by Primo Levi
They followed Styopka to the sick man’s pallet, to placate him. The man was a Tartar who had deserted from the German police, and he was still wearing the uniform. He didn’t look so sick to Mendel: he did have a slightly taut belly, but he showed no pain when it was palpated, and his fever couldn’t have been very high. He looked well fed; Mendel tried to reassure Styopka, and recommended having him fast for a day, and giving him no medicine.
“No danger of that,” said Styopka. “There isn’t any. We had some aspirin, but we used it up.”
As they left the tent, they ran into Venyamin. He was unrecognizable: he was no longer either the glib host, drunk on vodka and victory, or the overgrown child disappointed over the broken radio. He was a specimen of humanity to be feared, a youthful warrior with prompt, precise movements, an intelligent face, and an intense but inscrutable look in his eye. A sharp one, Mendel thought. Be on your guard.
“Come with me,” said Venyamin, with calm authority. He took them over to a corner of the tent and asked them who they were, where they came from, and where they were going; he spoke with the soft, confident voice of someone who expects to be obeyed.
“I’m an artilleryman, and he’s a paratrooper. We’ve been separated from our units, we happened to run into each other in the woods of Bryansk. We heard about your band, we came looking for you, and we caught up with you.”
“Who told you about us?”
“The Uzbek who sold you the radio.”
“Why did you follow us?”
Mendel hesitated for a moment:
“Because we want to join your band.”
“Are you armed?”
“Yes: a submachine gun, a German pistol, and some ammunition.”
Without any change in his tone of voice, Venyamin spoke to Leonid: “And you, why don’t you ever say anything?”
Leonid replied with some embarrassment that he tended to let Mendel speak because he was older, and because the weapons belonged to him.
“The weapons don’t belong to him,” said Venyamin. “The weapons belong to everyone: the weapons belong to those who know how to use them.” He fell silent for a moment, as if he were waiting for a reaction; but Leonid and Mendel remained silent, too. Then he went on:
“Why do you want to join the band? Answer me separately. You?”
Leonid, caught off guard, was tongue-tied. He felt as if he were suddenly back in school being quizzed; worse still, he was reminded of the humiliating interrogation he’d been subjected to when he was arrested and locked up in the Lubyanka. He mumbled something about a soldier’s duties and his wish to rehabilitate himself after being separated from his unit.
“You were held prisoner by the Germans,” said Venyamin.
“How do you know that?” Mendel broke in, surprised.
“I’ll ask the questions. But you can see it in his face. And you, gunner: why do you want to join us?”
Mendel felt himself being weighed as if on a scale, and was irritated at being weighed. He replied, “Because I’ve been wandering for a year. Because I’m sick and tired of living like a wolf. Because I have my own scores to settle. Because I believe that the war we’re fighting is just.”
Venyamin’s voice sank even lower:
“You saw us yesterday on a strange day, both good and bad. A good day, because the news that you heard is true, the radio repeated it twice, Mussolini has fallen. But that doesn’t mean the war will soon be over; last night that’s what we were shouting into one another’s ears, each of us talking the others into it, because hope is as contagious as cholera. Last night, we were on vacation, but we know the Germans all too well: last night I thought it over, and I believe that the war will go on for a long time. Also, yesterday was a bad day, because our radio stopped working. That’s much more serious than you can imagine: a partisan band without a radio is an orphaned band, deaf and mute. Without the radio, we don’t know where the front is, and in Moscow they don’t know where we are, and we can’t call the aircraft to do parachute drops: everything comes from the radio, medicine, wheat, weapons, vodka. The radio news even brings us our courage. And since you can’t live without wheat, when we run out of it we have to take it from the peasants, and so a band without a radio becomes a band of bandits. It’s just as well that you know all these things, and that you think them over carefully before making up your minds. It’s also just as well that you know something else, too. That eight months ago there were a hundred of us, and now we’re less than forty. That in our war there’s never one day like another: we’re sort of rich and sort of poor, one day we’re well fed and the next day we’re starving. And that this isn’t a war for those with weak nerves: we come from a long way away and we’re going a long way, too, and the weak ones are dead or else they’ve left. Think it over: and before giving you an answer I’ll think it over, too.”
A metallic sound rang out. The midday soup was ready, and Styopka had sounded the assembly bell by pounding a rock against a length of railroad track hanging from a branch. Everyone lined up in front of the stockpot, including Venya, Mendel, and Leonid, and Styopka ladled out the soup. Almost everyone had finished eating, and many were already stretched out in the sun smoking when they heard a voice shouting from the riverbank, “Logs are coming!” And in fact here they came, sailing slowly down the middle of the stream: large branchless tree trunks, scattered, a few at a time. Venyamin approached the water and turned suddenly attentive. He asked Styopka, “Where do they come from?”
“They usually come from the wharf in Smolensk, three hundred kilometers upstream; that’s the way it’s always been done, it costs less than the railroad. They go down into Ukraine, to reinforce the mine shafts.”
“That’s the way it’s always been done, but now the mines are working for the Germans,” said Venyamin, stroking his chin. Just then, at the bend in the river, something bigger came into view: it was a convoy of rafts roped together in single file, perhaps a dozen, coming into sight one after the other from behind a spit of wooded land. “We’ve got to get them,” said Venyamin.
“That’s a kind of work I’ve never done myself, but I’ve seen it done,” said Styopka. “Downstream, a kilometer or so, there’s a dead branch of the river; if we move fast, we can get there in time. But we’re going to need some poles.”
In an instant Venya was master of the situation. He left ten men to guard the camp, he sent ten more with axes to cut down some saplings and strip the branches off, and then he headed fast downstream along the bank with the rest of the men, Leonid and Mendel among them. They reached the dead branch of the river before the lumber, and shortly after them the ten men with the poles arrived, but the convoy was already
in sight. “Hurry, who’s the best swimmer here? You, Volodya!” But
Volodya, whether it was a genuine hindrance or a lack of determination, was unable to get his boots off in time: he was hunched over in the dirt awkwardly twisted, red-faced with effort, and Venya lost patience. “Good-for-nothing, lazy bum! Come on, give me that pole.” In no time he was barefoot and naked. Half wading, half swimming with one hand, he made it across the dead water, but by the time he got to the grassy point of land that separated the two branches of the river, the convoy of lumber rafts was already floating past. He could be heard cursing and then he was seen to plunge back into the current; other men followed him with poles. He swam swiftly toward the rafts, missed the first few, managed to clamber onto the last one, and immediately busied himself with the pole to drive the raft onto the grassy point, where it ran aground in the muck, but it was immediately clear that it wouldn’t remain there long. The other lumber rafts, drifting languidly with the current, were dragging on the anchoring raft, and a single man couldn’t hold firm. Out of breath, Venya shouted to the other men to climb onto the rafts, one man to each raft; by poling hard against the muddy riverbed, they managed to push the convoy away from the bank, back upstream, and around the point, finally, triumphantly, pushing the lumber into the still water
of the dead branch of the river. “That’s good,” said Venyamin as he got dressed again. “We’ll see, maybe we’ll haul it on shore and set fire to it; the important thing is to keep it from going to the mines. Let’s head back to camp.”
On the short return march, Mendel walked beside him and congratulated him. “I know very well that it doesn’t amount to much harm to the Germans,” Venyamin replied. “But for people like this there’s nothing worse than doing nothing. And nothing better than a good example. Get dried off, you two, and then come see me in my tent.”
In the tent, Venyamin got right to the point: “I’ve thought it over, and it’s no simple matter. You see, in our way, we’re specialists: we know this area, we’re trained for it. To have you with us would be a big responsibility. I’ll admit that you’re good fighters; but you see, more than fighters we’re rearguard operatives, we’re saboteurs, we create diversions. Each of us has his assigned tasks, and they’re not the kind of thing you learn in a few days. And then—”
“That’s not what you were saying this morning,” Mendel said. Venya lowered his eyes.
“No, that’s not what I was saying this morning. Listen, I don’t have anything against you people; I’ve had Jewish friends since I was a child, I had other Jews as comrades in Voronezh, at the training center, and I know that you’re no different from anyone else, no better and no worse, in fact, if anything, a little more—”
“That’s enough for me,” said Leonid. “If you don’t want us, we’re glad to go, and that might be better for everyone. We’re not going to get down on our knees and—”
Mendel interrupted him:
“No, I want to hear you say what it is that changed between this morning and now.”
“Nothing. Nothing happened, nothing concrete. It’s just that I heard people talk, and that . . .”
“We’re soldiers, you and I. We wear the same uniform, and I want you to tell me who talked and what was said.”
“I won’t tell you who had something to say. And it wasn’t just one person. If it were up to me, I’d gladly take you both in, but I can’t keep my men from talking; and I’m not sure you wouldn’t have to watch your backs. There are people with all sorts of ideas here, and they’re quick to act.”
Mendel insisted. He wanted to know, word for word, exactly what Venyamin had heard, and Venyamin repeated it, with the expression of someone spitting out a mouthful of food gone bad. “They say they don’t like Jews much, and they like them less when they’re armed.”
Leonid broke in: “We can leave, and you can tell those men of yours that in Warsaw, in April, armed Jews held out longer against the Germans than the Red Army in 1941. And they weren’t well armed, either, and they were starving, and they were fighting in the midst of their own dead, and they had no allies.”
“How do you know these things?” asked Venyamin.
“Warsaw isn’t all that far away, and news travels even without a radio.”
Venyamin stepped out of the tent, spoke in an undertone with Styopka and Volodya, then came back in and said:
“I ought to take away your weapons, but I’m not going to. You’ve seen who and where we are, I shouldn’t let you leave, but I’m going to let you leave: one day with us wasn’t much time, but maybe what you’ve seen will prove useful. Leave, keep your eyes peeled, and go to Novoselky.”
“Why Novoselky? Where’s Novoselky?”
“In the oxbow bend of the Ptsich River, a hundred and twenty kilometers west of here, in the middle of the Pripet marshes. Apparently, there’s a village of armed Jews there, men and women. The forest rangers told us about them; they get around all over the countryside, they know everything, they’re our telegraph and our newspaper. Maybe your weapons will be useful there. But you can’t stay with us.”
Mendel and Leonid took their leave, crossed the Dnieper on a raft made of several logs bound together, and continued on their way.
They walked for ten days. The weather had turned bad; it rained frequently, sometimes a sudden downpour, other times a fine penetrating drizzle that was almost a fog. The trails were muddy, and the woods gave off a pungent scent of mushrooms that was an early presage of autumn. Their provisions started to run short; they often had to stop at night at one of the scattered farms and dig up potatoes and beets. In the forest there were plenty of blueberries and strawberries, but after an hour or two of picking berries they were hungrier than before—hungrier and, in Leonid’s case, more irritated.
“This stuff is good for schoolkids on a camping trip. It tickles your belly instead of filling it.”
Mendel pondered the news he had heard at Venyamin’s camp. What weight should he assign to it? Given as it was, without comment, without a more comprehensive assessment, the information was as irritating as the blueberries, leaving the mind equally hungry. Mussolini in prison, the king back in power. Just what is a king? A sort of tsar, narrow-minded and corrupt, something out of bygone times, a fairy-tale character with gold frogging, a plume in his cap, and a rapier, arrogant and cowardly; instead, this king of Italy must be an ally, a friend, if he’d ordered the arrest of Mussolini. It was too bad that there was no more Kaiser in Germany, otherwise perhaps the war would really be over, as Venyamin had claimed in his drunken spree. The fact that fascism had fallen in Italy was undoubtedly good news, but what importance could it have? It was hard to get a clear idea: in the articles in Pravda, Fascist Italy had been described variously as a dangerous and deceitful enemy, and as a despicable jackal in the shadow of the German beast; certainly, the Italian soldiers on the Don hadn’t held out long, they were poorly equipped and poorly armed and they had no real interest in fighting, that much was clear to everyone. Perhaps they, too, had had their fill of Mussolini, and the king had complied with the wishes of his people, but in Germany there were no kings, there was only Hitler: better not to get your hopes up.
If a king was a fairy-tale character, a king of Italy was a fairy-tale character twice over, because Italy itself was a fairy-tale kingdom. It was impossible to come up with a clear picture of the place. How can you condense into a single image Mt. Vesuvius and the gondolas, Pompeii and the Fiat plant, La Scala and the caricatures of Mussolini that were published in Krokodíl, that street thug, with a hyena’s jutting jaw, a tasseled fez, the belly of a capitalist fat-cat, and a dagger in his hand? And yet it was that very same king who . . . well, impossible to figure out. Mendel would have given a fortune for a radio, but that was strictly a manner of speaking: they had nothing to barter, except for his machine gun and his pistol, and wisdom suggested he hold on to those.
He wondered if there were Jews in Italy. If there were, they must be strange Jews: how could you picture a Jew in a gondola or on the summit of Mt. Vesuvius? But there had to be, there were Jews even in India and China, and there was no reason to think they were unhappy there. It remained to be seen whether the Zionists of Kiev and Kharkov were right when they preached that Jews could be happy only in the land of Israel, and that they should all leave Italy, Russia, India, and China and go live there, growing oranges, learning Hebrew, and dancing the hora all together in a big circle.
Whether out of weariness, or perhaps the humidity, the scar under Mendel’s hair had begun to itch. Leonid’s boots had come unstitched, and his feet were wallowing in water and mud. Mendel could feel Leonid’s negative presence behind him, the weight of his silence: they hindered his progress more than the mud. It was no longer just the mud from rainfall, the fertile mud that comes from the sky, and which must be accepted in its season; as, little by little, they advanced westward, they increasingly often came upon a different kind of mud, a permanent mud, which reigned everywhere, and which came from the earth, not the sky. The forest had thinned out, and they encountered extensive clearings, though without any sign of human activity. The earth was no longer black or clayey but instead as ashen as a corpse; though damp, it was also meager, sandy, and seemed to ooze water from its very womb. Even so, it wasn’t sterile: it suppo
rted stands of cane, succulent plants that Mendel had never seen before, and vast hummocks of sticky-leaved bushes, stretched out on the ground as if bored with the sky. You’d sink into the soil, or really into the rotten leaves, up to your ankle. Leonid took off his boots, by now useless, and soon Mendel did the same; his boots were still holding up fine, but it seemed a pity to wear them out.
By the seventh day of walking, it had become a challenge to find a stretch of dry land where they could spend the night, even though the rain had stopped. By the eighth day, it was hard even to keep moving in the right direction: they had no compass, the sky cleared only occasionally, and it was increasingly common for the path to be interrupted by pools of water that were shallow but forced them to make aggravating detours anyway. The water was still and clean and smelled of peat, and floating on the surface were thick round leaves, fleshy flowers, and the occasional bird’s nest. They looked in vain for eggs; there were none, only shards of shell and sodden feathers. What they did find was frogs, and plenty of them: adult frogs the size of your hand, tadpoles, and sticky garlands of frog eggs. They easily captured several frogs, roasted them on spits, and ate them, Leonid devouring them with the feral greediness of a ravenous twenty-year-old, Mendel astonished to sense deep within himself a hint of the ancestral repulsion for forbidden flesh.
“Just like in Egypt in Moses’ day,” Mendel said, simply to start a conversation. “But what I’ve never understood is how they could be a plague: the Egyptians could have eaten them, just as we’re doing.”
“Frogs were a plague?” Leonid asked as he chewed.
“The second plague: Dam, Tzfardeia; tzfardeia are the frogs.”