From the commandant’s office came a hoarse, stifled, tormented scream.
Koryako began to walk toward the street door. “What am I doing, sticking my nose in? I should have just lain low and kept out of trouble,” he thought with sudden melancholy. Then the office door flew open and out rushed the Ukrainian Polizei chief, who had recently arrived from Vinnitsa, and the commandant’s pale young adjutant, who had spent the last market day rounding up partisans. The adjutant shouted something to the clerk, and the clerk jumped up and rushed to the telephone. The Polizei chief, seeing Koryako, shouted, “Quick, quick! Where’s there a doctor? The commandant’s had a heart attack!”
“There—in the house across the road,” said Koryako, looking out of the window and pointing. “He’s the best doctor in town. Only his name—forgive me—is Weintraub. He’s a Jew.”
“Was? Was?” the adjutant asked in German.
The Polizei chief, who had already picked up a few words of German, said, “Hier, ein gut Doktor, aber er ist Jud.”
The adjutant gestured dismissively and rushed toward the door. Catching up with him, Koryako pointed him in the right direction: “There—that little house there!”
Major Werner had had a severe attack of angina. The doctor understood this quickly, after asking only a few questions. He ran into the other room. He embraced his wife and daughter in farewell. Then he snatched up a syringe and a few capsules of camphor and hurried after the young officer. “Just a moment,” he said. “I must put on my armband.”
“Quick,” said the adjutant. “Come as you are.”
As they went into the office, the adjutant said, “I must warn you. Our own doctor will be here soon. A car’s been sent for him. He’ll be checking both your medicines and your methods.”
Weintraub smiled ruefully and said, “Young man, you’re speaking to a doctor. But if you don’t trust me, I can leave.”
“Quick! Don’t waste time!” shouted the adjutant.
Werner, a thin man with gray hair, was lying on a sofa. His face was pale and covered in sweat. His eyes looked terrible, full of deathly anguish. Slowly he said, “Doctor, for the sake of my poor mother, for the sake of my sick wife. It...it would be the death of them.” And he stretched out toward Weintraub a powerless hand with white, bloodless fingernails. The clerk and the adjutant both gave a sob.
“At such a moment he remembers his mother,” the clerk said reverently.
“Doctor, I can’t breathe. My eyes are going dark,” the commandant moaned, his eyes pleading for help.
And the doctor saved him.
The sweet feeling of life returned to Werner. Free now from spasms, his coronary arteries were now freely sending his blood on its way. Werner was free again; he could breathe. As Weintraub got ready to leave, Werner seized him by the hand. “No, no, don’t go—I’m afraid it might happen again.”
Werner went on quietly complaining. “It’s a fearful illness. This is my fourth attack. The moment it starts, I sense all the darkness of impending death. Nothing in the world is darker, more terrifying, and more awful than death. How unjust it is that we’re mortal! Don’t you agree?”
They were alone in the room.
Weintraub bent down over the commandant and—not knowing why, as if being pushed by someone—said, “I’m a Jew, Herr Major. You are right. Death is terrifying.”
For a moment their eyes met. And in the eyes of the commandant the gray-haired doctor saw a sense of confusion. The German depended on him; he was afraid of another attack, and the old doctor with the calm, assured movements was defending him from death. The doctor stood between him and the terrible darkness that lay so close to him, that lived right beside him, there in his sclerotic heart.
Soon they heard the sound of a car drawing up.
The adjutant came in and said, “Herr Major, the head doctor from the therapeutic hospital has arrived. You can let this man go now.”
The old man went on his way through the waiting room. Seeing a uniformed doctor with an Iron Cross, he said with a smile, “Good day, colleague. The patient is in good condition now.”
The doctor looked at him silently and without moving.
On the way home, Weintraub said in a loud singsong voice, “There’s only one thing I want now: I want a patrol to come the other way and shoot me outside the commandant’s window, right in front of his eyes. This is my one and only wish. Don’t go out without your armband. Don’t go out without your armband.”
He was laughing, waving his arms about as if he were drunk.
His wife ran out to meet him. “Did everything go all right?” she asked.
“Yes, yes, the life of our dear commandant is now out of danger,” he said with a smile. Then he went inside, dropped to the ground, and began to weep, beating his large bald head against the floor.
“The teacher is right,” he said, “the teacher is right. And may the day I became a doctor be accursed.”
Time passed. Koryako was appointed block warden. Yashka was now working in the Polizei. Marusya Varaponova, the most beautiful young woman in the town, was playing the piano in the officers’ café and living with the young adjutant.
The women went to the villages to exchange old clothes and other bits and pieces for wheat, millet, and potatoes; they complained about the huge sums charged by the German drivers. The labor exchanges sent out hundreds of notices—and young men and women went to the station, with knapsacks and bundles, to be packed into freight cars. A German cinema opened—and a brothel for soldiers and officers. A large brick toilet was built on the main square. On it, in both Russian and German, was written for germans only.
In the school Klara Franzevna gave the first class the following problem: “Two Messerschmitts brought down eight Red fighters and twelve Red bombers, while the antiaircraft guns destroyed eleven Bolshevik attack aircraft. How many Red airplanes were destroyed altogether?” The other teachers were afraid of talking about their own affairs in front of her; they waited until she left the common room.
Ragged, staggering from hunger, prisoners of war were herded through the town—and women ran out to them with boiled potatoes and pieces of bread. The prisoners were so exhausted by hunger and thirst and so infested with lice that they seemed to have lost all human likeness. Some of them had swollen faces, while others had sunken cheeks covered by dark, dusty stubble. But for all their terrible sufferings, they bore their cross bravely, and they looked with hate at the well-dressed and well-fed Polizei, and at the traitors in German uniforms. And their hatred was so great that, had they been offered the choice, their hands would have reached out not toward a warm loaf of bread but to grip the throat of one of these traitors.
Every morning, under the supervision of soldiers and Polizei, the women went out to build aerodromes and bridges, to repair roads and railway embankments. Trains of tanks and munitions passed by on their way east, and long lines of freight cars full of cattle and wheat passed by on their way west; some of the cars, packed with young boys and girls, were boarded up.
Women, old men, little children—everyone understood what was happening. Everyone clearly understood what lay in store for them and why the Germans were fighting this appalling war. One day, old Varvara Andreyevna went up to Rosenthal in the yard. Weeping, she said to him, “What’s happening in the world, grandfather?”
The old teacher went back to his room in silence. “In a day or two,” he said to Voronenko, “there’s probably going to be a mass execution of Jews—the life to which they’ve condemned the Ukraine is just too terrible.”
“But what have the Jews got to do with it?” asked Voronenko.
“What do you mean? The whole system is founded on them. The Fascists have created an all-European system of forced labor and, to keep the prisoners obedient, they have constructed a huge ladder of oppression. The Dutch are worse off than the Danes; the French are worse off than the Dutch; the Czechs are worse off than the French. Things are still worse for the Greeks and the Serbs, w
orse still for the Poles, and last of all come the Ukrainians and Russians. These are the rungs of the ladder of forced labor. The farther down you go, the more blood, the more sweat, the more slavery. And then, at the very bottom of this huge, many-storied prison is the abyss to which the Germans have condemned the Jews. Their fate has to terrify all the forced laborers of Europe, so that even the most terrible fate will seem happiness in comparison with that of the Jews. Well, it seems to me that the sufferings of the Russians and Ukrainians are so great that the time has come to demonstrate that there is a fate still more awful, still more terrible. The Germans will say, ‘Don’t grumble! Be happy and proud, be glad that you are not Jews!’ It’s not a matter of elemental hatred. It’s simple arithmetic—the simple arithmetic of brutality.”
3.
During the last month there had been a number of changes in the house where the teacher lived. Koryako the agronomist had put on weight and become uncommonly self-important. Women with bottles of home-distilled vodka were always coming to ask things of him; every evening he got drunk, put on the gramophone, and sang, “There in the mist my campfire shines.” Words of German began to appear in his speech. He would say, “Please don’t bother me with requests when I’m on my way to nach Haus or for to spazier.” Yashka Mikhailyuk was seldom to be seen; most of the time he was driving around the district, tracking down partisans. When he came back, it was usually with a cart laden with fatback, eggs, and home-distilled vodka.
Yashka’s old mother, who adored him, prepared fine suppers. Once, after some Gestapo corporal or sergeant had come to one of these suppers, she said to Dasha Voronenko, “You made the wrong choice, you fool. See what kind of people visit us now—while you live with your one-legged cripple in a room that belongs to a Yid!”
She had never forgiven the beautiful Dasha. In 1936 Dasha had refused Yashka and married Voronenko instead.
Yashka made a strange little joke: “Soon you’ll be able to breathe more freely. Yes, I’ve seen some towns that have already been purged—purged root and branch!”
Dasha repeated what Yashka had said. Old Granny Weissman began lamenting over her little granddaughter.
“Dasha,” she said after a while, “I’ll leave you my wedding ring. And there’ll be more than five hundredweight of potatoes from our vegetable patch, along with some pumpkin and beetroot. One way or another there’ll be enough to feed the child until spring. And I’ve got a roll of woolen cloth for a lady’s coat—you can exchange it for bread. And anyway the child has no appetite—she hardly eats anything at all.”
“She’ll be all right with us,” Dasha replied. “And once she’s grown up, she can marry our young Vitalik.”
That same day Doctor Weintraub came to see the teacher. He held out to him a little vial, with a close-fitting glass stopper.
“A concentrated solution,” he said. “My views have changed. During the last few days I’ve come to see this substance as a useful and necessary medicament.”
The teacher slowly shook his head. “Thank you,” he said sadly. “But my views have also changed. I’ve decided not to resort to this medicine.”
“Why?” Weintraub asked in surprise. “You were right, and I was wrong. I’ve had all I can bear. I’m not allowed to walk down any of the main streets. My wife is forbidden to go to the market—on pain of death. We all have to wear this armband. When I go out on the street now, I feel as if my arm’s weighed down by a band of red-hot steel. This is no way to live, you’re right. And it seems that even forced labor in Germany is considered too good for us Jews. I’m sure you’ve heard about unfortunate young boys and girls being taken to work there. But Jewish young boys and girls aren’t being taken—so what awaits them, what awaits all of us, must be something many times worse than this terrible forced labor. What it will be I don’t know. Why should I wait for it? You’re right. If it weren’t for my bronchial asthma, I’d go and join the partisans.”
“Well, I myself,” said the teacher, “have become an optimist during the terrible weeks since we last met.”
“What!” exclaimed Weintraub. “An optimist? Forgive me—but you’ve gone out of your mind. Don’t you know what these people are like? Yesterday I went to the commandant’s office to ask for my daughter to be released from work for one day after being beaten up. I was thrown out—and I’m glad they didn’t do anything worse.”
“That’s not what I mean,” said the teacher. “There was one thing that truly terrified me. The mere thought of it used to bring me out in a cold sweat. I was afraid that the Fascists might turn out to have calculated correctly. I talked about this to Voronenko. I was terrified, I didn’t want to live to see that day. I didn’t want to live to see that hour. Surely you don’t think that the Fascists embarked on this vast persecution, this destruction of a nation of millions, just for the sake of it? Behind what they’re doing lies a cold, mathematical calculation. They awake what is dark. They incite hatred. They resurrect prejudices. In this lies their power. Divide, persecute, and rule! The resurrection of darkness! Set each nation against some neighboring nation, set enslaved nations against nations that have retained their freedom, set nations from across the ocean against nations living on this side of the ocean—and set every nation in the world against the Jewish nation. Divide and rule! After all, there is more than enough cruelty and darkness in the world, more than enough superstition and prejudice. But the Fascists miscalculated. They meant to unleash hatred, but what has been born is compassion. They wanted to call up malice and schadenfreude; they wanted to eclipse the reason of great nations. But I’ve seen with my own eyes that the fate of the Jews has evoked only grief and compassion. I’ve seen that the Ukrainians and Russians, having suffered under the weight of the German terror, are ready to help the Jews in any way they can. They forbid us to buy bread or to go to the market for milk—and so our neighbors offer to buy things for us. Dozens of people have come around and given me advice about where to hide. I have seen much compassion. I have, of course, also seen indifference. But I have not often seen malicious joy at our destruction—only three or four times. The Germans got it wrong. They miscalculated. My optimism is triumphing. And I never had any illusions—I’ve always known that life is cruel.”
“That’s all true,” said Weintraub. He looked at his watch and went on: “But I must go now. It’s half-past three, the Jewish day is coming to an end...We probably won’t be seeing each other again.” He went up close to the teacher and said, “Allow me to say farewell to you. We’ve known each other for nearly fifty years. It’s not for me to be your teacher at a time like this.”
They embraced and kissed. And the women, watching them say farewell, began to cry.
A lot happened that day. Voronenko had managed, the previous evening, to get hold of two F-1 hand grenades. Some boys had given them to him in exchange for a tumbler of beans and two tumblers of sunflower seeds. “What can I do?” he said to the teacher. He was standing under a tree and watching his little son, Vitalik, bullying little Katya Weissman. “What can I do? I’ve come back home, but it’s brought me no joy—though God knows how often I dreamed of home while I was in the trenches and in the hospital. What have I come back to? The occupation: the labor exchanges, people being packed off to work in Germany. Hunger, depravity, German faces, Polizei faces, filthy traitors...”
Then Voronenko shouted angrily to his son, “What are you doing to the girl, you Fascist? You’ll break every bone in her body. Why? Her father died fighting for the Motherland, he was posthumously awarded the Order of Lenin—and you have to beat her up mercilessly from morning till night! Though God knows what’s the matter with the girl...She just stands there like a sheep, eyes wide open and not even crying. If only she’d run away from the fool, instead of just standing there patiently.”
No one saw Voronenko leave, his crutches quietly tapping against the ground. He stood for a while on the corner, looking back at the house where he had left his wife and son, and then set off toward
the commandant’s office. He never saw his wife and son again. Nor did Koryako the agronomist ever return home. The grenade thrown by the one-legged lieutenant exploded in the commandant’s waiting room, where the town’s block wardens were awaiting new instructions. The commandant himself was at that moment going for a stroll in the garden; the doctor with the Iron Cross had advised a daily forty-minute walk in the orchard, followed by a brief rest on the little bench.
The following morning crazy Lida Weissman was sent by a policeman to clear away the corpses of Doctor Weintraub and his wife and daughter. They had taken poison during the night.
A few benighted people tried to get into the doctor’s apartment. His wife had a coat made from Astrakhan fur, and they had a lot of other good things: carpets, silver spoons, crystal glasses they used only when their son, a Leningrad professor, came to visit them. But the Germans had left a guard there, and no one got anything at all—not even Doctor Ageyev, who begged for the Big Medical Encyclopedia and repeated heatedly that its many volumes were all in Russian and could therefore be of no use at all to the Germans.
The bodies were driven around the town. The thin, wretched horse stopped at every corner, as if the dead passengers kept asking to stop and look—at the boarded-up houses, at the blue-and-yellow windowpanes of the Lyubimenkos’ porch, at the fire observation tower.
Standing by windows, gates, and doors, the doctor’s former patients watched his last journey. No one, of course, wept, took their hat off, or came out to say farewell. No one during this terrible time was moved by blood, suffering, and death; what surprised and shook people was kindness and love. The town no longer needed the doctor. Who needed treatment at a time when health was a punishment in itself? Paralysis, crippling hernias, dangerous heart attacks, coughing up blood, malignant tumors—these things saved people from exhausting work, from forced labor in Germany. People dreamed of illnesses, summoned them up, prayed for them. The dead doctor was seen off with gloomy, silent looks. The only person who wept when the cart passed her house was old Granny Weissman; the previous day, when he came to take his leave of the teacher, the doctor had brought a kilo of rice, a small paper bag of cocoa, and twelve lumps of sugar for little Katya. Doctor Weintraub had been a good doctor, but he had not liked to treat people free of charge; never had he given anyone such a generous present.