The Road (11 page)

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, worse 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.

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.