Fast Fiction: Richard Mallinson
Richard Mallinson tells a Russian story in the manner of…who? Dostoevsky?
A Red Army officer was walking in a forest when he fell hundreds of feet down a steep incline and broke a leg and several ribs.
He lay there for two days and almost died until he was found by a forester. He was brought out on a stretcher and taken to hospital by helicopter.
Why had he been walking alone in the forest?
Why had he been carrying secret documents?
What had caused him to fall?
*
Years later, having survived Siberia, the officer decided to write his story.
'What do you think, Vassarov?'
The question was addressed to an old man who had come to visit him in his tiny flat high up in a Moscow tower block.
'Should I write it in the manner of Dostoevsky?'
'Don't ask me, sir,1 spluttered the old man, 'I am a forester not a scholar.'
'Never mind, Vassarov, you saved my life and I will never forget. Here, have some more vodka and take a bottle home for your wife.'
'My wife is dead, sir, but I will take the bottle just the same, thank you.'
Bloody greedy peasant, thought the officer.
Ah, I got the better of him there, thought the forester.
*
After Vassarov had gone the officer cleared the table, except for another bottle of vodka and his own glass.
He took a writing pad from the window ledge and a fountain pen from his pocket and began to write :
'I was walking in a forest when I fell hundreds of feet down a steep incline and broke a leg and several ribs.
'I lay there for two days and almost …’
He paused, drank more vodka and began to cry.
