As for Lida Weissman, she did not come back until evening. She said that the doctor and his wife had been heavy, that the ground was hard and stony, but that she had not, fortunately, had to dig them a deep grave. She also complained that she had broken the heel of one of her shoes with the spade and torn her skirt on a nail as she got down from the cart. She had enough good sense—or perhaps the sly intuition that often goes with insanity—not to tell Dasha that Viktor Voronenko was hanging from one of the main gates into the town.
But after Dasha left, she said in a quiet, matter-of-fact voice, “Viktor’s hanging there. He looks terribly thirsty—his mouth is wide open and his lips are quite dry.”
Later in the afternoon old Mikhailyuchka told Dasha about Viktor. Dasha went silently into the back of the yard, where the cucumbers grew, and sat down in between the rows. At first the boys kept a careful watch on her, thinking she was about to steal their food, but then they realized that she was lost in thought. She was biting her lip and thinking terrible thoughts, punishing herself remorselessly. She remembered the first day of her life with Viktor, and she remembered their last day. She remembered an army doctor. She had made sweet coffee for him. While they drank it, they had listened to records. She remembered how her husband had asked her at night, in a whisper, “You don’t find it disgusting to be sleeping with a one-legged cripple?” She had answered, “I’ll just have to get used to it.” Yes, she had sinned against him—in every possible way. What she wanted now was to run away from people. But the world had turned cruel, and there was no one who could show her compassion—she had to get herself up off the ground and go and be with people again. It was her turn that evening to fetch the water.
There was a German soldier living next door. He ran to the outhouse, pulling his belt off as he went by. On his way back he saw Dasha sitting there, and he went up to the fence. He stood there without a word, admiring her beauty, her white neck, her hair, her breasts. She sensed his look and wondered why God had punished her—on top of all her other miseries—with such beauty. It was impossible, during this vile, terrible time, for a beautiful woman to live cleanly and without sin.
Then Rosenthal came up to her and said, “Dasha, you want to be on your own. I’ll go to the well instead of you. You sit here as long as your soul needs. I’ve already given Vitalik some cold millet porridge.”
She nodded silently, looked at him, and let out a sob. He was probably the only person in the town who had not changed. He was still as polite and considerate as ever. He went on reading his books, saying, “I won’t be disturbing you, will I?” and wishing people good health if they sneezed. Everyone else had lost every quality she most loved in people: politeness, delicacy, and responsiveness. This old man seemed to be the only person left in the town who still asked, “How are you feeling today?,” who still said, “You look very pale this morning” or “Have something to eat—you didn’t eat anything at all last night.”
Everyone else in the world was living their life as if nothing mattered: what with the war and the Germans, everything seemed to have become worthless. And that was how she herself had lived, carelessly, giving no thought to things of the soul.
Using a little stick as a trowel, she quickly began digging between the cucumber runners and then carefully filling the pits, until the ground was quite level again. And when it was dark, she cried a little—she was breathing more easily now, and she wanted some tea and something to eat. She wanted to go up to mad Lida Weissman and say, “Well, now we’re both of us widows!” And then she’d go off and become a nun.
In the twilight Rosenthal put a candlestick on the table and took two candles from the cupboard. He had been keeping them for a long time. Each had been wrapped in blue paper. He lit the two candles, opened a drawer he never opened, and took out some bundles of old letters and photographs. He sat at the table, put on his glasses, and began intently studying the photographs and rereading the letters; the letters were written on blue and pink paper that had faded with time.
Old Granny Weissman went quietly up to him. “What will happen to my children?” she asked.
She did not know how to write. In all her life she had not read a single book. She was an ignorant old woman—except that, instead of book learning, she had learned to observe, and she had acquired a worldly wisdom that could penetrate to the heart of many things.
“How long will those candles last you?” she asked.
“Two nights, I think,” said the teacher.
“Today and tomorrow?”
“Yes, tomorrow as well.”
“And the day after tomorrow it will be dark?”
“Yes, I think it will be dark the day after tomorrow.”
She trusted few people. But Rosenthal could be trusted, and she trusted him. Grief welled up in her heart. She looked for a long time at the face of her sleeping granddaughter and said sternly, “Tell me—what is the child guilty of?”
But Rosenthal did not hear her; he was reading his old letters.
During the night he went through his vast store of memories. He remembered the hundreds of people who had passed through his life. He remembered pupils and teachers, friends and enemies. He remembered books and student discussions; he remembered the cruel, unhappy love he had lived through sixty years before and which had cast a cold shadow over his whole life. He remembered years of wandering and years of labor. He remembered his spiritual vacillations—from a passionate, frenzied religiosity to a cold, clear atheism. He remembered heated, fanatical arguments in which no one would yield.
All that now lay far in the past. He had, of course, lived an unsuccessful life. He had thought a lot but achieved little. For fifty years he had worked as a schoolteacher in a boring little town. Once he had taught in a Jewish trade school; later he had taught geometry and algebra in a Soviet school. He should have lived in the capital. He should have written books, published articles in newspapers, and argued with the whole world.
But he was not, now, feeling sad because his life had been a failure. Nor was he mourning those who had long ago departed this life; they, for the first time, were no longer of any concern to him. Now he only desired a single thing; he passionately wanted the miracle he could not understand: love. He had never known it. He had lost his mother when he was a little child, and he had been brought up in the family of his uncle; as a young man, he had known the bitterness of being betrayed by a woman. The whole of his life had been lived in a world of noble thoughts and rational actions.
He wanted someone to come up to him and say, “Put a shawl over your legs. There’s a cold draft, it’ll be bad for your rheumatism.” He wanted someone to say, “Why are you fetching water from the well today? What about your sclerosis?” He was hoping one of the women lying on the floor would come up to him and say, “Go to bed now. You shouldn’t be sitting at your desk so late at night—it’s not good for you.” Never had anyone come up to his bed, pulled up his blanket for him, and tucked him in with the words, “Have my blanket too—or you’ll get cold.” He knew that he was going to die soon, at a time when life was ruled by the laws of evil—and the laws of this brutal force, in the name of which unprecedented crimes were being committed, were determining the actions not only of the victors but also of those who had fallen into their power. Life was at the mercy of indifference and apathy. It was during this terrible time that he was fated to die.
It was announced the following morning that all the town’s Jews were to report at 6:00 AM the next day to the Platz by the steam mill. They would then be transported to the western part of the occupied Ukraine, where the Reich authorities were setting up a special ghetto for them. They were to take not more than fifteen kilograms of belongings. There was no need to take food, since dry rations and hot water would be provided throughout the journey by the military command.
4.
All day long neighbors kept calling to ask for advice, to ask the teacher what he thought of this decree. First there was Borukh, the witty,
foul-mouthed old cobbler who crafted such fashionable shoes; then came Mendel, the stove maker and taciturn philosopher; then Leiba, the tinsmith and father of nine children; and Haim Kulish, the broad-shouldered, gray-whiskered blacksmith. All of them had heard that similar announcements had been made in many other towns, but nowhere had anyone seen any trainloads of Jews—nor had anyone seen any columns of Jews on the highways, nor had anyone heard anything about life in these ghettoes. All of them had heard that Jews were being taken not to railway stations, nor along the main highways, but to gullies and ravines, to marshes and old quarries on the outskirts of towns. All of them had heard that, a few days after the Jews had left, German soldiers had been going to the markets and bartering shoes, women’s coats, and children’s pullovers for honey, eggs, and sour cream. People had come back home and said quietly, “A soldier was trying to barter a woolen jumper—the one Sonya from next door was wearing the morning the Germans marched them out of the town.” Or, “A German was trading the sandals belonging to that boy who was evacuated from Riga.” Or, “A German wanted three kilos of honey in exchange for the suit that belonged to our friend Kugel the engineer.” All of the Jews knew what was in store for them; they were all able to guess. But in their heart of hearts they did not believe it. The murder of a whole nation was something too terrible. Nobody could believe it.
And so old Borukh said, “How can they kill a man who makes shoes like I do? The shoes I make could be shown at an exhibition in Paris.”
“The Germans are capable of anything,” said Mendel, the stove maker. “Anything at all.”
“Very well,” said Leiba the tinsmith. “Let’s say they don’t need my kettles and saucepans and samovar flues. But why should they want to kill my nine children?”
And Rosenthal, the old teacher, said nothing. He listened to them and thought that he had been right not to take poison. He had lived all his life with these people; he should live his last bitter hour with them too.
“I’d slip off into the forest,” said Haim Kulish the blacksmith. “But how? The Polizei keep following us. The block warden’s been around three times since this morning. I sent one of my boys to my father-in-law—and my landlord followed him. He’s an honest man. He told me absolutely straightforwardly, ‘I’ve had a warning from the police. “You’re the man of the house,” they said to me. “If even just one little boy doesn’t show up at the Platz, you’ll be paying for it with your life.”’”
“What can we do?” said Mendel the stove maker. “Fate’s fate. A neighbor said to my son, ‘Yashka, you don’t look like a Jew. Run away to some village or other.’ And my little Yashka replied, ‘But I want to look like a Jew. Wherever they take my father—that’s where I’m going too.’ ”
“I can say one thing,” muttered the blacksmith. “Whatever happens, I’m not going to die like a sheep.”
“Well said, Kulish!” said the old teacher. “You’re a fine man!”
In the evening Major Werner had a meeting in his office with Gestapo officer Becker.
“Tomorrow’s operation must go without a hitch,” said Becker. “Then we’ll be able to breathe freely. I’ve had enough of these Jews. Every day there are outrages: five Jews escaping, apparently to join the partisans; a whole family committing suicide; three Jews walking about without armbands; a Jewish woman found buying eggs in the market in spite of being categorically forbidden to go there; two Jews arrested on Berlinerstrasse, even though they know that they’re forbidden to walk down any of the main streets; eight of them wandering about the town after four o’clock in the afternoon; two girls shot for trying to escape into the forest while being marched to work. Now these incidents may all be trifling—a great deal less serious, of course, than some of the problems encountered by our frontline troops—but they get on one’s nerves nevertheless. They all occurred during a single day, and other days are no different.”
“What is the operational procedure?” asked Werner.
Becker wiped his pince-nez with a piece of chamois. “It’s not us who determine the operational procedure. In Poland, of course, we have had broader possibilities to apply more energetic measures—and these, when it comes down to it, are essential. We are, after all, talking statistics with an impressive number of zeros. Here, of course, we’re having to work in field conditions—we are, after all, near the front line. The latest orders allow us to deviate from the procedures laid down and make adaptations for local conditions.”
“How many men do you need?” asked Werner.
Becker’s manner during this conversation was authoritative, a great deal more so than usual. Talking to him, Werner felt an inner timidity.
“The procedure is as follows,” said Becker. “There will be two squads—the execution squad and the guard squad. The execution squad should be fifteen or twenty men, all volunteers. The guard squad must be relatively large—one soldier to every fifteen Jews.”
“Why?” asked the commandant.
“Experience shows that, when a column realizes that it is not heading toward a railway line or a highway, hysteria and panic set in and there will be attempts at escape. Also, the use of machine guns has recently been prohibited—the percentage of shots resulting in mortality is too low. We have to use handheld weapons, and this greatly slows down the work. And then the recommendation is that the execution squad should be as small as possible—not more than twenty men for a thousand Jews. While the work is in progress, the guard squad has a fair amount to do. As you know, quite a high proportion of the Jews are men.”
“How long will this take?” asked Werner.
“With an experienced organizer, not longer than two and a half hours for a thousand people. The main thing is clarity in the assignation of roles, proper organization of the column, and correct timing. The operation itself does not take long.”
“But how many men do you need?”
“At least a hundred,” said Becker emphatically. He looked out through the window and added: “Weather conditions are also a factor. I’ve spoken to a meteorologist. Tomorrow morning is likely to be calm and sunny. There may be rain in the evening, but that’s neither here nor there.”
“And so...” Werner said hesitantly.
“The procedure is as follows. You yourself choose an officer—a member of the National Socialist Party, of course. It is his role to draw up a list for the execution squad. He begins by announcing, ‘Now then, I’m going to need a few men with strong nerves.’ This will have to be done this evening, in the barracks. The officer must collect at least thirty names—experience indicates that ten percent always drop out. Then he must talk to each man individually: ‘Are you afraid of blood? Can you endure a considerable degree of nervous strain?’ At this point there’s no need for any further explanation. The members of the guard squad must be chosen at the same time—and the Unteroffiziere must be given their instructions. Weapons must be checked. The execution squad must report, wearing helmets, outside the commandant’s office, by 5:00 AM. The officer will then explain the task in detail, after which he must speak to each of the volunteers again. Each volunteer is then issued three hundred cartridges, and by 6:00 AM they must be present on the assembly square. The Jews are then escorted to their destination, the execution squad proceeding thirty meters ahead of the column. Behind the column follow two carts, since there is always a certain number of women—the old, the pregnant, and the hysterical—who lose consciousness on the way.”
Becker said all this slowly, in order that the major should take in every detail. “Well then, that’s it for now,” he continued. “All further instructions will be given by my officers on-site.”
Major Werner looked at Becker and suddenly asked, “And what about the children?”
Becker cleared his throat disapprovingly. In an official conversation a question like this was inappropriate.
“You must understand,” he said very seriously, looking intently into the commandant’s eyes, “that the recommendation is to remove t
hem from their parents and to work with them separately, but I prefer not to do that. I’m sure you can see how difficult it is to tear a child away from its mother at such a sad moment.”
When Becker took his leave, the commandant summoned his adjutant, repeated the instructions to him in detail, and said quietly, “All the same, I’m glad that that old doctor did away with himself in advance. Otherwise I’d have felt pangs of conscience. Like it or not, he helped me a great deal. Without him I don’t know if I’d have survived till the army doctor arrived...And during these last few days I’ve been feeling excellent. I’ve been sleeping a lot better, and my digestion’s improved. Two people have told me that I’ve got more color in my face now. It’s quite possible that all this is because of my daily stroll in the orchard. And the air in this little town is exceptional. Before the war, apparently, there were sanatoriums here for lung and heart patients.”
The sky was deep blue, and the sun was shining, and the birds were singing.
***
When the column of Jews crossed the railway and, leaving the highway, headed off toward the ravine, Haim Kulish the blacksmith took in a lungful of air and, above the hubbub of hundreds of voices, shouted in Yiddish, “Oy, friends, I’ve had my day!”