A woman walks along the deserted steppe along the railway line, under the sky, in which the ridge of the Urals appears with heavy cloudy delirium, Tears are in her eyes, it is becoming increasingly difficult to breathe. At the dwarf kilometer column, she stops, moving her lips, repeats the number indicated on the column, leaves the embankment and on the signal mound looks for a grave with a pyramid. A woman kneels in front of the grave and whispers: "How long have I been looking for you!"

Our troops were finishing off the almost strangled group of German troops, whose command, like at Stalingrad, refused to accept an ultimatum on unconditional surrender. A platoon of Lieutenant Boris Kostyaev, along with other units, met an erupting enemy. The night battle involving tanks and artillery, the Katyusha was terrible - at the onslaught of the Germans distraught from frost and despair, at losses on both sides. Having repelled the attack, collecting the killed and wounded, a platoon of Kostyaev arrived in the nearest farm to rest.

Behind the bathhouse, in the snow, Boris saw the old man and the old woman killed in one gulp of artillery preparation. They lay covering each other. A local resident, Khvedor Khvomich, said that the dead arrived on this Ukrainian farm from the Volga region in a hungry year. They grazed collective farm cattle. Shepherd and shepherdess. The hands of the shepherd and the shepherdesses, when they were buried, could not be disconnected. The soldier Lantsov quietly read a prayer over the old people. Hvedor Khvomich was surprised that the Red Army soldier knew the prayers. He himself forgot them, in his youth he went to atheists, and he campaigned on the elderly to eliminate the icons. But they did not obey him ...

The platoon soldiers stopped in the house where the hostess was the girl Lucy. They warmed up and drank moonshine. Everyone was tired, drunk and ate potatoes, only the foreman Mokhnakov did not get drunk. Lucy drank along with everyone, saying: “With the return of you ... We have been waiting for you for so long. So long..."

The soldiers were sleeping one by one on the floor. Those who still kept strength in themselves continued to drink, eat, joke, remembering peaceful life. Boris Kostyaev, walking in the canopy, heard in the darkness the fuss and Lucy's tearing voice: “No need. Comrade foreman ... ”The lieutenant resolutely stopped the harassment of the foreman, brought him out into the street. Between these people, who went through many battles and tribulations together, enmity broke out. The lieutenant threatened to shoot the foreman if he tried again to offend the girl. Angry Mokhnakov went into another hut.

Lucy called the lieutenant to the house where all the soldiers were already sleeping. She led Boris to the clean half, gave her a bathrobe so that he changed clothes, and prepared a trough of water behind the stove. When Boris washed and lay down on his bed, his eyelids filled themselves with gravity, and a dream fell upon him.

Even before dawn, the company commander summoned Lieutenant Kostyaev. Lucy did not even have time to wash his uniform, which was very upset. The platoon received an order to drive the Nazis out of the neighboring village, the last stronghold. After a short battle, the platoon, along with other units, occupied the village. Soon the front commander arrived with his retinue. Boris had never before seen a commander close to whom legends spoke of. A German general was shot dead in one of the sheds. The commander ordered the burial of the enemy general with all military honors.

Boris Kostyaev returned with the soldiers to the very house where they spent the night. The lieutenant again fell into a deep sleep. At night, Lucy, his first woman, came to him. Boris talked about himself, read letters to his mother. He recalled how his mother drove him to Moscow as a child and they watched ballet in the theater. A shepherd and a shepherd danced on stage. “They loved each other, were not ashamed of love and were not afraid for it. In gullibility, they were defenseless. ” Then it seemed to Boris that the defenseless were inaccessible to evil ...

Lucy listened with bated breath, knowing that such a night would not happen again. On this night of love, they forgot about the war - a twenty-year-old lieutenant and a girl who was older than him by one war year.

Lucy found out from somewhere that the platoon would stay on the farm for another two days. But in the morning they passed the order of the company: to catch up with the main forces on machines, which went far behind the retreating enemy. Lucy, struck by a sudden separation, first remained in the hut, then could not stand it, caught up with the car on which the soldiers were traveling. Not embarrassed by anyone, she kissed Boris and with difficulty pulled away from him.

After heavy fighting, Boris Kostyaev asked the deputy politician for a vacation. And the deputy politician had already decided to send the lieutenant to short-term courses so that he could call on his beloved for a day. Boris already imagined his meeting with Lucy ... But none of this happened. The platoon was not even taken to reorganization: heavy fighting interfered. In one of them, Mokhnakov died heroically, throwing himself under an German tank with an anti-tank mine in a duffel bag. On the same day, Boris was shot in the shoulder with a shrapnel.

There were many people in the medical battalion. Boris was waiting for dressings and medicines for a long time. The doctor, looking at Boris’s wound, did not understand why this lieutenant was not recovering. Longing ate Boris. One night, a doctor came to him and said: “I have appointed you for evacuation. In traveling conditions, souls are not treated ... "

A sanitary train took Boris east. At one of the half-stations he saw a woman who looked like Lyusya ... Arina, a nurse of the carriage, looking at the young lieutenant, wondered why he was getting worse and worse every day.

Boris looked out the window, felt sorry for himself and his wounded neighbors, felt sorry for Lucy, who remained in the deserted square of a Ukrainian town, an old man and an old woman, buried in the garden. He no longer remembered the faces of the shepherd and shepherdess, and it turned out: they looked like a mother, a father, all the people he knew once ...

One morning Arina came to wash Boris and saw that he was dead. He was buried in the steppe, making a pyramid from a signal column. Arina sadly shook her head: "Such a slight wound, but he died ..."

Listening to the earth, the woman said: “Sleep. I will go. But I will return to you. There really no one can separate us ... "

“And he, or what he once was, remained in the silent land, entangled in the roots of herbs and flowers that had subsided until spring. Remained alone - in the middle of Russia. "