Babi Yar, page 32
‘I use the washing powder for doing the laundry,’ she explained, ‘but we sold the needles and the eau-de-Cologne, and we also sold our ration of black bread, and used the money to buy some cakes. We decided to have some cakes to celebrate our moving into a new home, as we used to do years ago.’
And, with an air of triumph, she placed on the table an antique cake-stand laden with cakes made with saccharine; my jaw dropped at the sight of such marvellous things. My mother gave me a nudge under the table.
We sat on till late in the evening. Mima talked away all the time, talking a lot of good sense and giving voice to the most astonishing thoughts. I even began to wonder whether he had not been putting on a show all these years and had simply taken refuge in a mental home.
But then something came over him, and what he said started to make less and less sense—or else I wasn’t clever enough to understand him. The old lady got him to his feet and took him away, like a child, to put him to bed, and it was very strange to see her talking to him in children’s language and slapping him—such a big, good-looking and yet helpless man.
Next day I heard the sound of sawing in the neighbours’ shed. The shed backed on to our garden and there was a crack in it through which I could see Mima sawing wood. He had put a big log on the sawing-horse and was scratching at it with a rusty old double-ended saw. The spare handle was waving about, the saw was bending and jumping out, but Mima went on scratching away at the rough log, clumsily but in great earnest. It hurt me to watch him, so I hopped over the fence and presented myself to him as an old friend.
‘Let me help you; it’s not so easy on your own,’ I suggested in a very down-to-earth manner.
He looked at me in horror and turned quite pale. For a while he remained silent and then muttered:
‘I suppose you can …’
I was very good at sawing wood. But on this occasion for some reason nothing went right. Mima’s watchful gaze upset me and made me feel awkward; behind their thick magnifying lenses his eyes seemed very dark, with huge bottomless pupils.
It was only with tremendous difficulty that we succeeded in sawing one log. Mima then leant the saw up against the wall and said, staring at me rather absently:
‘We shan’t do any more.’
‘No more?’
‘No more.’
’But why?’
‘I’m afraid.’
Timidly and cautiously I left the shed and clambered back over the fence. I was feeling rather shaky: it seemed as though a switch had clicked in my ears and all the noises going on around me became unbearably vivid—the clatter of a cart on the bridge, the barking of a dog, the confused hum from the market, the ‘ta-ta-ta’ from Babi Yar, and from the shed I could just hear the faint, cautious scratching of the saw. I put my eye to the crack. Mima was back on his own, scratching away vaguely at the log.
TO KILL A FISH
I have been turning this question over in my mind for a long time, and it now seems to me that the humane and intelligent people who come after us—if anybody is in fact left alive—will find it difficult to understand how it could come about, how man could ever conceive of committing murder, let alone mass murder. Actually to kill someone. How was it possible? What for?
How did this idea come to find a place in the dark recesses of the brain of an ordinary human being, born of a mother, at one time just an infant sucking at the breast and later going to school? The same ordinary being as millions of others, with hands and feet and nails that grow, and cheeks on which, in the case of a man, there are bristles growing, a being which sorrows, smiles, admires himself in the mirror, feels a tender love for a woman and can burn his fingers with a match, and himself has no desire whatsoever to die—in short, ordinary in every respect, except in his pathological lack of imagination.
A normal human being understands not only that he himself wants to live but that everybody else wants to live as well. When he sees the sufferings of others, or only thinks of them, he sees the same thing happening to himself and he feels at least some mental pain. And consequently he would not raise his hand against another.
It is very difficult to kill even a newly born kitten.
If you drown them, some of them will keep moving their paws a whole hour in the bucket of water. Whenever my grandfather had to perform this disagreeable task he used to send me away so that I shouldn’t watch it, and he would cover the bucket with a sack. I would eye the bucket beneath its sack from afar, and I would start to tremble: I imagined to myself that they were swimming around up to their ears in water, unable to breathe, just twitching their paws convulsively.
That was why, when a cat strayed into our house and gave birth to a couple of kittens, one of which turned out to be deformed, with fleshless, twisted projections instead of legs, and which miaowed desperately all the time, I decided, out of pity for it, not to drown it but to kill it outright.
It was a moist, warm blob of life, utterly devoid of sense and as insignificant as a worm. It seemed nothing could be easier than to dispose of it with one blow. I picked up the swollen, writhing object between two fingers, took it out into the yard, placed it on a brick, and dropped another brick flat on it from a height.
A strange thing happened—the little body seemed to be resilient, the brick fell to one side and the kitten continued its miaowing. With shaking hands I picked up the brick again and proceeded to crush the little ball of living matter until the very entrails came out, and at last it was silent, and I scraped up the remains of the kitten with a shovel and took them off to the rubbish heap, and as I did it my head swam and I felt sick.
It’s not so easy as you might think to kill even some little blind kittens.
Occasionally fish came on sale in the market. We couldn’t afford it, but I was always trying furiously to think up ways of getting my hands on some food and it occurred to me to go out and try to catch some fish.
I had often been fishing with my pals in the old days. It is, as you know, a tremendously pleasant occupation. True, I used to be rather sorry for the fish, but we usually put it in a sack or [kept it in a bucket, where it could wriggle about until it ‘went to sleep’, and, after all, what wonderful fish soup it made!
My fishing tackle was rather primitive, consisting of a rusty hook. But I decided that it was good enough to start with, dug up some worms the night before, and as soon as it began to get light I set off in the direction of the Dnieper.
When the river was at its highest the great expanse of meadowland between Kurenyovka and the Dnieper was often flooded right up to our embankment: it became a vast sea stretching to the horizon, and afterwards it would be covered with lush green grasses, the soil enriched with river silt. I made my way for a long time through the long grass, getting my feet wet through, but my spirits were kept up by my hunger and the idea of catching a lot of fish.
The banks of the Dnieper are sandy, with magnificent beaches and steep banks, and its waters are brownish in colour. There was nothing to remind me of the war, of hunger or of all the other horrors, and it made me think that the River Dnieper was just the same then as it had been in the days when Oleg’s boats or the floating caravans of merchants on their way along the great route ‘from the Varyags to the Greeks’ had come sailing down the mainstream, and how many princes, Tsars and political systems had replaced one another since then, while the Dnieper flowed quietly on its way. Such thoughts come into your head many times in the course of your life and eventually become hackneyed. But at the time I was just thirteen.
I cast the line, put the box of worms in my pocket and set off to follow the float as it was carried downstream. The Dnieper is a fast-flowing river, and there are two ways of fishing in it: either to sit in one place and re-cast your line every minute or so, or to move along the bank with the float.
I had probably tramped well over half a mile before I got stuck in an impenetrable willow-bed, but I caught nothing. So I ran back and covered the same ground again, and with the same result. And so I went on, running up and down like a fool, getting ever crosser and more upset. I was clearly doing something wrong—either I hadn’t fixed the plummet properly or I had chosen the wrong place and the wrong bait. The sun was already up and had started to warm the air, but I hadn’t had a single bite, as though there were no longer any fish in the Dnieper.
Thoroughly disappointed and very near to tears, I realized that the time when the fish are most likely to bite was long past, so I decided to try my luck in a little pool among the willows, although I was afraid my hook would get caught in a piece of old wood and it was the only one I had.
The little pond was some way away from the river. The current affected it only indirectly and you could scarcely see the water moving round in it. I had no idea how deep it was, so I simply lifted the float up as high as I could and cast it in. Almost at once it began gently to bob up and down.
It had scarcely disappeared beneath the surface when I gave it a sharp tug and pulled out an empty hook: something had eaten my worm. This was not so bad: now the hunt was on. I put some more bait on the hook and cast again, and the same game was repeated in the depths of the pool.
No matter what I did or how I fixed the bait, the hook always came out of the water empty. The fish was smarter than I was. I was now really worked up: I had to catch something, even if it was only a perch the size of my little finger!
Suddenly as I tugged I felt some weight on the line. At first I was horrified, thinking my hook had finally got caught, but at the very same moment I realized that it was actually a fish. Impatiently, not thinking for a moment that it might break away, I heaved with all my strength so that it sailed over my head, and I rushed in triumph across to where it lay flapping about on the grass. ‘Aha—you crafty old thing—you lost out in the end! I got you after all.’ It was a moment of great happiness. Anyone who has caught a fish even once in his life will know what I mean.
It was a perch, and at first it seemed to me bigger than it really was. A beautiful perch, with green stripes and bright red fins, soft to the touch and with a glazed look about it, it would have made a beautiful still-life.
But I was pursued by failure: the perch had swallowed the worm too eagerly. The line disappeared into his mouth, and the hook had got caught up somewhere in its stomach. With one hand I held down the flabby, twitching fish while with the other I felt around and tried to pull the hook out of its stomach, but it had apparently got caught in a bone. I kept on tugging and pulling and pulling very hard, and the fish went on wriggling, holding its mouth open in silence and looking at me with goggling eyes.
Then I lost my patience and pulled with all my force, the line snapped and the hook stayed in the fish. At that moment I had the feeling that I was having a hook pulled out of myself, and I broke out in a cold sweat on my forehead.
I know perfectly well you will think that it was nothing but a child’s over-sensitivity, and I’m quite ready to be jeered at by any real fisherman. But I was on the river bank alone, everything around me was fine, the sun was beating down, the water was sparkling, the dragonflies were settling on the marsh plants, and I had nothing to go on fishing with.
I threw the perch farther away on the grass and sat down to wait until it was quite dead. From time to time I could hear a rustling and a flapping over there: it was still jumping. Then it lay quiet. I went across and touched it with my foot, and it jerked up again, now all covered in dust and with bits of greenery stuck to it, all its beauty vanished.
I walked away, got lost in my thoughts and waited a long time, until I quite lost my patience and went back to look at it. It was still moving, and it began to get me really upset. I took the fish by the tail and proceeded to bang its head on the ground, but it still opened its mouth, stared at me and would not die: the ground was too soft.
In a fury I swung my arm up and threw the fish down on the ground with all my strength, so that it bounced like a ball, but it still went on wriggling and jumping. I went in search of a stick and found a rough piece of wood which I pressed down on the perch’s head—while it went on staring at me with its silly fish-eyes—and I proceeded to squash and hack and dig at that head, until I had gone right through it. And in the end it stayed quiet.
It was only then that I remembered that I had a knife, and it was not without some hesitation that I cut the perch open and poked about in it for a long time, turning my nose away from the revolting smell, and somewhere among the slimy intestines I came across my rusty hook and the undevoured worm. By which time the perch had begun to look as battered and beastly as if it had been dragged out of a rubbish tip, and it seemed strange: here was something that contained such a powerful determination to live, and I wondered why it had been necessary to destroy so crudely a living thing which had been so resilient and so cunningly put together, and so beautiful in its green stripes and red scales. I held the pitiful, smelly pieces of fish in my hand, and, despite my hunger, I knew at once that after what had happened I should not be able to eat it.
That was at a time when I had only just begun to make my acquaintance with life. Later I killed many a living thing, both big and small. Especially unpleasant was the business of slaughtering horses; but there it was, I did it, and I ate them. But that comes later.
… It was a sunny day, and while I was busy with the perch over there in the Yar and throughout the continent there were machines at work. I am really concerned least of all with the slaughter of animals. I am talking about the power of imagination which, if you have it, makes it very difficult for you to kill even a fish.
A CHAPTER OF ORIGINAL DOCUMENTS
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ANNOUNCEMENT
It is strictly forbidden to offer assistance of any kind to escaping Russian prisoners-of-war, either by giving them accommodation or by offering them food.
The penalty for any violation of this order will be imprisonment or death.
STADTKOMMISSAR ROGAUSCH*
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Kiev, May 8th, 1942
All able-bodied inhabitants of the city of Kiev from the age of fourteen to fifty-five are obliged to work in places as instructed by the employment exchange.
ABLE-BODIED PERSONS MAY LEAVE KIEV ONLY WITH THE PERMISSION OF THE DISTRICT AUTHORITIES.
People guilty of leaving Kiev of their own accord and of not responding to summonses issued by the employment exchange within seven days of their departure will be punished as for SABOTAGE, AND ALL THEIR PROPERTY WILL BE CONFISCATED.†
MAY 1942 WHAT’S ON IN THE CINEMAS
GLORIA— That’s What Men are Like, The Triple Wedding. METROPOLE—First Love, Wedding Night for Three.
ECHO— Yes, I Love You, A Wedding with Problems.
LUXE— A Woman with Plans, Salto Mortale.
ORION— Dancing Round the World, Only Love.
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MEN NEEDED FOR SERVICE IN UKRAINIAN POLICE
Qualifications: age—18 to 45; height—not less than 5 ft 6 ins; and a blameless moral and political record.*
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OPERA Season 1942
(For Germans only)
OPERAS Madam Butterfly, Traviata, The Queen of Spades, Faust.
BALLET Coppelia, Swan Lake.
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Re-naming of Streets
The following streets were renamed:
Kreshchatik—to be Von Eichhornstrasse.
Shevchenko Boulevard—to be Rownowerstrasse.
Kirov street—to be Doctor Todt Street.
(Streets had already been named after Hitler, Goering and Mussolini.)
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‘THE LIBERATED UKRAINE WELCOMES REICHSMINISTER ROSENBERG.’ (Beneath this headline the newspaper gave an enthusiastic and detailed account of how the Reichsminister in charge of the occupied eastern regions attended a lunch given by the General-Kommissar, inspected the principal monuments in the city of Kiev, watched the ballet Coppelia and visited a farm on the outskirts of the city) ‘where he chatted with the peasants and had an opportunity of convincing himself of their readiness to carry out the tasks facing them’.*
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ANNOUNCEMENT
Any person who, directly or indirectly, helps to support or conceal members of gangs, saboteurs, tramps or escaping prisoners or gives any of them food or other assistance will be punished. All his property will be confiscated.
A similar penalty will befall anybody who, being aware of the presence of gangs, saboteurs or escaped prisoners, fails to pass information about them immediately to their village elder, the nearest police chief, a military command or a German agricultural director.
Anyone who by laying such information assists in the capture or elimination of members of any gang, vagrants, saboteurs or escaped prisoners will receive a reward of 1,000 roubles, or priority in the receipt of foodstuffs, or the right to a strip of land or an extension of his private garden.
Rovno, June 1942
Military Commandant of the Ukraine. Reichskommissar of the Ukraine†
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Headlines from the Bulletins issued from the Führer’s H.Q.
‘Hunger and Terror in Leningrad.’
‘Advance Going According to Plan. Destruction of Important Enemy Units Near the Don.’
‘Soviets Continue to Suffer Major Losses.’
‘Soviets Yesterday Again Attacked Without Success Central and Southern Sectors of Eastern Front.’†
Prices on the Market, Autumn 1942
2 lb. of bread—250 roubles.
A tumbler of salt—200 roubles.
2 lb. of butter—6,000 roubles.
2 lb. of fat—7,000 roubles.
Average monthly earnings of factory and office workers at that time—300–500 roubles.
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FILMS SHOWING TODAY THE TIGER FROM ESHNAPUR
Marvellous full-length adventure film.
