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In September 1941, the Soviet Army’s Military Information Bulletin (partial) (arranging):

... From September 9 to 23, the Germans attempted to attack the Pulkovo Heights, Petergoff and Oranienbaum several times, but all failed.At the same time, our infantry units launched a powerful counterattack against the enemy.

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Maker has noticed some subtle details about his father's hearing almost since he was a child - he didn't think his father's hearing problem was as serious as people imagined, because his father never ignored him for this reason. Even though he was shy by nature, he never made loud noises; in fact, as he was older, Maker quickly realized that the loss of hearing and tinnitus that got worse with age caused troubles in his father's life. , but that subtle impression persisted into adulthood, and he even faintly felt that at some point, "deafness" was just an excuse for his father, just like people often say "pretending to be deaf and dumb"; Maker still remembers probably It was the late 50s. When he was in middle school, there was a period when he often saw two people in gray suits looking for his father at home. They would talk for hours in the study, and his mother would show a worried expression; Once, Maker heard his father send the two people out and said: "Sorry, my hearing is very bad, and I often can't hear what you are asking." Then the two people never came again.It was not until much later that Maker realized that the incident happened not long after the [-]th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

In Maker's impression, her mother's opinion of her father's hearing is completely different. She always carefully avoids causing any noise in her life. She said: "It is very bad for the remaining hearing." Perhaps because of this, when my mother complained, Only his father could say with an innocent face: "What are you talking about dear? I can't hear clearly..." When maker was seven or eight years old, he asked his father stupidly: "Why are you pretending that you can't hear your mother?" The father, who looked very young at the time, laughed and picked him up, kissed his cheek, his ears were itchy with his mustache, and his father said to his ear: "This is my secret, now it belongs to us Two!" Maker himself found it interesting, and he really never mentioned it again, because he thought childishly that it was a secret between father and son.

A long time later, Maker thought when looking at the old nagging mother and the smiling father, children will always notice the essence of certain things more keenly than adults, and this is exactly what the closest people impossible.

After September 9, the defense line in the south of the city was still the focus of the German attack, but they no longer had the strength to organize a truly powerful attack. After two or three days of seesaw, the defense line was gradually stabilizing, and the frontline troops began to rotate and rest.

Kulik went to the hospital.

The doctor flipped through Sasha's medical records and said, "Except for hearing, there is nothing wrong with all the examinations." He paused and looked at Kulik through the gap above the glasses, "You should also know that it is typical cannon-shock deafness. Great idea."

When kulik heard the word "deafness", he frowned, "Can you do some further examinations," he raised his hand and gestured, "For example... I heard that, uh, some of these cases are caused by Eardrums hurt, but some are only temporary?"

The doctor closed the medical record and said, "To be honest, the patient is not very cooperative."

Kulik frowned again, and he said, "I'll go talk to him."

As a result, Sasha did something that Kulik couldn't think of in the hospital the next day.

When Kulik came out of the doctor's office, he was surprised to find that Sasha was arguing with the nurse in the corridor.

At that time, Sasha exaggeratedly said loudly: "Sorry, please speak up, my ears are deafened by shells!"

The nurse turned pale with anger, and she growled like a lioness: "I say—comrade, you can't violate the hospital's regulations!"

Kulik felt that the shout could be heard almost on the whole floor, but Sasha still said unmoved: "I can't hear it!"

Kulik almost rushed over to drag him away, but Sasha continued persistently in the original direction and repeated: "Please speak up, I can't hear you!" Smells of alcohol.

"Where did you get the wine?" he asked, frowning.

Sasha turned around and looked at him with an exaggerated blank expression: "Huh?"

Kulik pulled his shoulders and whispered in his ear, "Stop pretending!"

They stopped, Sasha's mouth twitched, and a flicker of frustration flashed across his face as he found it difficult to pull a smile on; they stood silent for a while, and Sasha finally raised her eyebrows and succeeded. He showed his usual smile and said, "Heh... I was a little worried. I didn't know what would happen, so I drank some vodka to strengthen my courage... You know, there is a quota for the frontline troops, so I hid some..."

He said softly, his tone returned to calm and indifferent: "Sorry, I think I'd better go to sleep... I'm a little sleepy..."

Kulik said in the stern tone of a troop commander: "Where are you going? How sleepy are you? Shall I carry you back?"

Sahsa seemed to want to say something, but kulik looked at him seriously; he hesitated for a moment and finally asked: "Ilia, this time, I really didn't hear clearly..."

That night, Kulik received a call that was transferred to the division headquarters. The doctor in charge of Sasha said to him nervously: "Comrade Kulik, the abt of your division has been missing since the afternoon."

Kulik was silent for a moment and said, "Please don't worry, everything will be normal."

He hung up the receiver and let the doctor on the line be suspicious.He leaned his head on the back of the chair, closed his eyes and meditated for a while, then said, "Why don't you stay in the hospital?" He opened his eyes and looked at the person on the other side of the table, his voice seemed to come from his chest sigh, "sasha"

And the man was looking at him with a smile.

Kulik closed his eyes again, feeling too tired at the moment to bother to analyze whether the polite look meant he didn't hear clearly or he didn't want to answer.

During the day, the doctor gave the conclusion: "The patient's left ear is likely to have a mechanical injury to the inner ear, and the condition of the right ear is better, at least there is hope of recovery." Kulik asked eagerly: "There is great hope, right? How long?" The doctor looked at him through the gap above the glasses as last time, and said unhurriedly: "I mean, there is such a hope."

Kulik felt something stuck in his chest.

He didn't admit that it was guilt—in fact, as soldiers, they didn't have the right to put their personal feelings above the national interests, and it was because of this that he felt even more depressed because he had nowhere to vent.

He would rather switch places with Sasha: he is on Height 4, and he is the one who lost his hearing—but when this thought flashed through his mind, kulik suddenly developed a stronger self-loathing: this assumption Such moments seem phony.Perhaps in the earlier days, their fates had been exchanged inadvertently, and they have been intertwined ever since.He even began to hope that Sasha would yell like she did in the hospital during the day, and Sasha's calmness and indifference made him panic even more at this moment.

But the room was still very quiet, all he could hear was his heavier breathing.

"What are you laughing at?" Kulik asked suddenly, he opened his eyes, and sat up straight; his voice was not high but his tone was very aggressive, with a rare kind of arrogance and willfulness, "Why are you laughing all the time? You Do you think this shows your magnanimity?" He continued in one breath: "You were thrown there to work hard, but you didn't need to bear it, and a conceited fool ordered you not to retreat—shouldn't you complain Shouldn't you be angry? Why don't you accuse me and say what an old friend is entitled to accuse me of?"

He stood up abruptly, but his voice stopped abruptly.It was Sasha who interrupted him: "You are still the same."

Some of the traits from the youthful era still exist in Ilia. He is standing there emotionally at this moment, his eyes are extremely bright, and he raises his hand to loosen the neckline as if he is out of breath, but his face turns red like a child.

They looked at each other in silence for a while, Sasha broke the silence with a smile and said, "I think it's better to go back here, anyway, no matter where I am, my ears are the same."

He stood up and walked over and patted Kulik on the shoulder as if nothing happened: "Besides, the troops are resting now."

Kulik was stunned for a while, and seemed to realize that this seemed to be the answer to his original question. He quickly grabbed Sasha's arm and asked, "Can you hear what I said?"

Sasha frowned slightly, and he responded with a questioning look: "Uh? What?"

In a trench in the forward position.

A Soviet soldier was awakened by a rumbling sound in the middle of the night. He thought it was not the sound of artillery. "What is this?" He sat up and rubbed his eyes, but he was very alert.

There has been no fighting between the two sides here for several days, and the news ahead says that the German army is dispatching.The rumbling sound became louder and louder, and he felt inexplicably that something big was happening. He felt uneasy, but at the same time seemed a little excited.

After a moment of hesitation, he finally couldn't hold back and jumped up.He stepped on a dirt slope in the ditch, and slowly leaned out.As soon as his eyes came out of the ground, he was suddenly shocked by the scene in front of him.

A line of tanks was passing a few hundred meters away from him. The steel shells looked hard and dark in the night, like a group of beasts in heavy armor, holding a heavy barrel, with an unstoppable momentum.The heavy oppressive feeling of the track running over the ground seemed to crush his ribs one by one, and the dust brought up was wrapped in the wind and hit his face head-on, and he almost stopped breathing for an instant.

They stared at the scene they had never seen before with their eyes wide open. In front of such a huge and cold war machine, they felt indescribable fear and awe in their hearts.

At this moment, he still didn't know what he saw. On the night of the 25th, two German tank units withdrew from their positions in concealment, and drove towards Moscow along the Muga-Moscow railway line: The beginning of the tune.The German army had no strength to launch an offensive. Hitler gave up his plan to quickly capture Leningrad and shifted his strategic focus to Moscow.

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