by Jurek Becker
Well, anyway, Jacob didn’t come to the freight yard with any firm intentions. It would be wonderful if they already knew about it without him, if they had met him with the news: that would be ideal. He would have rejoiced with them, wouldn’t have let on that there were three people already in the know: Rosenblatt, himself, and Piwowa. He would have kept his mouth shut and, at the most, asked after a few hours who had brought the news. But as soon as Jacob arrived at the freight yard he realized that they didn’t know yet; their backs were enough to tell him. The lucky break hadn’t happened, indeed it would have been crazy to count on it; two lucky breaks in such a short time can only happen to Rockefeller on a Sunday.
They haul the crates to a freight car. As a carrying mate Jacob is not particularly sought after; no one is eager to have him; making pancakes is hardly conducive to muscle-building, and the crates are heavy. The yard is full of such people no one is eager to have; the big fellows are scarce. Everyone is eager to have them, but they don’t negotiate, preferring to haul together. Don’t talk to me about camaraderie and all that stuff; anyone who talks like that has no idea what goes on here, not the slightest. Personally I am not one of the big ones; I’ve cursed and hated them like the plague when I’ve had to haul with another fellow like myself. But if I had been one of them, I would have behaved exactly the same, exactly the same and not one bit differently.
Jacob and Mischa are hauling a crate to the freight car.
Mischa is a tall fellow of twenty-five, with light blue eyes, a great rarity among us. At one time he did some boxing at the hakoah, but only three fights, two of which he lost, and once his opponent was disqualified for hitting below the belt. He was a middleweight or, rather, more of a light heavyweight, really, but his trainer advised him to lose those few pounds in training, there being too much competition in the light-heavyweight class. Mischa took his advice, but it didn’t help much; he didn’t do all that well even as a middleweight, as was proved by his three fights. He was already toying with the idea of eating himself into a heavyweight; maybe he would have done better in that class. At about one hundred and eighty-five pounds the ghetto interfered with his plans, and ever since then his weight has gradually been going down. Even so, he is still in pretty good shape; he really deserves a better partner than Jacob. Many people believe that one day his good nature will cost him his head, but no one tells him that; maybe someday that person will suffer a similar fate.
“Stop gawking and look where you’re going, or we’ll both trip and fall,” says Jacob. He is furious because the crate is so heavy, in spite of Mischa, and what annoys him most is the knowledge that Mischa will be the first person he tells; the trouble is, he doesn’t know how to begin.
They heave the crates onto the edge of the freight car; Mischa’s mind really isn’t on his work. They go back to the pile to pick up another crate. Jacob tries to follow Mischa’s gaze: the fellow is driving him crazy the way he keeps looking sideways. The yard looks the same as always.
“That freight car over there,” says Mischa.
“Which one?”
“On the next-to-last track. The one without a roof.” Mischa is whispering, although the nearest sentry is at least twenty yards away and not even looking in their direction.
“What about it?” asks Jacob.
“There are potatoes in that car.”
Jacob grumbles all through the next haul. So there are potatoes in it, what’s so special about that? Potatoes are only interesting when you have some, when you can cook them or eat them raw or make pancakes out of them, but not when they’re lying around in some freight car or other at a yard like this one; potatoes in that freight car over there are the most boring thing in the world. Even if there were pickled herrings in there or roast goose or millions of pots of tsholnt… Jacob goes on and on, trying to get Mischa’s mind off the subject and draw him into conversation.
Only Mischa isn’t listening; the sentries’ relief will soon show up, something they always turn into a little ceremony, standing at attention and reporting and shouldering arms, and that is the only moment at which to try. Jacob’s objections aren’t worth a second thought, Mischa says, of course there’s a risk — all right, even a great risk, so what? Nobody’s saying the potatoes are as good as eaten; every opportunity is a risk; must one explain that to a businessman? If there were no risk, there would be no opportunity either. Then it would be a sure thing, and sure things are rare in life; risk and the chance of success are two sides of the same coin.
Jacob knows that time is running out; Mischa is in a state in which no normal conversation is possible with him. And then he sees the relief column marching up: now he has to tell him.
“Do you know where Bezanika is?”
“Just a moment,” says Mischa tensely.
“Do you know where Bezanika is? I said.”
“No,” says Mischa, his eyes following the column as it covers the last few yards.
“Bezanika is about two hundred and fifty miles from here.”
“Oh yes.”
“The Russians are within twelve miles of Bezanika!”
Mischa manages to tear his gaze for a moment from the marching soldiers; his unusual eyes smile at Jacob; actually this is very nice of Heym, and he says, “That’s nice of you, Jacob.”
Jacob almost has a fit. Here you overcome all your scruples, ignore all the rules of caution and all your misgivings, for which there are reasons enough, you carefully choose a blue-eyed young idiot to confide in, and what does that snot-nose do? He doesn’t believe you! And you can’t simply walk away, you can’t leave him standing there in his stupidity, tell him to go to hell, and simply walk away. You have to stay with him, save up your rage for some later occasion, and you can’t even relish the vision of such an occasion. You have to beg for his indulgence as if your own life depended on it. You have to prove your credibility although you shouldn’t need to; he’s the one who needs to. And you have to do all that terribly fast, before the sentries face each other, slap their rifles on their shoulders, and exchange the information that there is nothing special to report.
“Aren’t you glad?” asks Jacob.
Mischa smiles at him kindly. “That’s fine,” he says in a voice that, while sounding a little sad, is intended to convey a certain appreciation of Jacob’s touching efforts. And then he has something more important to watch again. The column is approaching, it has already passed the little redbrick building used by the railway men and the sentries.
Mischa is trembling with excitement, and Jacob tries to get his words out faster than the soldiers can approach. He tells his story in a shortened version — why hadn’t he started it earlier? He tells about the man with the searchlight, about the corridor in the military office, about the door that opened outward and hid him. About the report he heard coming from the room, word for word as he has been repeating it to himself a thousand times during the night, nothing added and nothing withheld. He omits his brief imprisonment in the doorjamb, keeps to essentials, nothing either about the man who took him to the duty officer, a minor figure in the story, only about the duty officer himself, who must have been human and hence a weak link in the otherwise logical chain of evidence. He had looked at the clock like a human being and then, like a human being, told Jacob to go home.
And then to his horror Jacob sees that there is no stopping Mischa now. The only way is through certainty, and already the soldiers are facing each other. The enemy must be caught off guard, when his attention is at a low point. Mischa is crouching, ready to leap, certainty and the Russians are far away; the only thing left for Jacob to do is grab Mischa and hold on to his leg. They both fall to the ground, and Jacob sees the hatred in Mischa’s eyes: he has ruined his chance, at least he is trying to. Mischa wrenches himself free, nothing can stop him now, and he thrusts Jacob away.
“I have a radio!” says Jacob.
It’s not the sentries who have fired. So far, busy with their changeover ritual, they haven’t
seen a thing — Jacob has fired, a bullet straight to the heart. A lucky shot from the hip without taking proper aim, yet it found its mark. Mischa sits there motionless: the Russians are two hundred and fifty miles from here, near some place called Bezanika, and Jacob has a radio. They sit on the ground staring at each other: there never was any freight car with potatoes, no one has ever waited for the sentries to be relieved, quite suddenly tomorrow is another day. Although it is still true, of course, that opportunity and risk are two sides of the same coin, one would have to be crazy to forget that there must be some sort of healthy relationship between the two.
They go on sitting for a bit, Mischa with a blissful smile in his eyes, the result of Jacob’s handiwork. Jacob gets up; they can’t sit there indefinitely. He is angrier than ever. He has been forced to launch irresponsible claims, and it’s that ignorant idiot who has forced him, just because he didn’t believe him, because he suddenly had a craving for potatoes. He’ll tell Mischa the truth all right, not this minute but sometime today, no matter whether that freight car is still there tomorrow or not. Within an hour in fact, an hour at most, maybe even sooner, he’ll tell him the truth. Let the fellow enjoy a few more carefree minutes, not that he deserves them. Soon he won’t be able to live without that happiness, then Jacob will tell him the truth, and Mischa will have to believe what went on at the military office. After all, that doesn’t change anything about the Russians; he’ll have to believe it.
“Pull yourself together and get up. And above all, keep your trap shut. You know what that means, a radio in the ghetto. Not a soul must find out about it.”
Mischa couldn’t care less what that means, a radio in the ghetto. Even if a thousand regulations were to prohibit it on pain of death, let them — does that matter now, when suddenly tomorrow is another day?
“Oh, Jacob …”
The corporal in command of the sentry detail sees a lanky fellow sitting on the ground, just sitting there, hasn’t even collapsed, propping himself on his hands and staring up into the sky. The corporal straightens his tunic and comes striding toward them, little fellow that he is.
“Watch out!” Jacob cries, nodding toward the danger approaching in all its dignity.
Mischa regains his senses, comes down to earth, gets up, knows what is about to happen but can’t keep the look of pleasure off his face. He busies himself with the crates, is about to tip one on its side, when the corporal hits him from the side. Mischa turns toward him; the corporal is a head shorter than he and has trouble reaching up to hit Mischa in the face. It almost verges on the comical, not suitable for a German newsreel, more like a scene from an old slapstick silent movie when Charlie the little policeman tries to arrest the giant with the bushy eyebrows, and, try as he will, the big fellow doesn’t even notice him. We all know that Mischa could lift him off the ground and tear him to pieces. If he wanted to. The corporal hits him a few more times — by now his hands must be hurting — then shouts something or other that nobody’s interested in and only lays off when a thin trickle of blood runs out of the corner of Mischa’s mouth. Then he straightens his tunic again and belatedly notices that in the excitement his cap has fallen off; he picks it up, puts it on, goes back to his men, and marches away with the off-duty sentry detail behind him.
Mischa wipes the blood from his mouth with his sleeve, winks at Jacob, and reaches for a crate.
“All right, let’s get on with it,” he says.
They lift up the crate, and, as they carry it, Jacob’s anger flares up again, almost tearing his teeth apart. He’s not superstitious, and there’s no such thing as a higher power, but in some inexplicable way — perhaps only because it verged on the comical — he feels that Mischa deserved the beating.
“Oh, Jacob…”
We know what will happen. We have some modest experience in the course events are apt to take; we have some imagination so we know what will happen. Mischa won’t be able to keep his mouth shut. Never mind that he has been forbidden to talk. It won’t be spite that will make him break his silence or make him not even try to remain silent; it won’t be some malevolent desire to get Jacob into trouble — it will be joy, pure and simple. Stop taking your own lives, you’ll soon be needing them again! Stop living without hope, our days of misery are numbered! Make an effort to survive, you’ve had plenty of practice, you’re familiar with all the thousands of tricks that can cheat death — after all, you’ve managed so far. Just survive the last two hundred and fifty miles, then survival will be over, then life will begin.
Those are the reasons why Mischa won’t be able to keep his mouth shut. He’ll be asked for his source; he will reveal it, what’s wrong with that? Soon even the children in the ghetto will know the big secret, in the strictest confidence of course, they will hear about it when their parents in their joy forget to whisper. People will come to Jacob, to Heym the possessor of a radio, and want to hear the latest news; they will come with eyes such as Jacob has never seen before. And what on earth is he going to tell them?
Half a day has passed, the big crates have been stowed away in the freight cars, now it’s time for the smaller ones, the kind that one man can carry alone, and Jacob has lost sight of Mischa. Well, not literally lost sight of him, they see each other every few minutes but always a few feet apart, in passing, with their backs under a load or on their way to pick up another crate. The opportunity for a word of explanation hasn’t come yet; he can’t just take Mischa aside and say, This is how things really are. Whenever they see each other, Mischa winks at him or smiles or makes a face or waves surreptitiously; whether carrying a crate or not, it hardly makes any difference, each time some confidential gesture: we both know what it’s all about. Once Jacob forgets himself and winks back, but he recovers immediately — that would be going too far, that would block the way to the opportunity. But he can’t help himself; each time they pass his anger subsides. After all, the fellow has a right to be happy. Why shouldn’t he be happy after all that has happened?
The day is bright blue, as if specially chosen for the joyous occasion. The sentry by the wooden shed is sitting on a few bricks, having taken off his rifle and placed it beside him; he is leaning his head against the wall with his eyes shut, basking in the sun. He is smiling; one could almost feel sorry for him.
As Jacob walks past he gets a good look at him. Walking quite slowly he studies that face with its closed eyes; he takes note of the smile, the prominent Adam’s apple, the wide gold signet ring on the sentry’s little finger. Jacob walks on and discovers, so he has told me, that he has changed. From one day to the next his senses are suddenly far more alert; he is beginning to observe. The apathetic despair has not survived the excitement of the previous night; nothing is left of that numbness. Now it is as if one must remember everything exactly as it was so as to be able to tell about it afterward. Afterward.
Jacob invents an innocent little game. On his way to the freight car or on his way back to the crates he always passes very close to the drowsing sentry. So close that he almost walks over his outstretched legs, each time depriving him for a brief moment of the sun. The sentry, of course, doesn’t notice, doesn’t even open his eyes although he is not asleep; he moves his head once slightly or twitches his mouth — in annoyance, it seems to Jacob — or does nothing at all. But each time Jacob passes him he loses a moment of sunshine. Jacob carries on his little game until he has to turn to another pile of crates. The sentry is no longer in Jacob’s path; he would have to make a detour, and for that the joke is too slight and the risk too great. Jacob sees with satisfaction that a few little clouds are carrying on his prank. Then it is noon.
A man in railway uniform emerges from the redbrick building, the same man ever since we’ve been working here. He has a stiff leg that makes a noise with every step like a pebble falling into water, obviously a wooden leg. We call him the Whistle, not at all disparagingly, for we know nothing about his human or professional qualities. The only thing we have against him is that h
e happens to be a German, which, strictly speaking of course, should not be reason enough for a low opinion, but that’s how unfair our plight can make us. As soon as he emerges from the building he pulls from his breast pocket a whistle fastened with a black cord to his buttonhole and proceeds to blow it at a remarkable volume, a signal that it is now noon. This is the only sound we have ever heard from him, apart from the pit-pat of his wooden leg. That’s why we call him the Whistle. For all we know he may be mute.
We form a line, very disciplined and with no jostling. That’s how they’ve taught us, under the threat of no food. It must look as if at the moment we had absolutely no appetite: What, already time to eat again? A fellow hardly has a chance to settle into the job before he is interrupted yet again by another of these many meals. So we form a line, without haste; we look around and make sure we’re all standing in an imaginary straight line. With outstretched arm you check the distance to the man in front of you, then correct it by a few inches to create the impression that you are among well-mannered people here. The spoon is taken out of the trouser pocket and held in the left hand against the left trouser seam. Then the handcart appears around the corner of the shed, with the tin bowls piled beside the two steaming green cauldrons. The cart stops at the head of the greedy line. The first man steps forward, opens the cauldron (invariably burning his fingers as he does so), and begins doling out the contents. The Whistle stands to one side, mute and staring fixedly, to see that everything is done fairly.
On this bright blue day I do the doling. I know nothing, I’m always the last to find out, the sun gets on my nerves, I’m furious. I’m annoyed at the extra work, my burned fingers are hurting, I’m the last to get my food. I slap the ladleful of soup into their bowls, the men move off, I discover nothing unusual in their faces, in none of them, but then I’m not paying attention. I don’t even see whom I happen to be giving soup to; I just look down at the bowls.