Babi yar, p.42
Babi Yar, page 42
The earth was dry and sandy, and the spade scraped against the pieces of brick in it. I was soon sweating, but by then I was able to kneel up in the hole. It was uneven, crumbling, like a rather long crater. I dug up lots of bones, a square nail and some pieces of newspaper. Everything had been preserved just as it was when the house was built in the time of the Tsar. The people who had printed and read those newspapers and thrown away the broken bricks were probably already dead.
I wanted the hole to hide in. And I really felt safer in it. There were only three possibilities of my dying in it: if they used dogs to find me, if a bomb fell on the house, or if the house were burnt down.
I thought I was quite alone and nearly fainted when a pair of green eyes lit up beside me. Titus had turned up and was staring at me with his enormous eyes.
I nearly wept out of gratitude, joy and affection for him. I drew him over on to my lap; he didn’t object—on the contrary, he started to nestle into me and purr, and we sat there, the two of us, reading passages from a newspaper half a century old.
We studied closely an advertisement which said that a certain Mr Schmidt was able to offer a large selection of the very best Swiss gramophones as well as the Amour needles, and that you could also obtain from him a marvellous collection of records, all at very reasonable prices … For some reason or other he was also in the business of buying up clocks, pearls and antiques. It was amazing to learn that there had been a time when people lived at peace in the world, buying clocks, gramophones and pearls. It was hard to believe. A gramophone was the only thing that Titus and I lacked.
I went quietly off to sleep, curled up in the soft earth. When I woke up light was already coming into the space beneath the house, which meant it was daytime. The cat had gone, I was frozen stiff, and the place no longer appeared to me to be as cosy and safe as it had during the night. Whole curtains of dirty cobwebs hung from the floorboards, which were so low they pressed down on me and seemed almost to crush me. Once again I began to feel nervous: I imagined the house collapsing on top of me with all its weight. I flattened myself to the ground and crawled as fast as I could, as if rats were nibbling at my heels, towards the hole and scrambled out.
To calm down I leant over the rainwater-butt to have a drink. Fallen leaves were floating on the water, but I scooped them off and blew on the surface; it was sweet and pleasant to the taste. I thought to myself: if ever I live to have water properly laid on, I shall still go on drinking rainwater, I like it so much.
At that moment I heard a noise. I started, raised my head and saw a German soldier coming into the yard carrying a rifle; then I caught sight of another one on the street outside. Instinctively and very stupidly I squatted down behind the butt, though I knew perfectly well that they were bound to see me.
When I thought they were not looking in my direction I dodged round the corner of the house, again cowering down rather stupidly, not looking round and averting my eyes from them in a sort of superstitious belief that they would not see me. I heard someone shout ‘Hey! … Hey!’ and I straightened up and stopped.
The soldier eyed me very sternly. He was a dark-haired, stocky fellow of about thirty, rather awkward in his movements, wearing old, muddy boots. His was a very ordinary, everyday type of face which had something familiar about it—he could easily have been a mechanic from the Sport Factory … His cap was cocked on one side of his head, his dark curls sticking out from under it. In German he said:
‘Come here.’
I took a few steps along the wall.
‘You’ll be shot,’ he said sternly and started to raise his rifle.
It was, apparently, loaded, since he did not shoot the bolt. Another German came up, took him by the arm and said something in a very calm and indifferent tone, which sounded roughly like: ‘Don’t do it, there’s no point.’ (That’s what I thought he said.)
The second soldier was rather older, quite an elderly man, with sunken cheeks. The dark-haired one answered him back and turned his head away for a moment. In that brief moment—I realized—I ought to have jumped up and dashed away. As luck would have it, at that moment my grenades were in the house. Yet this was the moment I had been preparing for.
There was no time even to cry out: ‘Please, mister—wait!’ The dark one simply raised his rifle, turned his head for a moment, said something to the elder one, and that was the last moment of my life.
I realized all this, without having time to move an inch. It was just the same as when you knock a flask or a bowl of flowers with your elbow and see it tip and fall before your very eyes: you have time to think that you ought to grab it, that though it is now whole and perfect in a moment it will be smashed; but you are not quick enough to make the movement, you can only think about it, annoyed and mortified—and it’s already smashed to bits.
Right in front of my face—not in the cinema, or in a picture or in a dream—I saw the black hole at the end of the barrel, and had in my nose the unpleasant smell of gunpowder (meanwhile the elder German apparently went on saying something, but the dark one—alas!—wouldn’t listen); ages seemed to pass and there was no shot.
Then the end of the barrel dropped from my face to my chest and I realized at once in amazement that that, apparently, was how I was to be killed—shot in the chest!
Then he lowered the gun altogether.
I couldn’t believe it, and I thought and expected that he would raise it again. The elder one merely glanced at me, tapped the dark one on the shoulder and left the yard. The dark one said to me sternly: ‘We-eg!’
It was only then that I finally came to myself, more dead than alive, and broke out in a cold sweat. I walked off, as in a dream, round the corner on my shaking, frozen, skinny legs, and into the house, where I stood in a corner with my face to the wall, swaying on my feet.
I have thought a great deal about the affair since, and I still cannot understand what happened. Was it a joke? Did the elder one say: ‘Stop fooling about; don’t scare him?’ Or was it meant seriously? And did the elder one say: ‘Stop that; he’s given himself up?’ If it was a joke, why didn’t he shoot? He only had to squeeze his finger. I suppose on November 1st every year I ought to remember and thank that finger, the forefinger on his right hand, which let me live.
Tuesday, November 2nd
I am one of those people who definitely prefer strong light. There can never be too much artificial light or too much sunshine for me. This is neither good nor bad but simply, it would seem, a biological peculiarity of my organism. I have never worn dark glasses, because the brighter everything is around me, the more dazzling the beaches and the snowfields, the better I like it and the more cheerful my mood. It never hurts my eyes; on the contrary, they bathe in a sea of light.
My mother used to have trouble with her eyes. She would always be drawing the curtains across the windows; I would draw them back. When everybody was suffering from the summer heat, I would be just starting to enjoy it. And during those terrible, cloudy autumn days, when it suddenly occurs to you that at that very moment somewhere in the Crimea, or in Africa, or on islands in the Pacific, the sun is shining bright and hot, a longing comes over me almost to the point of tears. How fortunate are the migratory birds which can just take off and fly where they please, without any special permission.
I hate it when the clouds stream across the sky and the sun shines through only briefly, and is then hidden for long stretches. I keep watching the beastly cloud, longing for it to pass. Whenever I recall something which happened years ago I am always quite sure whether the sun was shining at the time or not, if it was a dull day.
All this is by the way of background to the fact that I was overjoyed when, after the dull October days, the sun at last appeared.
It was as though my escape from being shot the day before had never happened. I became carefree and self-confident. It was as though, since I had been lucky once, I had decided that fate was looking after me and that I should get through somehow in the future.
Wiser now, I put a grenade in each pocket and kept them with me all the time, checking them from time to time to make sure the caps had not come unscrewed. I kept looking round me vigilantly, like a cat, ready to take cover at any moment. And I was seized with a desire to do something active, so I dug a trench under the house and made another hole there, for my mother.
She came and looked at it, but was not overpleased with the idea. She suggested hiding the trunk in it. I quickly did this, burying it deep down so that it should not be burnt. I had no doubt at all that the house would be burnt down, if not in the fighting then by the Vlasov people: there was no way of saving it. I studied it carefully, so as to remember what it looked like. Once again there were footsteps and voices on the street. I dodged under the house and saw Alexandra and Mikolai, my godparents, walking very slowly across the deserted square.
The old lady was carefully leading the blind man, keeping him away from the pot-holes and paving stones and talking to him very earnestly. He was wearing his famous glasses with the blue lens and the piece of ply-wood. When they found we were at home they both broke into tears. They had simply been trying to find some human beings.
My mother immediately took them in and fed them. They had not been able to find any food for themselves and had eaten nothing for two whole days.
‘We were living in the cellar,’ said the old lady plaintively. ‘The old man is dying anyway, so we came out to look for people.’
My mother nearly burst into tears. Just imagine what it is to be utterly alone in a deserted city! She persuaded the old folk to spend the night with us, and they agreed that it was better to keep together—to survive together or perish together. They fussed for a time, trying to make themselves comfortable, and were about to go to bed when they suddenly decided that they must go and look after their own flat in the children’s technical school, and that it was better for them to sleep in the cellar over there. They were really quite beside themselves and there was nothing for it but to let them go to their cellar.
My mother gave them some potatoes, which they accepted with a deep bow, and they made their way slowly back across the square. I said:
‘Have a look around the yards and in the cellars.’
The old lady threw up her hands.
‘In other people’s cellars? To go and steal? The Lord forgive you, my child!’
For some time I stood watching them go, afraid they might be shot. They were very unusual people, really ‘not of this world’. They went off across the square, destruction all around them, arm in arm, chatting quietly to each other.
I was already going to sleep when I heard the sound of a motor. Beams of light played over our windows. Something resembling a tank was rumbling straight across the vegetable garden, its headlights shining straight at our cottage. Without slowing down it crashed right into the fence, sending splinters flying, and looked as though it was going to charge right into the house. But it stopped at the wall of the house, at the very point where my wonderful hole was. It was too late for me to escape. There was a banging of doors in the yard and the sound of a lively conversation going on between some Germans.
As though someone else had willed it, my mother rushed to light a lamp so that they should see the light and not take fright as they came in. She did the right thing, because they even wiped their boots in the porch and knocked on the door. My mother answered their knock and they walked in, brisk, smartly turned-out and smiling.
‘Guten Abend!’—they indicated by means of gestures what they wanted—‘Schlafen, schlafen—sleep!’
‘Bitte,’ said my mother.
They moved about the room quite relaxed, arranging their things, quickly deciding where to hang their greatcoats and where to throw their cases. They proceeded to bring blankets and cases in from the vehicle. Meanwhile we rolled up our own bedding and moved into the other half of the house. I felt a little easier by this time and went outside to see what they had driven up in. It was a half-track vehicle, armoured, it seemed to me, and a gun was trailing behind.
The Germans kept up a lively conversation and in ten minutes they knocked on the wall and called out:
‘Missis, son, come here!’
We went into their room. Apart from the oil-lamp, which my mother had decided not to take away, they had a blindingly bright carbide light burning, but it was flickering, and one of them was working on it. The table was piled high with food and drink. There was wine, in earthenware bottles with brightly coloured labels, and metal drinking mugs for glasses. The Germans pointed to the table like the most expansive of hosts, and said:
‘Bitte, bitte! Come and eat!’
One of them handed me a ham sandwich. Staggered at the sight, I started to eat it, and it made me feel quite dizzy.
There were three of them. Franz was middle-aged, ginger-haired and very calm. Herman was about seventeen, dark-haired, handsome and well-built. I did not get to know the name of the third; he was the driver, who was mending the carbide lamp. He simply took a bite at a sandwich and collapsed from exhaustion.
Franz, the older one, poured my mother and me some wine, waving the earthenware bottle and saying boastfully:
‘France, Paris!’
The wine was sweet, with a delicate bouquet. Mother drank hers and told Franz that they were good Germans, but that there were others about who wanted to ‘bang-bang’ us.
Franz frowned.
‘That not soldier. That bandit—shame German nation. We are front-line soldier, artillery. War—“bang-bang”. Mothers, children—no “bang-bang”.’
Herman took a mouth-organ out of his side pocket and started to play on it. Franz went on drinking wine and insisted on using his small supply of words, explaining with some difficulty how desperately tired they were. The three of them had first been in Norway, then they had fought with Rommel in Africa, and now they had been withdrawn from the Western Front. Everywhere they went they had to fight.
‘Mein Gott! Here—war. There—war. War. War.’ This Franz was a serious, hard-bitten, very manly character, who seemed to be permeated with the smell of gunpowder, and I was rather scared of him. But young Herman, who was only about three years older than I was, was as straightforward and as likeable as my friend Bolik, and he was more ready to talk to me.
‘Franz is from Hamburg, I am from Berlin,’ he said proudly. ‘I’ve been at the front for a whole year!’
‘And is it awful at the front?’ I asked.
He smiled and said:
‘To tell the truth, it’s terrible. France not so awful. Russia awful.’
He immediately pulled out a photograph of himself with his father, a very substantial looking gent in a hat and carrying a stick, and next to him stood a shy, bony little boy in shorts with a Berlin square in the background.
My mother asked them where the front was and whether Kiev was being abandoned.
Franz became at once very solemn. No, Kiev would not be abandoned. The front was right there, in the forest. But the Russians would never enter Kiev. There would be a terrible battle. If forces had been transferred all the way from France, it was going to be a real battle! Yes, this was going to be another Stalingrad, only this time for the Russians. He pondered for a while, sitting there, and repeated the word, pronouncing each syllable clearly: Stalingrad.
Mother said:
‘November 7th is the biggest Soviet holiday.’
‘Ja, ja,’ Franz exclaimed. ‘Soviet want take Kiev on holiday. October. But they no take Kiev. They die.’
I began to feel rather depressed. He wasn’t lying—why should he want to! They were just treating us as human beings. It was a serious conversation. So I asked:
‘But if they do take it? Will you retreat?’
‘Ja, ja, understand,’ said old Franz very seriously. ‘You waiting for Soviets, but I say, I am old soldier: you go away, go away, please. Here—you die.’
He went on to explain that we ought to get away somewhere to a village or into the forest, dig ourselves a hole, sit there and wait until the front line moved away, because Kiev was going to be turned into a no-man’s-land on Hitler’s orders.
Franz jabbed his chest with his finger and said:
‘I tell you, old soldier. I fight in Poland. Is all the same—advance and retreat. Russian tired.’
The driver was asleep on the couch with all his clothes on. Herman suddenly became morose and put the mouth-organ aside. Franz was getting drunk. We went to our own part of the house, but could hear that Franz and Herman stayed awake a long time, talking.
That night I was awakened by a shout. My mother was calling in desperation:
‘Tolya, Tolya! Help me!’
I heard some scuffling and the sound of a stool going over. Half asleep, I cried out:
‘Who’s there? Who is it?’
I struck a match and was at first blinded by it, then saw my mother struggling with the ginger-haired Franz. He was very drunk, muttering in German, arguing with her and pushing her about.
I always had tapers ready by me on the stove. I lit one of them, summoned up my courage, and began to let myself down from the stove. Franz turned towards the light, stared at the flame with drunken eyes, eyed me thoughtfully for a moment and let my mother go.
‘Krieg, Mother. War, nichts gut,’ he said. ‘Ach!’
And, completely drunk, he staggered, bumped against the door and left the room.
Still trembling, my mother fixed a piece of wood against the door.
‘He’s drunk, quite drunk,’ she said. ‘It was a good thing you lit the light. Go to sleep … And—thank you.’
For the first time I really felt myself to be a grown man, who could and had to defend others. I woke up many times before the morning, listening and feeling for the grenades under my pillow. I reckoned up the number of days and hours left. Until the holiday of November 7th there remained only ninety-six hours. All around was silence.
Wednesday, November 3rd
Wednesday, November 3rd, began with beautiful weather. The sky was clear and blue, and when I went out on to the porch I literally caught my breath at the freshness and purity of the air and the brightness of the morning sunshine.
