Of course, physics was determining the course of the twentieth century… Just as Stalingrad was now determining the course of events on every front of the World War.
But immediately behind Viktor, right at his heels, followed doubt, suffering, lack of belief.
18
Vitya, I'm certain this letter will reach you, even though I'm now behind the German front line, behind the barbed wire of the Jewish ghetto. I won't receive your answer, though; I won't be here to receive it. I want you to know about my last days. Like that, it will be easier for me to die.
It's difficult, Vitya, ever really to understand people… The Germans entered the town on July 7th. The latest news was being broadcast on the radio in the park. I was on my way back from the surgery and I stopped to listen. It was a war-bulletin in Ukrainian. Then I heard distant shooting. Some people ran across the park. I set off home, all the time feeling surprised that I'd missed the air-raid warning. Suddenly I saw a tank and someone shouted: 'It's the Germans.'
'Don't spread panic!' I warned. I'd been the day before to ask the secretary of the town soviet when we'd be evacuated. 'There'll be time enough to talk about that,' he'd answered angrily. 'We haven't even drawn up the lists of evacuees yet.'
Well, it was indeed the Germans. All that night the neighbours were rushing round to each other's rooms – the only people who stayed calm were myself and the little children. I'd just accepted that the same would happen to me as to everyone else. To begin with I felt utter horror. I realized that I'd never see you again. I wanted desperately to look at you once more. I wanted to kiss your forehead and your eyes. Then I understood how fortunate I was that you were safe.
When it was nearly morning, I fell asleep. I woke up and felt a terrible sadness. I was in my own room and my own bed, but I felt as though I were in a foreign country, alone and lost.
That morning I was reminded of what I'd forgotten during the years of the Soviet regime – that I was a Jew. Some Germans drove past on a lorry, shouting out: 'Juden kaput!'
I got a further reminder from some of my own neighbours. The caretaker's wife was standing beneath my window and saying to the woman next door: 'Well, that's the end of the Jews. Thank God for that!' What can have made her say that? Her son's married to a Jew. She used to go and visit him and then come back and tell me all about her grandchildren.
The woman next door, a widow with a six-year-old daughter – a girl called Alyonushka with wonderful blue eyes, I wrote to you about her once – came round and said to me: 'Anna Semyonovna, I'm moving into your room. Can you clear your things out by this evening?' 'Very well, I'll move into your room then.' 'No, you're moving into the little room behind the kitchen.'
I refused. There isn't even a stove there, or a window.
I went to the surgery. When I came back, I found the door of my room had been smashed in and all my things piled in the little room. My neighbour just said: 'I've kept the settee for myself. There's no room for it where you are now.'
It's extraordinary – she's been to technical school and her late husband was a wonderful man, very quiet, an accountant at Ukopspilk. 'You're outside the law!' she said, as though that were something very profitable for her. And then her little Alyonushka sat with me all evening while I told her fairy-tales. That was my house-warming party – the girl didn't want to go to bed and her mother had to carry her away in her arms. Then, Vityenka, they opened the surgery again. I and another Jewish doctor were both dismissed. I asked for the previous month's pay but the new director said: 'Stalin can pay you whatever you earned under the Soviet regime. Write to him in Moscow.' The assistant, Marusya, embraced me and keened quietly, 'Lord God, Lord God, what will become of you, what will become of you all?' And Doctor Tkachev shook me by the hand. I really don't know which is worse – gloating spite, or these pitying glances like people cast at a mangy, half-dead cat. No, I never thought I'd have to live through anything like this.
Many people have surprised me. And not only those who are poor, uneducated, embittered. There's one old man, a retired teacher, seventy-five years old, who always used to ask after you and send you his greetings and say, 'He's the pride of our town.' During these accursed days he's just passed me by without a word, looking in the other direction. And I've heard that at a meeting called by the commandant, he said: 'Now the air feels clean at last. It no longer smells of garlic. ' Why, why? -words like that are a stain on him. Yes, and how terribly the Jews were slandered at that meeting… But then of course, Vityenka, not everyone attended. Many people refused. And one thing – ever since the time of the Tsars I've associated anti-Semitism with the jingoism of people from the Union of Michael the Archangel. But now I've seen that the people who shout most loudly about delivering Russia from the Jews are the very ones who cringe like lackeys before the Germans, ready to betray their country for thirty pieces of German silver. And strange people from the outskirts of town seize our rooms, our blankets, our clothes. It must have been people like them who killed doctors at the time of the cholera riots. And then there are people whose souls have just withered, people who are ready to go along with anything evil – anything so as not to be suspected of disagreeing with whoever's in power.
People I know are constantly coming round with bits of news. Their eyes are mad and they seem quite delirious. A strange expression has come into vogue: 'hiding away one another's things.' People somehow think a neighbour's house is going to be safer. The whole thing is like a children's game.
An announcement was soon made about the resettlement of the Jews. We were each to be permitted to take 15 kilograms of belongings. Little yellow notices were hung up on the walls of houses: 'All occupants are required to move to the area of the Old Town by not later than 6.00 p.m. on 15 July, 1941. Anyone remaining will be shot.'
And so, Vityenka, I got ready. I took a pillow, some bedclothes, the cup you once gave me, a spoon, a knife and two forks. Do we really need so very much? I took a few medical instruments. I took your letters; the photographs of my late mother and Uncle David, and the one of you with your father; a volume of Pushkin; Lettres de mon moulin; the volume of Maupassant with Une vie; a small dictionary… I took some Chekhov – the volume with 'A Boring Story' and 'The Bishop' – and that was that, I'd filled my basket. How many letters I must have written to you under that roof, how many hours I must have cried at night – yes, now I can tell you just how lonely I've been.
I said goodbye to the house and garden. I sat for a few minutes under the tree. I said goodbye to the neighbours. Some people are very strange. Two women began arguing in front of me about which of them would have my chairs, and which my writing-desk. I said goodbye and they both began to cry. I asked the Basankos to tell you everything in more detail if you ever come and ask about me after the war. They promised. I was very moved by the mongrel, Tobik – she was particularly affectionate towards me that last evening.
If you do come, feed her in return for her kindness towards an old Yid.
When I'd got everything ready and was wondering how I'd be able to carry my basket to the Old Town, a patient of mine suddenly appeared, a gloomy and – so I had always thought – rather callous man called Shchukin. He picked up my belongings, gave me 300 roubles and said he'd come once a week to the fence and give me some bread. He works at the printing-house – they didn't want him at the front because of his eye trouble. He was a patient of mine before the war. If I'd been asked to list all the people I knew with pure, sensitive souls, I might have given dozens of names – but certainly not his. Do you know, Vityenka, after he came, I began to feel once more that I was a human being – it wasn't only the yard-dog that still treated me as though I were.