The Testament (35 page)

The hospital was moved to a primary school. There I underwent further surgery, which finally did the job. After three weeks I was transferred to a center for convalescents. There, despite my weakened condition, I was able to take part in the life of the ward. The discussions ranged from the lightning-like advance of our armies to Koniev’s tactics and Zhukov’s strategy. Bets were taken: Which of the two would be the first to enter Berlin? The war was coming to an end soon, that was the consensus. Some of the wounded asked to be sent home. What good was it to expose oneself now, what would be the use of dying a hero’s death just before victory?

Raissa visited the hospital frequently. She had been promoted to captain and was on the lookout for the men hoping to leave. She had an eye for singling them out and the tongue to lash out at them; she called them wet rags, cowards, traitors, and they were afraid of her.

While making her rounds, she nonchalantly stopped here and there, ostensibly for a chat but in reality gauging the morale of
her
troops.

Did she recognize me? She pointed to the cast encircling my torso and asked, “When will you finally get rid of that, huh?” She was looking at my cast, not me. I answered, “Can’t be soon enough for me, Comrade Captain.” “Well said, soldier, well said. But make it snappy, you hear?”

The man in the bed next to mine was scolded: “Aren’t you ashamed to hang around here like that, dreaming and letting yourself be served like an old retired hag, while your gallant companions beat the devil out of the enemy on his own territory?” Thus she would bring us news from the front: “Cracow has been taken, Katowitz liberated, Sosnowitz swept away; we are marching on Berlin and you
are napping?…” As though it were our fault. Was that her way of being funny? Of cheering us up? Or of expressing her displeasure? She fumed at not being able to take part in these historical but distant battles. From now on, Lublin belonged to the past. The press was already reporting other war news; other cities, more exotic, more picturesque, were the focus of attention—and she, a captain, a political commissar, was reduced to taking care of a bunch of invalids and loafers.… She came close to holding us responsible. Without us and our stupid wounds, without these cursed hospitals, she might, at this very moment, be with Marshal Koniev or Marshal Zhukov, and the Party would be proud of her and render her the honors due her! That is why she was so mean: she resented us. And every day a little more. Every battle, every triumph added to her bitterness.

My cast came off in April. But I remained bedridden as I waited to be sent home. Nothing seemed to be happening. Came the month of May and the day the Germans capitulated. Our division was in charge of the local parade. It was a magnificent show, worthy of Moscow. All right, I am exaggerating, but I am just trying to describe to you what we felt when the division marched past the official stand where Kolbakov and his Chief of Staff stood motionless, saluting our flags.

Even the saddest and most melancholy ones among us opened themselves to joy. We drank, we sang, we applauded, we shouted
Long live Stalin!
and
Long live the Soviet Union!
and we repeated in chorus,
Hurrah, three times hurrah!
We danced in the parks, in the squares, in the streets; we embraced, strangers offered one another gifts and trophies. We lived this most beautiful day of our lives to the fullest, savoring every second, every memory; we were alive and we had won; the future was ours, happiness was ours. We were proud, for we had destroyed the beast; generations to come would be grateful.

That night nobody slept.

A day or two later, we were advised that we would be part of the next homebound convoy in early June. Before that, we would have to be checked out by the competent authorities and commissions.

One beautiful morning, Raissa appears in our ward carrying a bunch of files under her arm; her cold smile worries us. As usual, she walks between the rows of beds, stopping next to a noncom here, a soldier there, teasing them. Unexpectedly, she lets her blue gaze rest on me and her smile widens into a truly feminine smile. “So?” she says. “Happy to be going home, soldier?” “And how, Comrade Captain!” “You miss home, huh?” “Absolutely, Comrade Captain.” “Where are you from?” “I don’t know, Comrade Captain.” “You don’t know? Surely you have a family, a home of your own?” “I don’t, Comrade Captain.…”

And then she does something, Raissa, that she has never done before. She sits down on the edge of my bed! Interested? Intrigued? Suspicious? She questions me about my military career, my personal life. She seems to have forgotten our earlier encounter; it was all so long ago. But no, it is not that she has forgotten; she simply has not recognized me. Refresh her memory? I remain silent. Never mind. She smiles. If I say something, she’ll stop smiling. As for the business of the German prisoner … Even if the man I placed on the operating table had been my friend Lebedev, he would have died. There or elsewhere, in the great North. Anyway, it is better to forget. The war is over, Germany is vanquished and, most importantly, Raissa is smiling at
me
. She is not thinking of the dead prisoners, so why should I? She is captain, I am soldier. At your service, Comrade Captain!

She wants to know what I do in civilian life. I’m a proofreader, I tell her. She removes her cap; her blond hair
spills down the nape of her neck, down to her vest; I want to touch it, only touch it, not even caress it; it’s silly, I know, but that’s her fault. I once hated her, found her repulsive. Now we have changed, we both have; now I want to feel her hair in my hand. My buddies are watching us, they don’t understand: never before has Raissa fraternized with one of her subordinates. They try to listen but we are speaking in low voices as though exchanging confidences about my return home. “Proofreader? What’s that?” she wants to know. I explain it to her, then I add, blushing, “I also do something else.” She opens her eyes wide: “Something else?” “I am a poet,” I tell her almost inaudibly. She becomes excited: “Is that true? You’re a poet? Like Karovensky?” “No, Karovensky is famous; his poems are read even in the trenches. Mine …” “Well, what about yours?” “Mine, nobody has read but me; I don’t think they’re very good.” “You’ll recite them for me, promise?” She leans toward me: “Promise?” I nod: Yes, I promise. “Tomorrow,” she says, “I’ll come and fetch you; we’ll go for a walk in the garden.”

Now she is talking to Dmitri, to Lev, to Alexey, without any transition, while I am still all excited, flushed, torn between the desire to please her and the fear of appearing ridiculous. I should not have mentioned my poems to her. What does she know about poetry? The whispered songs, the fragments of yearnings and remorse, the prayers of the nonbelievers, how could she appreciate them? Particularly since the words are in Yiddish. I reason with myself: Why worry so much? She will not come, we shall not go for a walk, I shall not have to play the clown reciting my verses, thank God. First I loved Raissa, then I hated her, then I loved her, then … To hell with it. I no longer love her, I no longer hate her. I have other problems to solve. What will I do in Soviet Russia? Where will I live? Work? And what if I went to visit Lebedev’s family in Vitebsk?
How stupid I am. There are no more Jews in Vitebsk. Fine, I’ll go elsewhere, to Mitya and his grandmother, anywhere. I should be able, sooner or later, to find a place where a Jewish poet does not disturb people too much.

I was wrong, of course. Raissa did come back as promised. She wanted to hear my poems.

And here I am, a victim of my poetry.

Lublin suffered less than many other large cities. There was little debris in the streets. Life was almost normal. The churches were filled, the restaurants crowded. Polish and Russian soldiers fraternized. Under the trees, boys and girls rediscovered love.

Still weak, I walk with difficulty. I lean on Raissa, my right arm on her shoulder. Whenever I make an abrupt movement, I inadvertently touch her breast, and the blood rushes to my head. I often stop to rest. “Let’s stop at this bench,” I say. She helps me sit down. “Well?” she says. “What about your poems?” “You really want to hear them?” “Read them. I’ll tell you after.” “But you won’t understand.” “Don’t be insolent, soldier.” “I meant—you won’t understand them because I don’t write in Russian but in Yiddish.” “So what?” she says without blinking. “I understand Yiddish.” Oh, yes, she had learned it in her childhood; her grandparents had spoken Yiddish to her. “Where are they?” I ask. Her eyes darken. “They were killed.” “When?” “I don’t know.” “Where?” “In Vitebsk.” And suddenly I no longer see the whiteness of the sky, nor the foliage of the trees, nor the human torrent flowing toward the center of Lublin. I take a few sheets out of my pocket and begin reading aloud. She interrupts me impatiently: “How depressing, that’s enough, haven’t you anything more cheerful?” I shake my head. I am annoyed with myself for having given in to her. She is too cold, too indifferent to understand my poetry. I
fold my poems and put them back into my pocket. “Poets are supposed to sing of love or the fatherland, or both,” Raissa says spitefully. “Why can’t you do that?” Of all things,
she
is the one who’s offended, cheated! Her cold eyes seem hateful to me. She gets up abruptly. “Let’s go back.” “I was going to suggest that. The walk’s exhausted me.” I don’t want to feel the warmth and strength emanating from her body, so I try to walk by myself. She leaves me at the door and goes off without a word. I drag myself to my bed; I collapse with a single thought in my mind before falling asleep: As a poet, I have no luck; and as for women, I’m not doing so well either.

Raissa shows up again that same afternoon. She shakes me: “Wake up!” I rub my eyes; she seems even angrier than in the morning. She hisses at me through tight lips and I think: A blond serpent. I say: “I’m tired, I walked too much.” “Come on.” I get up and follow her, I climb into her car. We drive along for ten minutes or so, not more, and Majdanek, surrounded by barbed wire and elevated searchlights, rises up before us in all its serenity and icy horror. “Since you’re fascinated by the morbid,” says Raissa, “go ahead: take a look, fill your eyes.” I get out of the car, sure she will follow me, but she surprises me once more. She issues a terse command and her driver takes off. A moment later, the car is far away, leaving behind a cloud of white and gray dust resembling human ashes.

I made my way into Majdanek—and I shall not tell you, Citizen Magistrate, what I felt; that would be almost indecent. Let me say only this: I forgot my fatigue, my ailments, my disappointments, my illusions, I forgot everything; I walked and walked for hours and hours, until nightfall. I went into all the barracks, all the cells; I touched and caressed the stones, embraced the doors behind which an entire people, my own, had disappeared in
a cloud of fire. No, I shall not tell the story of Majdanek; others have done it before me; let the words of the survivors live and resound; I have no wish to cover them with mine. But let me say one more thing: I felt the desire to rest there. Forever. I felt the desire to remain with the invisible dead and beat my head, as they had done, against the walls, the ceiling, to gulp the air that was escaping, to bury myself in madness, whispering and crying, cursing and praying, and repeating to myself: None of this is true, they are not dead and I am not alive.… Never have I wanted so much to enter into madness and death as I did that evening at Majdanek.

Huddled in a barracks off to one side, I let the shadows envelop me. I listened to the moaning, the screams of terror carried by the night fog; I saw the children pressed against their mothers, I caught their silences touched by eternity, by a dead, sullied eternity. And I vowed never to leave them.

I was alone—never have I been more alone. And yet, there was a voice comforting me: “Don’t stay here, go back to the living.” And, a moment later: “Raissa is right, you’re attracted to the macabre.” Then, after another silence: “Raissa is young and beautiful, you like her, what more do you want? Go after her, love her.” “Don’t ask for the impossible,” I said. “This is not the time or the place.” “You’re wrong, it is here and now that you can and must overcome the call of the abyss, for the abyss is deeper and blacker here than elsewhere.”

I recognized the voice. I wanted to submit, to accept it, but I couldn’t. I had just glimpsed the truth of truths, I had just perceived man in his final convulsions; it was impossible for me to look away; I had to follow him beyond the camp and the present, into the heavens, all the way to the Celestial Throne, and there the taciturn gravedigger was addressing God in a whisper: “As a child I was a
believer, because I was told that it was impossible to give You a name and equally impossible to deny You or defame You in words. Only now I know! You are a gravedigger, God of my ancestors. You carry Your chosen people into the ground, just as I carried the soldiers fallen on the battlefields. Your people no longer exist. You have buried them; others killed them, but it is You who have put them into their invisible, unknown tomb. Tell me, did You at least recite the Kaddish? Did You weep for their death?”

My words met a stony silence. God chose not to respond. But the hoarse voice of a former companion echoed within me: “You exaggerate, my friend; you go too far. God is resurrection, not gravedigger; God keeps alive the bond that links Him and you to your people; is that not enough for you? I am alive, you are alive; is that not enough for you?” “No, that is not enough for me!” “What do you want? Tell me what you want.” “Redemption,” I said. And I hastened to add, “In this place I have the right to demand and receive everything; and what I demand is redemption.” “So do I,” said my companion sadly. “So do I. And so does He.”

Feverish, delirious, carried by angels in the service of death, I returned to the hospital. I took out my notebook. And in a dream I wrote to my father what I had seen.

Repatriated, demobilized, I went back to my job as proofreader at the foreign section in the State Publishing House. The days were gray and sad, the nights long and lonely. Nothing interested me, my life disgusted me even though it may have seemed enviable to others. As a wounded war veteran decorated with the Medal of the Red Flag, I enjoyed a variety of useful privileges: no standing in line for the streetcar, free entry to cinemas and the zoo, priority for certain foods. I had returned to the same small room in the home of my former landlady. A volume
of my verse was about to appear in Moscow: Markish and Der Nister had read and warmly recommended it. Visits to the Jewish Writers’ Club improved my morale, and I managed to multiply them. I attended meetings and lectures organized by the Anti-Fascist Committee in honor of Jewish intellectuals—Communists or sympathizers—from Europe or the United States. I heard novelists and poets who had been invited to present their work in progress. I liked going to see Mikhoels and his theater company perform
The Revolt of Bar Kochba
. In short, I was doing my best to return to normal by convincing myself that the killer had not won the game, that the gravedigger in me could leave the cemetery, that the Jewish people was still living, even if my own family was gone. But to recover my balance, if not my enthusiasm, I needed something or someone—I needed Raissa’s presence. That was precisely what I needed.