The Road (10 page)

Rosenthal did not sleep that night. It seemed as if the sun would not rise in the morning, as if darkness had spread over the town forever. But the sun rose at its predetermined hour, and the sky turned blue and cloudless, and the birds began to sing.

Not far above them was a German bomber. It was flying slowly, as if it too had been exhausted by a sleepless night. There was not a shot from the antiaircraft guns; the town and the sky over the town had become German.

The house was now waking. Yashka Mikhailyuk had come down from his attic and was strolling about the yard. He was sitting on the bench where the old teacher had been sitting only the day before. He said to Dasha Voronenko, who was lighting her little stove, “So what’s he going to do now—your defender of the Motherland? The Reds have run away, have they? Left him behind, have they?”

And the beautiful Dasha, smiling a pathetic smile, said, “Don’t report him, Yashka. He was conscripted, the same as everyone else.”

After being confined for a long time in the dark, Yashka had come out into the warmth of the sun. He was breathing the morning air, looking at the green onions in the vegetable patch. He had shaved and put on an embroidered shirt.

“All right,” he said lazily. “But I could do with a drink. D’you know where I can find something?”

“I’ll get you some moonshine,” said Dasha. “I know a woman who’s got some. But I’m begging you! Poor Vitya’s a cripple now. Don’t snitch on him.”

Then Koryako the agronomist came out into the yard. The women whispered to one another, “Look at him now—anyone would think it was Easter Sunday!”

Koryako went up to Yashka and whispered a few words in his ear. They both laughed.

The two men went to Koryako’s home and began to drink. Yashka’s mother, old Mikhailyuchka, brought them some fatback and pickled tomatoes. Varvara Andreyevna, who had five sons in the Red Army and the most vicious tongue of all the old women in the yard, said, “Well, Mikhailyuchka, the Germans have arrived—you’re going to be quite somebody now! A deserter for a son and a husband in a labor camp for anti-Soviet agitation—yes, soon this house will be all yours again. The Germans will be putting you in charge of the whole town!”

The highway lay five kilometers to the east, and the German troops had simply bypassed the little town. It was midday before the first motorcyclists rode down the main street. They were wearing only forage caps, underpants, and gym shoes, and they were heavily tanned. Each had a watch on his wrist.

“Dear God! Naked on the main street!” said the old women. “They know no shame.”

The motorcyclists rummaged about the yards. They took the priest’s turkey, which had come out to investigate some horse manure. They guzzled down two and a half kilos of the church elder’s honey, drank a bucket of milk, and went on their way, promising that the commandant would arrive in a couple of hours. In the afternoon Yashka was joined by two more deserter friends. All very drunk, they sang together, “Three tank men, three merry chums.” Probably they would have been glad to sing German songs, except that they didn’t know any. Koryako walked up and down the yard and, with a sly grin, asked the women, “So what’s happened to our Jews? Children, old men—I haven’t glimpsed a Jew all day. It’s as if they’d never existed. And only yesterday they were all coming back from the market with twelve-kilo baskets!”

But the women shrugged their shoulders and said nothing. Koryako felt surprised. He had expected them to respond differently.

Then the drunken Yashka decided to purge his apartment: until 1936, after all, the entire lower floor had belonged to his family. After Yashka’s father had been sent into exile, Voronenko and his wife had taken two of the rooms. And during the war the town soviet had installed Sublieutenant Weissman’s family in the third room; they had been evacuated from
Zhitomir.

Yashka’s friends were helping him clear the rooms. Katya Weissman and little Vitaly Voronenko were sitting outside crying. Katya’s granny was carrying out dishes and cooking pots. As she walked past the crying children, she said in a whisper, “There, there, children, you mustn’t cry.”

But there was something so terrifying about her sweating face and the gray strands of hair plastered to her temples and cheeks that the children only cried all the more.

Dasha reminded Yashka about their conversation that morning, but he answered, “You can’t buy Yashka with a half liter of vodka. Do you think people here have forgotten how that Vitya of yours went around dispossessing whoever he said was a kulak?”

Lida Weissman, the sublieutenant’s widow, was a little out of her mind. She had never quite recovered from receiving notification of the deaths of her husband and brother on the same day. She looked at little Katya and said, “There’s not a drop of milk at the market today. Cry all you like—there isn’t a single drop.”

And Viktor Voronenko was smiling, lying there on an empty sack and tapping the ground with one crutch.

Tall, gray-haired, and bright-eyed, old Mikhailyuchka stood there without saying a word. She was looking at the crying children, at her bustling son, at old Granny Weissman, at the smiling cripple.

“What’s up, Mama?” asked Yashka. “You’re standing there as if you’ve been struck dumb.”

Only when he repeated this a third time did she reply. “So here we are—our day’s dawned at last!”

The evicted families sat silently on their bundles until it began to grow dark. Then the teacher came out and said, “Please all come to my room.”

The women, who had seemed turned to stone, burst out sobbing.

Picking up two small bundles, the teacher went back to his room. Soon the room was heaped with bundles, pots and pans, and suitcases tied shut with pieces of string and wire. The children fell asleep on the bed, the women on the floor; Rosenthal and Voronenko went on talking in low voices.

“I’ve dreamed of many things in my life,” said Voronenko. “I’ve wanted the Order of Lenin. I’ve wanted a motorcycle with a sidecar, so my wife and I could go to Donetsk on our days off. While I was at the front, I dreamed of seeing my family, of bringing an Iron Cross and some condensed milk back for my son. But now I’ve only got one dream: to get hold of some hand grenades. Then I’d show those Fritzes a thing or two!”

The teacher replied, “The more you think about life, the less you understand it. Very soon, when they’ve smashed my skull in, I’ll stop thinking altogether. But for now the German tanks are powerless to stop me thinking—and what I’m thinking about is peace!”

“Why think about anything?” said Voronenko. “What I want is a few hand grenades—to put the wind up Hitler while I still can!”

2.

Koryako the agronomist was waiting to see the town commandant.

He had heard that the commandant was middle-aged and that he knew Russian. Apparently he had studied a long time ago in Riga.

The commandant knew that Koryako was here, and Koryako was pacing anxiously up and down the waiting room, glancing now and then at a huge portrait of Hitler talking to some children. Hitler was smiling; the children, smartly dressed, with tense, serious faces, were looking up at him from the lowly height of their childish stature.

Koryako was troubled. It was he who had drawn up the collectivization plan for the district: What if this had been reported to the Germans? And he was troubled because this was the first time in his life he would be talking to the Fascists. He was also troubled because this had once been the agricultural college; he himself, only a year ago, had taught field husbandry in this very building. He understood that he was taking an irrevocable step, that he would never be able to return to his former life. And he tried to stifle all his anxieties with a single phrase, which he repeated again and again: “I must play my trump card. I must play my trump card.”

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.