The Confession

2

When we were captured in the trenches near Humenne and marched westward, I had wondered what the prisoner-of-war camp would be like. My imagination had come up with details of a hypothetical cell: dirt floor, bunk, a slot in the door for food, maybe a hole in the corner for a toilet, and certainly a barred window one had to stand on one’s toes to look through to see the sun. None of these details matched the cell on Yalta Boulevard. It was extremely small, like-as Georgi had said-a soundproof water closet; unlike Georgi’s cell, this one was unlit. The ground was rough concrete, and there was no hole in it, only a small pot in the middle of the floor. No bunk and no window, no matter how high I reached my fingers up the wall. Then I remembered: I was under the earth.

The darkness settled on me with real weight. It became thicker with time, and after a while I could only sit in the corner, lacking the strength to climb up through it. I touched the dead German soldiers on my fingers and repeated their names. I think it helped, because it reminded me that in the war people died indiscriminately, and I was back in that world. That was at least familiar. I would live or I would die based on the whims of people I could not see, could not argue my case with. Fatalism settled into me with the fog.

But with time either the darkness sheds its weight, or you shed yours, because I began, without realizing it, to pace. Three steps took me to the back of the cell; two crossed its breadth. But I was able to make a kind of lap by using infant steps. Sometimes I ran into the wall-the concrete left a scrape on the tip of my nose-but I learned to sense the wall by the movement of air along it, and turned, quickly, to continue my lap.

The tiny cell stank of mildew and my sweat and urine. I held off defecating as long as I could-how long, I don’t know-then gave in. I used my undershirt to cover the small pot, but that didn’t help the stink.

My fatalism wavered over the hours. It wasn’t as strong as it had first appeared. I was still healthy-physically, at least-and could stand up straight. That in itself seemed enough to assure my survival. I was strong, and it didn’t make sense that a man as large and strong as I was could simply be erased.

This is the irrationality of darkness. You begin to grasp at little things. Just the sound of your footsteps on concrete give hope: They are so loud in the absence of all other sounds, they are godlike.

The hunger that came on and off and twisted my stomach into knots seemed like the only way to track time. I could go without eating for a couple days, which perhaps meant I’d been there two days. I considered banging on the steel door and calling for food, but I doubted my voice would make it through. And this was what I knew they wanted, for me to panic.

At some point a slot at the base of the door opened, filling the cell with a dim, painful light. This, at least, was something I had imagined while walking under German guard: an opening in the door for food. A tray slipped through, spilling soup from a tin bowl. Bread, and a brackish, chunky liquid I could not identify. By the time the slot closed again, I had almost finished it.