I looked around me. There was still the shelf. After that, we’d have to burn the bench, and after the bench, the table. But then where would we eat? The concrete slab was still frozen. We’d have to eat standing up.
‘What we eat will be cooked,’ I said, ‘but we’ll eat standing up. It’s not the end of the world.’
I sniffed at the steam that was rising from the saucepan. The flavour was starting to form. The onion and the salami tickled my palate. The cornmeal was still at the bottom: it had not yet begun to swell. That was what we were waiting for. But maybe the shelf and the bench would be enough, and we would still have the table to eat from. I went back to the bench and sat down. After a while, Bauer’s head started to drop and then he sat up straight. He was gradually falling asleep like that. I would have liked to do the same.
Suddenly I thought about our rifles that were leaning against the table behind us. What if the Jew crept out of the storeroom? I turned my head and glanced at him through the opening. He hadn’t moved. Bauer began breathing through his nose. He would end up falling fast asleep, even without coal in the stove to reassure him. Emmerich was fiddling with a button on his coat. The waiting and the warmth of the stove were sending each of us into our own little worlds.
That was why I stood up and went outside. I didn’t go far. I stayed on the threshold, under the eaves. With the stove radiating heat behind the door, and the saucepan steaming, the house seemed a bit less like a filthy Polish hovel.
A thin shower of snow fell from the roof in front of me, sparkling like silver. It was so light that I couldn’t even feel the wind that had lifted it off the roof. There must have been some sunlight, too, to make snowdust sparkle like that, but I couldn’t see the sun anywhere in the sky. I waited for another snow shower, without quite knowing why. But it was smoke from our fire that floated past my eyes.
The snowflake on the Jew’s hat was now tormenting me. It had followed me outside. It had come with me, in my thoughts. It had been there more or less constantly since the Jew had emerged from his hole, and I no longer had the strength to drive it away. All my strength had been drained by hunger and tiredness. I didn’t dare talk about it again to Emmerich or Bauer, I suppose because it was not the kind of torment that had me on my knees. When I looked at it directly, it was bearable. For that reason, I didn’t dare ask them for the help I needed.
It had seemed so unlikely that we would find one. But chance, being chance, had brought us one wearing something with the power to cause me pain. I had come outside to forget it a bit, but that hadn’t worked. All I had found was the cold silence of winter.
I laughed bitterly to myself at the thought that perhaps this snowflake was tormenting me for nothing. Perhaps it wasn’t his mother who had embroidered it? He might just have bought the hat, with the snowflake embroidered on it in a factory. There might be hundreds of other people who had worn the same one, who were wearing it even now.
Because if you want to know what it is that tormented me, and that torments me to this day, it’s seeing that kind of thing on the clothes of the Jews we’re going to kilclass="underline" a piece of embroidery, coloured buttons, a ribbon in the hair. I was always pierced by those thoughtful maternal displays of tenderness. Afterwards I forgot about them, but in that moment they pierced me and I suffered for the mothers who had, once, gone to so much effort. And then, because of this suffering they caused me, I hated them too. And the more I suffered for them, the more I hated them.
And if you want to know more, my hatred knew no bounds when they were not there to hug their darlings tightly to their breasts while I killed them. Once, they had embroidered a snowflake on their hat or tied a ribbon in their hair, but where were they when I was killing them?
Someone called my name. It was Bauer. I went back in, looked inside the saucepan, and sat down again on the bench. The flames were still high behind the mica window.
‘It’ll end up being cooked,’ Bauer told me.
‘I think so too.’
Then I said, ‘Why did you call me?’
‘I don’t know!’ he yelled in my ear.
I waited, hesitating, still not daring to ask for help. Better to do something else. So I said to Emmerich, about his son: ‘Listen, don’t make any threats. Tell him kindly what you think. Be honest and tell him what you told us — that it really bothers you to imagine him smoking. Listen, be direct about it. Don’t beat around the bush. Tell him you’ll be pleased if he doesn’t smoke.’
Emmerich leaned over and shot a look at me. His eyes glistened slightly. He was even smiling — not sadly, but sincerely.
‘I’d be happy, not just pleased,’ he said.
‘There you go, even better. Tell him you’ll be happy. I swear to you, he won’t be able to refuse you that.’
His smile widened. He rubbed one hand over his head, then the other one. After that, he didn’t know what to do with his hands, so he stared at them. He looked as though he was going to put them together.
‘Do it, Emmerich,’ I whispered. ‘Don’t be afraid to tell him.’
‘Yes, yes,’ Emmerich replied, lifting his eyes up.
‘It’s better like that, don’t you think?’ I asked Bauer. ‘Instead of threatening him.’
Bauer moved his head to one side, and then the other.
‘This is a good way of doing it,’ I insisted. ‘In fact, it’s the only way, really — to show his trust in him.’
‘Yeah, why not?’ Bauer said. I could tell he was not entirely convinced, but he said it to please Emmerich.
Thankfully Emmerich didn’t notice, and suddenly, quietly, as if to himself, he said, ‘It’s funny, isn’t it, because us three, here, we’d die if we couldn’t smoke.’
Put like that, what he said was so strange and true that we felt a bit disoriented, and stayed silent. And while each of us was dealing with that, as best we could, there was a knock at the door.
All three of us jumped, but we didn’t even have time to say a word, because the door was pushed open immediately afterwards. It was the Pole, the hunter, who I’d seen earlier, while I was collecting snow. His dog came in with him. The Pole crossed the threshold and shut the door behind him. The dog moved towards us. He still had those little balls of snow hanging on his neck. The Pole took his rifle from his shoulder and leaned it against the door, then moved towards the stove as calmly as if he were in his own home. And for a moment, forgetting he’d knocked, I believed that we really were in his house, sitting in front of his stove.
‘What do you want?’ Bauer asked him.
~ ~ ~
THE POLE DID not reply. Bauer grunted louder: ‘What do you want?’
The Pole signalled — as if he were sorry, but not very sorry — that he didn’t understand. We believed him. But that didn’t alter the fact that he was facing up to us, in spite of his somewhat apologetic demeanour. He was leaning with one hip against the stove, calm and impassive, just as if he were at home.
Sitting on the bench, we looked up at him, and began to smile at the desire he had — we understood this now — to show us he was not afraid of us. Because we didn’t care if he was afraid of us or not.
‘I know him,’ I said. ‘I saw him outside.’
‘What’s his name?’ Bauer asked me. And to amuse himself, he asked the Pole, ‘Have you come to eat? You’ll have to wait a while. It’s not cooked yet.’
Then he pretended to make a space for him on the bench, between us.
‘Come and sit down while you wait.’
The Pole remained motionless. Only his eyes moved, sparkling shyly like a wild animal’s, in reply to Bauer’s honeyed tone.
But while this was going on, the flames had begun to die down. I got up and filled the firebox with what was left of the chair. As I did this, I observed the Pole. He didn’t look at me, not even sideways. Bauer, who also noticed the way the Pole was ignoring me, as if I worked for him, said to me, ‘Do it properly for him.’