Babi Yar, page 33
For the first time on the screen—THE REAL INDIAN COUNTRYSIDE.
In the principal role—LA-YAN, popular dancer of the most unusual beauty.
A SENSATION! GRIPPING STORY! ADVENTURE! DRAMA! From Friday next in the Gloria and Luxe cinemas.
THE INDIAN TOMB
In the principal role—LA-YAN.
Even more powerful, more dramatic and gripping—this film is the second and final part of The Tiger from Eshnapur.
See it in the Gloria and Luxe cinemas.
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* Novoye Ukrainskoye Slovo, May 23rd, 1942.
† Op. cit., May 10th, 1942, ‘Order No. 88 issued by the Chief of the City of Kiev’.
* Announcement in Novoye Ukrainskoye Slovo day after day in the course of May 1942.
* Novoye Ukrainskoye Slovo, June 23rd, 1942.
† Kiev During the Great Fatherland War (Kiev, 1963), pp. 282–3.
† Novoye Ukrainskoye Slovo, July 4th, 7th and 20th, 1942.
CAUGHT IN THE ROUND-UP
I went to see The Indian Tomb and got caught up in a police raid. Police vans swept into our square at great speed and out of them tumbled Germans, dogs and Ukrainian police. The market-women screamed and scattered in all directions, baskets were swept off the counters and potatoes were scattered all over the place. Some folk were quick enough to get away, others were not so quick, and the crowd scrambled around first one exit and then another, where Arbeitskarte were already being checked.
What did I care? I was still under fourteen; I was liable to be directed to work, but not to be sent to Germany. I sat down on the step of one of the stalls, huddled up as small as I could make myself, just in case, and I watched the proceedings.
It was mainly the women they were after, young girls who had come in to the market from the outlying villages. [The peasants, of course, had no Arbeitskarte anyway. Even under Soviet rule they had not been given identity cards; they were people without rights who went their way until they were caught.] The girls were quickly pushed into the closed vans, where they screamed and banged on the tarpaulin and stuck their arms through holes in the sides. ‘Hey, Mother, help me, do something for me!’ A shabbily dressed woman unbuttoned her blouse, displaying an enormous white bosom which she took in both her hands and pushed under the nose of a policeman: ‘I’ve a baby feeding on me at home: look—see the milk!’
The police formed a line and combed through the market, driving out the rest of the people, but they didn’t bother those who were obviously elderly women, and they took one look at me and again said nothing. The raid ended as abruptly as it had begun. The vans drove off with full loads. The ground was scattered with squashed potatoes and broken bottles and pools of milk.
Such raids were now a daily occurrence, but what was most surprising was that people got used to them and almost at once began to take them for granted. It was as though it was the most natural thing in the world for some people to be on the prowl and for others to be dodging them. Had it ever been otherwise?
[Throughout the centuries the unfortunate people of Russia have been hunted down and beaten, sometimes by foreigners and sometimes by their own people, by the Cumans, the Tatars and the Turks, by their own rulers, like Ivan Grozny, Peter the Great and Nicholas, by the Tsarist police and then by the Bolsheviks, and all this seems to have instilled into them such a deeply rooted fear of authority that the most recent—in this case the German—man-hunt seemed quite natural. On the other hand, if there had been no persecution for a long period, that would have seemed somehow wrong and even have made people uneasy …]
I had my pay in my pocket, in the new Ukrainian money. In a single day Soviet money had ceased to circulate. They announced without any previous warning that Soviet money was no longer valid. In its place appeared ‘Ukrainian’ money minted in Rovno. I think it must have been one of the most straightforward monetary reforms in the world—you just threw the old money on the rubbish tip and that was that.
The new money was printed on very poor paper which tore easily, with a swastika and some German writing on one side, and with some more German on the other side and only right at the bottom, it said in Ukrainian: ‘One Karbovanets’. That is what was known as ‘Ukrainian’ money.
At the Gloria Cinema, which used to be called the October, I bought myself a ticket and was going inside when I suddenly heard a delighted shout: ‘Tolik!’
I turned and there was Shurka Matso … I mean Krysan. He rushed up to me, clutched at me and poked me, and I was also overjoyed to know he was alive and that nothing had happened to him. He dashed off to the vestibule, brought back a bottle of lemonade and two paper drinking cups, and we proceeded to pour it out and drink it right there in the cinema, with the feeling of being real grown-up men, good companions of long standing for whom friendship took priority over everything.
‘Down in Podol nobody knows me,’ Shurka was saying. ‘Everybody treats me as a Ukrainian.’
‘What are you doing there?’
‘Buying and selling. I deal in silver roubles.’
‘By the way, Bolik came back again!’ I remembered to tell him. ‘He managed to dodge the guards and get away; said he jolly nearly copped it from a machine-gun. Only, soon as he got back home they whipped him off to Germany. But he managed to get out of the transit camp, and he’s back home again.’
‘They’ll never get him down!’ Shurka shook with laughter. ‘Whatever they do with him he still keeps coming back home. But won’t they grab him again?’
‘He’s hiding away in the cellar, catching mice.’
‘Wha-at?’
‘He’s making mousetraps.’
The lights went down and people silenced us. The film was a documentary: Come to Lovely Germany.
There they were—energetic, sprightly young men and women, with their shoulders thrown boldly back and their eyes fixed on some inspiring point in the distance, getting into the goods wagons. [The only thing lacking was the march of the young Communists. Instead of that] they were singing Ukrainian folk-songs to the beat of the wheels on the rails. And there was lovely Germany—little white houses and everything amazingly clean. Still laughing because of their good fortune, the new arrivals were adorning themselves in new clothes, pulling on new lacquered boots. The young men were already driving well-fed horses, while the girls were putting their arms round the necks of thoroughbred cows. Then it was evening and time to relax. There they were, walking towards the edge of a charming pond, singing enchantingly ‘The moon is shining clear above …’ while the kindly German farmer, a substantial but also cheerful-looking man, crept up quietly behind them with a tender smile on his face and listened pensively to the song, just like their own father …
It was ages since I had been to the cinema, not since the Kreshchatik affair. Consequently every scene imprinted itself in my memory, especially The Indian Tomb, which followed the documentary.
At first I watched it quite uncritically, especially the genuine Indian landscapes and so forth. But then I began gradually to watch the film more closely, and ideas began to come into my head which the film-makers had not intended. I suddenly began to choke with rage.
Behind the figures flickering on the screen—of rajahs and charming German engineers and a dazzlingly beautiful European woman—I caught sight of the endless columns of slaves who had built that damned senseless tomb. They could be seen moving about in the background, but it was enough to make me shake with rage and for the film to lose all its attraction for me.
They had certainly been to India and filmed her actual landscapes. But all those folk—the slave-owners, exploiters and rulers—had their own special way of life, while there, in the background, were the slaves, divided up into brigades. That film marked the end for me. Until then I had taught myself only to read between the lines in the newspapers; but now I started looking more closely into everything, to see what was behind it. Especially if it appeared that I was supposed to admire it.
I used to get especially angry if people tried to persuade me to admire great statesmen. Maybe I missed a great deal as a small boy because of this. But all the same I never found myself being carried away by accounts of Alexander of Macedon or Napoleon Bonaparte, not to mention any other of our great benefactors. This almost morbid loathing for dictators, who invariably had their columns and columns of victims in the background, interfered with my reading and learning and even prevented me, paradoxically enough, from appreciating the greatness of such people as Shakespeare and Tolstoy. When I read Hamlet I would try to reckon up how many wretched servants had to be working for him so that he could carry on unhindered, torturing himself with his questions. When I read about Anna Karenina I used to wonder who had to sweat away to ensure that she could eat and drink her fill, and always be beautifully turned out. She was another of those parasites absorbed in her own woes.
Somewhere at the back of my mind I realized that it was rather foolish of me to act like this, but I could not overcome it. One’s environment determines one’s mental outlook. The only figure in literature who was always and still remains near to me is Don Quixote.
Shurka and I came out of the cinema thoroughly depressed. German soldiers were strolling along the pavements of Podol with their arms round local prostitutes. The young ladies were decked out in the very latest fashion: long and very curly hair falling loosely down over their shoulders, their coats hanging open and, of course, their hands always stuck in their pockets. Two couples just ahead of us had just parted and we overheard the following conversation:
‘What did he give you?’
‘Two marks, a mandarin and a sweet.’
‘I got three mandarins.’
Shurka scornfully shrugged his shoulders.
‘They’re just amateurs. They have their real tarts in the Palace of Pioneers—the Deutsches Haus, it’s a first-class brothel. Number 72 Saxaganskaya is another big establishment … Listen, have you got three thousand? There’s a pimp around here who wants to sell a whole sack of Soviet money; he’s made up his mind they’re done for and he wants three thousand for it. Shall we have it?’
‘I’ve got two hundred—that’s all my pay.’
‘That’s a pity … Still, never mind, to hell with him and his sack. We still don’t know whether the Bolsheviks will ever come back or if we’ll be still alive when they do.’
There were some cartoons displayed in the window of the hairdresser’s shop. In one of them Stalin was depicted as a falling colossus of clay which Roosevelt and Churchill were trying in vain to keep up.
Another of them also showed Stalin, this time as a hairy, moustachioed gorilla, with an axe covered in blood, with which he was chopping the hands off the corpses of children, women and old people. We knew that cartoon so well! Only in the Soviet version it was Hitler who appeared in the guise of a gorilla.
The caption informed us just how many millions of people Stalin had caused to rot in concentration camps, that he was no worker but the son of a man who owned a little cobbler’s shop, that his father had brutally ill-treated him, which was why he had physical defects, that he had arrived at a position of absolute power over the corpses of his rivals, that he had held the country down purely by terror, and that he himself had gone out of his mind through fear.
We read it through and yawned.
‘The Germans hanged some young Communists in the May Day Park,’ Shurka said. ‘They shouted: “Long live Stalin!” They pinned placards on them saying PARTISAN, but next morning they had been replaced by other ones saying VICTIMS OF FASCIST TERROR. The Germans flew into a rage, like tigers, and put police to guard the place. On the next morning the other corpses had gone and the police were hanging instead … All right, then, I’m on my way. Tell Bolik I’ll come over and see him!’
‘Where are you living?’ I shouted after him, surprised at the speed with which he departed.
‘Over there!’ he waved back. ‘Go on, beat it—there’s a raid! Say hello to Bolik for me!’
It was only then that I saw the covered lorries racing down the street. People were scurrying into the courtyards and diving into doorways like mice. I flattened myself against a wall, not particularly worried—if the worst happened I could produce my birth certificate to show that I was not fourteen.
HOW TO TURN A HORSE INTO SAUSAGES
Degtyaryov was a thickset, rather round-shouldered and awkwardly built but very active and energetic man of just over fifty, with greying hair, a big, fleshy nose and knobbly fists.
His clothes were always in a terrible state: filthy jacket, dirty, patched trousers, boots worn down at the heels and covered in mud and manure, and a flat cap on his head.
His favourite expressions were:
‘A pound of smoke’, meaning ‘nothing’, or ‘something of no importance’.
‘Perturbations’—meaning changes of political systems.
‘Get caught in the devaluation’— meaning to lose everything as the result of a monetary reform.
I turned up at six o’clock in the morning and the first thing Degtyaryov did (and rightly, too) was to give me a really good meal.
He had a very pleasant, clean house; white table-napkins and covers on the furniture; spotlessly white linen on the beds. Amid such cleanliness the master of the house himself looked like some uncouth peasant who had stumbled into a smart restaurant.
I eagerly gulped down the mutton stew, cereals and milk and the pancakes which were put in front of me by his wife, while Degtyaryov, studying me carefully as I stuffed it all down, told me what it was all about.
At one time he had had a small sausage factory. Then, during the revolution, perturbations and devaluations had taken place, and the factory had been taken off him. Next there was the period of the ‘new economic policy’ and he had again had what was more or less a factory, though it was smaller. They took that off him too. Now all he had was a little private butcher’s shop which he had to carry on illegally, because it cost a fantastic sum of money to obtain a licence. That was why they would close it down too.
‘Revolutions, systems overthrown, wars and perturbations—but we have to live somehow don’t we? I reckon—if your luck holds, you’re laughing, and if it doesn’t, a pound of smoke! The neighbours know what I’m up to, but I pay them off with bones. There’s no need for anyone else to know. If anyone asks what you’re doing, tell ’em: “I’m helping on the farm.” Like a farm labourer in the old days. You can lead the horses in through the streets, because when I do it they always point at me and say: “There’s old Degtyaryov taking another old nag off for sausages.” ’
I pulled my cap on and we went across the square towards the school. People were getting aboard the two-horse carts driven by cab-drivers, which now did the work of the trams, buses and taxis. Women with baskets, peasants from the villages and educated-looking people in hats were all clambering aboard, arguing with each other, handing up their bags, and arranging themselves around all four sides, their legs dangling down.
We pushed our way in between some baskets of radishes, the driver cracked his whip, and we were off to Podol faster than the wind, at two miles an hour, and the bushes flashed past.
I sat there, bumping up and down, overcome by the thought that for once I was travelling legally (usually I had to hide from the conductor or go by foot, but now Degtyaryov had paid for me like a law-abiding citizen) and with an air of great superiority I looked down on the dreary figures shuffling along the pavements in their shabby jackets and worn-out greatcoats, in galoshes or just barefoot.
The corn market was a sea of humanity and the very heart of Podol (I had read Zola and knew about the heart of Paris). The women at the stalls were shouting their wares, the beggars were whining and children were singing out: ‘Who wants cold water?’ There was a girl standing at the gate, terribly thin, like a skeleton, selling buns from a plate: ‘Fresh buns, very tasty, please buy my fresh buns.’
What a temptation! …
Down the Nizhny Val there was an enormous street market, endless rows of people bartering things. ‘What’s that?’ ‘An overcoat.’ ‘What’s the use of a coat like that?’ ‘It’s a very good coat! Warm as a coffin.’
Degtyaryov made his way confidently through the crowd and I hung on to his coat-tail so as not to get left behind. I nearly knocked down an old woman trying to sell a single spoon—she stood there holding one steel spoon in her hand. It ought at least to have been silver!
What a sight! …
The big market-place was crammed full of carts, manure and trodden-down hay and straw; cows mooed and pigs squealed.
‘What do you want for it?’ ‘Seventy thousand.’ ‘Go and screw yourself!’ ‘Gimme sixty then!’ Degtyaryov only asked the price of the pigs to remind himself of the good old days, but he got seriously interested in an old, lame, scabby gelding. The animal’s lips drooped down, dripping with saliva, his mane was full of burrs, and he stood there with his head hanging sadly down, his unseeing eyes half closed, paying no attention to the swarms of flies which had settled on his head.
‘I’ll give you five!’ ‘What did ye say? This is a real working horse!’ ‘One head, four ears; how about six, cash down?’ ‘Make it seven, master, he’ll pull anything you put behind him, a real fiery steed, you could use him for steeplechasing!’
Degtyaryov haggled fiercely and persistently, waving his money about, smacking his fist down on the palm of his hand, walking away, then coming back again, but the old man was not so stupid as he looked, and eventually they got to within ten roubles of each other. Finally the bridle was put into my hand and we made our way with difficulty out of the seething mass of people. When we got to the cab-rank Degtyaryov gave me my instructions for the journey:
‘You can ride him if he’ll take you, but for God’s sake don’t go past the police station.’
I led the gelding across to a mounting stand, climbed up on to his back and stuck my heels into him. His backbone was as sharp as a saw, and he dragged himself along slowly, limping and giving repeated signs of a desire to stop. I urged him on in one way and the other, walloped him with a stick, but finally took pity on him, got off his back and led him by the bridle.
