Katerina

21

WHILE THE WORK WORE THE days out, the cold made the nighttime hours infinitely long, and still I would wake each morning standing in line. There’s no limit to how much a person can endure. I felt, sometimes, that changes were taking place in my body. My legs swelled up and the veins turned blue on my hands, but I had no pains. I worked from morning to night. At night I would stand on my feet and say to myself, Another day. The thoughts shriveled up in my head, like a hollowed pumpkin.

“Were you married?” Sigi asked me.

“No, but I had a child.”

“Good for you.”

Later she told me about her first days with the Jews, how she was afraid of them, and how she got over her fear. In the first winter she had come down with pneumonia, and she was sure they would fire her right away, but the Jews surprised her and took care of her. The first summer she met Herz Reiner, a young, nonreligious Jew, a student in Lemberg, who courted her with frightening gentleness.

“Wouldn’t you like to go back to them?”

“I would.”

Sigi was tall and strong and full of contradictions. “I love the Jews,” she used to say. “But it’s too bad they’re Jews. If they weren’t Jews, I would love them even more. They are special creatures. I love contact with them.”

“Would you have married Herz Reiner?” My tongue egged me on.

“That’s something else. A woman has to get married in the church. We sin and love young Jews, but the church doesn’t love them. We have to marry people like ourselves.”

“So you don’t love them.”

“I’m a Ruthenian, my dear, a Ruthenian wild beast. The Jews are another race. We can be amazed by them, sleep with them, love them, and curse them, but not marry them. We’re different. What can you do? It’s not our fault. That’s how the Creator made us.”

I liked Sigi. I didn’t talk about everything with her, but I felt that we were attached to a memory full of warmth and sin, and that feeling gave us a kind of hidden advantage. We didn’t talk about it to anyone, and not much between ourselves, but we enjoyed each other’s company.

At night there was lots of talk. There were nights when they got carried away and talked about failed loves, and there were nights when they talked about harsh and vicious parents, or sometimes about brothers and sisters, and there were nights when they talked only about the Jews, and those were the liveliest nights of all. All of them had worked for Jews. And there were some whose fathers and forefathers had worked for the same family.

To steal from a Jew’s house, that was a craft a person learned over the years. It wasn’t easy to steal from Jews, they were alert and quick, but if you confused them, it was quite possible. After a year or two, one knew all the secrets—when they prayed and when they mated. On the holidays they were all in the synagogue, and that was the time to rifle through the drawers. To steal from a Jew’s house was a special kind of pleasure, almost like making love, declared one of them, and she made the women all laugh. Love affairs with Jews—that was also a matter they liked to explore. In that matter, there were some differences of opinion. Some women were sure that there was nothing like the Jews’ love; they were clean and gentle and never would abuse a woman. Others held that their manners were too refined. A woman needs a beast of the field, not caresses and whispers.

Meanwhile, they informed me that my lawyer had come to visit. Visiting hours were tense. Within a short time you had to take everything in and tell everything, and all through a narrow barrier. The shouts were deafening. My lawyer got permission to see me in a guardroom, not with everyone else.

Since the trial his hair, or rather, the remnants of his hair, had gone gray. He was short and balding, but no change had occurred in his expression, soft and attentive. “I’ve wanted to come to see you for a long time, but I couldn’t manage,” he apologized. He had brought me a package of sweets and a jar of jam. Meanwhile, he told me that he had managed to recover the jewels that Henni had left me from the agency that had confiscated them. From now on they would be in the prison office, and when the time came and I was freed, they would be returned to me, “And you’ll have a penny to keep body and soul together.”

“No need,” I said, very stupidly.

“A person never knows what the days have in store for him.”

Now he, too, seemed embarrassed. Perhaps he was disappointed because I hadn’t appreciated his efforts enough. To correct the impression, I said, “Everything is fine with me.” And that was the end of my words. He didn’t know what to say either, and he got to his feet. No one urged us to finish the conversation, but I, for some reason, hurried back to the shed.

At night I continued digging down in search of a path to my dear ones. It seemed to me, for some reason, that if I could get to Henni, I could get to them all. That feeling led me astray. The nights grew completely opaque—not a slit and no light. Only darkness on top of darkness, and here, among the bunks, as in every tavern, they would curse and blame the Jews. If it weren’t for the Jews, everything would be different. They must be exterminated, wiped off the face of the earth. There was no false note in those voices. They sounded as clearly as the mooing of a cow, and sometimes like a coarse folk song.

In my heart I knew that those voices didn’t have the power to hurt my dear ones, but nevertheless I wasn’t at ease. Who knows what harm a curse can do? My dear ones were wandering in the world of truth, laid bare, souls without bodies, and here the evil ones stood and reviled them day and night.

I hadn’t feared in vain. The next day I learned that a pogrom had taken place in one of the villages near the prison. The killing wasn’t very great, but there were many wounded. One of the jailers reported the details, and the news spread quickly. Apparently, the booty was plentiful this time. Now the peasants wouldn’t need the Jews’ stores anymore; they would have their own cloth, their own sugar, and high shoes of every type and size. Late that night a bottle of vodka passed from hand to hand. Everyone was happy that at long last they were letting the Jews have it.

At Passover, when it was permitted to give the women prisoners clothes and food, Jewish coats were already visible—lace dresses and woollen stockings and also a few new girdles. Everybody was happy, and they all tried them on.

“Why are you all alone?” One of the prisoners turned to me.

“I miss people.” The words came out of my mouth.

“You should forget everything. Everything that was is as if it never were.”

“And don’t you remember?”

“Certainly I remember, but right away I say to myself, You mustn’t remember. I’ve ordered my sisters and cousins not to come visit me. If I’m set free, I’ll go visit them. They don’t owe me anything. Visits just drive a person out of his mind. I would forbid visits. I don’t miss anything anymore. I did what I had to do, and now I can sit at ease.”

“What did you do?” I asked.

“I murdered my husband. Only you and I did the job all the way. The others just tried it and felt sorry about it.” A spark lit her eyes.

The prison was well guarded, but news still slipped in through every crack. The day before, we had heard that Sigi’s husband had been killed in a tavern. Everyone was pleased and drank, and I too joined in the pleasure. Sigi got drunk and in her drunkenness she announced, “I love our Lord Jesus with a great, powerful love. He is our Lord, He is our Savior. I knew He would take vengeance for me. Now the time has come for the Jews who killed God. I’ve worked for the Jews a lot and I stole a lot of money from them, but I’ll never forgive them for killing our Lord. How did those children of Satan dare to murder Him, for He is love and He is grace. God won’t forgive them. He has prepared a great revenge for them. You’ll see!”

She talked so much she vomited and turned as white as a sheet, but she didn’t stop cursing everyone who had tormented her throughout her life: her father and mother, her husband and children, the Jews and their cheating. If she hadn’t included the chief guard of the prison in her curses, the night would have ended happily and everyone could have slept in peace, but since she did include her, the jailers immediately pounced on her, beat her, and dragged her to the guardroom. The prisoners’ pleas were of no avail. That night she was tried and sent to solitary confinement, and that was the end of the great celebration.