We went back the way we had come. After about a quarter of a mile, we turned off into the wood. Gooskin then jumped down from the cart and strode off, looking alertly around him.
We glimpsed a German greatcoat. Somewhere in the bushes. Gooskin homed in on it.
“You stay where you are!” he shouted out to us. “I won’t be long!”
This round of negotiations did not take long. Gooskin reappeared, now accompanied by two friendly Germans who, with both words and gestures, were explaining the path we should follow to avoid the quarantine post.
We did as they said and happened on another German. This time it took only a couple of minutes to reach an understanding. Next we happened on some peasant or other. We thrust a few coins at him too, just in case. The peasant took the coins, but he stood there for a long time, gazing after us and scratching behind his left ear with his right hand. It seemed we needn’t have bothered.
In the evening we saw the lights of Klintsy, the large Ukrainian shtetl that was our goal. Our caravan was already bumping along the cobbled street when, for the last time, Gooskin jumped down, ran up to a passerby and held out some money to him. First surprised, then frightened, the passerby shied away and refused the money.
And we understood that the zone, this enigmatic border zone, now truly did lie behind us.
Klintsy was a large shtetl with a railway station, cobbled streets, stone houses, and even, here and there, electric lighting.
Klintsy was full of people like us. Getting across the border was evidently not the end of the story. It did not entitle a person to roam freely about the Ukraine. Here too one had to run around getting all kinds of papers and documents from all kinds of bureaus and offices. All this took time—and so Klintsy was packed full of travelers.
We wandered about, seeking a haven. One by one, carts peeled off and disappeared. In the end, all that was left of our caravan was its head: our own little family of carts—wet, dirty, and despairing.
It was slow going. Gooskin walked beside us on the pavement, knocking on doors and shutters, asking if we could stay the night. Beards and hands were thrust out of windows. Gesturing and waving in different ways, they all refused us.
We sat there in silence, blank and downcast, chilled to the marrow. It was as if Gooskin had loaded three carts with worthless junk and was now trying to sell this junk to people who merely shooed him away.
“Yes,” said Olyonushka, as if guessing my thoughts. “He’s carting us around as if we were young calves! But then why shouldn’t he? We’re not much different from calves—all we want is something warm to drink and a place to lie down for the night.”
Eventually, by the gates of a newly built two-story house, Gooskin entered into so animated a dialogue with an elderly Jew that our carters stopped the horses. Experienced as they were, they understood that this might be leading to something. The dialogue was intensely theatrical. One moment—all sinister whispers; the next—frenzied yells. Both parties spoke at the same time. And then, at a moment when they were both waving their arms in the air and shouting what seemed like the most terrible of curses, making Olyonushka cling to me and shout, “They’re going to throttle each other!”—at this alarming moment Gooskin calmly turned toward us and said to the carters, “Well, go on. What are you waiting for? Drive into the yard.”
While the old man began to open the gates.
The house we now entered was, as I have said, new. It had electric lighting, but the layout of the rooms was unusual—the front door opened straight into the kitchen. We, as honored guests, were taken further, but the owners themselves—the family who must have built this mansion—appeared to have gotten stuck in the kitchen. The whole of this huge family huddled together there, on beds, chests and benches and on blankets spread out on the floor.
The head of the family was an old woman. Next came the old woman’s husband—the tall bearded man who had let us in. Then the daughters. Then the daughters’ daughters, the daughters’ husbands, the son of the son’s wife, the son’s daughters and some kind of a shared grandson whom they were all bringing up together, with much love and shrieking.
The first thing we did, for form’s sake, was to ask the old woman how much she would be charging us. This truly was just for form’s sake—there was nowhere else we could have gone.
The old woman pulled a mournful face and threw up her hands: “Ach, don’t talk money! How can anyone make money out of the misery of others? Out of the misery of those who have nowhere to lay their head! We have enough space and we have all we need (here the old woman turned to one side and spat, to ward off the evil eye), so what do we want with your money? Go and rest, my daughter’s daughter will give you a samovar and anything else you need. But first of all, get yourselves dry. And don’t worry about anything. What do I want with money?”
Moved by her words, we made eloquent protests.
I studied this remarkable woman. As her faith required, she was wearing a wig—or rather, a piece of black cloth with white stitching to represent a parting.
“No,” Averchenko said to Gooskin. “We can’t possibly take advantage of such magnanimity. We absolutely must make her see reason.”
Gooskin smiled enigmatically.
“Huh! You really don’t need to worry on that score. Believe me!”
None of us was more deeply moved than Olyonushka. With tears in her eyes, she said to me, “You know, I think God has sent us on this journey to show us that there are still kind, magnanimous people in the world. Here we have a simple old woman. She is not rich but she is gladly sharing with us her last mite. Though we are complete strangers to her, she has taken pity on us!”
“An astonishing old woman,” I agreed. “And, most astonishing of all, she doesn’t really… she doesn’t have a particularly nice face.”
“Yes, it just goes to show. One really mustn’t judge by appearances.”
We were both so moved that we even turned down the offer of fried eggs. “Poor old woman… giving us her all and everything!”
Meanwhile Gooskin and the old man, wasting no time, set about the complex task of trying to obtain all the necessary passes and documents—so we could be sure to be on our way in the morning.
First, the old man went off somewhere on his own. Then he came back to fetch Gooskin and take him along too. They came back together—and Gooskin went off again on his own. Then Gooskin came back and announced that the authorities required me and Averchenko to present ourselves to them, without delay.
It was already eleven o’clock and we wanted to go to bed, but what could we do? Off we went.
We had only the vaguest idea what kind of authority to expect. Commandant, commissar, Cossack junior officer, clerk, provincial governor…“Here we are—at your bidding!” We were long accustomed to being without rights; we no longer even inquired where we were being dragged to, whom we had to see next or why. Olyonushka was right—we were little different from calves.
We came to an official-looking building. Something between a post office and a police station…
In a small whitewashed room, an officer was sitting at a table. By the door stood a soldier. A new kind of uniform, which meant they must be Ukrainians.
“Here you are!” said Gooskin and stepped aside.
Our patron—the old woman’s husband—took up position by the door, looking very alert indeed. At the first hint of trouble, he’d be off in a flash.
The officer, a young blond fellow, turned toward us, studied us attentively and, all of a sudden, broke into a broad, joyful, and astonished smile.
“So it’s true? Say who you are.”