"Living Water" by Andrei Konstantinov, summary Automatic translate

"Living Water" is a screenplay by Andrei Konstantinov, set in Polesia, Belarus, in August 1941. Written as a television series, the text combines war drama with a mystical element: at the center of the plot is a legendary spring, which, according to local legend, is capable of healing mortal wounds.

A detachment at the swamp

A small partisan detachment of about forty men is retreating under pressure from German troops. The commander, a weary fifty-year-old man whom the soldiers call Petrovich, decides to retreat through Zmeevo Swamp to Gankin Bor, the only forest in the area impenetrable to the enemy. He is constantly at odds with the Osobist, an undocumented NKVD major prone to repression even in the field: during the march, he manages to threaten several of his own soldiers with execution, including the carter Arkhipych and the young farmer Ivan.

The Commander deliberately takes Ivan along. He’s a 17-year-old with a slow speech and an unattractive appearance — the result of a childhood near-drowning in a forest lake. His grandmother resuscitated him, but afterward he became "a bit of a dunderhead." However, Ivan navigates the swamp impeccably: he leads the column through the swamps, rescues the nurse Lena when she falls into the quagmire, repairs a jammed Degtyaryov machine gun, and is the first to find the way to the islands of Maly Zmey and Bolshoy Zmey.

Two brothers and living water

A German Feldgendarmerie punitive force under the command of Major Karl von Bergensee follows the detachment. He is accompanied by his younger brother, SS Hauptsturmführer Günther, an Ahnenerbe officer who had recently returned from a secret expedition to the Himalayas. The brothers meet for the first time in months and chat on the riverbank, reminiscing about their shared childhood.

Since childhood, Günther has been obsessed with the search for living water — not as a folkloric figure, but as a real chemical compound with inexplicable properties. This interest dates back to the tragedy of 1915: a young governess, Greta, whom both brothers loved, nearly drowned in a lake on their family estate. Karl pulled the girl from the water, and Günther, a young geologist who had just collected water from a forest spring, splashed it on Greta’s face. She suddenly began breathing, although doctors later concluded that her brain had shut down while still in the water. Greta lived for six weeks — a period that medical science could not explain. Günther marked the spring with a notch, but when he returned, the spring was gone.

Since then, he’s been searching for living water in various parts of the world. Himmler keeps him at Ahnenerbe headquarters as a bearer of secret information, and that’s why Günther ended up in Polesia — near his brother and near the Snake Swamp.

The Traitor and the Farm

Karl tracks the partisans with astonishing precision: the Germans know the detachment’s route, and even the partisans’ spare radio batteries have vanished "of their own accord." Karl confides in his brother: he has an insider in the detachment, recruited under threat of death for his loved ones. He doesn’t reveal who exactly, adding wryly that Günther shouldn’t consider the informant a man.

On the captured farmstead — in the hut of Baba Simonovna, who had been arrested by the NKVD back in 1940 and died while being transported — the brothers set up a temporary headquarters. Here, Karl recruits a one-armed farmer, Afanasy, a former prisoner of war who had served time in an Austrian camp during World War I and in Soviet camps, where he lost his arm. Afanasy speaks German and strikes Günther as a man pretending to be more simple-minded than he actually is. Karl’s interpreter is a German woman named Helga, aka Olga.

Meanwhile, a seriously wounded commissar is hiding on the farmstead — he’s been left under the care of a local girl, Agata. Agata is suffering from the after-effects of smallpox: her face is covered in scars. She hid the commissar from the Germans and realizes that Anfisa, a talkative neighbor, has already reported this to the village elder, Lukich. Later, Agata makes her way into the forest with the wounded commissar and reaches the detachment’s location in Gankin Bor — by this time, her face has completely cleared of pockmarks. Lena, seeing Agata, drops her ladle of water in astonishment.

Machine gunner and spring

During the retreat to Bolshoy Zmey Island, the partisans suffer losses: one wounded man dies en route, and his body, on the Commander’s orders, is carried into the swamp without burial. To delay the Germans, fighter Azarenok, with the Degtyaryov machine gun repaired by Ivan, takes up a position near a coastal hill. The Germans shell the island with mortars from Maly Zmey Island, and Ivan is presumed dead during the battle.

Sergeant Krause and a group of eight men cross to Bolshoy Zmey to set up sniper positions. At the triangular boulder behind which Ivan’s body lay, the Germans discover only trampled grass with bloody footprints — and the remains of a bird of prey. Ivan himself has disappeared. A small spring bubbles up near the boulder; Krause drinks from it and washes his face, oblivious to the fact. Signalman Knut warns him, but the sergeant dismisses him.

In the final scene of the second episode, Ivan’s body lies in a small hole nearby, covered with spruce branches. A marsh harrier swoops down and pecks his finger — and the finger suddenly twitches.