11.10
He spent the night with his back to the hearth. That’s how Russian peasants sleep. I wonder if he’s a Russian? I did ask him, but he seemed indignant. He understands more than he lets on. Most of the workers from the East are Poles. He’s probably Polish, too.
11.14
They’re beginning to think it odd in the Berghof kitchen that I’m always so hungry. I can’t feed him on nothing but biscuits. He needs meat and vegetables. I wrap as much of what’s on my plate as I can in napkins when Eva isn’t looking. It’s not very appetizing, but that doesn’t bother him. What am I going to do with him in the long run?
11.15
He has a temperature. I’m trying to simulate his symptoms to get the right medicine. But my throat feels easier and healthier than it’s been for ages. I walked through the snow barefoot, but that only chilled my bladder, which is no use to him.
11.17
I’m giving him the bromide tablets the doctor prescribed for me, and aspirin stolen from Eva. She’s suggested a trip to Munich tomorrow. But I can’t leave. How can I get her to drop the idea?
11.22
Two days in Munich. I left him provisions and gave him the key to the cellar door so that he could use the bathroom. He seems better. No temperature now. Snow in Munich. Like white ashes left by the fires. No people. Partying as usual in Wasserburger Strasse. We rolled up the carpet and danced. Glowing embers under the ashes. Well, we’re only young once. But why now? When I came back he was sitting on my bed and listening to the radio. I punished him with two days on bread and water.
11.23
This morning Eva came here, which was a surprise. She’s never been before, not since I took to sleeping here. She says she thinks she ought to take better care of me. I don’t know what she means by that. People say that sort of thing without meaning anything much. Most of what Eva says doesn’t really mean anything.
11.25
I borrowed a German-Polish dictionary from Hitler’s library at the Berghof. Eva didn’t notice. Perhaps he’d be prepared to talk to me in his own language. It’s worth a try.
11.26
He spoke to me for the first time today. I tried some Polish from my dictionary on him. For the first time I saw him smile. My Polish pronunciation was obviously a joke. He began correcting me, and suddenly we were in the middle of a conversation. He knows German much better than I expected, and when he was lost for a word we looked it up in the dictionary. He’s Ukrainian, but his mother is Polish, so we were able to communicate with the help of the dictionary. Now that I know who he is and where he comes from I’m even more frightened for him. And for myself.
CHAPTER 5
I COULD NEVER HAVE WRITTEN DOWN THE whole confused story he told me in the margins of my book. I learned it only in fragments, and some of it I guessed at rather than learned. I had to fill in a good many gaps, and only over the course of time did the connections really come clear to me. Even today, however, much of his story is as real to me as if I myself had visited the village on the Ukrainian-Polish border that was his home. A village at the foot of the Carpathians, surrounded by woods and cornfields. A little village on a little river, where you can spear fish with sticks while you stand up to your hips in the running water. A village of wooden houses, with snow coming up to the eaves in winter; the only stone building is the castle standing behind tall copper beeches and rhododendrons. The castle offers you the only opportunity to dream of another world, where you might be another person. It’s a village where your father is a carter, with two horses, and has a few acres for growing barley and potatoes. A village from which you are driven out one day, when your childhood ends forever, and to which you will never return in your life.
THE EVENING HE WAS TAKEN AWAY, in October 1942, he had just been going to feed the dog. It was a young dog, and it was his. Or not really his. No one had given it to him, and no one even knew he had a dog. It wouldn’t have been allowed; in fact, it would have been impossible. But a dog decides where it belongs for itself. And once it has decided, it belongs to you forever and ever and ever, whether you want it or not.
The dog decides who it belongs to, but not of its own free will. It is more as if it had to make up its mind against its will. It whimpers, it whines, it howls. It crawls on its belly and wriggles under the hand of whoever is now its new owner, whether he wants it or not. Take me, I’ve chosen you. There’s nothing you can do but be chosen by me. And while you are still trying to be noncommittal—wait a moment, let’s think about this, I’m not at all sure I wanted a dog—you can’t tell for sure whether you didn’t, after all, give it the command to submit to you. You try to get things clear once and for all. You pick up a stick and threaten the dog with it. That’s enough, now, I don’t want you. But as soon as you’ve turned away it is placing the stick at your feet, showing you that you have no choice. You, too, obey the law of man and dog. You are surprised, but you resign yourself. In the end you accept the fact that you have a dog.
This one was a young hunting dog, a setter with a russet coat that was soft and smooth and wonderfully shiny despite the hunger he had endured. He was a gentleman’s dog. None of the peasants of Korcziw had a dog like that. A foreign dog. And there was only one answer to the question of where he came from: The huntsmen must have left him behind. They had arrived by car. German huntsmen in German cars who stayed at the castle for a few days and hunted stags and wild boar in the surrounding forests. When they drove off again they took a whole truck full of game with them. God knew where they were taking it. How can three or four men eat so much meat? Perhaps they were going to send it to the German soldiers to give them strength. They must be getting the strength to fight the war from somewhere or other. Strength to fight and win victories and be pitiless.
His father had died in the winter. He had had a cough. And although Mikhail’s mother put compresses made of hot potato on his chest day and night, and the priest came and sprinkled all four corners of the bedroom with holy water, it was God’s will to take him from them, and they had to bury the coffin in the snow; they wouldn’t be able to dig down any farther into the ground until spring. That was what happened when someone died in Korcziw in January. And in April they had to till the fields. By then death had taken one of the two horses as well, so there were only his brother Jossip and himself and the last horse, an emaciated mare, to do the work, Jossip being almost seventeen and Mikhail fourteen years old. His brother Andrzei was only eight and could scarcely even feed the chickens.
They put as much under the plow that year as they could, the mare, Jossip, and Mikhail. And it would have been enough for the family, too, but for the barley dues to be paid, which were calculated by the size of the fields in cultivation and not the number of workers available. Barley for the breweries that the Germans were planning to run in Ukraine after their victory, to brew enough beer for their soldiers. German soldiers like beer better than potato schnapps. They are always very thirsty from all that marching, and after all, they couldn’t bring their own beer from Germany. They had heavy marching packs to carry already.
That was why the German huntsmen had come in September. They were the new brewery managers. While they were out hunting, their men went to every farm and fixed the barley dues. Thirty hundredweight of barley for German beer, and his mother was so angry that she tore the scarf from her head and threw it at the feet of the men who came about the barley dues. It was a gesture of defiance, the utmost she could do as a woman and a mother. If she had ever allowed herself to do such a thing in front of his father, she would certainly have got a beating. For a moment he was terrified for her when he saw it. But the Germans didn’t seem to understand what his mother was saying. There! she said. See that? I have uncovered my head, for how can anything worse happen to me than what you are doing now?
May Our Lady help us, said his grandmother, who was equally horrified.
But Mikhail already knew Our Lady would not help with the barley.
Ble
ssed Virgin Mary, intercede for us. And on top of it all there’s a German dog, thin as a rake, always ravenously hungry for food and for something else, too, hungry for a response to his devotion.
He must have got lost during the hunt. It was probably the first time he had been out. Mikhail even thought he might have been frightened by the shooting and run away. Such things happen. Dogs like that are no use for hunting, and the hunters usually shoot them when they come back whimpering, beside themselves with delight and joy at being reunited with their masters.
At first he tied the dog up in a wooden shed a little way from the farm. Then, when he was sure the German huntsmen had gone away again, he let him off the leash and gave a short whistle when he visited the shed in the morning and evening. The dog barked as soon as he approached. Finally he left the door of the shed open at night, and the dog would run to meet him when he came early in the morning, very early so that no one would see. Anyone would know at once where the dog came from, and nobody would believe it was his dog now. He knew some people who would probably have shot the dog.
It had not been easy for him to feed the dog. He never had enough to eat himself, and no doubt to the sorrow of Our Lady had to steal from his mother and lie to her more than once. But one morning he found a dead rabbit in the woodshed. He praised the dog and shared the rabbit fairly with him.
He sometimes went to the wooden shed in the evening, laid his head on the dog like a cushion, breathed in his smell, listened to the faint rumbling in his belly, and felt the wet, warm tongue licking his cheeks and nose now and then, while a very quiet growl, a deep, sonorous sound rose from wherever the soul lives in a dog’s body. He had called him Fritz because it was the only German name he knew.
Then, one day around the middle of October, when it was already cold and the mist lay over the river meadows all day, but Jossip and he had cut enough wood for the winter—one day around the middle of October the village elder’s carter came to the door just as they were sitting down to supper. The village elder was his father’s cousin, and the carter said Jossip must clear out at once, he must go away and hide. The Germans, he said, had been asking around in the village about young men who were healthy and fit to work, and were to be employed in their factories in Germany. The village elder had given Jossip’s name, and they would soon be here to take him away, but only if Jossip was at home, understand? So he had sent the carter, because Jossip mustn’t be at home, or they would be yet another man short on the farm, if Jossip could be called a man yet.
But his mother had already got him into his winter jacket, and put some bread and sausage in his pockets. Jossip would know where to go, and soon they heard the stable door blowing in the wind. As usual, Jossip had failed to shut it properly. Mikhail went to close it, and when he got back to the kitchen they could already hear the Germans coming down the road. There were three men in SS uniforms. They came in through the doorway, ducking their heads. For the first time, Mikhail saw that his childhood home was a hovel. Low-ceilinged and poverty-stricken. It offered no protection.
Jossip Nowak?
Jossip’s not here.
When will he be back?
Who? Jossip. Oh, him. He won’t be back, he’s gone to town.
To town?
To Belz.
And what’s he doing there?
If only his mother knew. Probably looking for work. Who knows? Young folk today. They none of them ask their mother’s opinion anymore. They do as they like.
So who’s this, then? said one of the Germans.
Mikhail was still standing in the kitchen doorway, on the threshold, which may have made him look a little taller than he was. He wore the boots that had been his father’s. They were rather big for him, but he liked putting them on, because he felt that when he wore them he walked with a firm and heavy tread, like a man with something important to do.
At that moment his mother’s eyes turned to him, and he saw fear flare up in them, fear that made him walk into the kitchen and stand beside her. For it seemed to him that she needed his support, and after all, he was the only man in the house now.
Him? said his mother. He’s only a child!
But he could already look down on her if he stood beside her wearing boots. His mother was a very small woman.
How old are you? asked the German.
Nearly fifteen, he said.
He’s only fourteen! cried his mother. He was ill in the summer, too! He had typhoid fever! See how thin he is!
And she rolled his sleeve a little way up, took his slender wrist and held it out to show the German.
Don’t, Mother, said Mikhail, pulling his hand away. He was ashamed to have his mother making a spectacle of him like this.
Pack your things, said the German.
He’s not well, cried his mother. Please! And Mikhail saw her throwing herself on her knees, trying to kiss the hands of one of the Germans. He kept the boots on and went upstairs, followed by one of the Germans, who never took his eyes off him. The other two stayed downstairs with his mother. It was his grandmother who helped him to pack a few things: underpants, a shirt, a pair of woolen socks, what you need when you’re leaving home forever. She did not say a word to him, but she kept talking to God and the Virgin Mary, praying softly to herself. He heard her holding the pair of them responsible for everything that happened to him and would happen in the future. If they’d only admit it, they knew perfectly well it was their business to guarantee the boy’s safety. Well, who else would do it? His grandmother hoped God and the Virgin Mary were fully aware of that. They’d have their work cut out for them! Fancy letting a boy this age leave home, only thirteen years old!
Fourteen, said Mikhail, interrupting his grandmother’s prayers.
He heard his mother down in the kitchen, still pleading with the Germans and making out that he was a little boy, she, too, calling on the Lord God and all the saints to bear witness. It was very embarrassing for him.
Let’s go, said one of the Germans when he came down again. He was carrying his things on his back. His grandmother had stuffed them into a pillowcase.
Only now did he notice that the men were holding his mother down on a chair between them. When they saw that he was ready they let go of her, and suddenly she seemed entirely transformed.
Mikhail, she said, as she said in the dream he had dreamt over and over again since then. It was a dream in which he came into the kitchen in Korcziw early in the morning to fetch his breakfast before he went to school. His mother gave him a slice of bread and dripping wrapped in paper. He put it in his school bag and went to the door. But whenever he was about to walk out his mother called him back.
Mikhail, you’ve forgotten something, she said.
And he knew he had forgotten something, but he didn’t know what it was. He undid his bag and took out his slate, and saw that everything he had written on it was wiped away. All the homework he had done the day before. Whatever it was he couldn’t remember had been on the slate, but it was no longer legible, nothing could bring it back. What followed next was an agonizing search, an agonizing struggle to win time, to retrieve the irretrievable, which ended with his getting to school much too late, once again with the writing on his slate wiped clean and illegible.
Mikhail, you’ve forgotten something.
She went to the kitchen cupboard as if she were only going to spread him a piece of bread and dripping for school. She seemed to have calmed down and was now filled only by a great, growing urge to be active. She packed up some bread and sausage for him.
Mikhail, don’t forget your cap.
Mikhail, do you have a handkerchief?
Come along, said the German. The other two were already out in the yard.
Mikhail, wait, the socks I was knitting you. They aren’t finished. Oh dear. It won’t take long, she said, turning to the Germans. Half an hour, maybe only a quarter of an hour. Come back then. Yes, why don’t you come back in a quarter of an hour?
Mikhail was al
ready in the doorway.
It really won’t take long, she said, as if she were talking to herself.
It was only when the German took his arm and drew him through the farm gate that he suddenly remembered the dog, who had not been fed.
Mikhail, his mother called from the doorway of the house, you’ve forgotten something!
But they were already hauling him up into the open truck where a couple of other boys from his village were already sitting.
The dog! he called.
And his mother called back: What?
Someone must feed the dog! he called.
But the truck was already on its way, and the sound of the engine swallowed up his words. Although he did not turn back, he knew all his life that his mother had run behind the truck until it disappeared from view. He was never to see her again.
In the evening they were taken to a parish hall, about twenty youths, all older than he was, and they slept on the floor with their baggage as a pillow. All night he kept thinking that it must be possible to make a break for it and at least reach the dog just once, before they picked him up again. He had his mother’s bread and sausage, he could feed the dog with that. He strained his ears, listening, but all he could hear was the breathing of the other boys around him. Then he imagined the dog turning up in the morning and going with him. This was late in the night, when waking dreams begin to resemble the dreams of slumber, even when you have your eyes open and bitter grief will not let you sleep. The dog would go with him wherever he, Mikhail, was taken. He would work for them both. They would be inseparable. The dog would go wherever he went, and would never allow anything bad to happen to him, just as he, Mikhail, would protect the dog. He would always share his rations with him, and now and then the dog would bring a rabbit for them both, and they would eat it together by a small fire. He wouldn’t need a bed at night if he had the dog. They would keep each other warm and never be alone.
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