When the music stopped, Sofya Levinton wiped away her tears and said angrily: 'Yes, it's just what that poor man said!'
Then she glanced at the boy's face; even here, its peculiar expression made it stand out.
'What is it? What's the matter with you?' she shouted, gripping his hand. 'What is it? What's the matter? We're just going to the bathhouse to wash.'
When they had called for the doctors and surgeons, she had remained silent, fighting against some powerful force that she found repugnant.
The machinist's wife was walking along beside her; in her arms the pathetic little baby, its head too large for its body, was looking around with a calm, thoughtful expression. It was this woman, Deborah, who one night in the goods-wagon had stolen a handful of sugar for her baby. The injured party had been too feeble to do anything, but old Lapidus had stood up for her… No one had wanted to sit near him -he was always urinating on the floor.
And now Deborah was walking along beside her, holding her baby in her arms. And the baby, who had cried day and night, was quite silent. The woman's sad dark eyes stopped one from noticing the hideousness of her dirty face and pale crumpled lips.
'A madonna!' thought Sofya Levinton.
Once, about two years before the war, she had watched the sun as it rose behind the pine-trees on Tyan-Shan, catching the white squirrels in its light; the lake lay there in the dawn as though it had been chiselled out of some pure blue condensed to the solidity of stone. She had thought then that there was probably no one in the world who wouldn't envy her; and at the same moment, with an intensity that burnt her fifty-year-old heart, she had felt ready to give up everything if only in some shabby, dark, low-ceilinged room she could be hugged by the arms of a child.
She had always loved children, but little David evoked some special tenderness in her that she had never felt before. In the goods-wagon she had given him some bread and he had turned his little face towards her in the half-light; she had wanted to weep, to hug him, to smother him with kisses like a mother kissing her child. In a whisper that no one else could hear, she had said:
'Eat, my son, eat.'
She seldom spoke to the boy; some strange shame made her want to hide the maternal feelings welling up inside her. But she had noticed that he always watched anxiously if she moved to the other side of the wagon and that he calmed down when she was near him.
She didn't want to admit why she hadn't answered when they had called for doctors and surgeons, why she had been seized at that moment by a feeling of exaltation.
The column moved on beside the barbed wire and the ditches, past the reinforced concrete towers with their machine-guns; to these people, who no longer remembered freedom, it seemed that the barbed wire and the machine-gunes were there not to stop the inmates from escaping, but to stop the condemned from hiding away in the camp.
The path turned away from the barbed wire and led towards some low squat buildings with flat roofs; from a distance, these rectangles with grey windowless walls looked like the children's bricks David had once glued together to make pictures.
As the column turned, a gap appeared in the ranks and David saw that some of the buildings had their doors flung wide open. Not knowing why, he took the little box out of his pocket and, without saying goodbye to the chrysalis, flung it away. Let it live!
'Splendid people, these Germans!' said the man in front – as though the guards might hear and appreciate his flattery.
The man with the raised collar shrugged his shoulders in a manner that was somehow peculiar, gave a quick glance to either side of him and seemed to grow taller and more imposing; with a sudden nimble jump, as though he had spread his wings, he punched an SS guard in the face and knocked him to the ground. Sofya Levinton leapt after him with an angry shout. She stumbled and fell. Several hands grabbed her and helped her up. The people behind were pressing on; David glanced round, afraid of being knocked over, and caught a glimpse of the man being dragged away by the guards.
In the brief instant when Sofya had attempted to attack the guard, she had forgotten about David. Now once more she took him by the hand. David saw how clear, fierce and splendid human eyes can be when – even for a fraction of a second – they sense freedom.
By now the front ranks had already reached the asphalt square in front of the bath-house; their steps sounded different as they marched through the wide-open doors.
47
The warm, damp changing-room was quiet and gloomy; the only light came through some small rectangular windows.
Benches made from thick bare planks disappeared into the half-darkness. A low partition ran down the middle of the room to the wall opposite the entrance; the men were undressing on one side, the women and children on the other.
This division didn't cause any anxiety: people were still able to see each other and call out: 'Manya, Manya, are you there?' 'Yes, yes, I can see you.' One man shouted out: 'Matilda, bring a flannel so you can rub my back for me!' Most people felt a sense of relief.
Serious-looking men in gowns walked up and down the rows, keeping order and giving out sensible advice: socks, foot-cloths and stockings should be placed inside your shoes, and you mustn't forget the number of your row and place.
People's voices sounded quiet and muffled.
When a man has no clothes on, he draws closer to himself. 'God, the hairs on my chest are thicker and wirier than ever – and what a lot of grey!' 'How ugly my fingernails look!' There's only one thing a naked man can say as he looks at himself: 'Yes, here I am. This is me!' He recognizes himself and identifies his T, an T that remains always the same. A little boy crosses his skinny arms over his bony chest, looks at his frog-like body and says, 'This is me'; fifty years later he looks at a plump, flabby chest, at the blue, knotted veins on his legs and says, 'This is me'.
But Sofya Levinton noticed something else. It was as though the body of a whole people, previously covered over by layers of rags, was laid bare in these naked bodies of all ages: the skinny little boy with the big nose over whom an old woman had shaken her head and said, 'Poor little Hassid!'; the fourteen-year-old girl who was admired even here by hundreds of eyes; the feeble and deformed old men and women who aroused everyone's pitying respect; men with strong backs covered in hair; women with large breasts and prominently veined legs. It was as though she felt, not just about herself, but about her whole people: 'Yes, here I am.' This was the naked body of a people: young and old, robust and feeble, with bright curly hair and with pale grey hair.
Sofya looked at her own broad, white shoulders; no one had ever kissed them – only her mother, long ago when she was a child. Then, with a feeling of meekness, she looked at David. Had she really, only a few minutes ago, forgotten about him and leapt furiously at an SS guard? 'A foolish young Jew and an old Russian pupil of his once preached the doctrine of non-violence,' she thought. 'But that was before Fascism.' No longer ashamed of the maternal feelings that had been aroused in her – virgin though she was – she bent down and took David's narrow little face in her large hands. It was as though she had taken his warm eyes into her hands and kissed them.
'Yes, my child,' she said, 'we've reached the bath-house.'
For a moment, in the gloom of the concrete changing-room, she glimpsed the eyes of Alexandra Vladimirovna Shaposhnikova. Was she still alive? They had said goodbye. Sofya had gone on her way, and now reached the end of it; so had Anya Shtrum.
The machinist's wife wanted to show her little son to her husband, but he was on the other side of the partition. Instead she held him out, half-covered in diapers, to Sofya Levinton and said proudly: 'He's only just been undressed and he's already stopped crying.'