The Road (3 page)

“A boy or a girl?”

In the afternoon she went into labor.

“Oy!” she screamed hoarsely, sounding more like a peasant woman than a commissar. The pain was sharp, and it penetrated everywhere.

Beila helped her back to her bed. Little Syoma ran off merrily to fetch the midwife.

Vavilova was clutching Beila’s hand. She was speaking quickly and quietly: “It’s started, Beila. I’d thought it would be another ten days. It’s started, Beila.”

Then the pains stopped, and she thought she’d been wrong to send for the midwife.

But half an hour later the pains began again. Vavilova’s tan now seemed separate from her, like a mask; underneath it her face had gone white. She lay there with her teeth clenched. It was as if she were thinking about something tormenting and shameful, as if, any minute now, she would jump up and scream, “What have I done! What have I gone and done!” And then, in her despair, she would hide her face in her hands.

The children kept peeping into the room. Their blind grandmother was by the stove, boiling a large saucepan of water. Alarmed by the look of anguish on Vavilova’s face, Beila kept looking toward the street door. At last the midwife arrived. Her name was Rosalia Samoilovna. She was a stocky woman with a red face and close-cropped hair. Soon the whole house was filled by her piercing, cantankerous voice. She shouted at Beila, at the children, at the old grandmother. Everyone began bustling about. The Primus stove in the kitchen began to hum. The children began dragging the table and chairs out of the room. Looking as if she were trying to put out a fire, Beila was hurriedly mopping the floor. Rosalia Samoilovna was driving the flies away with a towel. Vavilova watched her and for a moment thought they were in the divisonal headquarters and that the army commander had just arrived. He too was stocky, red-faced, and cantankerous, and he used to show up at times when the Poles had suddenly broken through the front line, when everyone was reading communiqués, whispering, and exchanging anxious looks as though a dead body or someone mortally ill were lying in the room with them. And the army commander would slash through this web of mystery and silence. He would curse, laugh, and shout out orders: What did he care about supply trains that had been cut off or entire regiments that had been surrounded?

Vavilova subordinated herself to Rosalia Samoilovna’s powerful voice. She answered her questions; she turned onto her back or her side; she did everything she was told. Now and then her mind clouded. The walls and the ceiling lost their outlines; they were breaking up and moving in on her like waves. The midwife’s loud voice would bring her back to herself. Once again she would see Rosalia Samoilovna’s red, sweating face and the ends of the white kerchief tied over her hair. Her mind was empty of thoughts. She wanted to howl like a wolf; she wanted to bite the pillow. Her bones were cracking and breaking apart. Her forehead was covered by a sticky, sickly sweat. But she did not cry out; she just ground her teeth and, convulsively jerking her head, gasped in air.

Sometimes the pain went away, as if it had never been there at all, and she would look around in amazement, listening to the noise of the market, astonished by a glass on a stool or a picture on the wall.

When the child, desperate for life, once again began fighting its way out, she felt not only terror of the pain to come but also an uncertain joy: there was no getting away from this, so let it be quick.

Rosalia Samoilovna said quietly to Beila, “If you think I’d wish it upon myself to be having my first child at the age of thirty-six, then you’re wrong, Beila.”

Vavilova had not been able to make out the words, but it frightened her that Rosalia Samoilovna was speaking so quietly.

“What?” she asked. “Am I going to die?”

She did not hear Rosalia Samoilovna’s answer. As for Beila, she was looking pale and lost. Standing in the doorway, shrugging her shoulders, she was saying, “Oy, oy, who needs all this? Who needs all this suffering? She doesn’t need it. Nor does the child. Nor does the father, drat him. Nor does God in his heaven. Whose clever idea was it to torment us like this?”

The birth took many hours.

When he got back from work, Magazanik sat on the front steps, as anxious as if it were not Vavilova but his own Beila who was giving birth. The twilight thickened; lights appeared in the windows. Jews were coming back from the synagogue, their prayer garments rolled up under their arms. In the moonlight the empty marketplace and the little streets and houses seemed beautiful and mysterious. Red Army men in riding breeches, their spurs jingling, were walking along the brick pavements. Young girls were nibbling sunflower seeds, laughing as they looked at the soldiers. One of them was gabbling: “And I was eating sweets and throwing the wrappers at him, eating sweets and tossing the wrappers at him...”

“Yes,” Magazanik said to himself. “It’s like in the old tale...So little work to do in the house that she had to go and buy herself a clutch of piglets. So few cares of my own that I have to have a whole partisan brigade giving birth in my house.” All of a sudden he pricked up his ears and stood up. Inside the house he had heard a hoarse male voice. The oaths and curses this voice was shouting were so foul that Magazanik could only shake his head and spit. The voice was Vavilova’s. Crazed with pain, and in the last throes of labor, she was wrestling with God, with woman’s accursed lot.

“Yes,” said Magazanik. “You can tell it’s a commissar giving birth. The strongest words I’ve ever heard from my own dear Beila are ‘Oy, Mama! Oy, Mama! Oy, dearest Mama of mine!’ ”

Rosalia Samoilovna smacked the newborn on its damp, wrinkled bottom and declared, “It’s a boy!”

“What did I say!” cried Beila. Half opening the door, she cried out triumphantly, “Haim, children, it’s a boy!”

And the entire family clustered in the doorway, excitedly talking to Beila. Even the blind grandmother had managed to find her way over to her son and was smiling at the great miracle. She was moving her lips; her head was shaking and trembling as she ran her numb hands over her black kerchief. She was smiling and whispering something no one could hear. The children were pushing her back from the door, but she was pressing forward, craning her neck. She wanted to hear the voice of ever-victorious life.

Vavilova was looking at the baby. She was astonished that this insignificant ball of red-and-blue flesh could have caused her such suffering.

She had imagined that her baby would be large, snub-nosed, and freckled, that he would have a shock of red hair and that he would immediately be getting up to mischief, struggling to get somewhere, calling out in a piercing voice. Instead, he was as puny as an oat stalk that had grown in a cellar. His head wouldn’t stay upright; his bent little legs looked quite withered as they twitched about; his pale blue eyes seemed quite blind; and his squeals were barely audible. If you opened the door too suddenly, he might be extinguished—like the thin, bent little candle that Beila had placed above the edge of the cupboard.

And although the room was as hot as a bathhouse, she stretched out her arms and said, “But he’s cold—give him to me!” The little person was chirping, moving his head from side to side. Vavilova watched him through narrowed eyes, barely daring to move. “Eat, eat, my little son,” she said, and she began to cry. “My son, my little son,” she murmured—and the tears welled up in her eyes and, one after another, ran down her tanned cheeks until they disappeared into the pillow.

She remembered
him
, the taciturn one, and she felt a sharp maternal ache—a deep pity for both father and son. For the first time, she wept for the man who had died in combat near Korosten: never would this man see his own son.

And this little one, this helpless one, had been born without a father. Afraid he might die of cold, she covered him with the blanket.

Or maybe she was weeping for some other reason. Rosalia Samoilovna, at least, seemed to think so. After lighting a cigarette and letting the smoke out through the little ventilation pane, she said, “Let her cry, let her cry. It calms the nerves better than any bromide. All my mothers cry after giving birth.”

Two days after the birth, Vavilova got up from her bed. Her strength was returning to her; she walked about a lot and helped Beila with the housework. When there was no one around, she quietly sang songs to the little person. This little person was now called Alyosha, Alyoshenka, Alyosha...

“You wouldn’t believe it,” Beila said to her husband. “That Russian woman’s gone off her head. She’s already rushed to the doctor with him three times. I can’t so much as open a door in the house: he might catch a cold, or he’s got a fever, or we might wake him up. In a word, she’s turned into a good Jewish mother.”

“What do you expect?” replied Magazanik. “Is a woman going to turn into a man just because she wears a pair of leather breeches?” And he shrugged his shoulders and closed his eyes.

A week later, Kozyrev and his chief of staff came to visit Vavilova. They smelled of leather, tobacco, and horse sweat. Alyosha was sleeping in his cradle, protected from the flies by a length of gauze. Creaking deafeningly, like a pair of brand-new leather boots, the two men approached the cradle and looked at the sleeper’s thin little face. It was twitching. The movements it made—although no more than little movements of skin—imparted to it a whole range of different expressions: sorrow, anger, and then a smile.

The soldiers exchanged glances.

“Yes,” said Kozyrev.

“No doubt about it,” said the chief of staff.

And they sat down on two chairs and began to talk. The Poles had gone on the offensive. Our forces were retreating. Temporarily, of course. The Fourteenth Army was regrouping at Zhmerinka. Divisions were coming up from the Urals. The Ukraine would soon be ours. In a month or so there would be a breakthrough, but right now the Poles were causing trouble.

Kozyrev swore.

“Sh!” said Vavilova. “Don’t shout or you’ll wake him.”

“Yes, we’ve been given a bloody nose,” said the chief of staff.

“You do talk in a silly way,” said Vavilova. In a pained voice she added, “I wish you’d stop smoking. You’re puffing away like a steam engine.”

The soldiers suddenly began to feel bored. Kozyrev yawned. The chief of staff looked at his watch and said, “It’s time we were on our way to
Bald Hill. We don’t want to be late.”

“I wonder where that gold watch came from,” Vavilova thought crossly.

“Well, Klavdiya, we must say goodbye to you!” said Kozyrev. He got to his feet and went on: “I’ve given orders for you to be delivered a sack of flour, some sugar, and some fatback. A cart will come around later today.”

The two men went out into the street. The little Magazaniks were all standing around the horses. Kozyrev grunted heavily as he clambered up. The chief of staff clicked his tongue and leaped into the saddle.

When they got to the corner, the two men abruptly, as though by prior agreement, pulled on the reins and stopped.

“Yes,” said Kozyrev.

“No doubt about it,” said the chief of staff. They burst into laughter. Whipping their horses, they galloped off to Bald Hill.

The two-wheeled cart arrived in the evening. After dragging the provisions inside, Magazanik went into Vavilova’s room and said in a conspiratorial whisper, “What do you make of this, comrade Vavilova? We’ve got news—the brother-in-law of Tsesarsky the cobbler has just come to the workshop.” He looked around and, as if apologizing for something, said in a tone of disbelief, “The Poles are in Chudnov, and Chudnov’s only twenty-five miles away.”

Beila came in. She had overheard some of this, and she said resolutely, “There’s no two ways about it—the Poles will be here tomorrow. Or maybe it’ll be the Austrians or the Galicians. Anyway, whoever it is, you can stay here with us. And they’ve brought you enough food—may the Lord be praised—for the next three months.”

Vavilova said nothing. For once in her life she did not know what to do.

“Beila,” she began, and fell silent.

“I’m not afraid,” said Beila. “Why would I be afraid? I can manage five like Alyosha—no trouble at all. But whoever heard of a mother abandoning a ten-day-old baby?”

All through the night there were noises outside the window: the neighing of horses, the knocking of wheels, loud exclamations, angry voices. The supply carts were moving from Shepetovka to Kazatin.

Vavilova sat by the cradle. Her child was asleep. She looked at his little yellow face. Really, nothing very much was going to happen. Kozyrev had said that they would be back in a month. That was exactly the length of time she was expecting to be on leave. But what if she were cut off for longer? No, that didn’t frighten her, either.

Once Alyosha was a bit stronger, they’d find their way across the front line.

Who was going to harm them—a peasant woman with a babe in arms? And Vavilova imagined herself walking through the countryside early on a summer’s morning. She had a colored kerchief on her head, and Alyosha was looking all around and stretching out his little hands. How good it all felt! In a thin voice she began to sing, “Sleep, my little son, sleep!” And, as she was rocking the cradle, she dozed off.

In the morning the market was as busy as ever. The people, though, seemed especially excited. Some of them, watching the unbroken chain of supply carts, were laughing joyfully. But then the carts came to an end. Now there were only people. Standing by the town gates were just ordinary townsfolk—the “civilian population” of decrees issued by commandants. Everybody was looking around all the time, exchanging excited whispers. Apparently the Poles had already taken Pyatka, a shtetl only ten miles away. Magazanik had not gone out to work. Instead, he was sitting in Vavilova’s room, philosophizing for all he was worth.

An armored car rumbled past in the direction of the railway station. It was covered in a thick layer of dust—as if the steel had gone gray from exhaustion and too many sleepless nights.

“To be honest with you,” Magazanik was saying, “this is the best time of all for us townsfolk. One lot has left—and the next has yet to arrive. No requisitions, no ‘voluntary contributions,’ no pogroms.”