The spring of the 45th found us in Serpukhov. After all that was at the front, hospital whiteness and silence seemed to us something implausible. Pal Budapest, Vienna was taken. The ward radio did not turn off even at night.

“In a war, like in chess,” said Sasha Selivanov, a dark-skinned volgar with a Tatar brace, lying in the far corner. - E-two - e-four, bam! And there is no pawn! ”

Sasha’s thickly bandaged leg was sticking out over the bedboard like a cannon, for which he was nicknamed Self-propelled gun.

"Nothing was gained?" - bass of my right neighbor Borodukhov. He was from the Mezen men-foresters, already in his years.

To my left lay a soldier Kopyoshkin. Kopyoshkin had both hands broken, cervical vertebrae damaged, and there were some other injuries. He was walled up in a continuous chest plaster, and his head was bandaged to a splint brought under the back of his head. Kopyoshkin lay only on his back, and both his arms, bent at the elbows, were also bandaged to the very fingers.

In recent days, Kopyoshkin became ill. He spoke less and less, and even then voicelessly, with only his lips. Something was breaking him, burning under a gypsum spacesuit, he had completely dried out his face.

Once, a letter came from his house to his name. They unfolded the leaflet and put it in his hands. For the rest of the day, the paper sticked out in Kopyoshkin's motionless hands. Only the next morning he asked me to turn it over and looked at the return address for a long time.

Collapsed, finally capitulated, and Berlin itself! But the war still continued on the third of May, and the fifth, and the seventh ... How much more ?!

On the night of May 8, I woke up from the sound of boots grunting along the corridor. The head of the hospital, Colonel Turantsev, spoke with his deputy in the household Zvonarchuk: “Give everyone clean - bedding, linen. Poke a boar. Then, it would be nice for dinner wine ... "

Footsteps and voices drifted away. Suddenly, Sayenko threw up his hands: “That's it! The end!" He screamed. And, finding no more words, coolly, happily exhausted himself over the whole chamber. "

Outside the window, a raspberry rocket blossomed juicyly and scattered in clusters. Green crossed with her. Then the beeps sound harmoniously.

As soon as dawn arrived, everyone who could drove down the street. The corridor was buzzing from the creak and the sound of crutches. The hospital kindergarten was filled with the crowing of people.

And suddenly an orchestra came from nowhere: “Get up, the country is huge ...”

Before dinner, we changed our clothes, shaved, then the aunt Aunt Zina brought the soup out of the boar, and Zvonarchuk brought in a tray with several dark red glasses: “With victory, comrades.”

After lunch, drunk, everyone began to dream of returning to their homeland, praised their places. His fingers moved and Kopyoshkin. Sayenko jumped up, leaned over him: “Yeah, clearly. He says they are fine too. Where is this? Ah, well ... Penzyak you. "

I tried to imagine the homeland of Kopyoshkin. He painted a log cabin with three windows, a shaggy tree that looked like an inverted broom. And put this plain picture in his hand. He nodded faintly approvingly with a pointed nose.

Until dusk, he held my picture in his hands. But it turns out that he himself was no longer there. He left unnoticed, no one noticed when.

The orderlies took a stretcher. And the wine that he did not touch, we drank in his memory.

Holiday rockets flashed again in the evening sky.