Kaputt (6 page)

Farther along on a marshy stretch between the road and the river, a Soviet armored car lay overturned. The gun stuck out of the conning tower, the trap door was open and twisted by the explosion,- inside, amid the mud that had filled the car, was a man's arm. It was a carcass of an armored car. It stank of oil and petrol, of burnt paint, of gutted leather and scorched iron. It was a strange odor. A new odor. The new odor of the new war. I felt sorry for that armored car, but sorry in a different way than I had felt at the sight of the dead horse. It was a dead machine. A rotting machine. It had already begun to stink. It was iron carrion, overturned in the mud.

I stopped and went down to the side of the mudhole, close to the armored car. I grasped the arm of the tankman and tried to pull him out. I pulled with all my strength until I felt the arm yielding and saw a head gradually emerging from the mud. It was a mud ball. I wiped the face with my hand. I clawed with my nails at that mass of filth, and a small gray face with black lashes and black eyes appeared under the palm of my hand. It was a Tartar, a Tartar tankman. I began pulling once more to draw him out of the car, but soon gave up; the mud was stronger. I climbed into my car and drove off toward a cloud of smoke that rose from the plain, on the edge of a huge blue forest.

Meanwhile the sun was coming up from the horizon of green, and gradually the hoarse call of the birds was becoming shriller and more lively. The sun seemed to beat down hammer-like on the cast-iron plate of the lagoons. A shiver ran along the water with a kind of metallic vibration and spread to the surface of the pools, just as the sound of a violin spreads like a shiver along the arms of a musician. By the roadside, and here and there in the cornfields, were overturned cars, burned trucks, disemboweled armored cars, abandoned guns, all twisted by explosions. But nowhere a man, nothing living, not even a corpse, not even any carrion. For miles and miles around there was only dead iron. Dead bodies of machines, hundreds upon hundreds of miserable steel carcasses. The stench of putrifying iron rose from the fields and the lagoons. The cockpit of a plane was sticking up from the mud in the middle of a pool. The German cross was clearly discernible: it was a Messerschmitt. The smell of rotting iron won over the smell of men and horses—that smell of old wars,- even the smell of grain and the penetrating, sweet scent of sunflowers vanished amid that sour stench of scorched iron, rotting steel, dead machinery. The clouds of dust lifted by the wind from the far ends of the vast plain carried no smell of organic matter with them but a smell of iron filing. And all the time, while I was pushing into the heart of the plain and approached Nemirovskoye, the smell of iron and of petrol grew stronger in the dusty air,- even the grass seemed to be permeated with that undefinable, strong and exhilarating smell of gasoline, as if the smell of men and beasts, the smell of trees, of grass and mud was overcome by that odor of gasoline and scorched iron.

I was forced to stop some miles from Nemirovskoye. A German Feldgendarme—a field policeman—with his glittering brass plate like some knightly order hanging on a chain from his neck, commanded me to stop. "
Verboten!
—Prohibited!" It was impossible to go ahead.
"Nein! Nein! Nein!"
I drove along a side road, a kind of cart track; I meant to get as close as possible to Nemirovskoye, so I could see the Russian "bulge" that the Germans had encountered on their way, and were now attacking on all sides. Fields, ditches, villages, the
kolkhoz
—the collective farms—were all full of German troops. And everywhere
verboten.
Everywhere
zurück
—turn back. Toward sunset I made up my mind to go back. It was useless to lose time and to try to get through. Much better to turn back toward Balta and edge northward toward Kiev.

I drove on and stopped after a long stretch in an abandoned village where I ate a little of my dry bread and cheese. Most houses had been destroyed by fire. From the southwest came the roar of guns at my back. Yes, literally at my back. A large hammer and sickle were painted on the front of a house. Entering I saw that it was a Soviet office. A huge portrait of Stalin was pasted on the wall. Some Romanian soldiers had penciled: "
Aiurea!"
under that portrait, which means "Oh, yeah!"

I sat down on a writing desk cluttered with papers: the floor also was covered with papers, rags, books and propaganda pamphlets. And I thought of the dead mare stretched in front of the house where I had spent the night in the village of Alexandrovska; I thought of the poor, lonely carrion lying on the side of the road, in the midst of the crowd of dead machines and steel carcasses. I thought of the poor, lonely stench of the dead mare overcome by the smell of scorched iron, gasoline, rotting steel, of the new smell of this new war of machinery. I thought of the soldiers in
War and Peace,
of the Russian roads along which Russian and French bodies and carcasses of horses were scattered. I thought of the odor of dead men, dead beasts, of the soldiers in
War and Peace
who were left alive by the roadside to the rapacious beaks of the crows. I thought of the Tartar horsemen armed with bows and arrows, the horsemen of the Amur river, whom Napoleon's soldiers called
les Amours
—those tireless fleet, merciless Tartar horsemen, speeding out of the woods and flaying the enemy stragglers, that ancient and noble race of horsemen who were born and lived with horses, fed on horse flesh and mare's milk, dressed in horses' skins, slept under tents made out of horsehides, and were buried in deep graves astride their horses.

I thought of the Tartars in the Red Army, who are the best mechanical workers in the U.S.S.R., the best Storm Troopers among workers, the best
udarniki
—"shock" workers—and
stakhanovtzi
{2}
—the spearheads of the "attacking squads" of the Soviet heavy industry. I thought of the Tartars in the Red Army who are the best drivers of tanks, the best engineers in the armored divisions and in the Flying Corps. I thought of the young Tartars whom three five-year plans have transformed from horsemen into industrial workers, from horse-breeders into
udarniki
in the iron works of Stalingrad, of Kharkov and of Magnitogorsk.

"Aiurea!
" meaning "Oh yeah!" was penciled in Romanian beneath Stalin's portrait. Undoubtedly it had been written by some poor Romanian peasant, who had never examined a machine, who had never touched a screw, or loosened a bolt, or taken an engine apart—some poor Romanian peasant whom Marshal Antonescu—the "Red Dog" as his officers call him—had driven into that war of peasants against the huge army of engineering workers of the U.S.S.R.

I reached for Stalin's picture and began to tear off the section of the poster with the word "
Aiurea!"
Just then I heard footsteps in the yard. I went to the door and some Romanian soldiers who were there asked me the time. "Six o'clock," I answered. They said "
Multzumesc"
which means "thanks" and invited me to have a cup of tea with them. I said
"Multzumesc"
and following them through the village, shortly reached a partially wrecked house where five or six more soldiers welcomed me warmly, asked me to have a seat, and offered me a cup of tea and a bowl of
ciorba de pui
—the Romanian chicken soup.

I said "
Multzumesc
." We began to talk and the soldiers told me that they were a liaison post in the village, that their division was some ten miles farther on, to the right. There was not a living soul in that village. The Germans had passed through it ahead of the Romanians.

"The Germans," said one of those soldiers in a deep voice, and all the others laughed.

"The Germans went through here before we did," another soldier repeated as if apologizing. They laughed softly while eating the
ciorba de pui.

"
Aiurea!
"
said I.

"It is quite true," said one of them who was a corporal, "the Germans passed through here ahead of us. It is quite true."

"
Aiurea!
"
said I
.

"Domnule
—Sir—
Capitan,"
said the corporal, "if you don't believe me, ask the prisoner. We do not destroy villages; we do not harm the peasants. We only have it in for the Jews. It's quite true. You, there,
asculta!
—listen here!" he shouted turning toward the corner of the room. "Isn't it true that the Germans passed through here ahead of us?"

I turned toward the dark corner and saw a man sitting on the floor with his back against the wall. He was dressed in khaki; a yellow service cap sat on his shorn head. He was barefoot. A Tartar. He had a small lean face, the gray, shiny skin was tightly drawn over his prominent cheekbones; his eyes were fixed, black, perhaps veiled with hunger and fatigue. Motionless, he gazed at me with those veiled eyes of his. He did not reply to the corporal's question; he kept gazing at me.

"Where did you capture him?" I inquired.

"He was inside the armored car left in the square. There was something wrong with the motor, and the tank couldn't budge, but it kept on firing. The Germans were in a hurry and went off leaving us to deal with it. There were two men inside. They went on shooting till the very end. One of them was dead. We had to force the trap door open with a jimmy. He refused to surrender. He didn't have a single shot left; he said nothing; he squatted inside and did not want to open. The other one, the gunner, was dead. This one was the driver. We have to take him to the Romanian headquarters at Balta; but now nobody passes through here; the convoys of trucks drive along the main road. It's three days since anyone has passed through here."

"Why did you take off his boots?" I asked.

The soldiers began laughing, looked insolently at me.

"A lovely pair of boots," said the corporal, "you look,
Domnule Capitan,
what boots these pigs of Russians have." He got up, rummaged in a sack and drew out a pair of heelless Tartar boots of soft leather. "They are better clothed than we are," went on the corporal pointing to his down-at-the-heel shoes and to his torn trousers.

"It means they have a better country than yours," I said.

"These pigs have no country," said the corporal, "they are like animals."

"Even animals have a country," I replied, "a far better country than ours. Better than the Romanian country or the German country or the Italian country."

The soldiers gazed fixedly at me; they did not understand; they looked at me and silently chewed bits of chicken swimming in the
ciorba,
and the corporal said uncomfortably, "A pair of boots such as these is worth at least two thousand
lei."

The soldiers shook their heads and drew in their lips. "Yes," one of them said, "a pair of boots like these, two thousand
lei
at the very least, if not more," and again they shook their heads and compressed their lips. They were Romanian peasants and Romanian peasants do not know what animals are; they do not know that animals also have a country; they do not know what machines are; that machines also have a country; that boots also have a country; a far better country than ours. They are peasants, and they do not even know what being peasants means; the Bratianu law has given the land to a horse, to a cow, to a sheep. They only know that they are Romanian and Greek Orthodox. They shout "Long Live the King!"; they shout "Long live Marshal Antonescu!"; they shout "Down with the U.S.S.R.!" But they do not know what the King is, what Marshal Antonescu is, what the U.S.S.R. is. They know that a pair of boots such as these are worth two thousand
lei
at least. They are poor peasants, and they do not know that the U.S.S.R. is a machine; that they are fighting a machine, a thousand machines, a million machines. But a pair of boots like these is worth two thousand
lei
at least, if not more.

"Marshal Antonescu," I said, "has a pair of boots, a hundred pair of boots far better than these."

The soldiers gazed fixedly at me and drew in their lips.

"A hundred pair?" asked the corporal.

"A hundred, a thousand pair," I replied, "far better than these. Haven't you ever seen Marshal Antonescu's boots? They are very beautiful. Of yellow leather, black leather, red leather, white leather; cut in the English style with a rosette below the knee. They are beautiful. Marshal Antonescu's boots are more beautiful than those of Hitler or Mussolini. Hitler's boots are fine enough. I have looked at them closely. I have never spoken to Hitler, but I have looked at his boots from very near. They are spurless. Hitler never wears spurs, he is afraid of horses; but even without spurs, they are fine enough. Also Mussolini's boots are fine, but they are useless. They are not fit for walking or riding. They are only fit for standing in the grandstand, during a parade, and watching soldiers with torn shoes and rusty rifles march by."

The soldiers drawing in their lips gazed fixedly at me.

"After the war," I said, "we shall go and pull off Marshal Antonescu's boots."

"Also
Domnule
Hitler's," said a soldier.

"Also
Domnule
Mussolini's," said another.

"Certainly, also Mussolini's and Hitler's," I said. They all began laughing, and I asked the corporal, "How much do you think Hitler's boots are worth?"

They all ceased laughing, and suddenly, I don't know why, they turned to look at the prisoner who crouched in his corner and gazed at me with his veiled slanting eyes.

"Did you give him something to eat?" I asked the corporal.

"
Yes
,
Domnule Capitan
"

"That's not true. You did not give him anything to eat," I said.

The corporal took a bowl from the table, then filled it with
ciorba de pui,
and passed it to the prisoner.

"Give him a spoon," I said, "he cannot eat soup with his hands."

The soldiers gazed at the corporal as he took a spoon from the table, cleaned it by rubbing it with his hands and offered it to the prisoner.

"Ochen spassibo
—Many thanks," said the prisoner.