by Primo Levi
I looked at him dumbfounded; I was afraid I hadn’t understood. But the Greek, with a broad gesture, took in with his hand three-quarters of the horizon: and then I saw that in the tall grass, near and far, some twenty large girls lay stretched out in the sun, napping. They were blond, rosy creatures, with powerful backs, big bones, and placid, bovine faces, and were dressed in various crude and incongruous outfits. “They come from Bessarabia,” the Greek explained. “They’re all my employees. The Russians like them this way, white and heavy. It was a big pagaille here before; but since I’ve taken charge, everything runs wonderfully—cleanliness, variety, discretion, and no question about the money. It’s a good business, too, and sometimes moi aussi j’y prends mon plaisir.”
There returned to mind, in a new light, the episode of the hard-boiled egg, and the Greek’s contemptuous challenge: “Come on, tell me some article I’ve never dealt in!” No, I didn’t need a woman, or at least not in that sense. We parted after a friendly conversation; and after that, since the whirlwind that had convulsed that old Europe, dragging it into a wild contra dance of separations and meetings, had come to rest, I never saw my Greek master again, or heard news of him.
A Little Hen
The transit camp where I had so fortuitously seen Mordo Nahum again was called Slutsk. Anyone who looked on a good map of the Soviet Union for the small town that bears this name could, with a little patience, find it, in White Russia, a hundred kilometers south of Minsk. But on no map is the village called Starye Doroghi, our final destination, marked.
In July 1945, ten thousand persons were staying in Slutsk; I say “persons” because any more restrictive term would be inaccurate. There were men, and also a good number of women and children. There were Catholics, Jews, Orthodox, and Muslims; there were whites and yellows and various blacks in American uniform; German, Poles, French, Greeks, Dutch, Italians, and others; and also Germans who claimed to be Austrians, Austrians who declared they were Swiss, Russians who called themselves Italians, a woman dressed as a man, and even, standing out amid the ragged crowd, a Magyar general in full uniform, quarrelsome and colorful and as stupid as a rooster.
We were comfortable in Slutsk. It was hot, even too hot; we slept on the ground, but there was no work and there was food for everyone. In fact, the food service was marvelous: it was assigned by the Russians, in rotation by the week, to each of the main nationalities represented in the camp. We ate in a vast, light, clean room; every table had eight places, all you had to do was arrive at the right time and sit down, without checks or shifts or lines, and immediately the procession of volunteer cooks arrived, with surprising dishes, along with bread and tea. During our brief stay the Hungarians were in charge: they made spicy stews, and enormous portions of spaghetti with parsley, overcooked and wildly sweetened. In addition, faithful to their national idols, they had formed a Gypsy orchestra: six provincial musicians, in velvet trousers and doublets of embroidered leather, majestic and sweaty, who started with the Soviet national anthem, the Hungarian, and “Hatikva” (in honor of the large nucleus of Hungarian Jews), and then continued with frivolous, interminable czardas, until the last diner had laid down his fork.
The camp wasn’t fenced. It consisted of crumbling buildings, one or two stories high, aligned on the four sides of a vast, empty grassy space, probably the old parade ground. Under the burning sun of the Russian summer, this appeared dotted with people sleeping, or busy delousing themselves, mending their clothes, or cooking over makeshift fires, and was animated by more active groups, playing ball or ninepins. The center was dominated by an enormous low square wooden shed, with three entrances, all on the same side. Over the three doorways, in large Cyrillic letters traced in red lead by an uncertain hand, were written three words: “Muzhskaya,” “Zhenskaya,” “Ofitserskaya,” that is to say For Men, For Women, For Officials. It was the camp latrine, and its most prominent feature. Inside, there was only a floor of rough boards and a hundred square holes, ten by ten, like a gigantic Rabelaisian multiplication table. There were no subdivisions between the compartments intended for the three sexes; or if there had been they had disappeared.
The Russian administration paid absolutely no attention to the camp, so as to make one doubt that it existed: but it must have existed, since we ate every day. In other words, it was a good administration.
We spent ten days at Slutsk. They were empty days, without encounters, without events that you could anchor your memory to. One day we tried leaving the rectangle of the barracks, and going out into the plain to gather edible grasses: but after half an hour of walking we found ourselves as if in the middle of the sea, at the center of the horizon, without a tree, a height, a house to take as a goal. To us Italians, used to the background of mountains and hills, and the plain crowded with the signs of human presence, the immense, heroic Russian space was dizzying, and made our hearts heavy with painful memories. We tried to cook the grasses we had gathered, but got almost nothing useful.
I had found in an attic an obstetrics tract, in German, with a lot of colored illustrations, in two heavy volumes: and since printed paper is for me a vice, and for more than a year I had been starved for it, I spent my time reading randomly, or sleeping in the sun in the wild grass.
One morning, with mysterious, lightning-like speed, the news spread that we were to leave Slutsk, on foot, to be settled in Starye Doroghi, seventy kilometers away, in a camp for Italians alone. The Germans, in such circumstances, would have covered the walls with bilingual announcements, clearly printed, specifying the hour of departure, the approved baggage, the timetable, and the death penalty for the recalcitrant. The Russians, on the other hand, let the order spread on its own, and allowed the march to organize itself.
The news provoked a certain turmoil. In ten days, we had settled ourselves in Slutsk, more or less comfortably, and in particular we were afraid of leaving the overwhelming abundance of the Slutsk kitchens for who knows what wretched situation. Besides, seventy kilometers is a lot; none of us were in shape for such a long march, and few had proper shoes. We tried in vain to get more precise information from the Russian Command: all we could find out was that we were to leave the morning of July 20, and that a real Russian Command did not appear to exist.
On the morning of July 20 we gathered in the central square, like an immense caravan of Gypsies. At the last minute we learned that there was a railroad line between Slutsk and Starye Doroghi, yet only the women and children were allowed to travel by train, along with the usual well-connected types, and the no less usual clever ones. On the other hand, to get around the tenuous bureaucracy that ruled our fates did not take exceptional astuteness; but not many of us realized it at the time.
The order to depart was given around ten, and immediately afterward a counterorder. Numerous other false departures followed this one, so that we got moving only around midday, without having eaten.
A major highway passes through Slutsk and Starye Doroghi, the one that connects Warsaw with Moscow. In those days it was in complete disrepair: it consisted of two side lanes, of bare earth, meant for horses, and one in the center, formerly paved but then torn up by explosions and the tracks of the armored tanks, and so not very different from the other two. The road traverses an endless plain, almost without inhabited places, and is therefore made up of long straight stretches: between Slutsk and Starye Doroghi there was a single, barely noticeable curve.
We left with a certain bravado: the weather was splendid, we were fairly well nourished, and the idea of a long walk in the heart of that legendary country, the Pripet Marshes, had in itself a certain fascination. But our opinion very quickly changed.
In no other part of Europe, I believe, can you walk for ten hours and find yourself always in the same place, as in a nightmare: always ahead of you the road leads straight to the horizon, always on both sides is steppe and forest, and always behind you the road goes straight to the opposite horizon, like the wake of a ship; and there are no villages, no ho
uses, no smoke, not a milestone that in some way might indicate that a little distance has been gained; and you do not meet a living soul, except flocks of crows, or a hawk cruising lazily in the wind.
After several hours of walking, our column, initially compact, meandered for two or three kilometers. At the tail end was a Russian military cart, drawn by two horses and driven by a sullen, monstrous noncommissioned officer: he had lost his lips in battle, and from the nose to the chin his face was a terrifying skull. I think he was supposed to pick up the exhausted; instead, he was busy diligently retrieving the baggage that was gradually abandoned on the road by people who were too tired to carry it farther. For a while we had the illusion that he would give it back upon our arrival, but the first person who tried to stop and wait for the cart was greeted by shouts, cracks of the whip, and inarticulate threats. This was the end of the two volumes of obstetrics, which constituted by far the weightiest part of my personal baggage.
At sunset, our group was proceeding by itself. Beside me walked the mild and patient Leonardo; Daniele, limping and enraged by thirst and tiredness; Signor Unverdorben, with a friend of his from Trieste; and Cesare, of course.
We stopped to rest at the single curve that interrupted the fierce monotony of the road; there was a roofless hut, perhaps the only visible remains of a village destroyed by the war. Behind it, we discovered a well, where we slaked our thirst with pleasure. We were tired and our feet were swollen and covered with sores. I had long ago lost my archbishop’s shoes, and had inherited from somewhere or other a pair of bicycle shoes, as light as feathers; but they were tight, and I was forced to take them off periodically and walk barefoot.
We held a short council: what if that fellow made us walk all night? It wouldn’t be surprising: once at Katowice the Russians had made us unload boots from a train for twenty-four hours straight, working alongside us themselves. Why not hide in the woods? We would arrive at Starye Doroghi at our own pace the next day; the Russian certainly didn’t have a roster for taking a roll call, the night was announcing itself as warm, there was water, and, among the six of us, we had not much but something for dinner. Though the hut was in ruins, there was still a bit of roof to shelter us from the dew.
“Excellent,” said Cesare. “I’m for it. Tonight, I want to get a roast chicken.”
So we hid in the woods until the cart with the skeleton had passed, waited until the last stragglers had left the well, and took possession of our campground. We spread out our blankets, opened our bags, lit a fire, and began to prepare dinner, with bread, millet kasha, and a can of peas.
“What a meal,” said Cesare. “What peas. You didn’t understand. I want to celebrate tonight, and I want to make a roast chicken.”
Cesare is an indomitable man: going around the markets of Katowice with him had already convinced me of that. It was futile to insist that to find a chicken at night, in the Pripet Marshes, without knowing Russian and without money to pay for it, was a senseless proposition. It was pointless to offer him a double ration of kasha to quiet him. “You all stay here with your lousy little kasha: I’m going to look for a chicken by myself, but then you won’t see me again. I say goodbye to you and the Russians and the hut—I’m off, and I’ll get back to Italy by myself. Maybe even by way of Japan.”
It was then that I offered to go with him. Not so much because of the chicken or because of the threats; but I love Cesare, and I like to see him at work.
“Bravo, Lapé,” Cesare said to me. Lapé is me: Cesare named me long ago, and he still calls me that, for the following reason. It’s well-known that in the Lager we had shaved heads; when we were liberated, our hair, and mine especially, after a year of being shaved, had grown back oddly soft and smooth. At that time mine was still very short, and Cesare claimed that it reminded him of the skin of a rabbit. Now, “rabbit,” or rather “rabbit skin,” in the mercantile jargon in which Cesare specializes, is lapé. Daniele, however, the bearded and bristly and frowning Daniele, thirsting for revenge and justice like an ancient prophet, was called Corallí, because, Cesare said, if coralline—glass beads—rained down you would thread them all.
“Bravo, Lapé,” he said to me, and explained his plan. Cesare is in fact a man with crazy ideas, but then he pursues them with great practical sense. He hadn’t dreamed the chicken: from the hut, to the north, he had glimpsed a path that was well trodden, and thus recent. It was likely that it led to a village; now, if there was a village, there were also chickens. We went outside: it was almost dark by now, and Cesare was right. On the brow of a barely perceptible undulation in the earth, perhaps two kilometers away, between the trees, we could see a light shining. So we set off, stumbling through the stubble, followed by swarms of voracious mosquitoes. We carried with us the only goods for barter that our group was willing to part with: our six plates, common earthenware plates that the Russians had at one point distributed as part of our barracks equipment.
We walked in the dark, careful not to lose the path, and we periodically shouted. From the village no one answered. When we were a hundred meters away, Cesare stopped, took a deep breath, and cried, “Hey, you Russians. We’re friends. Italianski. Do you have a chicken to sell?” This time there was an answer: a flash in the darkness, a sharp crack, and the whine of a bullet, a few meters above our heads. I lay down on the ground, gently, so as not to break the plates, but Cesare was furious, and remained standing: “Damn you! We’re friends, I told you. Sons of a bitch, give us a chance. We want a chicken. We’re not thieves, we’re not Deutschi, we’re Italianski!”
There were no more gunshots, and already human outlines could be glimpsed on the edge of the height. We approached cautiously, Cesare in front, continuing his persuasive speech, and I behind, ready to throw myself to the ground again.
Finally we reached the village. There were no more than five or six houses around a tiny square, and there, waiting for us, was the entire population, some thirty people, the majority old peasant women, plus children and dogs, all obviously alarmed. A large bearded old man emerged from the small crowd, the one who had fired the shot; he was still pointing the gun at us.
Cesare now considered that he had performed his role, which was the strategic one, and called me to my duties. “It’s your turn now. What are you waiting for? Come on, explain to them that we’re Italians, that we don’t want to hurt anyone, and that we want to buy a chicken to roast.”
Those people looked at us with suspicious curiosity. They seemed to have decided that, although dressed like escaped prisoners, we weren’t dangerous. The old ladies had stopped chattering, and even the dogs were quiet. The old man with the gun asked us some questions that we didn’t understand; I know only a hundred words of Russian, and none of them suited the situation, with the exception of “Italianski.” So I repeated “Italianski” several times, until the old man began in turn to say “Italianski” for the benefit of the bystanders.
Meanwhile Cesare, more concrete, had taken the plates out of the bag, displayed five of them in full view, on the ground, as if at the market, and held the sixth in his hand, tapping the edge with his nail to let them hear that it had the right sound. The peasant women watched, amused and intrigued. “Tarelki,” said one. “Tarelki, da!” I answered, happy to have learned the name of the goods we were offering, at which one of them extended a hesitant hand toward the plate that Cesare was demonstrating.
“Hey, what are you thinking?” he said, pulling it back alertly. “We’re not giving them away.” And he turned to me angrily. So what was I waiting for, why wasn’t I asking for a chicken in exchange? What was the use of my studies?
I was embarrassed. Russian, they say, is an Indo-European language, and chickens must have been known to our common ancestors in an epoch long before their subdivision into the various modern ethnic families. His fretus, that is to say, on that fine logic, I tried to say “chicken” and “bird” in all the ways known to me, but obtained no evident results.
Cesare was also
perplexed. Cesare, in his heart of hearts, had never been fully convinced that the Germans spoke German, and the Russians Russian, except out of a peculiar spitefulness; he was further persuaded, deep down, that only out of a refinement of that spitefulness did they claim not to understand Italian. Spite, or extreme and outrageous ignorance: open barbarity. There were no other possibilities. So his bewilderment was rapidly turning into rage.
He muttered and cursed. Was it possible that it was so difficult to understand what a chicken is, and that we wished to exchange six plates for one? A chicken, the kind that go around pecking, scratching, and saying “cockaday.” Without much faith, grim and scowling, he performed a terrible imitation of the habits of chickens, squatting on the ground, scraping with one foot then the other, and pecking here and there with his hand in a wedge shape. Between curses, he also went “cockaday”; but, of course, that interpretation of the chicken’s sound is highly artificial; it exists exclusively in Italy and has not spread elsewhere.
So we got no results. They looked at us in astonishment, and certainly took us for madmen. Why, for what purpose, had we come from the ends of the Earth to do this mysterious clowning in their square? Now furious, Cesare even tried to produce an egg, and meanwhile insulted them in fantastic ways, making still more obscure the meaning of his performance. At this indecorous show, the chatter of the old ladies rose an octave and became the sound of an agitated wasps’ nest.
When I saw one of them approach the bearded fellow, and speak to him nervously, looking in our direction, I realized that the situation was in jeopardy. I made Cesare get up from his unnatural postures, calmed him, and with him went over to the man. I said, “Please, sir,” and led him near a window, from which the light of a lantern illuminated a rectangle of earth fairly well. Here, painfully conscious of many suspicious looks, I drew a chicken in the dirt, complete with all its attributes, including—out of an excessive zeal for specifics—an egg behind. Then I got up and said, “You plates. We eat.”