. I'll go with you."

And they went to the river, past the white stone ruins, already scorching hot in the just-risen sun. In the middle of the former streets, on the ground, directly in the hot sun, sweaty, snoring, flushed people slept. They were mostly locals, old men, women, and children, left without a roof over their heads-rarely, solitary Red Army soldiers who had lagged behind their units and were catching up with them. Gordon and Dudorov, watching their feet so as not to step on them, walked carefully among the sleepers.

"Talk softly, or we'll wake up the town, and then it's good-bye to my laundry."

And they continued their last night's conversation in low voices.

"What river is this?"

"I don't know. I didn't ask. Probably the Zusha."

"No, it's not the Zusha. It's some other."

"Well, then I don't know."

"It was on the Zusha that it all happened. With Christina."

"Yes, but in a different place. Somewhere downstream. They say the Church has canonized her a saint."