Eva's Cousin

by Sibylle Knauss

  Toward morning he must have slept after all.

  Later, he reproached himself bitterly for not using his last night in Korcziw, where he had a dog, to run away, for they were herded back into the truck before it was light. This was because of the mothers, who had waited outside the parish hall all night after word went around the village that they were still there, and who all wanted to give their sons something they had forgotten, caps, prayer books, a cake baked in a hurry. . . . They had not let the Germans send them home until long after midnight, and they were coming back at daybreak. They had been assured that daybreak would be early enough, and only when they got that assurance were they prepared to leave.

  Consequently they were now setting off just before daybreak, under cover of darkness. All the boys had spent the night making plans to get away, and had finally slept briefly on those plans, not noticing until they were in the truck again that it was too late now.

  I’ve got a dog, said Mikhail, when the truck was out of the village. It was a confession of the secret he had kept to himself for weeks. He had reached the point of telling his secret.

  Shut your trap, said the boy sitting opposite him.

  I really wanted to bring him with me, said Mikhail.

  Didn’t you hear him tell you to shut your trap, said another of the boys, the oldest of them.

  Shut up, all of you, said one of the Germans, who spoke a little Polish.

  Mikhail wondered how he could jump off the truck as it went along. All the boys were wondering how they could jump off the truck as it went along.

  They were taken to Belz, where two doctors examined them.

  Take a look at this lad, said one of the doctors to the other when it was Mikhail’s turn.

  Good Lord, said the other doctor.

  Mikhail stood in front of him, naked. Without his father’s boots and the padded jacket he had worn on the journey he was a wretched sight.

  Any illnesses? asked the first doctor.

  Mikhail said he had had typhoid fever in the late summer.

  Might just as well send this one home again, said the other doctor. Look at him. He can’t work.

  And he took Mikhail’s wrist, as his mother had done yesterday. Then he pulled down Mikhail’s lower eyelid and examined his eyes through a glass.

  If you ask me . . . , he said, shaking his head.

  This time Mikhail knew what was going on.

  I sometimes come over all dizzy, he said.

  I bet you do, said the first doctor. You’ll be properly fed with us, and then you can work.

  They don’t get anything to eat, you see, he told the other doctor. This lad’s fourteen. He’s got some growing to do yet.

  Just a moment, said the other doctor. Joseph? Is that right? You’re supposed to be seventeen years old?

  That’s my brother, said Mikhail. There’s been a mix-up. I’m here by mistake.

  Suddenly he saw everything turning out all right. He could go back on foot. He wouldn’t mind that. He’d be home in two days’ time. A dog doesn’t starve to death in three days.

  Don’t you lie to us, Joseph, said the first doctor. Good God, they all lie like the blazes. Listen to me, Joseph, he said, you’ve been ill, and you’re not the strongest lad in the world, but a bit of work will do you good. It’ll make you big and strong. It’ll make a man of you, Joseph.

  He punched Mikhail in the ribs. His examination was over.

  And Joseph, one more thing, he said, as Mikhail bent to pick up his clothes and took in what had happened. Give up lying. Lies won’t get you anywhere.

  Mikhail only wished they would, because then he would have told some. Why had he been taken instead of Jossip? He must have done something wrong, and he couldn’t work out what it was. If only he had at least told Jossip that the dog would need feeding.

  They were taken to the barracks in Hrubieszów, where they slept on straw, and his only comfort was the smell that rose from it. But at this point he was already so dreadfully homesick, thirty miles from Korcziw, that any kind of comfort only made matters worse. He lay on the straw, buried his face in it, breathed in the smell and traced all the odors of Korcziw in it. He picked them out one by one, the smell of ripe wheat still in the ear, the smell of potatoes slowly beginning to rot, the smell of a damp pinewood fence, perhaps showing that a few splinters of pine had found their way into the straw, the ammoniac smell of urine, which overpowers every other smell in a cowshed or stable, the smell of slightly rotting cabbage leaves, God knew where that came from, the smell of sweat from an unhappy animal robbed of its freedom, which he recognized as his own, and finally, stronger every day he slept there, the aroma of the tears he wept into the straw.

  They stayed in Hrubieszów for a week, and every day more boys were brought in from somewhere or other, boys who fantasized day and night about escaping and soaked the straw with their tears. They did not talk much, and if one of them wailed out loud he was immediately told to shut his trap. He was in a world where there was no pity now.

  On the sixth day he saw Stepan, a boy from Korcziw, not much older than himself. They had been at school together.

  He asked him about the dog.

  Stepan hadn’t seen any dog, but he said that was all right, he was going to escape anyway. He had no intention of going to Germany, and once he was back in Korcziw he promised to look after the dog. Suddenly Mikhail felt he was an old hand at captivity. He had at least got beyond such notions. All the same, he told Stepan how to find the wooden shed, and felt a certain comfort in knowing that someone else knew.

  Next day the train left, and he and Stepan tried to get into the same goods truck and actually succeeded, although not side by side. But when his eyes were used to the darkness—only a little daylight filtered through the barred hatches in the sliding doors—he could see Stepan, and Stepan sometimes looked his way. That comforted Mikhail slightly and made up for the loss of the straw bed on the barracks floor. They tried to get a little closer to each other, but changing places was not allowed.

  They were on their way all day and all night, a goods truck full of boys between fourteen and twenty. None of them had ever traveled before, they had never been farther from home than the town that held the nearest administrative district center. Most of them had never even been in a train before. They listened to the rattle of the wheels and were bewildered. They had traveled in carts drawn by horses or teams of oxen, and this was their introduction to the machine age, which was inexorably carrying them away from everything they knew. Farther and farther and farther away every moment. They did not feel their hunger or thirst or full bladders, or anything else from which they were yet to suffer, they felt only that they were nothing. Only a few days ago they had still been sons, grandsons, brothers, future smallholders; now they were ground to nothing in this crushing of iron on iron. Foreigners as they would be from now on, foreign workers, they felt increasingly foreign to themselves, anonymous figures taking with them far too heavy a burden of what they remembered and loved, what was familiar to them. They felt it all concentrating into a small, hard kernel that they would now carry within them, with nothing but their weak and freezing bodies to protect it. The hidden, aching core of their desolation.

  Once, toward evening, they stopped at a railway station where they were given soup and cold, weak tea. They were told to get out and use the latrine buckets. Every single one of them intended to make a break for it and go home on foot. This was the opportunity they had all been waiting for.

  But it wasn’t even the guards posted on both sides of the platform with the safety catches off their guns that stopped them. Something else prevented them from simply running away. If they had all tried, a few might perhaps have made it. The fact was that they had already changed. They were no longer the boys who had been willing to face any danger, any challenge. They were prisoners now, a wretched procession of the dispossessed, and not a spoonful of soup would be wasted on them over and beyond what was necessary to keep them fit to
work. Ashamed, bellies half filled, they got into the trucks again. Mikhail and Stepan did not look at each other anymore. They tried to sleep.

  For it was suddenly important to keep their strength up. A little extra food, warmth, or sleep could be crucial. The boys pressed close together. Any attempt to claim privacy for yourself was impossible in any case, in such cramped conditions, and was expressed only occasionally in an unfriendly growl, in an intentional rigidity of the limbs, the poking and pushing of anyone who got too close to his neighbor, perhaps let his head drop on his neighbor’s shoulder as he fell asleep, but all such attempts were now useless, indeed counterproductive. They almost crawled under each others’ padded jackets, breathing on the necks and armpits of the boys next to them. Give me some of your warmth and I’ll give you some of mine. This is the behavior of slaves. They know they have nothing except their mere selves. Everything that had previously made up the basis of their social standing, the victories and defeats associated with them, the property owned by their fathers, the intimidatory potential of elder brothers, the beauty of the girls they desired or who had been their sisters and fiancées, all those imponderables whereby a person’s worth is assessed and which are carried around like an aura, an invisible halo, counted for nothing here. The first commandment of a slave runs: Thou shalt not be proud. Or you won’t live long.

  Mikhail soon learned it, too. When the train next stopped and they were herded out he was already looking down at the ground, as slaves do, knowing it is none of their business where they are. No more rapid glancing back and forth, no spying out the terrain for possible escape routes. And he would never know the name of the first German town to which they came. He could of course read the Roman alphabet, since they had learned Polish at school. He just didn’t look at the signboard.

  Here they were deloused, had their heads shaved, and were sorted out according to their usefulness. The strong, well-grown boys for building work and industry, the others for agricultural labor.

  Finally there was only Mikhail left, naked, bald, freezing, shrinking into himself with despondency and cold, shrinking into himself like his penis, which was almost out of sight, a pale boy, too weak, too small, and too useless to be fit for either industry or agriculture.

  Neither the man in the white coat nor the uniformed man seemed to know what to do with Mikhail. The other youths were already getting dressed again. Their clothes, like their naked bodies, had been sprayed with pesticide, and before they put them on they had to shake them vigorously to make the fleas that had been living in them fall out.

  Then Mikhail suddenly saw one of the boys picking up his own jacket. It was the most precious thing he owned. It wasn’t just because it had belonged to his father and still smelled of him, it was thick and soft, and on him it was almost as long as an overcoat. It was also his only home, his winter quarters.

  Naked as he was, he ran over to the group of boys—they were the strong ones, including the building workers—and snatched back his jacket. Thief, he said in Ukrainian. The other boy bent and picked up another jacket. He, too, was already a slave, indifferent, without any pride left.

  When Mikhail was going back to the two men he saw them closing their book, standing up and going out of the door, and he realized that so far as they were concerned the matter was settled. He had made his own choice. The small problem he represented was solved. As easy as that.

  Now he was with the young men who had been picked to do the hardest work. Most of them had even come to Germany of their own free will. All they wanted was to work for a fair wage, the prospect that had been held out to them, and they had promised to send a good part of it home to their families. They believed they had a right to go home on leave once a year, and they had signed contracts assuring them of both these things. What they didn’t know was that the provisions of these contracts did not apply to the nationals of an enemy power. No one had told them that.

  Mikhail was with the wrong set, as he well knew. But as things stood there was no one around to hear any protests. So he shook the dead fleas out of his clothes as best he could, and put them back on. At least he had his jacket. He resolved never to let it out of his sight again.

  The train to which he was assigned was going to southern Germany. It was all one to Mikhail. What mattered was not where he was but his distance from Korcziw. And every time the wheels of the train went round that distance increased.

  He tried not to think of the dog. But the dog was thinking of him, Mikhail knew that, and from now on it would be the one thing that distinguished him. It was his secret mark of rank. His pride, hidden deep within him, in knowing that the dog was his. The dog would stray and kill game, grow bad-natured and suspicious, just as Mikhail must be suspicious and bad-natured from now on, relying on no one but himself. That way they would not cease to be master and dog, and in all their misery a tiny kernel of hope would still exist inside a hard shell. He, Mikhail, and the dog had every reason to stay alive.

  Even years later, Mikhail would sometimes work out how old the dog would be now, and whether he might still be alive. Seventeen, eighteen years? How long does a dog live? And how long does his memory live, and his desolation and grief, how long do they live on?

  He saw Stepan for the last time on the loading platform of a truck. He seemed to be waving, and Mikhail waved back to him. Then the truck started to move, and Mikhail stood there, arm raised in the air, palm of his hand outstretched, as long as he could still see the vehicle. A motionless wave, a frozen greeting sent the way that Stepan was going, away from him. Then he felt someone shove him in the ribs. Nazi swine, someone hissed in his ear, in Polish, and he, too, was pushed into a truck.

  They drove into the mountains. It was October and already cool, with a little snow on the peaks, when Mikhail arrived in Hitler’s private domain.

  HE NEVER TOLD ME exactly what had happened before he took refuge with me in the Tea House. He didn’t like talking about it. But in time, as we came to know each other better—although his distrust always remained near the surface, always ready to hand—I could sometimes get him to talk. And from what he told me about it, just disconnected fragments, observations imperfectly understood, anecdotes that broke off before you could see what the point of them was, delivered in the pidgin language with which he tried to protect himself even from me, the short sentences using only verbal infinitives that he used to conceal his advanced knowledge of German—I be hungry. I not understand—from all this I have told myself his story as if it were my own.

  And in a way it was my own story, too. It sent me on a journey of exploration around the place where we were. Through Mikhail I came to see the other, invisible side of the Obersalzberg. Through him I saw that the world is full of loopholes through which you can slip into other worlds, other realities, and that from those other viewpoints things appear in their full terrible light. If Mikhail had not existed, I would have had to invent him in order to get a view of the place where I was.

  But he did exist: dirty, greedy for anything edible, cautious, wily as a fox, silent as a cat, desperate as a wild animal in a trap, timid and distrustful.

  He had no word for the sickness from which he suffered. No German word, and no Ukrainian or Polish word either. He had no term for the disorder that afflicts the soul and makes it sick. From all I gathered from him over the course of time, I spelled out the word for myself: homesickness. He was deranged, ill with it. He would die of it. He knew that, but first he wanted to be home just once more. To see if the dog was still there. Smell the potato fires of Korcziw in autumn. To tell his mother that you had to obey the Germans, always and unconditionally. Teach her to understand that they had no pity. They were the stronger. They always would be.

  He had no doubt that they would pick him up and either shoot him or bring him back. He had no idea that in his native country the Germans had already lost the war and were in retreat. The SS men, the brewery managers, the endless columns of Wehrmacht trucks, all gone like ghosts. He d
idn’t know that they had been superseded by Red Army soldiers, and it was these soldiers whom the people of Korcziw now feared. He didn’t know that they would kill him if he came back because they would regard him as a collaborator, and wouldn’t ask whether he had gone with the Germans voluntarily. He had no idea that his mother was praying fervently that he would stay where he was. He couldn’t know how far, how irretrievably far he had fallen into one of the black holes of the history of the twentieth century.

  There was nowhere for him to go, no refuge, no homeland, not even a country of which he was a citizen. His old village on the border, first Polish, then Ukrainian, then part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, was ultimately only as he saw it in his dreams. A stable door. A stairway. A headless chicken fluttering around the yard until it stopped in midcourse, twitching, and fell to the ground.

  Sometimes, in the huts, he tried to find the smell of the old wooden house in Korcziw that had been his home. Stones smell of nothing, but wooden houses retain something of the breath of the trees of which they are made. Something of the aroma of their autumns and their springs. It is strongest in sunlight, when the wood expands with a slight creak. In Korcziw it had spoken with a voice as familiar to him as the rustle of his grandmother’s skirts. In winter the fire on the hearth made the wood speak. Overnight, as the fire died down, the wood fell silent. You heard nothing but the wind rattling the shingles on the roof. But in the morning, when the fire was lit again, the wooden house moved and expanded.

  Mikhail sought the smell of Korcziw in the darkness of the hut in the Antenberg camp, and responded to the familiar voice of wooden beams expanding. He deceived himself as best he could, and lay with closed eyes conjuring up a sense of being in Korcziw. At least he wasn’t in a stone building. The snorting and shifting of the other men—they slept eighteen to a room—could in certain circumstances be Jossip and Andrzei. He enlisted the aid of his homesickness and shut out all perceptions that would disturb the illusion. With a bold and supreme effort of the mind he filtered them out, forcing his senses to inexactitude, and there it was, the smell of wood, the creaking of the beams, the sound of his brothers breathing beside him, the grating noise as a slab of snow slid off the roof. And he wept.