PSALM 44 (3 page)

“
I
’
m going to try to sleep,
”
and then
—
as if doing so would hasten the answer and ultimately the decision about which
Ž
ana was thinking and in the absence of which it didn
’
t seem to her (Marija) that she could think of anything else or do anything else, not until whatever it was came out, whatever it was concerning herself and those three other women, for little Er
ž
ika Kon had been among them at first, Er
ž
ika Kon who had earlier, one night, hurled herself at the wire and fallen, riddled with bullets, forgetting everything, because that
’
s what death is,
To forget everything
, she thought
—
she asked:
“
What time could it be?
”
as if through this question the hand of death or at least its sister would be summoned to close her tired eyes, but with this question resistance was born in her consciousness, as a consequence of some dim recollection of the ultimate interconnectedness of forgetting-death-sleep-and-time and her consciousness, which set this whole causal chain in motion and must rank highest in its hierarchy, hand-in-hand with time.

“
I don
’
t know,
”
Ž
ana said, but then, as if resistance had been awakened in her too, she went on to say, as though picking up a forgotten weapon:
“
I think it
’
s past eleven. I don
’
t think it
’
s any later than that.
”
Then like a buoy it popped up to the surface, that which until this moment had filled the gloom and which now all at once crystallized and condensed into the space of two or three words in a whisper:
“
Tonight we
’
ll try.
”

And even before Marija succeeded in turning her thoughts to anything specific, to being fearful or overjoyed, to crying out or to screaming or all of it together in the inferno that was the tumult of her mind and the chaos of her organism, in the savage circulation of blood that cascaded throughout her body like some hot, interior wave leaving behind on the shore the broken and disordered remnants of thought (only the briefest glance at the innumerable associations that were saturating and trampling each other) as well as the secretions of her glands and ovaries
—
even before she managed to realize that she was trembling on the edge of unconsciousness in this intense assault,
Ž
ana added what it was no longer necessary to say:
“
I didn
’
t want to tell you right away. I was thinking you should get some sleep. You need to be fresh.
”

In that way she kept Marija from thinking about Polja and from feeling sorry for her, or repentant:
Ž
ana had with her words simply wiped Polja away by not mentioning her; she didn
’
t even refer to her as
“
Poor Polja,
”
which again would have signified something; instead she simply said
we will try
, and in this
we
nothing and no one else could be present save the three of them, that is,
Ž
ana, Jan, and Marija: to wit, only the living, and Polja was already beneath a shroud. But Marija could still sense Polja, not because of her quiet gurgling, which was no longer communication in any earthly language but simply a slight whisper in the tongue of death itself; rather Marija could sense her through the fact that she was obliged constantly to push Polja
’
s corpse to the side, out of the current of her own thoughts, down under the ice (they had already buried Polja), just as they had shoved under the Danube
’
s ice the corpses of those women, back then, at the beginning
—
so that she could make room for the living or at least for those she hoped were living: for Jakob, in fact; who else? And she now all at once caught a glimpse of Jakob
—
it was the first time she
’
d pictured him since their last meeting
—
no longer in the perspective that revealed itself, forlorn and grim, behind her when she looked back at him, but rather in some future, almost imaginable: Jakob stands there, just like that, tall and pale, his face covered in a reddish beard, worn down and worn out from his return but with his eyes radiating happiness and his arms open wide and stretching down the road toward where she
’
s standing, Jan in her arms, offering Jakob the child like bread and salt, like the sacred miracle at Bethlehem. But that momentarily glimpsed perspective on the future began to collapse immediately like a canvas backdrop thrown up in the desert
—
and only Jakob himself remained in that real wilderness from which the wind had carried off the set, abandoned save for gray drifts of dust.

She thought back to that last meeting with Jakob, not so long ago, actually five weeks ago, Jan was barely two weeks old at that point, no more. She recalled clearly that Jan had been two weeks old: she had given birth on the same day that she saw Jakob for the first time after their separation. But that was further back. She saw Jakob (who else could it have been) a second time back there at the train station; and this is how it was: from Maks she had received a message (she had found the message in the barracks, beneath the headrest in the straw) stating that Jakob would be walking past with a transport, that evening, around seven. She subsequently spent the whole day pondering how she could get away from the worksite and make it to the station to see Jakob and tell him that he was becoming a father and then when she cried out JAKOB, I AM PREGNANT she couldn
’
t have been imagining it and she knew that he had to have heard her cry and recognized her voice, for who else would shout that out to him and do so from the formation that was already approaching the entrance to the camp; hence she had to see Jakob, if not on account of that other thing at least so that she could convince herself that he was alive and so that she could ask him what he thought of all this while he hammered on that coffin at the camp gates and couldn
’
t he have at least stopped swinging the hammer in his hand so that she would at least see that he had heard that she had yelled to him that she was pregnant. And then something unexpected appeared, right when she was thinking in her despair that the only thing she could do was to throw down her shovel all of a sudden and run for it, which would have been pure suicide, and she was already envisioning how she
’
d fall, shredded by the machine guns, breathing her last, seized with spasms, attempting to pronounce the words
“
Jakob, Jakob
”
through the blood rushing out of her mouth, as if he would be able to hear and understand that she was trying that she was doing everything she could that she wanted nothing other than to see him.

That was when a
kapo
ordered Er
ž
ika Kon and her to head for the station and deliver something there. She didn
’
t know if this order was genuine or if it was only one of Maks
’
s tricks to make it possible for her to run into Jakob, but she set off toward the station with Er
ž
ika Kon, accompanied by a soldier who walked in lockstep with them. She still did not know (and even to this day has not found out) if this had simply been some subterfuge on the part of Maks to enable a meeting with Jakob or if it was mere happenstance that she was summoned from the group and told to go to the depot.

On the way she was wondering if this transport, supposedly containing Jakob, was going to make a stop in the station or just pass through, but she was utterly incapable of doing anything, although she knew that everything beyond this point depended on her and that she had no idea what time it was nor could she inquire of anyone what time it was, although it did appear to her that the time was at hand (they were walking along the new road that the camp inmates had built and she several times considered asking the soldier what time it was but then she took fright at the thought of putting everything at risk and forfeiting the opportunity that had come her way for her to see Jakob) and from that she concluded that Maks had had a hand in all this, but she didn
’
t know if they needed to hurry up or slow their stride even though the soldier was dictating their pace.

And so all at once she found herself at the station, looking at the long row of sealed cars out of which peered phantomlike faces at the small grated windows and she recognized the Babel of cries for help that she herself had heard at the time she was transported in cattle cars of that same type, that outcry which becomes a dry and morbid whisper: in all the languages of Europe the word
water
being pronounced as if it were the very stuff of life, even more so than that ancient Hellenic
ur
-element and essential substance belonging to every living thing, along with air and earth, of course
—
the way that word now transformed itself on Polja
’
s lips, the chaos of the cattle car shrinking to the monotone whisper of a moribund. And then the train moved just as she caught sight of it, right in front of her nose like some enormous antediluvian dinosaur ejected from its watery home onto firm dry land several millennia after its epoch, and she sensed all at once the thirst in Jakob
’
s guts and in her own and she began to run down the line of cars, now starting to rock, and they collided with a bang and she was like a condemned soul having her guts gnawed out by the plague and she was utterly transformed into screaming into the cry into
“
Jakob! Jakob!
”
as if that reptile were beginning to rouse itself and make a getaway, gasping for breath, completely metamorphosed into that stegocephalian dinosaurian Babylonian and European
“
Water! Water!
”
and suddenly she saw a rag appear from a high, narrow window of the car ten meters in front of her, like a
reliquiae reliquiarum
of Jakob, and after that the hand holding that rag and waving it like death
’
s own flag
—
that clenched hand without a face, motioning with the rag
—
that was Jakob now, the Jakob who had remained when with a bang the stage and set had been destroyed and she looked backward: gray drifts of dust.

But
Ž
ana was still going on:

“
Maks
’
s orders,
”
she said, not waiting for the flood of blood inside Marija to ebb, the blood that was pounding her and rocking her off her foundations:
“
Tonight at 2:30,
”
she said.
“
Get prepared and try to get some sleep. You need to be rested. I
’
ll wait for Maks
’
s signal: two long and two short knocks.
”

“
Okay. I
’
ll try,
”
Marija responded.
“
I
’
ll try to sleep at least a bit.
”

Ž
ana lay on her stomach in the straw, propped up on her elbows, head thrust between her palms; her legs trembled slightly. Chewing on a short piece of straw, she looked out through the crack in the direction of the fence. Periodically a fine edge of light slid across her face and tore open the intense darkness of the barracks; then Marija, without moving her head or disturbing the baby asleep on top of her, could see
Ž
ana
’
s profile with that straw in her mouth.

“
She
’
ll be dead by dawn,
”
Marija said, but her voice made itself heard against her will; and then as if meant for herself:
“
I should return this sheet to Polja.
”
She heard
Ž
ana
’
s suppressed sigh and thought
That is an answer
, but right away she caught another whisper:

“
So much the better for her. You understand:
tomorrow it will be harder to die
. Even in an hour or two it
’
s going to be harder
”
; and then,
“
It
’
s already hard enough to die.
”

“
Because of hoping?
”
Marija asked.

“
I don
’
t know,
”
Ž
ana replied.
“
Maybe because of hoping.
”
Then she got up and Marija realized, although she didn
’
t see it, that
Ž
ana had risen to give Polja the can with water;
“
Now it
’
s a human being that
’
s dying,
”
Ž
ana said.
“
You understand: a human being and not an animal.
”

Then Marija repeated what she had said a short while before, but she wasn
’
t thinking of that, she was already thinking
I should return the sheet to Polja
and she was wondering if Polja could hear the artillery and she was thinking it would be better if Polja couldn
’
t hear it, but all she said was:

“
Yes, it
’
s on account of hope
”
; and
Ž
ana repeated:

“
Up to now it was an animal dying. It
’
s easier, I believe, to die like that.
”

The other woman didn
’
t respond. All she felt was the way her body was going numb from lying there, immobile, in the damp: the wet diapers she had wrapped around her naked body were releasing an icy moisture that her skin was absorbing from her stomach to the middle of her thighs; it gave the impression that her skin had become pasty and rotten like that of a corpse, although she didn
’
t really feel like she had skin at all anymore, rather just some gelatinous mass, which together with the wet rags was glued to her bones. But the child wasn
’
t cold; she thought: I folded Polja
’
s sheet over twice and laid it across the wet diapers so that the moisture wouldn
’
t reach the baby.
I didn
’
t dare put the wet diapers on my stomach
, she thought.
I could only wrap them around my thighs
,
and I didn
’
t dare take off my underwear; it wouldn
’
t be good if I got my period now. It
’
s always so unpredictable; a few sniffles are enough to bring it on
; then she thought that it would be best if she got up and moved the diapers a bit lower. It was probably just past ten now, and Maks was going to give the signal after two, and then she would have to move and she was frightened by the prospect of her legs completely freezing up and turning into some icy, inert mass.

Thus it was necessary to undertake something, above all to push those damp diapers lower and to return the sheet to Polja. But then, on the very cusp of the movement with which she wanted to raise the infant off of herself and to position him so she could stretch her limbs and give Polja back the sheet, she stopped, restrained the movement that was almost finished being born, feeling the way its mild charge crept across her body (a charge that should have set her hand into motion) and sagged from the tips of her fingers:
Polja is going to die
, and she sensed with bitterness that it was precisely this thought that stayed her limbs, not because she now at long last comprehended that Polja was really not coming with them (she was conscious of that: though Polja would remain alive until two, she would nevertheless not be able to come with them), but rather because she realized that she herself had acquiesced to the fact that Polja would not be going with them.

“
Ž
ana,
”
she said, and when she noticed the other woman had moved:
“
Help me pull Polja
’
s sheet out from under the baby.
”

“
He has more need of it, the baby,
”
Ž
ana said unexpectedly.
“
And you do too . . . Do you understand . . . ?
”
—
and before Marija could gather her thoughts and say anything, she heard the rustling of the straw and the quiet knocking of the tin can.

“
You see, it
’
s too late for that,
”
said
Ž
ana.
“
For Polja, it
’
s too late already.
”

“
What time is it?
”
Marija asked, at the same time as a narrow blade of light scraped over
Ž
ana
’
s face and she saw her lips moving:

“
It
’
s not yet midnight. I don
’
t think it
’
s midnight yet.
”

Marija was just then shifting her frozen legs.

“
I got my period,
”
she said.
“
Or so it seems.
”

“
That
’
s from the fear,
”
Ž
ana said; then she corrected herself:
“
From the excitement.
”

“
No,
”
Marija said.
“
From the wet diapers. I didn
’
t dare go to sleep (it was just some kind of half-dozing state). I should have changed position
”
—
then she sensed once more Polja
’
s mute presence in the room (she felt it from the silence) and she remembered that she was supposed to make more diapers out of her sheet. But she didn
’
t get up. She couldn
’
t begin tearing Polja
’
s sheet right away and making diapers. And sanitary pads. Then she asked,
“
How old was she?
”
but she already knew that she wasn
’
t going to be able to stand it another second in that position and that her stomach and legs were about to disintegrate abruptly like in Poe
’
s story about the corpse of M. Valdemar, which has been artificially kept alive by means of hypnotism and which then suddenly dissolves into gooey, slimy rot. And even before she could hear
Ž
ana
’
s answer,
“
Seventeen, I think,
”
she had already pushed her hand under the child to extract Polja
’
s sheet, which she then laid next to her on the straw and she laid the child across it and wrapped it up with the other hand. Then she turned to the side for a moment, felt for the edge of the diaper, arched her back, and started unwrapping the wet, blood-covered rags around her legs.
“
She seemed older to me,
”
she said so that her rubbing the dry edge of a diaper on her benumbed skin to wipe away the blood couldn
’
t be heard.

“
Corpses don
’
t have an age,
”
Ž
ana said, and then Marija felt the blood beginning to circulate slowly beneath her skin, rising up through the capillaries to the surface, all over her buttocks and her thighs, and then she stretched out her legs and sat up in the straw, leaning her shoulder blades against the cold wall of the barracks. She wiped her fingers on a damp rag and began groping about in the dark for a dry piece of linen to make a pad.

“
You met her before I did,
”
she said, locating her underwear in the gloom beneath the fingers of her right hand, and then she put the folded portion of linen into place between her legs and slid her underwear back up.

“
Yes,
”
said
Ž
ana.
“
She was one of those. You know. One of the chosen ones. Along the way she tried to flee. They gave her a thorough beating. Then she got sick and instead of taking her into the
Lebensborn
they dispatched her here. What saved her was the fact that she played the cello. I heard that the overseer who beat her was punished. The Germans regretted that a flower like her should end up on the inside . . .
”

Then the straw beneath
Ž
ana began to rustle and Marija turned in her direction, following the narrow band of light; she was still lying on her stomach with the straw between her teeth and her eyes fixed on the crack: she was following the movement of the floodlight
’
s beam along the barracks and wire.

The field guns, with their ever-faster salvos in the distance, suddenly fell silent.

“
If Polja had lived
—
”
Marija said, and though she wanted to tell the truth: if she had stayed alive till two, in other words until the point at which Maks was going to give the sign, and if she had been left alone in the barracks (since, being so sick, she couldn
’
t go with
Ž
ana and Marija )
—
tomorrow they would have crammed her into a truck anyway and taken her off to the gas chamber, she just couldn
’
t let it end that way for her, so she said:
“
—
she would have been in Odessa in a month or so . . . I believe she was from Odessa
”
; and
Ž
ana said:

“
Or maybe if she had just lived a few more hours.
”

“
They won
’
t take any risks
,
”
Marija said.
“
That Maks is a damned clever fellow.
”

“
Yes,
”
said
Ž
ana.
“
Damned clever,
”
and then she asked,
“
Have you ever seen him? Maks, that is?
”

“
No,
”
Marija said:
“
Never . . . though actually
—
”
But she couldn
’
t finish her thought, and Marija should have said
We
’
ll get through this
or
We
’
ll make it
or something else just not
They won
’
t take any risks
. And even though she
’
d stopped with that, and had fallen silent, she began to get clumsily entangled in that heavy net of men, thinking that in terms of needlepoint it was a ridiculous pattern and with the delicate, finely pointed needle of a woman
’
s passivity she began poking into its empty spaces until she found herself wrapped up in the tough, thick threading of the nets and had to call for help from more men, first from Jakob
—
in her mind
—
and then, aloud and with desperate entreaty in her voice, that other man too, Maks. The Maks she had still never seen but who had existed for her for months now as a synonym for salvation, the incarnation of masculine god-agency. That
’
s why she
’
d wanted to say
I
’
ve known him as long as I
’
ve known Jakob
, but she changed her mind, for she remembered that the true sense of
Ž
ana
’
s question lay elsewhere. At least it seemed that way to her.
Ž
ana simply wanted to point out that she herself (Marija) wasn
’
t in any condition to do for herself or for her child anything other than submit to the fate that she identified with Jakob, and that that Maks (and she always said
“
that Maks
”
herself) was merely the executor of the will of fate-Jakob, and wasn
’
t even a concrete person, with no face and shoulders, no hairy chest and great, powerful hands. Instead: an unknown agent, the hand of God, or the devil himself, or precisely some invisible and unknown powerful third thing that works miracles: he flips some unseen lever or cuts a wire and darkness breaks in . . . Like that night in the corridor when she was coming out of Jakob
’
s room. And before that, too. Ten minutes earlier: all at once the darkness fell. And it was like this:

When Dr. Nietzsche halted in front of Jakob
’
s door he screamed:
“
These working conditions are impossible! Every five minutes, that power plant!
This smells like sabotage to me
,
”
and then Jakob covered her mouth so she wouldn
’
t cry out, and then he pushed her, or actually placed her in the cabinet like she was an object and locked her in. But before he shut the door: