by Ezra Glinter
“Look how happy he is to get killed or to kill another Jew,” Levinson motioned to the others.
“I don’t understand. You didn’t know why you were sent here?” Asnat exclaimed. He had been quite stirred by Levinson’s answer. “We are soldiers and we’ve gone to war. We don’t know who lies in wait on the other side, whether it’s a Jew or a Christian. We only know that the enemy is over there, the enemy of our country. And the soldier who doesn’t shoot at them is a traitor and deserves to be hanged. Kahanovski, you’re right. Give me your hand and we’ll go together to shoot the Austrians and we’ll earn a Cross of St. George. You’re right, once you’re a soldier you have to be a good soldier. If not, you bring shame not only on yourself, but also on the entire nation to which you belong.”
“You see, you’re right,” Aranovich responded. “We, Jewish soldiers, need to fight hard so they won’t be able to say that Jews are cowards. We need to fight and give our all to show the anti-Semites.”
“No, not for the anti-Semites,” Asnat called out. “We need to fight for ourselves. Because we are men and we want to be thought of as men.”
“Of course, of course we need to faithfully serve the emperor,” Levin enjoined. “The rabbi told me when I last saw him that I should serve the czar faithfully, that it was a mitzvah 50 and an obligation.”
Everyone was silent for a moment.
But Aranovich still trembled from fear and said with his hands more than he said with his mouth:
“Go over there and see how they’re being buried. Like dogs. Look, look!” the young man called out with a shudder, and covered his eyes.
“OK, OK, let’s go,” Kahanovski replied. “Come on, Asnat, aren’t you going to see how they bury the Austrians?”
“Of course I’m coming,” Asnat said, standing up.
“Wait, I’m coming too,” Levinson smiled. “Let’s see what my burial will look like.” He also stood up to go.
“It’s forbidden to talk like that,” Levin said quietly.
“And you, Aranovich, aren’t you coming?” Kahanovski said cheerfully to the pale young man.
They climbed the hill where many other soldiers were already standing and looked down on the wide field. From a distance they saw fresh earth dug in very long rows. Jews in black overcoats with small Jewish hats stood with shovels in their hands and covered the graves with dirt. Next to them stood guards with guns in their hands, prodding the Jews at their work. Soldiers’ clothes, guns, and other possessions lay around the piles of dirt, and military carts were brought to gather everything up. The whole field was trampled. Next to the trees lay broken branches and bullet-ridden tree trunks. The wounded trees told the story of the great massacre that had taken place here better than the things strewn about the ground. The trees, destroyed at the very height of their blooming, seemed almost like children who had known nothing of what was going on or its purpose, but had been forced to remain where they stood without any chance of escape.
The soldiers were not allowed to look on for very long. They were driven away from the hill: command was afraid that death would frighten the young soldiers.
When Asnat and his friends returned to their previous spot, they found Aranovich sitting with Levin. Levin held a prayer book in his hand and recited Psalms while Aranovich lowered his head to also look into the book and repeat each word after Levin, like a student with his rabbi.
The scene left a wild impression on the other soldiers. They knew Aranovich as someone who had always laughed at Levin’s piety and often bothered him while he prayed. Aranovich was suddenly reciting Psalms! They all sensed the earnestness in his reciting of the Psalms, and so they dispersed wordlessly, not wanting to disturb them.
ASNAT WAS RESTLESS the whole day. He wandered about dejectedly, unable to find a place for himself. It wasn’t the field of death that had gotten to him, but that he had somehow lost track of the reason he had decided to become a soldier. When he had first made the decision, he hadn’t exactly understood it either, but he had felt that he had done the right thing. Now he had lost that feeling, and it seemed to him that it was all nonsense. The conversation with Levinson had reminded him of the many episodes he had witnessed of Jews being persecuted, and in particular of how they had driven his father out of the forest he himself had purchased. His father, the great timber merchant, had registered as a citizen through a poor, drunken non-Jew, a privilege for which he paid weekly. There were so many incidents, not of outright rage, but of small acts of vengeance and everyday abuse. And maybe they were right, that a Jew has no homeland and will never have one. So let the nations of the world devour one another—what does it matter to the Jews? They should hide themselves in a cellar and observe with indifferent expressions on their faces as they’re passed like slaves from one master to another. What difference does it make whom they serve?
And he was ashamed, not for his young life that he had put in danger for nothing, but of his feelings. It seemed to him that the commanders were laughing at him, that the Jew Asnat had thought himself privileged enough to become a soldier and wage war for his “fatherland.”
ASNAT LAY ON the ground and watched as Aranovich, Kahanovski and many other Jewish soldiers, whom he knew had never prayed a day in their lives, all gathered around Levin. Their praying gradually became warmer and more devout. Levinson, the intellectual, who had always laughed at God, also joined in, taking a prayer book in his hand; he had also become devout all of a sudden. Aranovich was crying—the tears poured from his eyes and his face twisted in sorrow, as if he was taking great pity on himself.
The group of soldiers became quiet. Levin recited out loud the confessional prayer, and all the soldiers repeated after him, pounding their chests. Some cried, some became pensive, and others were silent—but everyone was serious. After the confessional prayer, the soldiers kissed and shook hands, as if it were Yom Kippur at the Kol Nidre 51 service.
Levinson approached Asnat.
“So, Asnat, give me your hand and forgive me, even if you don’t believe in it.”
Asnat silently shook hands with him.
After the Russian Orthodox prayer service also concluded, the feeling in the camp became a bit lighter. The soldiers became livelier and more cheerful, and they sat down with each other as brothers. Lunch was eaten in groups, and Jewish and Russian soldiers continually kissed one another, sang songs and wished one another good luck. The camp was filled with a feeling of brotherhood. The officers and lieutenants mingled with the soldiers, exchanging salutations and joining the fraternal atmosphere. Arbuzov, a bit drunk from the excitement, went up to Levin, kissed him and other Jewish soldiers and repeated again and again:
“Pray to your God, pray, you Jewish soldiers! He is our God too, pray that he help us, pray that he save us.”
And to his comrades, the Russian soldiers that had come with him, he explained:
“Each person has his God and his way of praying to Him.”
“There is only one God in the world for all of us,” a Jewish soldier exclaimed.
“There is only one God,” the Russian soldiers answered.
“Come let’s embrace, brothers.”
“We’re all brothers.”
And the Jewish soldiers kissed the Russian soldiers, the medics, and the orderlies.
“Yesterday you humiliated him,” Arbuzov said, while crying on Levin’s shoulder, to the soldier who had stuffed a piece of meat in Levin’s mouth. “Go, Ivanov, go and make up with him.”
“Make up with him, Ivanov,” the other soldiers called out in response.
Ivanov, the huge, strong gentile, approached, full of shame, and offered Levin his hand.
“Kiss him,” Arbuzov shrieked, “kiss one another!”
Ivanov and Levin kissed.
“That is how it should be,” the other soldiers said in agreement.
ASNAT LAY DOWN on the field alone. He had seen the brotherhood and the true humanity with which death had bound one man to another, but he c
ould not take any part in it. He was frustrated with himself that he couldn’t disregard all of his thoughts and, like Levinson, throw himself into the brotherhood and forget about everything in an instant. He also wanted to kiss the other soldiers, but he just wasn’t able to. It seemed to him that if he were to do such a thing the feeling of it wouldn’t be true, as if he was doing it to ingratiate himself to the other soldiers. He felt that his heart was racing; he wanted, in that moment, before they departed maybe never to see one another again, to shake someone’s hand. But he didn’t have anyone. He hated Levinson the intellectual, and Levin was too religious for him. But he couldn’t stay alone in the field any longer. The soldiers had already taken note of him, and he was afraid that they would consider him too proud. He stood up and left the Jewish soldiers. He remembered Kahanovski and said to himself: yes, with him I have to say my goodbyes. Asnat went looking for him. He found Kahanovski sitting in a corner talking with Aranovich. Aranovich had finished crying and now was trying to comfort himself. His eyes showed a hopeless despondency and he kept shaking his head back and forth. Kahanovksi sat next to him, offering comforting words.
“Look, Asnat is here too,” Kahanovski said to Aranovich. “He’s more educated and wealthier than us, and yet see how he goes into battle without fear. None of the soldiers are afraid; see how courageous they are. We’re all going into battle. You must hope that you’ll live, that you’ll shoot them, and that no bullet will catch you. You have to be brave. You’re no child.”
“But I have a little girl back home and I want to see how she grows up, what she’ll look like when she’s older. I so much want to see all of this, but I know I’ll never see her again,” the young man answered in unending despair.
“But Aranovich, we all have fathers and mothers! We’re not dead yet! What’s gotten into you? Look at me, look at Asnat, look at all the other Jewish soldiers.”
When Kahanovski took his leave from Aranovich, Asnat went up to Kahanovski and said with an awkward smile:
“So, Kahanovski, give me your hand. Maybe we won’t see each other again. You’re in the seventh company, right?”
“Yes,” Kahanovski answered. He then became pale and offered his hand to Asnat.
“Do you have anyone?” Asnat asked.
“I have a fiancé that I love.”
“You’re happier than me. I’ve got no one.”
“No one?”
“Well, yes, I do have a little sister that I love.”
“Give her this chain when you come home,” Kahanovski said, taking the chain off his watch.
Asnat looked for something in his pockets to give Kahanovski. He couldn’t find anything except for a small ribbon that his sister had given him to remember her by. But he didn’t want to give it away. He remembered the golden watch, a present from his father for finishing school. He took it out of his satchel and gave it to Kahanovski.
They kissed one another and went their separate ways.
Asnat went into his tent and took out from among his things the handkerchief that he had brought with him from home so he could have it near him when he needed it. He didn’t want to die with strange clothes on his body, or to simply bleed out on the sand. He placed the handkerchief near his heart and prepared himself for the road.
In a half-hour the company left the cabbage field behind and went into the line of fire.
THEY WALKED ACROSS the field they had looked down upon just the day before from atop the hill. It was clear that a devastating slaughter had taken place there over the previous two days. The field was all trampled and long rows of freshly dug earth stretched across it. The half-broken trees stood with their bullet-ridden, still-smoldering branches hanging like corpses swimming in their own blood. The field was a beet field and the beets had not yet been harvested. The red and white beets had been kicked around and trampled, their green leaves like dirty rags. Among the beets you could find soldiers’ uniforms, hats, satchels, rifles, swords, and every once in a while a dead body or a part of a dead body. Old peasant farmers and their wives and daughters gathered up the beets from among the scattered objects and put them in piles while Jews in black cloaks and small hats gathered up the corpses and carried them to freshly dug graves. The beets that were still whole were gathered for later use while the trampled ones were left on the ground to rot with the corpses.
The soldiers walked silently, though they had been commanded to sing. Here and there you could hear a lone voice, but no one else joined in song, and soon the lone voice went silent as well. Then they came to the mass graves where the Jewish men stood with shovels. They had paused for a moment from their labor and stood to the side with their shovels in one hand while saluting the regiment with the other. The soldiers began jumping over the ditches, and as they leaped, they looked down at the dead soldiers piled one on top of the other, some naked and some in their uniforms. Dead faces stared at them with small and innocent open eyes. The earnest dead faces seemed to tear themselves from the dirty uniforms. A few soldiers stopped to look into the ditches, but those who wanted to jump after them pushed them forward. This is how the regiment proceeded past the mass graves.
They also came across huge black holes in the ground that from a distance looked like great puddles of mud. But when they passed near these holes and examined them more closely, they pulled back startled: inside they saw a cauldron of human and horse intestines. From within the seething black mess, which the soldiers could hardly comprehend, human faces and limbs protruded, emerging from underneath a horse that had been torn apart with its guts oozing over everything.
At first they came upon a single black ditch and then moved past; but soon they started appearing with greater frequency. The landscape was covered with these muddy ditches, and the soldiers had to navigate their way between them. They knew that the ditches had been made by the enemy’s bombs, but each soldier comforted himself by saying that he would be spared from such an end. How they could convince themselves of this no one knows. But the young, healthy life force within them protested and refused to fall into such a filthy cauldron, where death was so foul; in their fantasies they imagined a freer and better death.
The sun began to set on the horizon. The landscape became flatter and wider, and the sky curved over the earth, the glowing red of the horizon reflecting everywhere.
At a corner of the sky there appeared a pale patch that hung above the landscape. Something had appeared, and it was difficult to tell from a distance whether it was houses, mountains or more forest. The closer they came to the patch of white, the more it became clear that it was a cloud of smoke which rose from the ground and into the heavens. The soldiers understood what it was. Some of their hearts began to beat harder, others were already indifferent. The road had become easier to walk on, and the graves and long ditches were fewer. But from time to time one had to jump over a dead soldier who had been left in the field. The dead soldier, with his rifle in hand, and the fact that they would come upon him so suddenly, so unexpectedly—this terrified the soldiers more than the black graves. Each soldier’s imagination had become overactive: I could be just like him . . .
The road became more treacherous, the ground trampled and worn. The soldiers’ legs sank deeper into the sandy earth, which was covered in patches of clover that stuck to their boots. It had become dark, but the atmosphere was homey, even joyful. They passed by several wagons, horses and automobiles. High-ranking officers stood on top of a hill deep in discussion. One could see suddenly that there were many of them, that regiments were coming from all directions, and that there were all different kinds of soldiers—infantry, cavalry, artillery. They didn’t know exactly where all of these soldiers had come from, but it seemed to them that the entire world was full of them. As far as the eye could see, the landscape was packed with soldiers. Torches and flares had been lit in various places, and each one illuminated the soldiers’ faces. One could hear in the distance the constant sound of shooting. Boom! Boom! Boom! But one hardly not
iced the sound anymore; it had been drowned out by the noise of the soldiers, the wagons and horses, the cars racing past like devils. It was all so exciting, you forgot that you were ever afraid. There were so many of them!
But they didn’t remain there for more than a moment. They passed over the noise and rush of the other soldiers and proceeded to a village whose houses were boarded up. Not a soul could be seen. The church steeple was burning and no one thought to put it out.
They came to a spot just below the village and suddenly saw before them a black field overgrown with something, though it was too dark to tell whether it was trees or human beings.
Suddenly a flare streaked over their heads and lit up a green forest, the brightness revealing trembling leaves and soldiers overlooking a meadow. In a moment it was dark again and they felt something pass over their heads with a gust of wind.
The air was torn asunder by a great noise. The projectile could be heard again as it fell with a dull thud into the earth, taking a few trees down with it.
The soldiers continued on and another car raced past as if possessed. The trotting of horses could be heard nearby, though who or what was riding them remained unknown in the dark. Their boots came down on something—maybe a stone? But no, it was something softer, something unknowable . . .
They went further into the darkness. Then suddenly another flash of light appeared over their heads. You could see your comrades like it was day—Aranovich’s pale face—and then your eyes were blinded and another gust of wind passed overhead.
The noise this time was lesser. Some soldiers fell into a ditch, others collapsed by your side, their feet giving way. But they continued onward. Another flash of light, another gust of wind. Your head wanted to tear itself from your body, but some thought fell into your mind, the recognition of your friends’ voices—“God, help me . . .”—but still you went onward, ever onward, until you came to a ditch. There you found the others. Orders were given to lie down in the ditches or to dig new ones, and all the soldiers threw themselves into the earth.