The Theft
A gray snow was falling, the sky was gray, the ground was gray, and climbing from one snowy hill to another, the chain of people stretched along the entire horizon. We had to wait for a long time while the work-gang leader got his group into formation – as if some general were hidden beyond the hill.
The work gang lined up in pairs, and turned off the path – the shortest way home to the barracks – on to another road that had not yet been beaten down by convict feet. A tractor had passed this way recently, and the snow had not yet covered its tracks, which looked like the spoor of some prehistoric beast. The going was harder here than on the path, and everyone was hurrying. Every so often someone would stumble, fall behind, pull his snow-filled felt boots out of a drift, and rush to catch up with his comrades. Suddenly, as we came around an enormous snowdrift, there appeared the dark figure of a man in an enormous white sheepskin coat. Only when we came closer did I realize that the snowdrift was a low stack of flour sacks. A truck must have gotten stuck here, unloaded, and been towed away empty by the tractor.
The work gang walked rapidly past the stack of flour sacks toward the guard. Then they slowed down and the men broke ranks. Retreating in darkness, the men finally reached the glare of a large electric light-bulb hanging above the camp gates.
Complaining of cold and exhaustion, the work gang hurriedly got into an uneven formation before the gates. The overseer came out, unlocked the gates, and admitted the people to the camp ‘zone’. Even after we had entered the camp, people remained in formation right up to the barracks. I still understood nothing.
Only toward morning, when they started to divide up the flour, using a pot to scoop it up instead of a measuring cup, did I realize that for the first time in my life I had participated in a theft.
I did not find this particularly upsetting. Indeed, there was not even time to think about what had happened. We each had to cook our share by any means available – either as pancakes or as dumplings.