Katerina

28

AGAIN, THE DAYS WERE BRIGHT and hot and I worked harvesting corn. The skin disease continued to spread over my face in a thick rash, and everyone avoided me. The chief jailer assigned me a corner of the field so I wouldn’t have contact with anyone. After a day’s work, I would return alone, and behind me, at a good distance, followed the jailer. If I hadn’t been a murderess, they certainly would have freed me. They free afflicted people, but they are strict with murderesses.

Only the other Katerina, from my village, dared to approach me. I told her that it didn’t hurt much and that I could bear it. It was a discomfort you could overcome. I was glad to have found the correct words. Katerina lowered her head, as though I had recited a verse from Scripture.

Poor Sophia, the woman I had beaten, called from a distance, “Katerina, for my part I forgive you for everything. If only we could see you healthy among us.” She wore a broad peasant kerchief on her head, and she looked like a miserable servant.

The nights were hot and close, with no air to breathe. Like black snakes, the trains twisted through the valley. Prisoners no longer stood by the bars and shouted, “Death to the merchants, death to the Jews.” Now there was no doubt that after the Jews were all dead, they would free all of us. We had to await their death patiently. Not many were left, and those few were being transported in trains. Through cracks in the wall I caught the whispers. It wasn’t malice but tense expectation.

How correctly they had guessed only became known to me later. Even during that accursed summer I was cut off from all my dear ones. My isolation and illness surrounded me like a tight band. The fire was trapped in my bones, wiping out every part of me. My soul dried out from day to day in my swollen body.

And at night, strong flames would penetrate my sleep and lick my flesh. I was very close to death, but each time an escape opened before me. After all, prison isn’t a sealed freight car. More than once during that long summer I wanted to loose the shackles from my hands, to grasp one of the prisoners and shake her powerfully. They used to grovel before the jailers like slaves, all for a bit of drink or some powder or cologne. One mustn’t grovel, and one mustn’t wish for other people’s death. Death isn’t the end. There are heights upon heights, cried all my limbs. My mother used to come back to my body and fill me with courage. My arms were ready for the struggle, but there was no strength in them. The prisoners knew that, and they didn’t fear me anymore.

There was one very old woman in the sheds, a woman of about ninety, who had completed her prison term years earlier but refused to be set free and asked to stay. Her wish was granted, and she remained not only with the women of her generation but also those of the two following generations. She was the prison’s memory. She recalled all the practices of earlier years—who was freed and when, who was sick and who was healed, who had a bitter fate and who was fortunate. But, mainly, she taught the prisoners patience. Patience is a holy virtue. When a person acquires that virtue, no harm can come.

Years earlier, her glance had encountered me, and she hated me. She immediately declared that my expression—though it was indeed a Ruthenian one, and you could see I had grown up in a good Christian home—something had become muddied there, irreparably. Poor Katerina tried to defend me, but the old woman stuck to her opinion: “The Jews have destroyed her soul, and she can never be redeemed.” Since I had fallen sick, I became an example that she constantly cited. “You can see with your own eyes what the Jews did to her. Hell is roasting her in this world.”

“How many trains went by last night?”

“Seven.”

“I see they’ve picked up the pace.” I heard Sigi’s voice.

They all compared and counted. The trains passed through the valley with crisp speed, like red-hot bullets. I was shut off and heavy. If there was anyone I hated, it was that old woman. She didn’t speak anymore but prophesied, and her prophecies were poisoned arrows. “In a little while,” she used to whisper, “in a little while the end will come to all the killers of our Lord Jesus. One mustn’t rush the end. Let things take their course. Everything is for the best.”

Nobody realized how close the end was. One morning we saw that there was no one on the towers. Black crows hopped on the flat roofs. The jailers had fled, too. Even the commissary had abandoned his storeroom. None of us could believe our eyes.

“There are no more Jews,” announced the old woman. “Arise, women, and return to your homes.” But no one dared get up. The sun was full and low, and a silence, like after a great war, was spread on the valley and on the barren ridges. Sigi stretched her hand, a large hand, through the bars of the window and said, “Everything has stopped moving.”