I looked at his head from above, looked, and looked, and looked. Like it was a dream. Here I was dying, and I felt so calm. I even stopped bellowing.
He called to the German with the sledgehammer. “
Noch einmal
, Willi!”
Willi heaved once more —
wham!
The important German pressed his ear to me again, listening.
“
Noch einmal!
”
Oof! He hit me so hard that chips flew off of the sledgehammer. I realized that it really was made of ice.
Everything swam before my eyes.
The important guy pressed his ear to me again. His ear was already covered with my blood. And suddenly he shouted, “
Ja! Ja!
Herr Laube
,
sofort!
”
And the German with the doctor’s tube rushed over to me. He stuck the tube to my chest and listened. He mumbled something, squinching his sour face.
The important German pushed him away.
“
Noch einmal!
”
And they slammed me again. I felt as though I was falling asleep: my lips filled with lead, and my mouth grew numb and heavy, like it was someone else’s; it felt fuzzy, like the inside of a stove. Then I was so, so light, like a cloud, and the only thing in my chest was my heart and that was all. No stomach — I wasn’t breathing, or swallowing. This heart in me seemed to
move
. That is, it was just...I couldn’t tell what. Like some little creature. It stirred, fluttered. It muttered something sweet as honey: khrr, khrr, khrr. Not the way it used to — from fear, you know, or joy. This was completely different, as though it had just awoken and before it was really deep, deep asleep. Here they were, killing me, and my heart woke up. There wasn’t any fear in it, not the tiniest smidgen. There was only this sweet muttering. Just everything good, honest, and so tender that I felt petrified. The hair on my head moved: that’s how good I felt. All the fear drained away:
What is there to be afraid of, if my heart is with me!
Nothing of the sort had ever happened to me.
I froze stiff and didn’t breathe.
The German with the tube started listening to me again. He spoke very loud, “Khra...Khra...Khram!”
The important one grabbed the tube from him and put it on my chest himself.
“Khram! Genau! Khram!”
And he began to shake with joy.
“
Herrschaften
, Khram! Khram!
Sie ist
Khram!
Hören Sie! Hören Sie! Hören Sie!
”
They all started blabbering and fussing around me. They cut the ropes off. But suddenly everything about them was disgusting to me — their horrible nasty voices, and hands, and faces, and their vehicles, and this drooling forest, everything all around. I stiffened so as not to scare off my heart, so that it would keep on muttering so sweet, so that the heart sweetness would take all of me in through my guts. But they started pulling me out of the ropes like a doll, grabbing me. My heart suddenly fell quiet.
I fainted dead away.
I don’t know how much time passed.
I came to.
I hadn’t even opened my eyelids, and I could feel — everything was rocking. They were taking me somewhere.
I opened my eyes: I saw that the room was small. It swayed slightly. I looked around — there was a window next to me, with a curtain on it. There was a little gap in the curtain and I could see the forest going by.
I realized I was on a train.
As soon as I realized this, my head became sort of empty. As though it wasn’t a head, but a hay barn in spring — not a stick of straw, not a blade of grass. The cattle had gobbled everything up over the winter.
Emptiness. Enormous, no end to it. In all directions. But this emptiness didn’t scare me or anything, it was sort of good. It was —
whoosh!
Like racing down an icy hill on a sled —
whoosh!
You start and you’re already at the bottom. This emptiness was the same —
whoosh!
It rode into my head. And my head was empty, completely empty, though I understood everything and acted the right way.
I freed my hand from under the blanket. I looked at it — my left hand. I’d seen it thousands of times. But I looked at it — as though seeing it for the first time. Even though I knew everything about it! I remembered all the little scars, the one where I cut myself on the sickle, and where I hit a nail. I remembered so well, like someone was showing me a movie. That blue spot on my pinkie over there: Where did it come from? Well, it was from the time that Uncle Semyon returned from the army, he’d made himself a badge he pinned on his chest: a heart with an arrow. And he was teaching the boys how to make them: you had to nail a picture to a bit of wood, then burn a boot heel, take the soot, and rub it on the nails. That was it! You pinned the wood on your chest. Our neighbor Kolka made one, but father scolded him and threw the wood out, and then I pricked my pinkie on that wood with the nails. On one nail.
That’s what.
The little room I was in was so lovely, all wood. And the screws in the wall were shiny. Two beds, a little table in the middle, a yellow ceiling. Warm. And it smelled clean, like in the hospital.
Someone was lying on the other bed. In a uniform. Turned toward the wall.
I freed my hand from under the blanket and sat up. I saw that I was only wearing my underclothes. And my chest was bandaged.
Then I suddenly remembered everything. At first, it was like my memory was lost: who I was, where I was — I couldn’t understand anything: I was just riding and riding.
I looked around: there was an iron box on the table. A book.
I lifted the curtain: woods, woods, and more woods. Trees were the only things flashing by.
I sat up and hung my legs over the edge of the bed. I looked down — my cowhide boots weren’t there. There were no clothes to be seen. I hung my head down, looking in the corners. Then my throat got scratchy and I started coughing. It made my chest hurt terribly.
I moaned and grabbed my chest.
The guy who was dozing jumped up and rushed to me. It was the same German who had brought the ice sledgehammers. He fussed about, embraced me by the shoulders and mumbled, “
Ruhe, ganz Ruhe, Schwesterchen...
”
He laid me down on the bed and covered me with the blanket. He leaped up, buttoned his collar, straightened his tunic, unlocked the door, and ran out, closing the door. I had barely managed to think a thought when the important German came in.
He was still the same — tall and fair. But not wearing black anymore. He wore a blue robe.
He sat on my bed and smiled. He took my hand, lifted it to his lips, and kissed it.
Then he took off his robe. Under the robe he had on a shirt and pants. He took off the shirt. His skin was so white. Then he started taking off his pants. I turned away.
Now he’s going to go and make a woman of me, I thought. I lay there, listening to his trousers rustling, and wasn’t even afraid. I lay there senseless. What did I care? I’d just lived through so much in that grove that nothing mattered anymore.
He got undressed. He threw the blanket off me and started taking off my underclothes.
I looked at the wall, at the new screws.
He undressed me all the way. And then he lay down next to me. He patted my head. And turned me toward him. I closed my eyes.
He turned me to him carefully, wrapping his long arms around me. He pressed his whole body to mine, pressed his chest to mine.
And that was it! He lay there, that’s all. I thought, that’s the way the Germans do it, they’re careful with girls, first they calm them down, and then —
bam!
In our village they do it right off, I’d been told.
I lay there. Suddenly I felt a shock, a jolt through my whole body, as though I’d been hit by lightning. My heart stirred once again. Like some little creature. At first I felt strange, anxious, as if I’d been hung upside down like a piece of meat in the cellar. Then it felt good. I felt I was floating down a stream, riding a wave that carried me, faster and faster. Suddenly I could feel his heart as if it were my own. His heart began to tug at my heart. It was so incredibly sweet. So dear and familiar.
It burned clear through me.
Even my mama hadn’t ever been so close to me. No one had.
I stopped breathing, and plunged into the feeling as into a well.
He kept on plucking and pulling at my heart with his heart. Like it was a hand. He’d squeeze it, or open it up. I grew numb. I completely stopped thinking. I wanted only one thing — for it to never stop.
Lord, how sweet it was. He’d start plucking at my heart, I’d just go numb, go numb like I was dying. My heart would flutter and stop. It would just stand there, like a horse sleeping. Then —
bing!
It would come alive again, quiver, and he’d start plucking at it again.
But everything on earth comes to an end eventually.
He stopped. We both sort of died. We lay there in two big lumps. Neither of us could lift a finger.
The train kept on going — chug-a-chug, chug-a-chug.
Then he loosened his hands. And collapsed on the floor.
I lay there and lay there. Then I sat up and I looked around. He was on the floor, as still as a corpse. Then he moved, suddenly embracing my legs. It was so dear and sweet!
I didn’t even have the strength to cry.
He got up and dressed. Laid me down in bed and covered me with a blanket. Then he left.
I couldn’t lie still. I got up. I pulled back the curtains from the window and looked out. I saw forest, fields, and villages. I looked at them as though I was seeing all this for the first time. I felt no fear. There was such joyous peace in my chest. Everything was clear!
Then he returned. This time he was dressed in his black uniform. He brought me some clothes: a pretty dress, all sorts of underclothes, boots, a coat, scarf, and beret. And he started dressing me. I watched him. On the one hand, I was embarrassed, but on the other, my soul was singing!
He dressed me and sat down next to me. He looked at me with his blue eyes. And I looked at him.
I felt so good!
It wasn’t that I’d fallen in love with him. It was good in a totally different way. You can’t say it in words. I felt I’d been given in marriage. To something great and good. Something that was forever and eternally my own, very dear, very beloved.
It wasn’t love, the thing you have between girls and fellows. I knew about love.
I’d fallen in love twice before. First with Goshka the shepherd. Then with Kolya Malakhov, an already married man. Goshka and me kissed, and he squeezed my breasts. We’d go up in the hayloft to do it. He wanted to paw me lower down — but I didn’t let him.
I fell in love with Kolya Malakhov myself. He didn’t know anything and still doesn’t, if he’s alive. Like Father, he was sent to the war on June 24.
Before the war he was married off to Nastenka Pluyanova. He was seventeen and she was sixteen. We worked at the haymaking together. He cut, I dried and raked. I got stuck on him. He had curly hair, he was handsome and merry. When I caught sight of him — my heart would freeze. I’d be soaked to the bone in embarrassment. I’d go beet red. I even stopped eating for two days. Then it would pass somehow. Later — it happened again. I could think only of him. I cried and cried: dumb old Nastenka was so lucky! Then it sort of let go of me. Just as well. Why should I pine after someone else’s fellow? That’s love for you.
But this — was something else.
We rode the whole day in silence. We sat side by side.
Then the train stopped. The German got up, put the coat on me. And took me by the hand through the entire car. It was full of German officers. We got off the train at the station. I looked around — what a station, I’d never seen anything of the sort! It was all iron and so high, no beginning or end to it. There were trains everywhere! People everywhere! And they all had things with them, and were well dressed. Everything was clean. Like in the movies.
He took me across the station. The other Germans followed him. Behind them a peasant with a mustache wheeled the suitcases on a cart.
I walked behind him. Everything was different. It all smelled different. A city smell.
Suddenly the station came to an end. We walked straight out into the city. It was so beautiful! All the houses were beautiful. There wasn’t any war here at all — all the buildings were whole, people strolled down the streets calmly. Some even had dogs. They sat on benches and read newspapers.
We came to some automobiles. Just as black as the other one I’d ridden in, and just as shiny. Everyone got in. The important German and I got in the first car, and it drove off. Through the whole city.
I looked out the window and suddenly said, “
Was ist das?
”
He laughed. “
Oh, du sprichst Deutsch
,
Khram! Das ist schöne Wien
.”
Then he started talking fast, but I didn’t understand anything. Over the two years that the Germans stayed with us, I learned some German words. I even knew swear words. But I never studied German in school.
I just smiled. Then he made a sign to the German who sat in front. He had met us at the station. And he was fair and blue-eyed, too. But he wasn’t wearing a black uniform, he was in regular clothes. And a hat.
He spoke to me in Russian, and I thought he must be Polish. He said, “This city is called Vienna. It’s one of the most beautiful cities in the world.”
He told me all about the city: when it was built and what marvelous things there were to see. But I didn’t remember anything.
Suddenly the important German ordered the chauffeur, “Stop!”
We stopped. The important one said something. And the Germans nodded.
“
Eine gute Idee!
”
The important one got out, opened the door, and signaled to me. I got out. I looked around: just a street. And a store with a pretty sign was right in front of us. Such a wonderful aroma came from that store! I felt faint!
The important German and I went inside. There were mirrors all around, and thousands of candies, cakes, pies, and other sweets. Very pretty girls in white aprons stood around. Behind me the Pole said, “What do you want?”