by Primo Levi
“Nothing wrong with that,” said Gedale. “You’ll have had the practice before the theory. After all, we learn to walk and talk by doing it, don’t we? Peace will come and you’ll be a famous doctor, I feel certain of it.”
The inquisitive fondness that Gedale showed for all human beings seemed to have been multiplied tenfold in Edek’s case. Mendel asked him why and Gedale replied that he didn’t know. But then he thought it over and said, “Maybe it’s just the novelty of the thing. It’s been a long time since I met anyone with a pen in their breast pocket and a tie. There was no one like that in the forest.”
“But Edek doesn’t wear a tie!”
“He’s wearing a tie in spirit. It’s as if he were wearing one.”
They passed the long evenings of rain and waiting by talking and smoking; occasionally, Gedale would even play the violin. But there was no drinking in the Polish camp: Edek was a humane and reasonable commander, but there were certain areas in which he was quite rigid, and he had a number of minor obsessions. After one of his drunken men started a brawl several months earlier, Edek had forbidden alcohol, and he was intractable on this prohibition, with a puritanical rigor. He’d asked Gedale to impose the same prohibition on his men, lest they set a bad example, and Gedale had accepted, though with misgivings. He was also afraid of dogs. He wanted nothing to do with the two poor Gedalist dogs, the ones that had led the band through the Turov minefields and who knew every member of the band individually. He came up with the excuse that the dogs might reveal the camp’s position by barking at night, and, ignoring Gedale’s objections, he had them sold in a nearby village.
Edek was reserved and rarely asked questions, but he, too, was curious about the Gedalists, and especially about Gedale and his past.
“Eh, who knows what a great violinist I would have become!” Gedale said with a laugh. “My father insisted on it: he used to say the violin was useful, because, whatever happens, you can take it with you when you go; and talent is even more useful, plus it goes through customs duty free. You can travel the world, with the concerts and the money you earn; and maybe you’ll even become an American, like Jascha Heifetz. I liked playing, but not studying; instead of going to music lessons, I ran away and went ice skating in the winter, or swimming in the summer. My father was a small businessman, and he went bankrupt in 1923, so he started drinking and died when I was only twelve. We had no money, and my mother sent me to work; I was a clerk in a shoe store, but I kept on playing, just to console myself after a full day with customers’ feet in my hands. I also wrote poems: they were sad and not really all that good. I dedicated them to the customers who had dainty feet, but I’ve since lost them all.
“Playing music has always kept me company. I played instead of thinking; in fact, I have to tell you that thinking has never been my strong suit. I mean to say, thinking, seriously thinking, drawing the consequences from a given premise. Playing was my way of thinking, and, even now that I’m in a different profession, well, I get my best ideas while I’m playing the violin.”
“The idea of the pumpkins, for instance?” Edek asked.
“No, no,” Gedale replied, modestly. “I got the idea of the pumpkins while looking at the pumpkins.”
“And how did you get the idea of taking up this new profession?”
“It came to me from heaven: a nun brought it to me.” While he was talking, Gedale had picked up his violin; without really playing it, he was caressing the strings with his bow, producing distracted, subdued notes. “That’s right, a nun. When the Germans took over Bialystok, my mother managed to get into a convent. At first I was reluctant to be shut in, I was with a girl, and we slept in a different place every night. I have to tell you: at the time I was already twenty-four years old, but I lived as if I were asleep, day by day, like an animal. I had no idea, either of the danger or of my duty.
“Then the Germans locked the Jews in the ghetto. My mother got word to me that I would be accepted into the convent as well, and I went there. My mother was Russian; she was a strong woman, she knew how to impose her will, and I liked having her boss me around. No, I wasn’t disguised: the nuns had given me a place to stay in the cellar. They never tried to baptize me, they’d taken us in out of pity, without ulterior motives, and at risk to themselves. They brought me food, and I was happy living in the convent: I was no warrior, I was a twenty-four-year-old child, good at selling shoes and playing the violin. I would’ve waited out the end of the war in that cellar: the war was other people’s business, it was for the Germans, the Russians. It was like a hurricane, and when a hurricane hits sensible people seek shelter.
“The nun who brought me food was young and cheerful, the way nuns can be cheerful. One day, it was in March 1943, along with the bread she brought me a note: it came from the ghetto, it was written in Yiddish, and it was signed by a friend of mine. It said, ‘Come be with us: your place is here.’ It said that the Germans were beginning to deport the children and the sick people from the ghetto and were sending them to Treblinka, that soon they would liquidate them all, and that it was necessary to prepare to resist. As I was reading, the nun watched me with a very serious face, and I understood that she knew what was written in the note. Then she asked me if there would be a reply: I told her that I’d think it over, and the next day I asked her how she had got that note. She told me that there were many baptized Jews in the ghetto, and that the nuns had been given permission to take them medicine. I told her that I was ready to go and she told me to wait until night. She came to me before sunrise and told me to follow her; she led me to a small storeroom, she had a lantern in her hand, and she gave it to me to hold, then she said, ‘Turn around, panie.’ I could hear the rustling of her habit, and profane thoughts came into my mind; but then she allowed me to turn around, and she handed me two pistols. She gave me the contacts that would allow me to get into the ghetto and she wished me good luck. In the ghetto there were only a few young men who were armed but they were determined: they’d learned about rifles from an encyclopedia, and they’d learned how to shoot on the spot. We fought together for eight days; there were two hundred of us, nearly all of them are dead now. With five others, I made my way to Kosava and we joined forces with the fighters in that ghetto.”
The knot of people around Edek and Gedale had been gradually growing. Not just Poles, but also a great many of the Jews had listening to that story, which not all of them knew. When Gedale finished, Edek uncrossed his legs, sat up straight on his stool, ran his hands through his hair, smoothed his trouser legs over his knees, and asked haughtily, “What are your political beliefs?”
Gedale extracted the equivalent of a laugh from his violin:
“Striped, dappled, and spotted, just like Laban’s sheep!” He looked around the room and pointed out to the lieutenant, at the table, interspersed among the broad fair faces of the Polish soldiers, in the harsh light of the acetylene lamp, Arie’s Caucasian mustache, Dov, with his neatly brushed head of white hair, Jozek with his cunning eyes, Line, fragile and tense, Mendel with his lined and weary face, Pavel, half witch doctor and half gladiator, the savage faces of the men from Ruzany and Blizna, Isidor and the two Rokheles, dropping from exhaustion: “As you can see, we are quite an assortment of merchandise.”
Then he picked up his violin and went on:
“All kidding aside, lieutenant, I understand the reason for your question, but I’m in something of a bind about how to reply. We aren’t orthodox, we aren’t regulation, we aren’t bound by any oath. None of us have had any time to think it over and come up with clear ideas; each of us has a harsh past behind us, different for each one. Those of us who were born in Russia were suckled on communism with our mother’s milk: that’s right, their mothers and fathers turned them into Bolsheviks, because the October Revolution emancipated the Jews, it made them citizens with full rights. In their way, they have remained Communists, but none of us love Stalin anymore after the pact he signed with Hitler; and, for that matter, Stal
in never loved us very much.
“As for me and the others who were born in Poland, we have a variety of ideas, but we have one thing in common, we and the Russian Jews. All of us—some more, some less; some earlier, some later—have felt that we were strangers in our homeland. We have all wished for a different homeland, a place where we could live like all other peoples, without feeling we were intruders and without being pointed out as foreigners, but none of us have ever thought of fencing in a field and saying ‘This land is mine.’ We’re not interested in becoming landowners: what we want to do is make the sterile land of Palestine become fertile again, plant orange groves and olive trees in the desert and make it fruitful. We don’t want Stalin’s kolkhozes. We want communities in which all are free and equal, without constraint and without violence: where you can work by day and play the violin at night; where there is no money, but everyone works according to his ability and receives according to his needs. It seems like a dream, but it’s not; this world has already been created by our brothers, more farsighted and courageous than us, who immigrated there long before Europe became one huge concentration camp.
“In that sense you could call us socialists, but we did not become partisans because of our political ideas. We are fighting to save ourselves from the Germans, for revenge, in order to blaze our way; but most of all—forgive me for using such a big important word—for dignity. Finally, I have to tell you this: many of us had never tasted freedom, and we’ve learned to appreciate it here, in the forests, in the marshes, and amid much danger, along with adventure and brotherhood.”
“And you are one of them, aren’t you?”
“I am one of them, and I regret nothing, not even the friends whom I watched die. If I hadn’t found this profession, perhaps I would’ve remained a child: now I would be a twenty-seven-year-old child, and at the end of the war, if I survived, I would’ve gone back to writing poems and selling shoes.”
“Or you would have become a famous violinist.”
“That’s unlikely,” said Gedale. “A child doesn’t become a violinist: or, if he does, he remains nothing but a child violinist.”
Edek, who was twenty-three years old, looked seriously at Gedale who was twenty-seven: “Are you sure you haven’t remained something of a child?”
Gedale laid down his violin: “Not always; only when I want to be. Not here.”
“Who do you take your orders from?” Edek asked again.
“We’re an independent group, but we follow the instructions of the Jewish Combat Organization, where and when we’re able to establish contact, and their instructions are these: destroy German lines of communication; kill the Nazis who are responsible for massacres; move westward; and avoid contact with the Russians, because until now they’ve helped us, but it’s not clear what they’re going to want to do with us in the future.”
Edek said: “That’s fine with us.”
The war seemed far away. For many weeks it had rained without stopping, and the Polish camp was besieged by mud; apparently, operations had been suspended at the front as well. The rumble of artillery could no longer be heard, and the buzzing of aircraft had also become less frequent: strange airplanes, unreal, possibly friendly or perhaps enemy, inaccessible in their secret trails above the clouds. There had been no more parachute drops, and provisions were becoming scarce.
In early November it stopped raining, and soon after that Edek received a radio message. It was an urgent request for help from headquarters: in the Holy Cross Mountains, eighty kilometers northeast of there, an Armia Krajowa company had been surrounded by the Wehrmacht, and was in desperate straits. They needed to set out immediately to relieve them. Edek ordered seventy of his men to prepare for departure; and just as Gedale, a long year ago, had invited Dov to go out on a deadly hunting party, so now Edek invited Gedale and his men to take part in the expedition. Gedale accepted immediately, but without eagerness. This was the first time that he and his men had been asked to fight the Germans in a pitched battle, not against an isolated garrison, as in April at Lyuban, but against German infantry and artillery, therefore experienced and well organized, and yet even at Lyuban dozens of Jews had been killed. On the other hand, this time they weren’t alone: Edek’s Poles were resolute, experienced, well armed, and driven by a hatred of the Germans that was greater even than that of the Jews.
Gedale selected twenty of his men, and the composite platoon set out. The fields were drenched with rain, Edek was in a hurry, and he chose the most direct route, in violation of all partisan rules: they marched along the railroad, three abreast, on the wooden ties, from sunset to dawn and even after dawn. There were no protective patrols along the column’s flanks, no rearguard; the vanguard consisted of only six men, and Mendel was among them, as was Edek himself. Mendel was astonished at the recklessness of the operation, but Edek reassured him, he knew that countryside: the peasants would never report them, they supported the partisans, and those who did not feared their reprisals.
On November 16, they came within sight of Kielce: at Kielce there was a German barracks full of Ukrainian auxiliaries, and Edek was forced to go around the city, wasting precious time. Just beyond Kielce they encountered the first rolling terrain: dark wooded hillsides, swathed in strands of fog that drifted slowly in the wind, fraying across the tops of the fir trees. According to the information that Edek had received, the battlefield should be nearby, in the low ground between Górno and Bieliny, but there was no sign of battle; Edek ordered the men to rest for a few hours, until the first light of day.
By first light the fog had thickened. They could hear the occasional isolated gunshot, brief bursts of machine-gun fire, then silence, and in the silence a voice from a loudspeaker. It was faint, and came from a distance, probably from the far side of the encirclement. It was hard to understand; the words came through only in bits and pieces, subject to the shifting wind. The words were in Polish, the Germans urging the Poles to surrender. And the shooting resumed, faint and scattered; Edek gave the order to advance.
Halfway up the hillside, they took positions behind bushes and trees and opened fire in the direction they assumed the Germans were. It was a battle fought blindfolded; the fog was so dense that, strictly speaking, there was no need to shoot from shelter, but precisely because of this veil that surrounded them, and which limited visibility to no more than twenty meters or so, the sense of danger was even sharper: the attack could come from anywhere. The German reaction was angry but short and poorly coordinated: a heavy machine gun opened fire, followed by a second one, both to the left of Edek’s deployment. Mendel saw bits of bark flying off the trees ahead of him, sought shelter, and fired his submachine gun in the direction from which the bursts of gunfire seemed to be coming. Edek ordered a second salvo, longer this time: perhaps he was trying to give the Germans the impression that the detachment that had just arrived was stronger than it was, but they were just wasted bullets. A few minutes later, they heard the explosions of heavy artillery being fired, these, too, distant and off to their left, and a few seconds later the bursts of shells landing: they were falling randomly, ahead of them and behind; the shells behind them were closer, and one fell not far from Mendel, but it lodged in the soft earth without exploding; another one plummeted to his right, and Mendel saw the flash through the curtain of fog. He ran over and found Marian, Edek’s right-hand man, on the site: the mortar shell had demolished a sapling, and two Poles lay dead in the churned-up soil. “They’re not firing from an elevation,” said Marian. “They’re on the road to Górno. There can’t be that many of them.”
The bombardment ended suddenly, there was no more shooting, and around ten o’clock they heard the muffled roar of engines.
“They’re leaving!” said Marian.
“Maybe they think we’re stronger than we are,” Mendel replied.
“I doubt it. But they don’t like fog any more than we do.”
The rumble of German vehicles grew fainter, and died away. Edek gave
the order to advance in silence. From tree trunk to tree trunk, the men began climbing, without encountering resistance or any other sign of life. As they got a little higher up, the trees began to thin out, and then vanished entirely: the fog, too, had lifted, and the battlefield came into view. The hilltop was a barren heath, crisscrossed by faint trails and a single dirt road that led to a massive construction, possibly an old fortress. The ground was covered with dead bodies, some already cold and stiff, many of them mutilated or lacerated by horrible wounds. Not all of them were Poles from the Armia Krajowa: one compact group, which must have fought to the last man, was made up of Russian partisans; other bodies, on the edges of the field, were dead Wehrmacht soldiers.
“They’re all dead. I don’t understand who they were calling on to surrender,” said Gedale. Without realizing it, he was speaking in a hushed voice, as if in church.
“I don’t know,” Edek replied. “Maybe the shots we heard when we got here were from the last survivors.”
Mendel said, “Earlier the fog was very thick, and they were calling on dead men to surrender.”
“Maybe,” said Marian, “the speech on the loudspeaker was recorded on a disc: the Germans have done it before.”
They surveyed the battlefield, examining the bodies one by one: someone might still be alive. But no one was; some bodies bore in the back of the head or on the temple the marks of a final bullet. Inside the fortress, too, there was nothing but dead bodies, Russians and Poles, many of them barricaded in the guard tower, which had been demolished by an artillery shell. They noticed that some of the corpses were extremely thin. Why?
“Then the rumor we’ve heard was true,” said Marian.
“What rumor?” asked Mendel.