by Primo Levi
On February 25, Pavel came home with five pairs of silk stockings, and an excited uproar ensued: the women all hastened to try them on, but they only really came close to fitting Sissl and Rokhele the Black; they were too big for the other Rokhele, Line, and Bella. Pavel silenced the din:
“Don’t worry, it doesn’t matter, tomorrow I’ll take them back and exchange them for new ones. I’ve got something else to tell you—I’ve found a truck!”
“You mean you bought one?” asked Isidor.
No, he hadn’t bought one. It turned out that behind the train station the Russians had established a scrap yard for demobilized equipment, and you could find anything you wanted there. Pavel knew nothing about these things, someone would have to go with him the next day to the dump. Who knew anything about trucks? Who knew how to drive one? The band had traveled more than a thousand kilometers on foot: wasn’t it time to ride in a truck?
“Still, we’ll have to pay for it,” said Mottel.
“I don’t think so,” said Pavel. “There’s no fence around the yard, there’s nothing but a ditch, and only one guard. The important thing is to move quickly: there’s already a huge crowd of people coming and going, this morning in fact I saw two young guys taking away a motorcycle. Who’ll come with me tomorrow morning?”
Everybody wanted to go with him, if for no other reason than to have some fun. Line and Arie pointed out that they had driven tractors; Pyotr and Mendel had military driver’s licenses, and, besides, back home Mendel had had occasion to fix both tractors and trucks. In an unaccustomed abuse of authority, Gedale said that he would go because he was the head of the band, but the most insistent of all was Isidor, who had no claim whatsoever. He wanted to go with Pavel at all costs: he had a disinterested and childish passion for machinery, machinery of any kind, and he said that he would learn how to drive the truck in the blink of an eye.
Mendel went, and he saw that Pavel hadn’t been exaggerating: in the junkyard there was really everything, and not merely junk. The Russians, supplied by the Allies with military matériel of all kinds, were not being too particular: the minute a piece of equipment or a vehicle caused trouble of any kind, they discarded it and took a new one. More damaged equipment came in every day from the battle zone, by truck or by train; no one examined it or checked it, it was dumped in the junkyard, and there it lay to rust. The doleful metal cemetery was teeming with the curious, experts, and swarms of kids playing hide-and-seek.
There were plenty of trucks: of every make and in all states of repair. Mendel’s eye fell on a row of Italian trucks; they were Lancia 3 Ro three-ton trucks, and they looked brand-new: perhaps they came from some German storage area. While Pavel did his best to distract the guard by offering him tobacco and chewing gum, Mendel got a closer look at the vehicles. They actually still had keys on the dashboards and seemed ready to drive away; Mendel tried turning on the ignition, but nothing happened. The explanation was soon found: the trucks had no batteries, and never had had any; the contacts of the electrical system were still covered with grease. When Pavel got back, Mendel told him:
“Go back to your man and keep him occupied. I’m going to go see if I can find a charged battery somewhere.”
“But what should I say to him?”
“That’s your problem. Tell him about when you were an actor.”
While Pavel was dredging his memory and his imagination in an attempt to entertain the sentry without arousing his suspicions, Mendel began systematically scouting the other vehicles. He soon found what he was looking for, a Russian truck about the same size as the Lancias, in fairly good condition: it must have arrived recently. He opened the hood and touched both poles of the battery with his knife blade. There was a snapping sound and a blue flash—the battery was charged. He went back with Pavel to the schoolhouse, and waited as the hours slowly passed; it felt as if night would never come.
When darkness fell, they took their weapons and went back to the scrap yard. There was no sign of the sentry; either he was sleeping somewhere nearby or else he had gone thoughtlessly back to his barracks. Among the dark silhouettes of the vehicles and junked cars and trucks, however, a furtive population now scurried: like termites, they were dismantling and demolishing anything that might prove useful or marketable: car seats, cables, tires, auxiliary engines. Some of them were siphoning fuel out of the tanks; Pavel borrowed a hose, did the same thing, and poured some diesel fuel into the gas tank of the first Lancia 3 Ro in the line. Then Mendel removed the good battery and, with Pavel’s help, dragged it to the truck. Mendel installed it, hooked up the cables, they climbed into the cab, and he turned the key. He felt in the darkness for the headlight switch, and the headlights came on: “. . . and there was light,” he thought to himself. He switched them off and started the engine: it turned over immediately, smooth and rounded; it responded obediently to the gas pedal. Perfect.
“We’re all set!” said Pavel in an undertone.
“That remains to be seen,” Mendel replied. “I’ve repaired plenty of beasts this size, but I’ve never driven one.”
“Didn’t you say that you had a driver’s license?”
“Well, yes, I have a driver’s license,” said Mendel between clenched teeth. “In those days, they were handing them out to anyone, the Germans were in Borodino and Kaluga, six half-hour lessons and off you go. But then I only drove tractors and cars; it’s quite another matter to drive at night. But now shut up, please.”
“Just one more thing,” said Pavel. “Don’t go out the front gate. There’s a guard hut there, someone might be inside. And now I’ll shut up.”
With furrowed brow, intent as a surgeon, Mendel pressed down the clutch pedal, put the shift into gear, and lifted his foot: the truck started off with a savage lurch. He switched the headlights back on, and with the engine racing he headed very slowly toward the far end of the yard, along a clear thoroughfare.
“Don’t think I’m going to shift gears. I’ll try that tomorrow: for today this is how we’re going to travel.”
The truck moved along toward the ditch, tipped forward, and then reared up majestically skyward. “We’re out,” said Pavel, inhaling the rainy air: he realized that he hadn’t taken a breath for perhaps a minute. A voice shouted behind them: “Stój! Halt!” Pavel leaned out the side window and fired a burst of bullets into the air, more in celebration than to intimidate. When they reached the road, Mendel screwed up his courage and shifted into the second low gear: the engine’s roar dropped slightly in pitch, and the truck’s speed increased marginally. No one was following them, and they reached the schoolhouse in a few minutes.
Gedale, armed like them, was waiting in the street. He threw his arms around Mendel, laughing and reciting the blessing of the miracles. Mendel, his forehead beaded with sweat in spite of the cold, replied, “Better to say the other blessing, the one about narrowly averted dangers. There’s no time to waste, let’s leave immediately.”
Rudely awakened, the Gedalists carried baggage and weapons downstairs and jammed into the back of the troop truck. Mendel restarted the engine. “To Zawiercie!” Gedale, who had taken a seat next to him in the cab, shouted out. Following the directional signs that the Russians had posted at the intersections, Mendel drove out of the city and found himself on a secondary road full of potholes and puddles. Step by step, and with plenty of grinding, he learned to shift into the higher gears, and soon they were traveling at a reasonable speed. The jolting became worse as well, but no one was complaining. He climbed a hill and started down the other side: the brakes responded and he felt reassured, but the tension of driving was exhausting him.
“I can’t keep it up much longer. Who’ll spell me?”
“We’ll see about that later,” Gedale shouted over the din of the engine and the clattering metal. “Right now just take care of getting out of town.”
Halfway down the hill they encountered a roadblock: a rough log, set atop two barrels on either side of the road.
“What should I do?”
“Don’t stop! Accelerate!”
The log flew aside like a piece of straw and they heard bursts of submachine-gun fire; from the back of the truck someone fired back with single shots. The truck continued through the night, and Gedale shouted in laughter:
“If not thus, how? And if not now, when?”
11
February–July 1945
It was comfortable in the cab, but the men and women crammed into the back of the truck were breathing, along with their first air of freedom, the chilly night wind: they were numbed by the cold and their uncomfortable positions and aching from the bumps. Some of them complained, but Gedale ignored them.
“How much fuel do we have?” he asked Mendel.
“It’s hard to say. Maybe enough for another thirty or forty kilometers, at most.”
They halted at dawn, on a secondary road. On either side were piles of junk, unbelievable both in quantity and in variety: the only wealth that war produces. There were trucks, armored cars, half-tracks, and the boats and pontoons used to cross rivers—all wrecked and overturned. There was a German cook wagon, intact: it would have been invaluable, but there was really no more room on the truck. A pity.
“We need to find diesel fuel,” said Gedale, “otherwise this outing will soon come to an end. Go on, spread out, unscrew the fuel caps and check the tanks.” The luckiest one was Isidor, who found an upright armored car, without wheels but with an almost full tank.
“Do you think it’s the right grade?” asked Mottel.
“There’s only one way to find out,” said Mendel. “But during wartime engines get used to anything.”
“Just like us,” sighed Rokhele the Black, stretching like a cat.
Gedale was impatient to get the truck off the road: in broad daylight it was far too visible, and he didn’t feel sure that the theft of the truck and the violation of the checkpoint hadn’t been reported. He walked back and forth nervously. “Hurry up and siphon that gas!” But it was no simple matter: no one had a rubber hose, and there was no way to procure one. Someone suggested turning the armored vehicle over, but Isidor said, “I’ll take care of it.” Before anyone could say a thing, he picked up a jerrican, pulled out the Luger that he’d been issued, and fired at the base of the gas tank. A jet of yellowish kerosene sprayed out of the bullet hole.
“What if it had exploded?” asked Pavel in retrospective fear.
“It didn’t explode,” said Isidor.
The sky was growing lighter, and a distant roar of artillery could be heard coming from the south: the way west was clear, the Germans had retreated well beyond Legnica (though Wrocław, under siege, was still holding out); on the other hand, along the entire Czechoslovakian border the fighting continued. They kept going for several days, traveling by night and hiding the truck during the daylight hours. Mendel got tired of driving all night, and asked for a replacement, but neither Pyotr nor Arie nor Line showed much enthusiasm for taking a turn. Isidor, on the other hand, could have wished for nothing better; he was more deeply in love with the truck than he was with Rokhele, he spent all his free hours cleaning the dust and mud off it, and he never missed an opportunity to stick his nose under the hood. He took a couple of practice lessons from Mendel and learned incredibly quickly, after which there was no tearing him away from the steering wheel. He was an excellent driver, and everyone was satisfied, especially Mendel.
No one was familiar with the area; at every crossroads Isidor slowed down and asked Gedale: “Which way do we go?” Gedale would check with Schmulek, then make a decision on instinct. It was practically pure chance that got them to Rawicz, at the border between Greater Poland and Silesia: after hiding the truck in the woods, they walked in small groups into the town, the first place they’d seen along their journey that hadn’t been ravaged by war. Life hadn’t yet returned to normal, but a few shops were open, there were newspapers for sale at the train station newsstand, colorful posters announced a romantic film being shown at the one movie theater. On the main street, a woman in a fur coat and high heels walked a small dog that looked more like a cat on a leash. The Gedalists felt dirty, uncivilized, and shy, but there were plenty of refugees in town, and nobody paid any attention to them. Gedale invited Bella, the White, and Isidor into a café for a cup of coffee: they accepted, but they seemed to be sitting on pins and needles. Schmulek refused to go into town; he said he’d be glad to stay in the truck with three other men, to guard the vehicle and the weapons.
They bought various everyday wonders for which they’d felt the desire or need for some time now: stockings, toothbrushes, underwear, pots and pans. Pavel, who could also read Polish with some effort, found an old illustrated edition of Les Misérables on a used bookstall. He was obliged to hand it over to Bella when she asked to borrow it, but then Pyotr, with some excuse, persuaded Bella to give it to him. Nor did Pyotr keep possession of the book for long. Not only did he not understand a word of Polish; he couldn’t even read the letters. In the days that followed, the book was passed from hand to hand and finally came to be considered community property.
Everyone was eager to go to the movies. Gedale was perhaps more eager than anyone else, but he had read in a Polish newspaper that the Americans had crossed the Rhine at Remagen and had taken Cologne. “We’ll go meet them: we’ll be safer with them. It’s time to get going again.” They reluctantly tore themselves away from the delights of city life; in Rawicz refugees, no matter what part of the world they came from, had an easy life. The streets were teeming with British, American, Australian, and New Zealand soldiers, all of them former prisoners of war; and then there were Frenchmen, Yugoslavians, and Italians, who had worked (voluntarily or otherwise) in the German factories. The populace was courteous and hospitable to them all, even to Gedale’s Jews, who blended into the variegated background.
They left town late that night, heading for Glogau; they stopped to rest for a few hours in a narrow lane running between the fields, covered with blankets in the back of the truck, which felt like home by now. A little before dawn they started off again: just as they rounded a curve the truck’s headlights framed another vehicle stopped before them, pointed in their direction, and Isidor was forced to jam on the brakes. “Turn hard, head into the fields!” Gedale shouted at him, but it was too late. A squadron of armed Russian soldiers had surrounded the truck; they were all forced to get out. Those Russians were in a terrible mood, because their troop truck was stuck in the mud: the tires were worn bald and no longer got any grip on the snow. Their corporal was furious. He was heaping contemptuous insults on the driver, and, once he had the Gedalists in his hands, he unleashed all his anger upon them. He asked: “Where are you going?”
“To Glogau,” Gedale replied.
“Glogau my foot. Come on, help us out here. Didn’t you hear me? Get moving, you parasites, good for nothings, goddam foreigners!”
Speaking in Yiddish, Gedale said quickly:
“Hide the weapons under the blankets. Obey without arguing.” Then, speaking to Pavel and Mendel: “The two of you do the talking, in Russian; all you Poles, shut up.”
In the crisscrossing beams of the headlights of the two vehicles, a terrible confusion arose. Fifty men, which was the sum of the Russians plus the Gedalists, could not physically fit around the bogged-down truck, but the corporal, with a stream of insults and oaths, hurled back into the bedlam all those who tried to withdraw. They were useless efforts: the boots of the rescuers slipped in the mud, and in any case the truck was so heavy that human arms would certainly not be able to get it going again.
Mendel said to Gedale:
“Shall we offer to tow him out? Our tires are brand-new.”
“Give it a try. Maybe it will improve his mood and he’ll let us go.”
“Comrade corporal,” said Mendel, “if you have some stout rope or a chain we can try to tow you out with our truck.”
The Russian looked at him as if he were a talking horse. Mendel
was forced to repeat his offer, after which the corporal immediately resumed insulting his men because they hadn’t come up with the idea first. There was rope, in fact there was a steel cable, stout but perhaps a little too short. It worked perfectly; Gedale’s truck, in the early dawn light, started backing slowly, hauling the Russian vehicle, nose to nose: the road was too narrow to allow them to turn the Lancia 3 Ro around, and driving out into the fields almost certainly meant getting stuck in the mud. Isidor, who was forced to drive with half his body extending out the window, did a splendid job, but the corporal, instead of expressing his gratitude, just went on cursing and shouting:
“Go faster, go faster!”
Finally, after about a kilometer, the country lane spilled them out onto a larger county road. They stopped, and Mendel got out to unhook the tow cable. From the cab of the truck, Gedale said: