Babi Yar, page 35
‘Not turned out so bad, the fish!’ I said.
‘Bad’s the word. I’ve done them far too much,’ Degtyaryov said. ‘It’s ages since I smoked the damned things, and I’ve made a complete mess of them. I’m ashamed to take them down there.’
He proceeded to pack the fish carefully in a basket lined with newspaper. I couldn’t see what he had done so wrong.
‘I’ll tell you what, you take it to them,’ he said. ‘Say that Degtyaryov is not feeling well and couldn’t come along. For God’s sake don’t pinch any of them: they’ve been counted. You go down through Syrets, past the canning factory and the brickworks, where the road turns off to the left up a hill; keep on up it a long way till you see a military camp with guard towers, and say at the gate: “This is for officer Radomsky.” Explain to him that I am sick and couldn’t come along. Hand it in, basket and all, don’t bring it back again.’
‘But it’s a new basket …’
‘To hell with that. And don’t say I spoilt the fish; maybe he won’t understand. Hand it in and get back home quick. Do you follow me?’
There was nothing really to follow. I humped the heavy basket up on to my shoulder (which always hurt, because it had been rubbed sore carrying things) and off I went. I was exhausted even by the time I reached the Syrets. But I knew that, even when I seemed to have no strength left, I could keep staggering on and always seemed to find more from somewhere.
I sat down to have a rest on the windward side, so as not to smell the tantalizing odour of smoked fish. I passed the canning factory and I passed the brickworks, and the road went off to the left up a hill.
I was so glad, so pleased with myself, when at last I caught sight of the military camp to the left of the road. And it was a pretty big camp at that: I kept walking for a long time without coming across any gate. Notices said: FORBIDDEN ZONE, IT IS FORBIDDEN TO APPROACH CLOSER THAN 15 YARDS. GUARDS OPEN FIRE WITHOUT WARNING.
Because of that I instinctively kept close to the right-hand side of the road, keeping an eye on the guards in the towers. There were three rows of wire, of which the middle one was mounted on china insulators and obviously carried an electric charge, which meant that it was a very important camp, perhaps a secret one.
At last I managed to drag myself as far as the corner where the gate was situated. I decided that here the fifteen-yard zone did not apply and went up to the guard who stood there leaning against one of the gate-posts and looking bored.
‘For officer Radomsky,’ I said, pointing at the basket.
He nodded in the direction of a long, low building near the gate and said something of which I understood only the word Wachstube—the guard-room. I went up the steps into the porch, entered the building and found myself in a long corridor. There was nobody to be seen, but I could hear the tapping of a typewriter and went towards it. The door into the room was half open and there were some girls inside gossiping—our own, local girls, working as secretaries, apparently. It looked the same as any other office—desks stained with ink, counting frames and cash-books with columns of figures. The girls were pretty in the Kurenyovka style: rosy-cheeked, with full figures and curly hair. They all stared at me.
‘This is for officer Radomsky,’ I repeated my piece.
‘Aha—put it down here.’
One of the girls helped me to lift the basket on to the table and immediately put her hand under the paper and broke off a piece of fish.
‘Oho—not so bad … mmmm … very tasty!’
They gathered round the basket and proceeded to pull the fish to pieces with their chubby little ink-stained fingers and stuff it into their mouths. They were just simple, naughty little girls from Kurenyovka. I began to be rather worried, but if they seized on the fish so boldly it meant that they had the right to do so, it seemed to me, and I was delighted that they enjoyed it. Let them eat their fill.
‘It’s from Degtyaryov —he’s ill and couldn’t come along,’ I said, thus completing my mission.
‘Aha—mmm … we’ll pass it on. Thanks.’
And off I went, a little worried, it’s true, that I had not handed it over to ‘officer Radomsky’ in person, because the girls might gobble up half of it. And a bit later I began to regret that I hadn’t eaten at least one small fish myself, because nobody had the slightest intention of counting them.
Degtyaryov was unusually pleased when I returned and gave him a full account of how I had handed the fish over and to whom. He wasn’t pleased that I hadn’t handed it over to the officer himself, but when I described how the secretaries had eaten it and praised it he jumped up and started striding round the room.
‘That’s good—maybe even better! Those stupid girls won’t understand. And they were licking their fingers? Thank God, maybe this perturbation will pass. I shan’t take it along there again, to hell with it. Phew—thank the Lord! Go off home—there’s no more work for you.’
I departed, not quite sure why it had all upset him so. Well, supposing he had spoilt the fish, just imagine, what a tragedy. I realized, of course, that, as a skilled tradesman he was ashamed to disappoint his German client, apparently a very important person …
Then suddenly it struck me: wait, where on earth had I been?
Surely that was the camp just next to Babi Yar, the one they told such awful tales about? Tired and dazed through carrying that basket, I had not grasped that I was approaching it from the back. Cars and lorries going there from the centre of the city went through Lukyanovka, but I had gone through Syrets, round the other side.
So that meant Degtyaryov had been in the camp—and got out again? What for, and how had he done it? For gold, for a basket of fish? And it had been my good fortune that the ‘officer gentleman’ had not been there. If he had lost his temper because Degtyaryov had not turned up, he might have kept me in there. What a dirty, mean trick, sending me along in his own place! Like sending someone into a minefield.
I started to think about that barbed wire charged with electricity, and remembered seeing some dejected prisoners inside it, but I hadn’t studied them very carefully; after all, there were plenty of them around. And I had heard the sound of shooting beyond the barracks, but there was now shooting everywhere. Like a sparrow, I had flown into the cage and flown out again, and I had been lucky.
In any case I have been very lucky indeed up till now, and I don’t know whom to thank for my good luck: it’s nothing to do with people; there is no God, and fate, that’s just a pound of smoke. I am simply lucky.
It was purely a matter of luck that I arrived in this world not a Jew, not a gypsy, not old enough to be sent to work in Germany, that bombs and bullets missed me, that patrols didn’t catch me, that I escaped from under a tram by a miracle and fell off a tree without killing myself. My God, what luck!
I suppose it’s only people who have a lot of luck who manage to survive in this life. If I had been unlucky I might already have been inside the wire of Babi Yar, quite by chance, accidentally, perhaps just because the ‘officer gentleman’ happened not to be in a good mood or got a fish bone stuck in his gum …
I walked on a little farther down the street, utterly crestfallen. It was already getting dark and storm-clouds loomed heavy and violet-coloured. Once again I felt the strength draining out of me and leant against the fence. I felt such a sickness and such a yearning that I could have stood there and howled.
An unbearable feeling of being suffocated; the silence of the world around; the purple stripes across the sky. I felt myself to be a tiny little ant bricked up in the foundations of a building. The whole world seemed to consist of nothing but bricks and stone, without a glimmer of light showing through; wherever you turned there was nothing but stone and walls and prison.
I was submerged in a sea of desperate, elemental longing. When you came to think of it: the whole world was a prison: restrictions on all sides; everything laid down within precise limits; everything concreted up and divided off; you can go only here, live only like this, think only like this and speak only like this. How can it be, why should it be, whom does it serve, that I should have been born and allowed to crawl around in this world as if I were in prison? We have built barriers not only for the ants but for ourselves as well! And they call it living.
Unhappy people: what have you done to deserve such a fate? You are born like hungry, cold, homeless puppies on a rubbish dump. The rain whips down on you, the frosts bite you, and death threatens you. You can’t escape anywhere; there’s nowhere to hide. So where is all the justice you talk about, where are you all, clever people of this world?
Just throw the word ‘compassion’ out of the vocabulary. There is no such thing. There is no compassion on this earth.
Part Three
ESCAPE FROM SILENCE
A thousand years ago Vyshgorod was a fine, large city, a rival to Kiev itself, the ‘mother of Russian cities’. Later it failed to sustain the rivalry and declined, so that today it is just an ordinary village on the high banks of the Dnieper.
I had ten thousand roubles with me, so I decided to avoid places where lots of people were gathered: the most populous places had now become the most dangerous.
Degtyaryov had bought a stallion off a farmer in Vyshgorod. My job was to take him the money and bring back the horse; it was not the first time I had done it. I didn’t keep to the main road, but went across the fields, past the Pochaina river, through the Dubki woods; and I was glad I had, because I did not meet a single soul.
It was rather strange that although as I was halfway through the village I could see some German soldiers in the distance, and felt something was wrong, instead of turning back and taking cover, I carried on as if hypnotized until I reached them. By this time I was in a state of panic and confusion, trying to work out what to do but unable to hit on anything.
They stopped me in their usual matter-of-fact way. One of them took me by the shoulder quite kindly and turned me back, while the other continued going from house to house.
I realized at once what was going on, immediately did what was expected of me, marching obediently into a farmyard where there were a dozen or so farmers, old men and boys, sitting around, some of them on the ground, with calm, indifferent, detached expressions on their faces. Just to be sure I checked with a boy of my own age:
‘Is this a round-up for Germany?’
‘That’s right,’ he sniffed. ‘They’re taking everybody.’
Leaning up against a wall, I started to try and think the situation out: Degtyaryov would now decide that I had run away with his money. True, when my mother went to him and made a fuss, he would understand that I was in trouble, but by then I should be on my way to Europe. It had happened to me at last.
The round-up was carried out very quietly. The soldiers went from cottage to cottage, taking all the menfolk, and they all came quietly and silently, as I had done. The Germans no longer asked for any documents, because dates of birth were of no importance. Everything was quite straightforward and proper: if you got caught, it was your own look-out, and it was best to keep your mouth shut.
Then we were all driven out on to the roadway and something like a column of prisoners-of-war was drawn up. We moved along in one grey mass, raising the dust, with escorts on either side, their rifles under their arms. And without thinking I found myself shuffling along, my eyes to the ground: I really was being driven. I bumped up against the others and felt less like a human being than like an animal in a herd.
We were driven into a collective farmyard surrounded by buildings, and left among the remains of rusty carts and seed-drills. There were only a few escorts, and they were apparently so accustomed to people obeying them and following the crowd that they didn’t even bother to come into the yard. Two of them simply stood at the gate to keep an eye on the yard while the others went off somewhere.
The peasants were sitting in a long row beneath the wall of the house, which looked as if it had been the village Soviet. In search of a place to sit I went to the corner of the building where I found a big stone to sit down on. True, it was out in the full heat of the sun, but all the shade had been taken.
However unfortunate I may have been, my clothes still marked me out from the villagers. Their clothes were all faded and torn, and they sat there, silent and utterly passive. The feeling that I too was just part of a herd would not leave me, hard as I tried to dismiss it.
What did it mean—that there was really no difference between a herd of cows and a herd of people? Cattle were driven to the slaughter, guided with big sticks and divided up into small groups, and the herd would obey and be broken up; each individual one would stand in line and move forward, one after the other, head to tail, to receive the fatal blow. If the herd were to rear up and to become conscious of its own strength, it could destroy the whole slaughter-house. Yet still they went to be killed one at a time, quietly and calmly, taking regular lunch-breaks.
And here, close by, just the other side of the fence, was another herd grazing, unheeding, unconcerned. ‘Just animals,’ we say, ‘they don’t understand.’ Human beings understand everything, and still behave like a herd of cattle. Apparently we haven’t advanced very far from the animal stage yet.
What was it like before the war? Year after year our herdsmen used to grab people one at a time or in groups, herd them in droves off to Siberia or shoot them, while the others just went on grazing, looking on, trembling with fright and waiting. So when the Germans drove that crowd of people on to Melnikov Street, and they sat there waiting their turn the next day and the day after, they no longer had anything to lose, and they didn’t rear up or tear anything down, they simply wept and marched off in small groups to be dealt with. Yet around them there was what seemed to be a civilized city, in which others, including myself, remained, grazing quietly and swinging their tails, seeing, hearing, trembling with fright and remaining silent.
It is beyond comprehension. They slap us in the face, and we only shy back, like a herd—and stay silent. The herdsmen have behind them centuries of experience to fall back on: they know that once you have scared people into silence with brazen self-confidence and the aid of sticks and cudgels, you can then do what you like with them. You have only to wave a straw at them and the herd will shy away.
It’s the same as with a big bully in school who terrorizes a whole class single-handed. [One succeeding the other, brazen scoundrels have reduced the people of Russia to the state of a munching herd of cattle which no longer knows which way to retreat in that land which is so deep in blood, so even and flat as a table that there is nowhere for the herd to hide, and it has no other land to go to.]
When the soldiers saw something happening on the street and went to have a look, I got up from my stone and went to relieve myself round the corner. There, amongst the nettles, was a pile of bricks and pieces of iron. Stumbling over them and making more noise than was safe, I managed to reach the fence and scramble over it somehow. I was almost certain that the soldiers would catch me at once and send me back or shoot me.
But so far all was well. There was a lane going down to the left, but to the right it came out on the main street which I had come along. It was quite wide where it joined the street, making a sort of square in the middle of which stood a house with no fence round it. I stupidly walked out on to the main street and went around the house to the left, because that was the way I had come and the way I knew. Actually, I scarcely knew what I was doing and was simply counting on my luck.
And all went well. The guard on the gate did not notice me, although he could have done. But then, just ahead, appeared the soldiers who had left the yard. I picked up a stick from the ground, pulled my cap down over my forehead, made myself as small and insignificant as possible and, sniffing unconcernedly, walked past the soldiers who were busy talking to each other. When I was about twenty yards beyond them they apparently realized what had happened and shouted:
‘Hey, sonny!’
I kept on walking, as though I had heard nothing.
‘Hey!’ they started shouting from behind me.
At that point I broke into a run. The bolts on the rifles rattled, but it was a winding street, and I dashed into a gateway, wide-eyed, my feet clattering on the stones like the sound of a motorcycle. I heard the sound of a shot, a SHOT AIMED AT ME personally, and almost immediately afterwards two more shots aimed at ME. But apparently they were only firing in my direction and couldn’t actually see me.
Sensing with my whole body, and especially the back of my neck, the possibility of a bullet hitting me, I ran zig-zag down the lane leading down steeply to a little bridge which I intended to hide under. But while I was still thinking about it my legs carried me on of their own accord and I found myself among the vegetable gardens, and beyond them I recognized the field through which I had come.
Once again—simply because that was the very road I had come by—I ran across the open field. They could have shot me like a hare as I crossed it, but I kept running, because my thoughts couldn’t keep up with my feet. I ran on, not looking round, in a state of blind terror, cross with myself only for not being able to run faster.
They did not chase me. I don’t know why not. I went on running till I could no longer see properly, all the way to Dubki, where finally I collapsed and lay writhing on the grass, gulping in the air … I was safe for the time being.
Vyshgorod was now far behind me, in a bluish haze. I had a good drink of water from a puddle, splashed some over my head and slowly came to myself. I was alive!
Ah—perturbations and devaluations, but I was alive! So you thought you’d got me, you bastards? You’ve got the guns, but I’ve got my legs: how marvellous life is—how many times my legs alone have saved me! Thanks be to those life-saving legs! Because I need that life of mine.
No, it seems to me I know now why I am alive, scratch around among the market-stalls, gnaw horse’s bones: I am growing up so as to be able to hate you and fight you. That’s the task I set myself in my life: to fight against the evil ones who are turning the world into a prison and a stone crusher. Do you hear that, evil ones?
