Kaputt (32 page)

The colonel gave a sign to one of the officers who was clutching a bundle of newspapers under his arm and the examination began.

Five prisoners took a step forward. Each of them stretched out a hand, took a paper that the officer held out to him—they were old issues of
Izvestia
and
Pravda
found in the office of the
kolkhoz
—and began reading aloud. The colonel raised his left arm to look at his wristwatch. He kept his arm breast-high and his eyes fixed on the watch. It was raining and the newspapers were soaked; they drooped in the hands of the five prisoners whose faces were either red or extremely pale and sweating as they stumbled over the words, halted, stammered, blundered the accents and skipped lines. They could all read with difficulty, except one very young man who read with assurance, from time to time raising his eyes from the paper. The Sonderführer listened to the reading with an ironical smile in which I seemed to sense a vengefulness—as interpreter, he was the sole judge. He stared at the readers, shifting his eyes from one to the other with a deliberate and nasty slowness. "Stop!" said the colonel.

The five prisoners raised their eyes from the papers and waited. At a nod from the judge, the Feldwebel shouted, "Those who have failed will go and stand on the left; those who have been promoted, over there, to the right." The first four failures at a sign from the judge went dejectedly to cluster on the left, and a youthful ripple of laughter ran along the ranks of the prisoners, a gay, mischievous, peasant laughter. The Sonderführer also laughed.
"Oh, bednii
—Oh poor fellows!" the prisoners called to those who had failed. "You will be sent to work on the roads, Oh bednii, you'll carry stones on your backs," and they laughed. The one who had passed, all alone on the other side, laughed more than the others, chaffing his unlucky comrades. They all laughed except the prisoners who looked like workmen; they stared at the colonel's face and were silent.

Then came the turn of the next five. They also struggled to read well, without stumbling over the words, without placing the wrong accents, but only two could read fluently; the other three, red with shame or pale with anxiety, clutched the papers tightly in their hands, and from time to time licked their parched lips. "Stop!" said the colonel. The five prisoners raised their faces, wiping the sweat with the papers. "You three, over there, to the left; you two, to the right!" shouted the Feldwebel at a nod from the Sonderführer. The prisoners continued chaffing the ones who had failed saying, "
Oh, bednii Ivan!"
or
"Oh, bednii Pyoti!"
and patted their shoulders as if to say, "You will be hauling stones!" They all laughed.

Again, one of the five prisoners in the third batch read excellently, fluently, pronouncing each syllable, and from time to time he raised his eyes to look at the colonel. The newspaper he was reading was an old issue of
Pravda,
dated June 24, 1941, and the page read: "The Germans have invaded Russia! Comrade soldiers, the Soviet people will win the war and will crush the invaders!" The words rang out under the rain, and the colonel laughed, the Sonderführer, the Feldwebel, the officers laughed, everybody laughed; and the prisoners also laughed, looking with envy and admiration at their companion who could read like a schoolmaster. "Well done!" said the Sonderführer and his face shone. He seemed proud of the prisoner who could read so well: he was happy and proud as if the prisoner had been his pupil. "You, to the right, over there," said the Feldwebel in a good-natured voice, giving him a kindly push with his hand. The colonel glanced at the Feldwebel, started to say something, but checked himself, and I noticed that he was blushing.

The group assembled on the right laughed contentedly; those who had passed looked at their less fortunate companions with a bantering air; they pointed their fingers at their own breasts saying, "Clerks!" Making grimaces, they pointed at those who had failed and said, "Stones on the back!" Only the prisoners who looked like workmen and who, one by one, went to swell the ranks of those sent to the left, kept silent and gazed at the colonel who, chancing to meet their eyes, blushed and shouted with a gesture of impatience, "
Schnell!
—Quick!"

The examination lasted for about an hour. When the last batch of three prisoners completed the two minutes of reading, the colonel turned to the Feldwebel and said, "Count them!" The Feldwebel began counting from a distance, pointing at each man with his finger,
"Ein, zwei, drei
..." On the left were eighty-seven, on the right were thirty-one who had passed successfully. Then, at the colonel's bidding, the Sonderführer began to speak. He seemed like a schoolmaster dissatisfied with his pupils. He said that he was disappointed, that he was sorry to have flunked so many, that he would have preferred to pass them all. At any rate, he added, those who had not succeeded in getting through the examination would have no reason to complain, provided they worked and displayed a greater skill than they had displayed at school. While he spoke, the group of the successful prisoners gazed at their less fortunate comrades with a compassionate air, and the younger ones dug their elbows into each other's ribs and giggled. When the Sonderführer had finished speaking, the colonel turned to the Feldwebel and said: "
Alles in Ordnung. Weg!"
and he walked off toward his headquarters followed by the other officers who looked back occasionally and exchanged whispers.

"You'll stay here until tomorrow, and tomorrow you will start for the labor camp," said the Feldwebel to the group on the left. Then he turned toward the group on the right who had passed and harshly ordered them to fall in line. As soon as the prisoners formed a close line touching one another's elbows—they looked pleased, and laughed, glancing at their companions as if making fun of them—he counted them again quickly, said "Thirty-one," and made a sign with his hand to a squad of SS men waiting at the end of the courtyard. He ordered, "Right about, turn!" The prisoners turned right about, marched forward stamping their feet hard in the mud and, when they came face to face with the wall surrounding the yard, the Feldwebel commanded "Halt!" Then turning to the SS men who had lined up behind the prisoners and had already raised their tommy guns, he cleared his throat, spat on the ground and shouted, "Fire!"

When he heard the rattle of the guns, the colonel who was within a few steps of the office, stopped, turned abruptly; the other officers stopped and also turned. The colonel passed his hand over his face as if wiping away sweat and, followed by his officers, entered the building.

"Ach, so,"
said the Melitopol Sonderführer walking past me. "Russia must be cleared of all this learned rabble. The peasants and workers who can read and write too well are dangerous. They are all communists."

"Natürlich,"
I replied, "but in Germany everyone, whether they are peasants or workers, can read and write well."

"The German people are a people of high
Kultur."

"Naturally," I replied. "The German people have a high
Kultur."

"Nicht wahr!"
said the Sonderführer laughing, and walked toward headquarters.

I was left alone in the center of the yard facing the prisoners who could not read well, and my whole body was shaking.

Then, as their mysterious fear grew, as that mysterious white stain spread over their eyes, they began killing prisoners whose feet were blistered and who could no longer walk. They began setting fire to the villages that were unable to hand over a fixed number of loads of wheat and flour, a certain number of loads of corn and barley and of heads of horses and cattle to the requisitioning platoons.

When only a few Jews remained, they began hanging the peasants. They strung them by their necks or by their feet to the branches of trees in the little village squares, around the bare pedestals where the white statues of Lenin and Stalin had stood only a few days before. They hung them side by side with the rain-washed corpses of the Jews that had been dangling for days under the black sky, side by side with the dogs of the Jews that had been strung up on the same trees with their masters. "Ah, the Jewish dogs—
die jüdische Hunde!"
said the German soldiers as they passed along.

In the evening, when we halted in the villages for the night— we were by then in the heart of the ancient Cossack land of the Dnieper—and fires were lighted to dry the soaked clothes on our backs, the soldiers cursed softly between their teeth and greeted one another scornfully saying,
"Ein Liter!
—One liter!" They did not say
"Heil
Hitler!" They said
"Ein Liter!"
and they laughed as they stretched toward the fire their swollen feet, covered with the little white blisters.

Those were the first Cossack villages we saw on our slow, laborious and endless march east. Old bearded Cossacks sat in the doors of their houses, watched the columns of German transports go by and occasionally glanced upward at the sky gently arching above the huge plain. That wonderful Ukrainian sky, light and delicate, supported by lofty Doric columns of spotless white clouds rising on the skyline from the far end of the crimson autumn steppes.

"Berlin raucht Juno,"
said the soldiers, and laughingly threw the last empty packages of Juno cigarettes at the old Cossacks sitting in the doorways of their houses. Tobacco was becoming scarce and the soldiers cursed.
"Berlin raucht Juno!
—Berlin smokes Junos!" they scornfully shouted. I thought of buses and trams in Berlin bearing the inscription
Berlin raucht Juno,
of U-Bahn
{13}
stairways with the words
Berlin raucht Juno
painted in red on every step. I thought of the clumsy, leering, badly washed Berlin crowd with their ashen-colored faces glistening with grease and sweat, of the disheveled women, with red eyes, swollen hands and string-darned stockings, of the old people and of children with hard, spiteful faces. In the midst of that leering and frightened crowd I saw again the soldiers on leave from the Russian front— those silent, lean, stern soldiers, almost all bald, even the youngest among them. I watched that mysterious stain widening in their eyes, and I thought about the
Herrenvolk
and about the useless, hopeless heroism of the
Herrenvolk. "Aus dem Kraftquell Milch,"
said the soldiers scornfully throwing the last empty cans of Milei milk-egg at the old Cossacks sitting in the doors of their houses.
Aus dem Kraftquell Milch
was written on the empty cans thrown into the mud, and a shiver ran down my back as I thought about the
Herrenvolk
and about the
Herrenvolk's
mysterious fear.

At night I sometimes left the bivouac or the house in which I had found shelter and, taking my blankets with me went and lay down in a corn field, close to the camp or to the village. There, stretched out among the rain-sodden stalks, I waited for the dawn and listened drowsily to the noises of passing transports, troops of Romanian cavalry, columns of armored cars. I listened to harsh, brutal German voices and the merry high-pitched Romanian voices calling,
"Inainte, baiatsi, inainte!
—Forward, boys, forward!" Herds of starving vagrant dogs came close to me and sniffed, wagging their tails—those small Ukrainian mongrels, with yellowish hair, red eyes and bandy legs. Some of the dogs often huddled beside me licking my face, and whenever a step sounded on the neighboring path or the wheat rattled in a strong gust of wind, the dog would growl softly and I would say: "Down, Dmitri!" I felt as if I were talking to a man, to a Russian. I said: "Shut up, Ivan!" and I felt as if I were talking to one of those prisoners who had tried so hard to read well, who had passed their examination and now lay in the mud, their faces gnawed by lime—over there by the wall encircling the yard of the
kolkhoz
in the village near Nemirovskoye.

One night I spent in a sunflower field. It was really a sunflower forest—a real forest. Bending on their tall hairy stalks, their large, round black eyes with long yellow lashes misty with sleep, the sunflowers slept with drooping heads. It was a clear night, the sky steeped in stars shone with blue and green reflections, like the hollow of a huge sea shell. I slept hard and I was awakened at dawn by a gentle, soft crackling. It sounded like the rustle of people walking barefoot through grass. I listened holding my breath. The faint coughing of motors came to me from the near-by encampment—faint voices calling to one another in the wood by the brook. A dog was barking in the distance. Down on the skyline the sun was breaking through the black shell of the night, rising warm and red over the plain glistening with dew. That rustle spread and became louder every minute. It was by now like the crackling of a brushwood fire. Now it was like the subdued creaking of a vast army marching cautiously through a field of stubble. Lying on the ground, I held my breath, watching the sunflowers slowly raising their yellow eyelids and gradually opening their eyes.

The sunflowers were raising their heads and gently twisting on their stalks, turning their large black eyes to the rising sun. It was a slow, even, vast movement. The entire sunflower forest was turning to gaze at the young glory of the sun. I, too, raised my face to the east and watched the sun rising little by little amid the rosy vapors of the dawn, above the bluish clouds of smoke from the far-off fires on the plain.

Then the rain ceased and, after a few days of strong, cold winds, the frost suddenly set in. Not snow, just a sudden, fierce autumnal frost. During the night the mud hardened, the pools of water were covered with glistening glass as thin as human skin. The air turned limpid; the sky, blue-gray in color, looked cracked like a broken mirror.

The German march toward the east became more rapid; the bark of the guns, the rattle of rifles and machine guns sounded sharply and clearly, unbroken by echoes. The heavy armored cars of General von Schobert that had crawled laboriously during the rainy days, like clumsy toads, through the slippery, sticky mud of the plain between the Bug and the Dnieper, began roaring again over the frost-hardened ruts. The bluish smoke from the exhausts etched faint clouds that melted away at once over the trees and yet left something of their mysterious presence in the air.