by Ezra Glinter
His entrance awakened the old Jews. They gathered around him, at first fearfully, warily, and then they began to recognize him, and he them: two of them were Reb 52 Yosef Rozenkrants, the wealthiest member of the town, and Reb Chaim Sokhatshever, his in-law. He barely recognized them—they had been proud homeowners, the finest Jews of the town. Now they looked like beggars or vagabonds.
Everyone was quiet for a moment. Reb Yosef wiped the tears from his eyes with his sleeve and said:
“So, Asnat, this is what we’ve come to!”
“And where is my father?” Asnat asked.
The Jews were silent and looked at one another. Suddenly, Leyb the synagogue caretaker called out:
“Why should we hide this from him? He should know. He has to say the mourner’s prayer. Asnat, your father is no longer among the living.”
“Why?” Asnat protested.
“They let him have it. He was barely able to crawl his way to a Jewish grave.”
“Who did this to him?”
“The Cossacks.”
“Did they shoot him?”
“No, worse.”
“What happened? Tell me!” Asnat ordered.
“They whipped him to death!”
Asnat bit his lip and was silent. They were all silent for a while.
“And where is my mother?”
“Your mother is upstairs in the women’s section with the other women. They’re cooking something warm for us.”
In a few minutes there was a scream, like the howl of a wild animal when it is wounded. This was Asnat’s mother, who burst into the study house with a wild and weary look on her face. She had just heard that her son had returned and now filled the study house with a mother’s cry.
“My child, my child has come back!”
She fell upon him from one side and his sister fell upon him from the other, and for a while she wasn’t able to get a single comprehensible word to come out of her mouth.
All of a sudden she noticed his wooden legs and in a frenzy she fell to the ground and grabbed his legs and screamed out with an almost inhuman voice:
“Look, look what they’ve done to my child! My legs, my golden legs!” And she kissed his wooden legs. She embraced them, pressed them to her face, and covered them with motherly tears.
Asnat stood as if struck by lightning. He tore the steel cross from his uniform and held it out in his hand. He exclaimed, as if to himself:
“Is this worth a father or a mother? Is this worth my two legs, my two legs of flesh and blood?”
And he held the cross as far away from his body as he could.
Asnat had wanted to throw the cross away, but he remembered that he had done all of this—had gone to battle—not for them but for himself, for Ansat. He put the cross back on his chest and showed it to his mother.
“I lost my legs, Mama, but I got a medal.”
His mother tore the cross off his uniform and howled like a wounded, wild animal:
“Look everyone. My legs, my two legs of flesh and blood—for a cross . . .”
44 Deuteronomy 6:4, “Hear O Israel the Lord our God the Lord is One,” is traditionally said by religious Jews as their last words.
45 Ritual fringes worn on the corners of a four-cornered garment.
46 Prayer shawl.
47 Mikhail Kutuzov (1745–1813) was a field marshal who defeated Napoleon during the French invasion of Russia.
48 Phylacteries.
49 The essential part of the Jewish prayer service, said three times daily.
50 Religious commandment.
51 The first prayer service on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, and one of the most solemn occasions of the Jewish year.
52 Yiddish for “Mr.”
David Bergelson
1884–1952
DAVID BERGELSON WAS one of the great Yiddish modernists of the twentieth century and, for a few years in the 1920s, a high-profile contributor to the Forward.
Born to a wealthy family in Okhrimovo, in what is now Ukraine, Bergelson lost both of his parents as a teenager and was subsequently raised by his older brothers. At the age of nineteen he moved to Kiev, where he helped the city become a center for modern Yiddish culture.
Like many Yiddish writers, Bergelson began by writing in Hebrew but switched early on to Yiddish and never published his Hebrew works. His first published book was At the Depot, a novella that appeared in 1909 and received plaudits from literary critics. Four years later his novel The End of Everything (also translated as When All Is Said and Done), a masterpiece of Yiddish modernism, established him as one of the most important Yiddish writers of the period.
In 1921, following the Russian Revolution and the Ukrainian War of Independence, Bergelson immigrated to Berlin, where he joined a large expatriate community of Yiddish-speaking writers, artists, and intellectuals. It was there that he met Abraham Cahan, who invited him to write for the Forward. For the next five years Bergelson became a regular contributor of short stories and novellas, although he often argued with Cahan over the frequency of his publication, which he depended on for his livelihood.
“On the Eve of Battle” appeared in the Forward in 1923 and extended a narrative about the insurgent leader Botshko and his ragtag band of Red Army fighters, whom Bergelson had introduced in the Forward in 1922. Set in rural Ukraine in the late fall of 1918, when the forces of the Ukrainian nationalist leader Symon Petliura were perpetrating vicious pogroms against Jews, the story focuses on Aba, a young Jewish wagon driver, who joins Botshko’s regiment for protection, only to have his courage and sense of loyalty put to the test in the midst of a murderous rampage.
In 1926, Bergelson’s differences with Cahan reached a breaking point, and he quit the Forward to write for its Communist competitor, Frayhayt (Freedom). Bergelson stayed in Berlin until 1934, when the rise of Nazism convinced him to move first to Denmark and then to return to the Soviet Union. During the Second World War he was active in the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee and helped edit its publication, Eynikayt (Unity).
Although Bergelson initially benefited from Soviet state support for Yiddish culture, like other Yiddish writers and intellectuals, he soon became the target of Stalinist persecution. At the beginning of 1949 he was arrested, and was subsequently imprisoned and tortured for more than two years. On August 12, 1952, Bergelson was executed along with twelve other Yiddish writers and cultural figures, a date that became known as the “Night of the Murdered Poets.”
On the Eve of Battle
(JANUARY 29–FEBRUARY 6, 1923)
Translated by Ellen Kellman
I
ANDRIUK WAS SHOT by blond Fritz with the Cossack sidelock; he shot him with a strange, sudden swiftness, as though he was compelled to hurry, or else the whole affair might come to naught. And the forty-year-old Andriuk, with his wrinkled, deceitful face, had just developed a cataract in his left eye. He got it from a stab wound during their hasty retreat from Aleksandrovke to Kislok at dusk on Saturday. Now it remained in everyone’s memory how, before death, this very cataract had gazed on them entreatingly, as if it were both beseeching and reprimanding them: “Didn’t I serve loyally, ah, Comrades? And why shoot me now? For a trifle—for a little theft from a peasant in the village.”
And along with the cataract, Leyzerke—Lazar Popov, the military commissar—a strict and upright officer—remained in everyone’s memory. Even though no one had heard him order Fritz to shoot Andriuk, it was obvious . . .
With his hands in his pockets, Leyzerke went out all alone to talk to the many peasants who were creating an uproar around headquarters, and promised to pay for all the damage that his retreating “great ones” 53 had caused in the village, and even for Andriuk’s theft, and everyone saw how the peasants obeyed him and dispersed.
From that moment on, Leyzerke’s reputation began to rise like yeast.
In the squadron they discussed everything:
“We will stay longer in Kislok.”
“More men
will be coming.”
“The military commissar has ordered it.”
And Botshko asked him:
“So, does this mean that Comrade Popov is waiting for a communiqué and money?”
Leyzer responded in brief:
“We wait.”
He no longer acquiesced to anyone—he had always been an upright fellow.
From then on no other thefts were heard of in the village. Suddenly the members of the squadron became much older and quieter. And when Botshko went over to the barracks, they listened to what he had to say and looked at him with newly virtuous eyes; they had coalesced because of Andriuk’s misfortune. Immersed in the muted grayness of the village, a few short winter days passed. The memory of the small town of Aleksandrovke, from which they had pulled back, was still fresh, as was Andriuk’s cataract, which had grimaced drily and begged for compassion before death. And it seemed that compassion would come later, compassion would still come.
Just as before, the nights reek of sweaty barracks, of bodies that never get undressed, that lie around on the floor and fill the primitively heated building with the sound of snoring. Late at night, when they stretch out fully, they give off a choking stench, a mixture of an unclean animal cage and a smoldering charcoal lamp. And at that moment, Elik the slaughterer’s son wakes up. He retreated here from Aleksandrovke with Leyzerke because his party ordered him to, and also because it’s all the same to him where he gets killed—at home or somewhere else. Just before he wakes up he senses that he is choking—that there is no air to breathe. In total darkness he lights a match and kindles a little green flame, briefly making the barracks visible, as if through smoke. In this pitch-black game of blind man’s bluff, the door creaks and Elik finds a seat outdoors on the earthen bench, wraps himself in his shabby short coat and stoops, stoops down like a Jew. Above his head an unfamiliar night sky, quiet and rustic, alternately starry and cloudy. As though under no one’s jurisdiction, blind sleeping houses are silhouetted, but from far beyond them, a long, drawn-out, vigilant, nocturnal whistle is intermittently heard. From the granaries and fences opposite, Leyzerke approaches in his gray military greatcoat with its slit down to the soles of his feet. And as always, when he goes out late at night to check the positions, he is not alone. Two non-Jewish lads from Kislok—heavily armed, blank-faced youths—follow him like loyal Hasidim. 54 A few days earlier he and Elik had a short conversation about Andriuk’s violent death.
Leyzerke: “You’ll see, Elik: what a regime! . . . What a regime!”
Elik smiled through the hole that was left when his front tooth was knocked out: “Yes, indeed, it’s already spattered with blood.”
Since then Leyzerke has been avoiding Elik. From the distant darkness his voice is heard.
“Who’s smoking there, out of doors?”
“It’s me, Elik.”
“Why are you sitting out here?”
“It’s stifling in the barrack.”
A pause.
It seems that Leyzerke is reluctant to leave, but hesitates to go over to Elik.
“You have to get used to it.”
And he disappears into the village to check the sentries’ positions. One might think that Leyzerke came over to the barrack for no particular reason. But a while later, a member of his heavily armed escort came running, and asked about Aba, a robust fellow from the local area—a strapping, ruddy-faced guy.
“Isn’t there someone by that name among you?”
“There is, there is.”
ABA, YEKHIEL-MOYSHE THE coachman’s boy, the second Jew to join the squadron, was a lethargic fellow, like an unemployed worker. He had been among those who personally witnessed how Fritz raised his rifle to shoot Andriuk. But when he was asked if Leyzerke had given the order, the coachman shrugged his shoulders dully and lazily turned away.
“What does it matter to me?”
And at that time, it appeared that Aba would not want to pledge his loyalty without a good reason—that he actually joined the “great ones” only because he was promised that they would soon go to the big town in the valley, where his fiancée lived. And as soon as he got there, that would be the end of the whole business. So Aba slept soundly during the long nights, like a superfluous sleepyhead—a silent sign that he had come along partly for a purpose and partly out of idleness. He mooched around lazily the whole time, noticing that from the nearby plundered town of Granov young escapees kept on arriving, and were given guns, and that large, powerful gentile youths from Kislok were joining the squadron. The others told him:
“Around thirty of them, aren’t there? And everyone with his own horse.”
So he answered coldly:
“Who cares?”
It was as if a more enthusiastic answer would be enough to strengthen his bond with the “great ones.” He felt like an outsider among them, but it seemed to him that the group was peculiarly warm and welcoming. Aba thought: “They give out bread, they do.” And also meat, and when they cook, they offer him a portion, and actually, he’s a stranger here—the fifth wheel on the wagon.
But on that predawn morning, Aba’s lethargic body felt how it was roused too vigorously from sleep, and whoever was doing the rousing was too enthusiastic, and was an expert rouser.
They ordered him to get dressed, shouting:
“Faster! They are waiting for you outside.”
Aba thought he was dreaming in the gray outdoor dawn. All night, frozen white pellets had been falling quietly, like light snow, and Leyzerke was standing there waiting, in his gray military greatcoat with the slit down to the soles of his feet, as the pellets fell, and asked Aba whom he knew in the surrounding villages. And he dispatched Aba to Zekharye the wheelwright’s place in the large village of Lishtshinovke and ordered him to scout out what Petliura’s 55 retreating units were doing there. Officer Klimenko, who was Leyzerke’s close friend, and Botshko himself were standing there with him. Both looked very sleepy, but it appeared as if they had decided on the whole thing yesterday, and they had only come out to have a look at Aba in his worn-out gray greatcoat. They told him to pull his peasant’s cap down lower. They asked him:
“Ready?”
And while Aba pulled his red coachman’s belt over his hips, Botshko gave an authoritative whistle, stepped forward, looked intently at Aba, straightened up, and gave an apparently fervent order:
“Right shoulder forward, march!”
Aba obeyed in silence; he was still a soldier under gentile command. He started walking, but still felt very sleepy. He didn’t understand clearly why they were sending him to Zekharye the wheelwright in Lishtshinovke, and what he was supposed to do there. He strode through the fields, and the deeper the damp gray fog became, the more his mission faded from memory. He only knew that he must avoid all the villages—it was dangerous—and even if he took detours everywhere, it would still only be a mile or a mile-and-a-half to get to Lishtshinovke. And from there, it was only about four miles to the large town in the valley, where his fiancée was a servant in an inn. She was a bad-tempered person and he, Aba, would wager: “Just let anybody else try to make a pass at her.” Now, as always, Aba made no decision about it. He just sensed that he had no desire to go back, and that, even now, in the midst of this deadly situation, it was wonderful to stride towards his bride as he was doing at that moment. He once came to her on just such an early gray morning and found her all alone behind the inn, bending over a basin that she had just emptied out. A pair of crows had settled down near her, and a pair of pigs came running, attracted by the smell of the upturned basin.
“Scram! she yelled at them angrily. Scram!”
She herself was barefoot, with an ample bosom. Her sleeves were rolled up, her legs bare, her sleepy face with its narrow eyes dull and dark, and smelling unwashed. Always quick to anger, she spoke very little but rapidly, so rapidly that an outsider could hardly understand her at all, and as she spoke, she blinked her eyes.
“Well, well, Abke!” she remarked a
bruptly. “What brings you here, ha? Abke?”
II
ABA STEPPED QUICKLY through unfamiliar fields. All around him uninhabited tracts of land seemed to flow together in a cascade, and there was no one, no one who might notice the red of his coachman’s belt from a distance. The day—cloudy and dark, shrunken, was very much like a short Friday—a day that waits for a snowfall, and no snow falls. The tracts also seemed shrunken. As Aba approached the large village through the fields, something wintry and deathly glanced at him. A strange silence had descended upon the houses, gardens and lanes, as though someone had just died in the middle of the day, and the whole village was waiting and listening for church bells to begin tolling. They glanced at Aba even more silently in the wheelwright’s half-gentile, half-Jewish little dwelling.
The wheelwright and his wife were both seated on a small sofa near the tepid stove, the soles of their shoes outspread, and it seemed as though it was a fast day in the house. No one was cooking breakfast. The window shades were lowered, although it was daytime. The children played off to one side, dejected and speaking in whispers, as though they had been admonished by parents who were observing the seven days of mourning after a death.
“Quiet! Quieter . . . Look how cheerful this one is.”
And when they finally said something to him, Aba, it sounded indifferent and aggrieved.
“So where are you headed, ha? Aba . . . The devil is driving you to your bride in the middle of such a calamity?”
“Stay here, you ass! You’ll leave your head on the road. They are murdering people everywhere around Yanovke and Granov.” And their sad eyes looked not at Aba, but at the lowered window shades across from them.