Behind the partition, a man with a thick black beard, wearing torn pyjama bottoms instead of underpants, called out, his eyes and his false teeth glittering, 'Manechka, there's a bathing-costume for sale here. Shell we buy it?'
Musya Borisovna smiled at the joke; her low-cut shift revealed her breasts and she was covering them with one hand.
Sofya Levinton knew that these witticisms were anything but an expression of strength. It was just that terror became less terrible if you laughed at it.
Rebekka Bukhman's beautiful face looked thin and exhausted; she turned her huge, feverish eyes aside and ran her fingers through her thick curls, hiding away her rings and ear-rings.
She was in the grip of a cruel, blind life-force. Helpless and unhappy though she was, Fascism had reduced her to its own leveclass="underline" nothing could break her determination to survive. Even now she no longer remembered how, with these same hands, she had squeezed her child's throat, afraid that its crying would reveal their hiding-place.
But as Rebekka Bukhman gave a long sigh, like an animal that had finally reached the safety of a thicket, she caught sight of a woman in a gown cutting Musya Borisovna's curls with a pair of scissors. Beside her someone else was cutting a little girl's hair. A silky black stream fell silently onto the concrete floor. There was hair everywhere; it was as though the women were washing their legs in streams of bright and dark water.
The woman in the gown unhurriedly took Rebekka's hand away and seized the hair at the back of her head; the tips of her scissors clinked against the rings. Without stopping work, she deftly ran her fingers through Rebekka's hair, removed the rings and whispered:
'Everything will be returned to you.' Then, still more quietly, she whispered: 'Ganz ruhig. The Germans are listening.'
Rebekka at once forgot the woman's face; she had no eyes, no lips, just a blue-veined, yellowish hand.
A grey-haired man appeared on the other side of the partition; his spectacles sat askew on his crooked nose and he looked like a sick, unhappy demon. He glanced up and down the benches. Articulating each syllable like someone used to speaking to the deaf, he asked:
'Mother, mother, how are you?'
A little wrinkled old woman, recognizing her son's voice amid the general hubbub, guessed what he meant and answered:
'My pulse is fine, no irregularity at all, don't worry!'
Someone next to Sofya Levinton said:
'That's Helman. He's a famous doctor.'
A naked young woman was holding a thick-lipped little girl in white knickers by the hand and screaming:
'They're going to kill us, they're going to kill us!'
'Quiet, quiet! Calm her down, she's mad,' said the other women. They looked round – there were no guards in sight. Their eyes and ears were able to rest in the quiet semi-darkness. What pleasure there was, a pleasure they hadn't experienced for months on end, in taking off their half-rotten socks, stockings and foot-cloths, in being free of clothes that had become almost wooden with dirt and sweat. The haircutters finished their job and went away; the women breathed still more freely. Some began to doze, others checked the seams on their clothes for lice, still others started to chat quietly among themselves.
'A pity we haven't got a pack of cards!' said one voice. 'We could play Fool.'
At this moment Kaltluft, a cigar between his teeth, was picking up the telephone receiver; the storeman was loading a motor-cart with jars of 'Zyklon B' that had red labels on them like pots of jam; and the special unit orderly was sitting in the office, waiting for the red indicator lamp on the wall to light up.
Suddenly the order 'Stand up!' came from each end of the chang-ing-room.
Germans in black uniforms were standing at the end of the benches. Everyone made their way into a wide corridor, lit by dim ceiling-lamps covered by ovals of thick glass. The muscular strength of the smoothly curving concrete sucked in the stream of people. It was quiet; the only sound was the rustle of bare feet.
Before the war Sofya Levinton had once said to Yevgenia Nikolaevna Shaposhnikova, 'If one man is fated to be killed by another, it would be interesting to trace the gradual convergence of their paths. At the start they might be miles away from one another – I might be in Pamir picking alpine roses and clicking my camera, while this other man, my death, might be eight thousand miles away, fishing for ruff in a little stream after school. I might be getting ready to go to a concert and he might be at the railway station buying a ticket to go and visit his mother-in-law – and yet eventually we are bound to meet, we can't avoid it…'
Sofya looked up at the ceiling: the thick concrete would never again allow her to listen to a storm or glimpse the overturned dipper of the Great Bear… She was walking in bare feet towards a bend in the corridor, and the corridor was noiselessly, stealthily floating towards her. The movement went on by itself, without violence; it was as if she were gliding along in a dream, as if everything inside her and round her had been smeared with glycerine…
The door to the gas chamber opened gradually and yet suddenly. The stream of people flowed through. An old couple, who had lived together for fifty years and had been separated in the changing-room, were again walking side by side; the machinist's wife was carrying her baby, now awake; a mother and son looked over everyone's heads, scrutinizing not space but time. Sofya Levinton caught a glimpse of the doctor's face; right beside her she saw Musya Borisovna's kind eyes, then the horror-filled gaze of Rebekka Bukhman. There was Lusya Shterental – nothing could lessen the beauty of her young eyes, her nose, her neck, her half-open mouth; and there was old Lapidus walking beside her with his wrinkled blue lips. Again, Sofya Levinton hugged David's shoulders. Never before had she felt such tenderness for people.
Rebekka Bukhman, now walking at Sofya's side, gave a sudden scream – the scream of someone who is being turned into ashes.
A man with a length of hosepipe was standing beside the entrance to the gas chamber. He wore a brown shirt with a zip-fastener and short sleeves. It was seeing his childish, mindless, drunken smile that had caused Rebekka Bukhman to let out that terrible scream.
His eyes slid over Sofya Levinton's face. There he was; they had met at last!
Sofya felt her fingers itching to seize hold of the neck that seemed to creep up from his open collar. The man with the smile raised his club. Through the ringing of bells and the crunch of broken glass in her head, she heard the words: 'Easy now, you filthy Yid!'
She just managed to stay on her feet. With slow, heavy steps, still holding David, she crossed the steel threshold.
48
David passed his hand over the steel frame of the door; it felt cool and slippery. He caught sight of a light-grey blur that was the reflection of his own face. The soles of his bare feet told him that the floor here was colder than in the corridor – it must have just been washed.
Taking short, slow steps, he walked into a concrete box with a low ceiling. He couldn't see any lamps but there was a grey light in the chamber, a stone-like light that seemed unfit for living beings – it was as though the sun were shining through a concrete sky.
People who had always stayed together now drifted apart, began to lose one another. David glimpsed the face of Lusya Shterental. When he had first seen it in the goods-wagon he had felt the sweet sadness of being in love. A moment later a short woman with no neck was standing where Lusya had been. She was replaced by an old man with blue eyes and white fluff on his neck, then by a young man with a fixed wide-eyed stare.