anyone to take
their water-melons to market with him.
After being in the car it was particularly pleasant to walk. I have a
horror of road accidents, especially when pedestrians are involved. Thank
goodness no blood was shed. The woman must have been frightened rather than
hurt.
One day many years ago I was walking through Moscow feeling in rather
low spirits. I was just graduating from the institute and the faculty would
not accept my diploma thesis. There was something about it they didn't like.
It had frightened them somehow. Actually it was rather a silly piece of
work, but the heads of the faculty, and I myself for that matter, were slow
to realise this. Later on, when I had to defend it, its foolishness was
safely exposed and I got a good mark for it. But that day in the street I
was depressed. It was cold and slippery and there was wet ice on the
pavements. Suddenly I noticed a lorry backing out of a narrow passage
between two buildings. There were two little boys on the pavement, one about
eight, the other nearer four. At the sight of the approaching lorry the
elder boy abandoned the little one and ran to safety. I shouted at the top
of my voice. The little fellow heard nothing. He was watching the pigeons
and had lapsed into that state of profound meditation that is known only to
philosophers and children. He was so small that the end of the lorry had
already passed unhindered over his head. I managed to run up and drag him
away in time. Luckily the lorry had been moving very slowly, the driver
being particularly careful because of the ice.
The little boy never realised what had happened. He was warmly wrapped
up and only his fresh little face was visible under a fur hat with earflaps.
Neither mothers nor drivers are proof against all eventualities, and this is
where the pedestrians come in. And even they derive some benefit from such
incidents. At that moment I made up my mind once and for all that the
meaning of life did not lie in diploma work, nor even in the opinion of the
faculty, but in something else.
Perhaps, in being a decent kind of pedestrian? At bottom, all these
cars, aeroplanes, locomotives are really nothing but the children's
perambulators that we pedestrians either pull or push.
After sitting for so long in someone else's car it was a pleasant
relief to be walking on firm ground. The earth is always ours, no matter who
or what makes it spin. The main thing is the sense of freedom and peace it
gives us. You are not being moved by some external force, you are moving
yourself. And what's more, you cannot run anybody over. Of course, someone
may run you over, but then you could also be hit on the head by a falling
brick. The main thing is not to throw bricks about.
I walked home congratulating myself on never having bought a car, and
on having sold my bicycle.
I think our best thoughts occur to us when we are moving at a speed of
not more than five kilometres per hour.
--------
One day in summer
One hot summer day I was sitting near the pier eating ice-cream
sprinkled with broken nuts. That's the kind of ice-cream they sell here.
First they put firm little dollops in a metal dish, then sprinkle nuts on
top. I suppose I could have refused the nuts (peanuts, to be exact), but no
one else did, so I didn't either.
The girl at the ice-cream counter in her crisp white overall, looking
cool and therefore pleasant, was working silently, in a smooth, steady
rhythm. No one wanted to break this established rhythm. It was too hot and
we were all too lazy.
The flowering oleanders cast light shadows on the tables of the
open-air cafe. A salutary breeze from the sea drifted through their
straggling branches carrying a sweetish smell of decay from the tired pink
flowers. Through the oleanders I could see the pier and the sea.
Now and then anglers' boats would pass slowly, each with its home-made
trawl consisting of a basket on an iron hoop.
It was Saturday and they were catching shrimps in preparation for the
morrow's fishing. Sometimes a boat would heave to and the men in the stern
would haul in the basket with its heavy load of sand and silt and bend over
it searching for the shrimps and slopping handfuls of silt over the side.
Having emptied the basket, they would rinse it out, then throw it over the
stern again and row as far away from it as possible so as not to frighten
the shrimps with their boat. They were keeping very close to the shore
because in this kind of weather shrimps come right up to the water's edge.
On the upper deck of the pier holiday-makers were queueing for the
launch. From the water came the sound of boys' voices vying with each other
in asking, or rather, demanding that the people in the queue should throw
them coins. Responding reluctantly to these urgings, someone would
occasionally toss a coin into the water. Judging by the faces that peered
over the rail, this occupation afforded no one any great amusement. One of
the lads stayed at some distance from the pier and kept demanding throws
into the deep water. Sometimes a sparkling coin would fly in his direction.
It was harder for him to catch it out there, of course, but on the other
hand he had no rivals to contend with and could work in peace.
Some of the lads were diving straight off the pier. The sound of their
bodies splashing into the water and of their young voices was refreshing.
When a launch arrived and took on its passengers, the lads who had been
lucky enough to retrieve a few coins ran up the steps and bought ice-cream.
Wet and shivering, they would devour their portions with a noisy clattering
of spoons, then run back to the pier.
"Is this seat free?" I heard a man's voice above my head.
Beside me stood a man holding a dish of ice-cream and a folded
newspaper.
"Yes," I said.
He nodded, drew back a chair and sat down. I had been so taken up with
the sea that I had failed to notice his approach. His accent and a slight
drawl told me that he was a German. He was in his mid-fifties, sunburnt,
with a vigourous crop of short fair hair, a slightly asymmetrical face and
bright, clear eyes.
The newspaper was one of our Black Sea publications. He scanned it for
a while, laid it aside with a little smirk and set about his ice-cream. The
smirk emphasised the lopsidedness of his face and I wondered if the habit of
smirking in this fashion had perhaps pulled the lower part of his otherwise
regular features to one side.
Curious to know what it was he had laughed at, I tried to peep into his
newspaper.
"Want to read it?" he asked promptly, noticing my not very skillful
attempt, and held it out to me.
"No," I said and, sensing in his tone a desire for communication,
added, "You speak very good Russian."
"Yes, I do," he assented, and his bright eyes flashed even brighter.
"And I'm proud of it. Still, I've been studying the language since I was a
boy."
"Have you really?" I said.
"Yes," he repeated vigourously, and added with an unexpected touch of
slyness, "Can you guess why?"
"I don't know," I said, trying not to look quite so sociable if that
was what my face had expressed in the first place. "To be able to read
Dostoyevsky in the original?"
"Exactly," he nodded, and pushed aside the empty ice-cream dish. All
this time he had been hard at work on its contents without for a moment
letting me out of range of his intensely bright eyes. To perform both these
tasks at once he had been forced to lower at me most of the time.
"How do you find it here?" I asked.
"Good," he nodded again. "I came with my wife and daughter, though it's
very expensive here."
"Where are they?" I asked.
"I'm waiting for them to come back from the beach," he said, and looked
at his watch. "I decided to go for a walk in town by myself today."
"Look here," I said suddenly, trying not to appear too enthusiastic.
"Suppose we drink a bottle of champagne together?"
"I'm with you," he said good-naturedly, and spread his arms.
I rose and went to the bar. All blue plastic and glass, with dazzling
streamlined curves, the bar looked more like a flying machine than part of a
catering establishment.
Surrounded by this synthetic splendour sat the bar-tender eating hominy
and cheese in an attitude of bucolic bliss. His wife was standing over him
and at his knee, with one hand rummaging thoughtfully in a large drawerful
of sweets, was a child.
"Champagne and a kilo of apples," I said, having inspected the counter.
The one and only waitress was standing next to me, her back against the
bar, eating ice-cream. The barman wiped his hands with a rag and, clicking
his tongue, reached into the ice-barrel. The waitress did not stir.
"He's a foreigner," I said with a nod in the direction of my table.
The barman responded with a comprehending motion of his head and I
sensed his hand going deeper among the tinkling icicles in the barrel. The
waitress went on calmly eating her ice-cream.
"Tell the kids to keep quiet," I heard the barman's voice behind me.
The young coin-divers had taken over a free table next to ours. Their
elbows were beating a tattoo on the table. One of them kept shaking his head
to get the water out of his ear, and this sent the others into fits of
irrestrainable laughter. Their wet, sunburnt skin was speckled with goose
pimples. They all looked the picture of health, and it was pleasant to watch
them.
The waitress brought a dish of apples and a bottle of champagne. Having
put the dish on the table, she started taking the foil off the bottle. The
lads at the next table froze in expectation of the pop, but then I noticed
that the waitress had forgotten the glasses and stopped her. Not in the
least offended by my interference, nor in any way embarrassed by her own
mistake, she went for the glasses. She appeared to have a very keen sense of
her own independence, and also to take a secretly ironic view of her
customers. It was particularly noticeable as she walked away swinging her
broad hips, but not too much, just for her own pleasure, not for anyone
else's benefit.
A minute later she reappeared with two tall narrow glasses. She removed
the cork skillfully, letting out the air little by little, so that the boys,
who had again frozen in expectation of a big bang, were once again
disappointed. We drank to having made each other's acquaintance.
"Magnificent stuff," said the German, and replaced his empty glass
firmly on the table. Tiny beads of perspiration had broken out on his
forehead. The champagne really was good.
"Were you living in Germany during the time of the Nazis?" I asked when
the conversation turned to Mikhail Romm's film Ordinary Fascism, which he
praised highly. Apparently he had seen it at home in West Germany.
"Yes," he said. "From start to finish."
"Well, it's all over now," I said. "What do you think? Was Hitler a
clever or gifted man in his way?"
"He was never a clever man," the German shook his head, twisting his
lip a little to one side. "But he did possess some sort of hypnotic gift, I
believe."
"In what sense?"
"His speeches roused the mob, worked them up into a kind of
politico-sexual psychosis."
"What about Mein Kampf?" I said. "What would you call that?"
"In form it's a typical stream of consciousness. But in contrast to
Joyce, it's a stream of a very foolish consciousness."
"Never mind the form," I said. "The thing that interests me is how he
set about proving, let us say, the necessity for exterminating the Slavs."
"In Mein Kampf that was all wrapped up in very vague phrases. It was
only brought out into the open after they had got power. Mein Kampf was
written in 1924. On the whole, it's a wretched, semi-literate piece of
work," he added contemptuously, and I felt that the subject had begun to
bore him.
"Is that what you think now or have you always thought so?" I asked.
"Always," he replied, rather haughtily it seemed to me, and added
suddenly, "and I nearly paid the price for it."
He paused as if to recall something or, perhaps, wondering whether to
continue.
"Are you tired of my questions?" I asked, pouring champagne.
"Not a bit," he replied promptly, and having sipped at his glass again,
set it down firmly on the table. Apparently he had some doubts about the
stability of the glass.
"It was just a boys' prank," he said with a smile. "Two of my friends
and I got into our university one night and scattered pamphlets around. We
quoted a few illiterate passages from Mein Kampf and argued that a man who
didn't know the German language properly could not claim to be leader of the
German people."
"And what happened?" I asked, trying not to appear too curious.
"We were saved by the primitive mentality of the police," he said and
rose, emptying his glass, at the sound of the launch's siren.
"I'll be back in a moment," he said with a nod, and set off briskly
towards the pier, moving fast on his muscular legs. I noticed that he was
wearing shorts.
The boys' table was now occupied by a local pensioner, a smallish
chubby old man in a clean tussore tunic. On the table before him stood a
bottle of Borzhomi mineral water and a small tumbler, from which he would
occasionally take two or three sips, then munch his lips and, fingering a
string of prayer beads, go on watching the passers-by with idle curiosity.
Everything about him seemed to say: here am I, I've worked hard all my
life and now I'm enjoying a well-earned rest. I drink Borzhomi if I want to,
I count my beads if I want to, and, if I want to, I can just sit and look at
you. And there's nothing to stop you doing a good job of work in life so
that afterwards, when your time comes, you too can enjoy a well-earned rest
as I am doing now.
At first he was alone, then he was joined by a big carelessly made-up
woman wearing a necklace of wooden beads, who sat down at his table with a
dish of ice-cream. They talked animatedly and all the time the old man's
voice seemed to emanate a chilly intellectual superiority, which his
companion sought ineffectually to melt, with the result that her own voice
began to betray a certain secret resentment and even reproach. But this the
old man ignored, persisting obstinately in the tone he had adopted from the
start. I listened.
"Japan is now considered a great country," the pensioner remarked. "And
as a matter of fact they do have some very beautiful women."
"But the men are all ugly," his companion retorted joyfully. "In
'forty-five I saw lots of Japanese POWs in Irkutsk and there wasn't a single
good-looking man among them."
"Prisoners of war are never good-looking," the pensioner interrupted
superciliously, as though revealing some profound psychological truth behind
her ethnographical observation and thus disposing of the modest value of the
observation itself.
"I don't see why..." the woman began, but the old man in tussore silk
raised his finger and she fell silent.
"However, Japan is at the same time a major source of potential
aggression," he said, "because she is tied up with America through banking
capital."
"If you ask me, they're all a lot of scoundrels in America, except for
about ten per cent," the woman responded and, noticing the old man touching
his beads, herself began to finger her necklace.
"A country of enormous wealth," the pensioner proclaimed thoughtfully,
and propped his elbows on the table, two sharp, uncompromising elbows
outlined through the wide sleeves of his tussore tunic.
"Dupont's daughter," he began, but the thought of the educational level
of his audience made him pause. "Do you know who Dupont is?"
The woman looked confused. "Oh yes, that one..."
"Dupont is a multi-millionaire," the old man declared harshly. "And
compared with a multi-millionaire a millionaire is considered a mere
beggar."
"Good heavens," the woman sighed.
"Well," the pensioner continued, "Dupont's daughter came to a reception
wearing diamonds worth ten million dollars. Now I suppose you'll ask why no
one robbed her?"
The old man leaned back, as though offering time and space for the
widest conjecture.
"Why?" the woman asked, still overawed by the wealth of the
multi-millionaires.
"Because she was guarded by fifty detectives disguised as distinguished
foreign guests, " the pensioner concluded triumphantly, and sipped at his
Borzhomi from the small tumbler.
"Now they've published Admiral Nelson's private correspondence," the
woman remarked. "A man can write all sorts of things to a woman..."
"I know," the old man interrupted sternly. "But that's the English."
"It's a shame anyhow," said the woman.
"Vivian Leigh," the pensioner continued, "tried to save the admiral's
honour but she failed."
"I know," said the woman, "she's dead, isn't she?"
"Yes," the old man affirmed. "She died of tuberculosis because she
wasn't allowed to have any sex life. When a person has tuberculosis or
cancer," holding the beads in one hand he bent down two fingers on the
other, "all sex life is categorically forbidden!"
This sounded like some kind of mild warning. The old man glanced
sideways at the woman, trying to sense her attitude to the matter.
"I know," the woman said, not allowing him to sense anything.
"Vissarion Belinsky also died of tuberculosis," the old man recalled
suddenly.
"Tolstoy is my favourite writer."
"It depends which Tolstoy," he corrected her. "There were three of
them."
"Leo Tolstoy, of course," she replied.
"Anna Karenina," he remarked, "is the greatest family novel of all
times and all nations."
"But why was she so jealous in her love of Vronsky?!" the woman
exclaimed, as if she had been sorrowing over this for years. "That's such a
terrible thing. Quite unendurable."
A crowd of holiday-makers had left the beach and was drifting lazily up
the street. The foreign women among them in their short beach robes seemed
particularly long-legged. A few years ago they had not been allowed to walk
into town in such attire; now apparently is was tolerated. My new
acquaintance reappeared.
"They seem to be very late," he said without any special regret.
I poured out some more champagne.
"That's German punctuality for you," I said.
"German punctuality is very much exaggerated," he replied. We drank. He
took an apple from the dish and bit into it vigourously.
"So it was the primitive mentality of the police that saved you?" I
reminded him when he had swallowed his bite of apple.
"Yes," he nodded, and went on, "the Gestapo turned the whole
philosophical faculty upside down but for some reason they left us alone.
They decided it must have been the work of students whose line of study
would enable them to compare Hegel's style with Hitler's. One day all the
students of the philosophical faculty had their lecture notes confiscated,
although we had printed our pamphlets in block capitals. Two of the students
refused to surrender their notes and were taken straight from the university
to the Gestapo."
"What did they do to them?" I asked.
"Nothing," he replied, allowing his asymmetrical face to break into a
sardonic smile. "Released them the next day with profound apologies. These
brave fellows had influence in high places. One of them had an uncle who
worked in Goebbels' office, or pretty near it. Admittedly, while they were
finding this out, they gave him a nice..." He paused and made an eloquent
gesture with his fist.
"A black-eye," I suggested.
"Yes, a black-eye," he repeated the expression that had evaded him with
some pleasure. "And he went about for a whole week with that black-eye, very
proud of it. Actually that was one of the typical things about the Reich--a
return to primitive tribal relationships."
"Was this deliberate or part of the logic of the regime?"
"Both, I think," he replied after a pause. "The Reich bosses tried to
pick their men on a local as well as a family basis. Sharing the same
accent, the same memories of a certain part of the country and so on
provided them with a substitute for what educated people call spiritual
affinity. And then, of course, there was the system of the invisible
hostage. Our family, for instance, lived in constant fear because of
mother's brother. He had been a Social-Democrat, arrested in thirty-four.
For several years we were able to correspond with him, then out letters
started coming hack stamped 'adressat unbekannt', meaning that the person
they were addressed to was no longer there. We told mother he must have been
moved to another camp where correspondence was not allowed, but my father
and I suspected that he had been killed. And after the war we learned that
he had been."
"Tell me," I said. "wasn't this a handicap for you while you were at
college or at work?"
"Not directly," he said slowly, speaking between pauses, "but one
always had a feeling of uncertainty or even guilt. It's a difficult kind of
feeling to express in words. You have to experience it in reality. It seemed
to get stronger, then tail off, then come on again. But it never disappeared
altogether. A kind of inferiority complex towards the state--that's how I
could define that particular condition."
"You put it very clearly," I said and poured out the rest of the
champagne. Whether it was the drink or the precision of his definition I am
not sure, but I did envisage very clearly the condition he had described.
"To give you an even better idea, I'll tell you about something that
happened to myself," he said and, smacking his lips, placed his empty glass
on the table. He was certainly enjoying the champagne.
"What about another bottle?" I suggested.
"Fine," he said, "but you must let me pay for it."
"That would be contrary to our custom." I said, swelling with pride in
my own generosity.
I held up the empty bottle for the waitress to see. She was watching a
workman crouched beside the barrel where the ice-cream was kept. He was
breaking up a large lump of ice wrapped in wet sackcloth. The waitress
nodded and turned unwillingly to the bar. My companion offered me a
cigarette and lit one himself.
The pensioner was still talking to the woman at his table. I listened
again.
"Churchill," he declared sententiously, "recognised no other drink
except Armenian brandy and Georgian Borzhomi."
"Wasn't he afraid they'd take their revenge on him?" said the woman,
nodding at the bottle of Borzhomi.
"No," the pensioner replied blandly. "Stalin had promised him. And you
know how Stalin kept his word?"
"Of course," said the woman.
"I wonder," the German remarked, "what is the popular local wine here?"
"I have read the Stalin-Churchill correspondence," the pensioner said.
"It's an extremely rare book."
"At the moment," I said, still listening to the conversation at the
next table, "Isabella is the favourite."
"You couldn't lend it to me to read, could you?" the woman asked.
"Never heard of it," said my companion after some reflection.
"No, I cannot, my dear," the pensioner replied more gently, to soften
the refusal. "But I can let you have some other rare book. I've been
collecting rare books ever since I retired."
"It's a local peasant wine." I said. "It happens to be in fashion at
the moment."
The German nodded.
"Have you got Woman in White?"
"Of course," the pensioner nodded. "I have all the rare books. "
"Lend it to me. I read fast," she said.
"I can't lend you Woman in White, but you can have any of my other rare
books."
"But why can't you lend me Woman in White?" she asked bitterly.
"Not because I don't trust you but because someone else has it at
present," said the old man.
"Fashion is a remarkable thing," my companion observed suddenly,
stubbing out his cigarette on the side of the ash-tray. "In the 'twenties
there used to be a popular film actor who made himself up to look exactly
like Hitler."
"How do you mean?"
"He either sensed or foresaw the kind of looks that would appeal to the
lower middle classes as a whole. And a few years later the image he had
created turned up in the real person of Adolph Hitler."
"That's very interesting," I said.
The waitress came up with a fresh bottle of champagne. Instead of
allowing her to uncork it, I took the cool wet bottle myself. She cleared
away the empty ice-cream dishes.
I removed the foil from the neck of the bottle and, holding down the
white polythene cork with one hand unfastened the wire with the other. The
cork pressed up against my hand with all the force of a strong, living
creature. I released the air gradually, then poured out the champagne. As I
tipped the bottle a wisp of vapour rose from the neck.
We each drank a full glass. The new bottle was even cooler and tasted
better still.
"After I had graduated," he said, still replacing his glass on the
table in the same firm, deliberate manner, "I was accepted by the institute
of the famous Professor Hartz. In those days I was considered a young and
promising physicist and they put me in a group engaged in theoretical
studies. The scientists at our institute led a rather secluded existence and
tried to cut themselves off as much as possible from the life around them.
But this was becoming more and more difficult, if only because one might
easily be killed any day by the American bombing. In 1943 several districts
in our town were bombed so badly that even the medieval enthusiasts could
not pass them off as picturesque ruins. More and more cripples from the
Eastern Front kept appearing in the town, and more and more tormented
women's and children's faces, but Goebbels' propaganda went on proclaiming
victory, in which by this time no one, in our circle at least, had any
belief whatever.
"One Sunday afternoon, when I was sitting in my room reading a novel of
pre-Nazi days, I heard the voices of my wife and someone else, a man, coming
from the next room. My wife's voice sounded worried. She opened the door and
looked anxiously into my room.
" 'There's someone to see you,' she said, and stood aside to admit a
person who was a complete stranger to me.
" 'You're wanted at the institute,' he said after a brief greeting.
'It's for an urgent conference.'
" 'Why didn't they ring me up?' I asked, watching him closely. He must
be some new man from the administrative side, I decided.
" 'You can probably guess,' he said significantly.
" 'But why on Sunday?' my wife protested.
" 'We don't discuss orders from our superiors,' he retorted with a
shrug.
"By that time we were used to the police making a great show of
vigilance around our institute. There was nothing we could do about it. You
had only to ring from one room to another to speak to a colleague about some
problem connected with our work and the line would go dead. This was
regarded as a means of protecting us against any leakage of information.
Now, apparently, they had decided to inform us of top-secret conferences by
their own official messengers.
" 'I'll be ready in a minute,' I said, and began changing.
" 'Perhaps you would like a cup of coffee?' my wife suggested. I could
still feel the alarm in her voice.
" 'Very well,' I replied, and nodded to reassure her.
" 'Thank you,' the man said, and sat down in an armchair, glancing out
of the corner of his eye at the bookshelves. My wife left the room.
" 'I am from the Gestapo,' the man informed me when he had heard the
door close behind my wife in the next room. He said this in a toneless voice
as if trying to contain the explosive force of his statement as far as
possible.
"I felt my fingers instantly go numb and fumbled helplessly to button
my shirt. By a great effort of will I managed to overcome their rigidity and
guide the buttons into place, and then adjust my neck-tie. To this day I
remember those few seconds of suffocating silence, the deafening rustle of
my starched shirt, the sudden irritation with my wife for always using just
that little bit too much starch in the washing and--most surprising of
all!--the sense of embarrassment at having to do something so disrespectful
as change my clothes in this stranger's presence, while all the time the
underlying thought behind these sensations was that I must not hurry, must
not show any sign of alarm.
" 'Well, what can I do for you?' I asked him at last.
" 'I am sure it's something quite trivial,' he said without the
slightest expression in his voice, apparently still listening for any sounds
in the other room. The sound of a door opening told us that my wife was
bringing the coffee.
"We looked at each other and he understood my silent inquiry at once.
" 'No need to cause anxiety,' he said, and gave me a significant
glance. I nodded as cheerfully as I could. I had to show that I had nothing
to be afraid of and was confident of getting home soon. I slipped a marker
into the novel I had been reading closed it briskly and dropped it on the
table. If he had been watching my behaviour, this gesture should have told
him that I expected to return to my book that evening.
" 'We have decided we had better go right away,' he said rising, when
my wife appeared in the doorway with a steaming tray.
" 'It can't be as urgent as all that.' I protested.
"I took a cup of coffee and drank it standing, in a few searing gulps.
He also sipped a little coffee. My wife was still disturbed. She realised
that while she had been out of the room I must have elicited some more
definite information from my visitor and she looked inquiringly into my
eyes. I gave no answer to her glance. She looked at him but he remained even
more inscrutable. There was something indefinably odd about him. Perhaps it
was the oddness of the insurance agent. His dark-blue mackintosh gave him a
rather sombre elegance.
" 'But you'll be back for dinner?' she asked, when I had returned the
cup to the tray. It was still four hours till dinner time.
" 'Of course,' I said, and looked at him. He nodded, either to confirm
what I had said or in approval of my taking up his game.
"When we had left and the house was some distance behind us, he halted
and said, 'I'll go on ahead and you'll follow.'
" 'At what distance?' I asked, marvelling at my own readiness to live
according to their instructions.
" 'About twenty paces,' he said. 'I'll wait for you at the entrance. '
" 'All right,' I said, and he walked on ahead of me. There were two
weak spots in my biography--the fate of my uncle and the pamphlets. I
realised they must know all about my uncle. But how much did they know about
the pamphlets? Six years had passed since then. But for them there was no
statute of limitations and they never forgave anything. Surely none of the
others had let it out? I had told only one other person, an old
school-friend of mine. I trusted him as much as I trusted myself. But
perhaps one of the others had, like myself, confided in a friend and that
friend had betrayed him? But if they knew something, why did they not arrest
me straightaway? Turning all this over in my mind, I walked on in the wake
of my escort. He seemed to be in no hurry. In his slouch hat and dark-blue
mackintosh he now looked more like a street lounger.
"The Gestapo office was situated in an old mansion surrounded by tall
plane trees. On one side it looked over a field, where some schoolboys were
playing football. Several bicycles lay gleaming in the grass. It was strange
to see these lads and hear their excited voices so near this sinister
building whose purpose was common knowledge in the town. The pavement on
this side of the street was almost deserted. People preferred to keep to the
other side. I followed my escort down a dimly lit corridor. There was no
guard on the door. My escort stopped and waited for me at a pass-office
window. When he saw me approaching, he caught the duty officer's eye and
nodded in my direction. The duty officer was speaking on the phone. He
glanced at me and put down the receiver.
"There was a cup of tea on his desk with a crushed slice of lemon
floating in it. He stirred it with a spoon and sipped. We walked on down the
corridor, at the end of which I could make out the iron cage of a lift. We
entered the lift. He slammed the iron door and pressed a button. The lift
stopped on the third floor.
"We came out of the lift and walked down a long corridor lit by dim
electric bulbs, then turned down a side corridor and into another and at
last, when I thought the corridors would never end, we halted at a door
padded with black leather, or some kind of material that looked like black
leather.
"My escort nodded to me to wait, took off his hat and opened the door a
little. But even before he opened it, he and his dark-blue mackintosh seemed
to melt into the black background of the door. This corridor like all the
others was poorly lighted.
"Five minutes later the door opened again and I saw the pale blob of my
escort's face in the blackness of the door. The blob nodded and I entered
the room.
"It was a large, well lighted room with windows looking out over the
field where the boys were still playing football. I had not expected to find
myself on this side of the building. It may have been pure coincidence but
at the time I was sure they had deliberately confused my sense of direction.
The large desk was bare save for an inkstand, an open folder and a pile of
clean notepaper. Behind it sat a man of about thirty with a narrow,
carefully shaven face. We greeted each other and he extended his hand to me
over the desk.
" 'Won't you sit down,' he said, and nodded to an armchair. I sat down.
He spent a minute or so rather casually leafing through the contents of the
file that lay in front of him. The desk was very wide and it was quite
impossible to read what he was looking at. But I was certain that the file
was about me.
" 'Have you been at the institute long?' he asked, still thumbing the
pages casually. I replied briefly, quite sure that he knew far more about me
than his question indicated. He turned a few more pages.
" 'In what department?' he asked. I named my department and he nodded,
still examining the file as though seeking confirmation of what I had told
him.
" 'How do they feel at the institute about the war against Russia?' he
asked, and this time he raised his head.
" 'Like the whole German people,' I said.
"A faint expression of boredom appeared in his dark, almond-shaped
eyes.
" 'Could you be more specific?'
" 'Scientists are not very interested in politics, you know,' I said.
" 'Unfortunately,' he nodded pompously and, putting on a more dignified
air, added suddenly, 'Do you know that the Führer himself finds time to take
an interest in the work of your institute?'
"A glassy look came into his eyes and for a second his whole appearance
bore a distant resemblance to Hitler.
" 'Yes, I do,' I said.
"The institute authorities had often told us confidentially about this
and made it clear that in response to this exceptional interest on the part
of the Führer we should display exceptional zeal in our work.
" 'But the Führer is not the only person who is interested in your
work,' he continued after a generous pause, in which I was granted time to
enjoy the pleasant side of the matter. 'The enemies of the Reich are also
interested.'
"The glassy look reappeared in his eyes and he again resembled the
Führer, this time in expressing ruthlessness towards the Reich's enemies.
"I shrugged. This was a relief. Apparently he did not know about my
escapade at the university. He went back to the file, leafed through it,
then stopped suddenly and began to read a page with raised eyebrows. The
tension grew inside me again. He did know, after all.
" 'Your uncle seems to have been a Social-Democrat?' he queried, as
though he had quite by chance discovered a slight blemish in my intellectual
background. Even the way he said 'your uncle' seemed to express contempt
for, rather than hatred of, the Social-Democrats.
" 'Yes, he is,' I said.
" 'Where is he now?' he asked, making no attempt to conceal the falsity
in his voice. I told him the whole story, which he knew perfectly well
already.
" 'There you are, you see,' he nodded, and his tone seemed to indicate
that this was the inevitable outcome of such hopelessly obsolete patriarchal
convictions. But I was wrong. His tone indicated something quite different.
" 'There you are,' he repeated. 'We trust you, but what is your
response?'
" 'I trust you too,' I said, as firmly as I could.
"He nodded. 'Yes, I know you are a patriot, even though your uncle was
a Social-Democrat.'
" 'Was?' I could not help repeating, and felt a sudden stab of pain in
the chest. We had kept hope alive in spite of everything. Apparently the
Gestapo man had said more than he intended. Or was he merely pretending to
have done so?
" 'Was and still is,' he corrected himself, but this sounded even more
hopeless. 'I know you are a patriot,' he repeated, 'but the time has come
for you to show your patriotism in practice.'
" 'What have you in mind?' I asked. The hand leafing through the file
stopped for a moment and appeared to stroke an unopened page. He seemed
scarcely able to resist the pleasure of turning it. Once again I had a
suspicion that he knew something about those pamphlets.
" 'Help us in our work,' he said simply, and looked into my eyes.
"I had never expected this. My face must have expressed either fright
or revulsion.
" 'You won't have to come here,' he added quickly. 'One of our people
will meet you about once a month and you will tell him...'
" 'Tell him what?' I interrupted.
" 'The attitude of scientists, instances of hostile or subversive
statements,' he said evenly. 'We need relevant information, not
surveillance. You know how much importance is attached to your institute.'
"He sounded like a doctor persuading a patient to take the prescribed
medicines.
"His dark, almond-shaped eyes were watching me steadily. The skin on
his clean-shaven, bluish face was so taut that it looked as if any grimace,
any private expression would cause him pain by pinching the already
overstrained skin. He therefore tried to maintain only one expression on his
face that was in line with the general direction of his service.
" 'If it were a matter of any hostile statements,' I said,
involuntarily bringing my own voice and face in line with this general
direction, 'I would consider it my duty to bring them to your notice in any
case.'
"As soon as I began to say this the faint expression of boredom again
appeared in his eyes and I suddenly realised that all this was to him merely
a long familiar form of refusal.
" 'Bearing in mind the fact that we are at war,' I added, to make it
sound more convincing. This had eased the situation. It was not the first
time they had heard a refusal.
" 'Yes, of course,' he said expressionlessly, and reached out for the
telephone as it began to ring.
" 'Yes,' he said, and a voice grated in the receiver. 'Yes,' he
repeated from time to time as the voice went on. His monosyllabic replies
sounded impressive and I sensed that he was playing the high official for my
benefit.
" 'He's bluffing,' he said suddenly into the receiver, and I gave an
involuntary start. 'Here, in my room,' he added. 'Come over.'
"All this time he must have been talking about me over the phone. This
fisher of my soul now rose to his feet, took a bundle of keys out of his
pocket and walked over to a safe and, as he did so, another man entered the
room. I felt instinctively that this must be the person who had just been
speaking on the phone. He glanced at me with a kind of casual curiosity, and
I decided that they had not been talking about me.
"The first Gestapo man opened his safe and bent forward to look inside.
I caught a glimpse of several rows of mousy-coloured files standing tightly
packed on the shelves. He hooked two fingers into one of them and pried it
out. The file actually seemed to resist and at the last moment, as it
reluctantly gave in, emitted a kind of squeal, like the cry of a captured
animal.
"The files were so tightly packed that the row closed again at once, as
though nothing had been removed. The other man took the file and silently
left the room.
" 'So you don't want to co-operate with us?' said my interrogator,
resuming his seat. His hand again glided to the unopened page and stroked
it.
" 'Hardly that,' I said, feeling my eyes drawn irresistibly to the page
that was quivering under his hand.
" 'Or is it your uncle's principles that forbid it?' he asked. I felt
the spring of annoyance within him begin to tighten. And all of a sudden I
realised that the main thing now was not to show him that it was normal
human decency that prevented me from having any connection with him.
" 'Principles have nothing to do with it,' I said. 'It's simply that
every job demands a sense of vocation.'
" 'You should try. Perhaps you have the right one,' he said. The spring
had slackened a little.
" 'No,' I said, after a little reflection. 'I am no good at hiding my
thoughts. I am far too talkative.'
" 'Is that a hereditary defect?'
" 'No,' I said, 'just part of my character.'
" 'By the way, what was this incident at the university?' he asked
suddenly, raising his head. I had not noticed him turn the page.
" 'What incident?' I asked, feeling a dryness in my throat.
" 'Shall I remind you?' he asked, pointing to the page.
" 'I don't remember any incident,' I said, and braced myself.
"We eyed each other for several long seconds. If he knows, I thought, I
have nothing to lose. And if he doesn't know this is still the only way to
act.
" 'Very well,' he said suddenly, drawing a clean sheet from the pile of
paper and placing it before me. 'Put it all down on paper.'
" 'Put what down?'
" 'That you refuse to help the Reich,' he said.
"So he doesn't know, I thought, feeling renewed strength. He knows that
there was some such incident while I was studying but nothing more. And now
I took a quiet pleasure in estimating the extent of his knowledge.
" 'I'm not refusing,' I said, pushing the sheet gently aside.
" 'So you agree, then?'
" 'I am quite prepared to carry out my duty to my country but without
these formalities,' I said, trying to choose the mildest possible
expressions. The pamphlet danger seemed to have passed, but I was afraid he
might bring it up again. At the moment when he had asked me straight out, I
had been almost certain that he had no precise knowledge, but now that the
danger seemed to have passed I was even more afraid to return to this dark
spot. Instinctively I was trying to get as far away from it as possible and
I sensed that this could only be done at the price of some concession. He
can only be diverted by the chance of a breakthrough somewhere else, I
thought.
" 'No,' he said, and a rather sentimental note crept into his voice,
'you'd better put it down honestly in black and white that you refuse to
perform your patriotic duty.'
" 'I'll think it over,' I said.
" 'Yes, of course you must,' he said amicably and, opening a drawer,
took out a cigarette and lighted it. 'Have a smoke?' he suggested.
" 'Yes,' I said.
"He produced an open packet from his drawer and offered it to me. I
took a cigarette, and then noticed that his own cigarette was from another,
more expensive packet. I almost laughed in his face as he offered me a
light. Even in this, apparently, he had to feel his superiority.
"I was silent and so was he. I was supposed to be thinking things over.
Silence was to my advantage.
" 'You should bear in mind,' he recalled suddenly, 'that our service
has not done away with material incentives.'
" 'In what sense?' I asked. This was subject worth developing. I had to
impress upon him that I was moving in his direction.
" 'We don't pay too badly,' he said.
" 'How much?' I asked with deliberate arrogance. I had to show him that
he had succeeded in overcoming what they would call my weak-kneed
intellectual scruples. A flicker of resentment appeared in his eyes--this
was an insult to the firm. Perhaps I had gone too far.
" 'That would depend on the fruitfulness of your work,' he said. Yes,
fruitfulness--that was the word he used.
"I shook my head regretfully, as if I had been considering my budget.
'No,' I said. 'They don't pay me too badly at the institute.'
" 'But in time we shall be able to provide you with a good flat,' he
said in some alarm. Now we were bargaining.
" 'I have a good flat already,' I said.
" 'We'll give you a flat in a district that has the best air-raid
shelter in the city,' he promised, and looked out of the window. 'The
American gangsters of the air have no mercy even on women and children.
Under these conditions we have to look after our personnel.'
"That was a typical sample of national-socialist logic. The Americans
were bombing women and children, so there had to be special protection for
Gestapo men. Altogether this dangerous game lasted for about three hours.
The essence of it was that I had to display a readiness to join them but at
the last moment I must appear to be held back by a purely self-centred
attitude of caution or some other consideration far removed from ordinary
standards of human decency. At one point he nearly cornered me by pointing
out with a fair degree of logic that I was actually working for
national-socialism as it was, and my attempt to avoid any direct commitment
was merely a refusal to face the facts. However, I managed to evade the
issue. This tragic problem had been discussed often enough in our own
circle, which was naturally a very narrow and trusted one. History had
granted our generation no right of choice and to demand any more of us than
ordinary decency would have been unrealistic."
My companion broke off and lapsed into deep thought. I poured out more
champagne and we again emptied our glasses.
"Do you rule out the idea of heroism?" I asked involuntarily.
"No," he replied quickly. "Heroism is something I would compare with
genius, moral genius."
"And what is the conclusion from that?" I asked.
"I believe that heroism always implies a supreme act of reason,
practical action, but a scientist who refused to work for Hitler would not
make his protest heard further than the nearest Gestapo office."
"But one doesn't have to give a direct refusal," I said.
"An indirect refusal would be pointless. Nobody would understand such a
gesture and there would always be someone else to fill the gap when the
person in question was eventually removed, if there was a gap to fill."
"All right," I said. "But even if no one notices his removal, he can
still refuse for the sake of his own conscience, can he not?"
"I don't know," he said, and gave me a rather strange look. "I have
never heard of such a case. That's far too abstract, too maximalist.
Something out of The Karamazov Brothers... But I know that in your country
you take a different view of heroism too."
"We believe that heroism can be inculcated," I replied with some relief
at getting back to a less complex subject. I had begun to think that he was
misunderstanding me.
"I don't think so," he shook his head. "Under our conditions, the
conditions of fascism, it would have been quite wrong and even harmful to
ask a person, particularly a scientist, to offer heroic resistance to the
regime. If you put the issue that way--either heroic resistance to fascism
or complete involvement in it--what you are doing, as a friend of mine once
remarked, is to completely disarm people morally. There were some scientists
who at first condemned our conciliatory tactics, then gave up the whole
thing and concentrated on making a career. Say what you like, but common
decency is a great thing."
"But common decency could not defeat the regime?"
"Of course, not."
"Then where's the solution?"
"In this case the solution was provided by the Red Army," he said, and
his asymmetrical face broke into a smile.
"But if Hitler had been more careful and not attacked us?"
"He could have chosen a different time, but that's not the point. The
point is that the very victories he achieved in such feverish haste were the
result of the corruption of a regime which even without the Red Army could
not have lasted more than two or three generations. But that was just the
situation in which what I call decency would have acquired even greater
significance as a means of preserving the nation's moral fibre for a more or
less opportune historical moment."
"We are getting away from the subject," I said. "What happened to you
after that?"
"Well, to put it briefly," he resumed, lighting another cigarette, "the
hunt for my soul lasted about three hours, in the course of which he left
the room and returned several times. In the end we both got tired and he
suddenly marched me off to someone I took to be his boss. We entered a huge
waiting room with a middle-aged woman, a rather plump brunette, sitting at a
desk loaded with telephones. Three other people were waiting in the room and
I recognised one of them as the man who had come in for the file. The woman
was speaking on the telephone. She was talking to her daughter. Apparently
the girl had just come home from a picnic and was pouring out an excited
story. I could feel that even at some distance from the phone. It was rather
strange to hear such things in a place like this. Then a bell rang on the
desk.
" 'All right, that's enough for now,' I heard the woman say as she put
down the receiver. She stood up and walked quickly into the office. The four
Gestapo men drew themselves up respectfully. Two minutes later she
reappeared.
" 'Go inside,' she said and, as she went back to her desk, gave me a
look that set my nerves on edge. Only a woman can give you that kind of
look. Such a vicious look, I mean. No, there was none of the hatred or
contempt that I could expect at any moment from those other four. That look
of hers consisted of a feline curiosity in my guts on the one hand, and
complete confidence in her master, on the other. It may have been the effect
of fatigue, but I actually felt as if my guts might at any moment rise into
my throat.
"We went into the office. It was an even more luxurious chamber with an
even bigger desk loaded with telephones of various colours, and an inkstand
shaped like the ruins of an old castle. A big man, who looked rather like
the manager of a flourishing restaurant, was sitting at the desk. He was
darkhaired and wore a fawn suit with a flamboyant necktie.
"He offered no one a seat and we remained standing by the door. The
three men from the waiting room, closer to the desk, and I with my escort a
little further away.
" 'So he can't make up his mind?' the chief boomed thunderously,
staring at me with astonished eyes. 'A promising young scientist and he
won't co-operate with us? I just can't believe it!' he exclaimed, and
suddenly rose to his full, impressive height.
"His astonished eyes seemed to implore me to deny this false and
perhaps even maliciously invented information that his assistants had
supplied. As soon as he spoke, I realised he was aping Goering. This was a
fashion among functionaries of the Reich in those days. Each of them chose
for himself the mask of one of the leaders.
" 'And this at a time when hordes of Asians are hurling themselves at
the sacred soil of Germany, at a time when gangsters of the air are bombing
innocent children to death!' He motioned towards the window and to the field
beyond where the children were still playing football. They must have been
different children by this time, but it seemed to me that both the field and
the children had been cultivated specially by the Gestapo for purposes of
illustration.
" 'I am not refusing,' I began, but he interrupted me.
" 'Do you hear that? Didn't I tell you?' he exclaimed. He seemed about
to jump on the desk in his enthusiasm. But his tone changed soon enough when
he addressed his assistants. 'So you failed to explain to him where his duty
lies. You couldn't find the key that exists for every German heart.'
"He looked at me with his bovine eyes and I could see that he was
asking for my consent not so much for me to work for them but as a boost to
his pedagogical prestige. Let us both put these incompetent devils to shame,
he seemed to be suggesting--the murderous clown.
" 'You see, it's like this...' I began, sensing that this pedagogical
process was going to cost me dear. But just at that moment, to my good
fortune, the door opened. He glared at the door like an infuriated bull. It
was the secretary.
" 'Berlin,' she said softly, and nodded towards one of the telephones.
"He seized the receiver, and it was immediately obvious that we had all
vanished from the face of the earth and even he, as he bent over the phone,
had correspondingly diminished in stature.
"We withdrew silently to the waiting room, and from the waiting room
into the corridor. The secretary ignored us completely.
"I returned with the fisher of my soul to his office. I felt that he
was utterly fed up with me. I also sensed that both he and his colleagues
were at heart glad that their chief had failed in his pedagogical efforts.
My man made no further attempt to argue with me.
"He signed my permission to leave, wrote a telephone dawn on a slip of
paper, and said, 'If you make up your mind, ring this number.'
" 'All right,' I said, and left the room. I don't remember how I found
my way home. As I walked through the streets I felt the kind of weakness and
pleasure that one experiences on first getting up after a long illness. When
I was sure that no one was following me, I tore up the slip of paper and
threw it into a refuse bin, though for some reason I still tried to remember
the number.
"The next day I did not telephone, of course. But every day after that
I lived in a state of constant suspense. One evening when I came home from
work my wife said that the phone had rung but, when she had answered it,
someone had put the receiver down at the other end. A few days later I
myself answered the phone and again there was no reply, or rather I heard
someone carefully replace the receiver. Or perhaps it was my imagination.
"I didn't know what to think. In the street and in buses I began to
have the impression that there was a detective's eye upon me.
"At the entrance to the institute I would feel nervous if the guard on
duty took more than usual interest in my pass.
"Two or three months went by. One day an old school friend of mine rang
up. He was now a well-known criminal lawyer and lived in Berlin. As usual we
agreed to meet for a walk in town and then go back to my house for dinner.
My wife was delighted. His company always had a good effect on me and now I
particularly needed something to liven me up.
"He was a witty talker, rather frivolous, but always a good friend.
Whenever he visited us from Berlin he would bring with him a whole
collection of anecdotes that gave us a better idea of what was going on in
the Reich than any other type of information.
"On this occasion he rang off with his usual 'Heil Hitler, thank you
for your attention', referring to the fact that all hotel telephones were
monitored. For the first time in all these weeks I found myself smiling
broadly. I, too, was convinced that my telephone was being tapped.
"My friend and I had similar views on everything that was happening in
Germany. Incidentally, he was the only person I had told about my student
escapade.
" 'I don't believe the Reich is going to last a thousand years but
it'll last quite long enough for our generation,' he would say when we
talked about it. Like everyone with a gift for humour he was a pessimist.
During the past year the information from the Eastern Front had made it look
as if he had overrated the Reich's potential. When I had told him this
during his previous visit, he had disagreed.
" 'On the contrary,' he had exclaimed. 'I underrated the extent of
Hitler's madness.'
"We met in the lounge of his hotel. As soon as we were out in the
street and at a safe distance, I said, 'Well, start away. Hitler goes into
an air-raid shelter and there...'
" 'My God!' he exclaimed. 'Only night watchmen tell that kind of story
nowadays. The latest thing is the carpet-eater series. '
" 'What's that?' I asked.
" 'Listen,' he said, and started on one story after another. Their
general theme was that Hitler, on hearing the news of fresh defeats on the
Eastern Front, would throw himself on the floor of his study and bite the
carpet. We passed several blocks and he was still relating stories from what
seemed a quite inexhaustible series. The last one he told, which was far
from the best, has engraved itself on my memory.
"Hitler goes into a shop to buy a new carpet. 'Shall I wrap it up for
you, or do you wish to gnaw it on the premises?' asks the salesman.
"He had just told this story, when my Gestapo man appeared round the
corner coming towards me. In my confusion I could not make up my mind
whether to greet him or not. At the last moment I realised that this would
he the wrong thing to do, but then I noticed that my friend and he had
nodded to each other.
"We walked on. My mind was in a whirl. He went on talking but I could
not understand a word. His voice seemed to come from far away. Feverish
thoughts raced through my head. He was working for the Gestapo. They had
called him as a witness. I should be shot.
"And yet I still clung to the hope that the Gestapo man was merely a
chance acquaintance of his. Perhaps they had met in connection with one of
his cases. He had often told me that the Gestapo interfered in political and
criminal trials alike.
"But how could I find out? The realisation came to me in a flash. It
was quite simple. I must ask him straight out. If they had met by chance he
would say who he was, but if they had a secret connection he would, of
course, invent something.
" 'By the way, who was that you nodded to?' I asked a few minutes
later. Oh God, how much depended on his answer. How I would have hugged him
if only he had told me the whole truth!
" 'Oh, just someone I happen to know,' he replied with studied
indifference. I felt his momentary hesitation and all the rest seemed to
take place in a mist. There was an air-raid warning. We ran for cover. Near
a gutted building we spotted an old air-raid shelter that had caved in on
one side.
"He pushed me inside and slithered down the concrete steps after me.
Anti-aircraft guns barked overhead. A bomb burst some distance away and I
felt the earth give a frightening heave. Gradually the anti-aircraft fire
moved away to another part of the town and the sound of bursting bombs grew
fainter.
"It's bad enough to die in an air-raid, I thought, but how much worse
to be murdered by the Gestapo. Not so much because of the torture. There was
something mystical about it, like being strangled by a ghost.
"Perhaps this was because you were isolated from everyone else and
punished in the name of the whole country.
"But what had I done? I had merely written what every educated person
in the country knew already. Had I invented new rules for the German
language? And why is it that something which everyone of us sees separately
cannot be seen by all of us together? But what really worried me was this
sense of guilt. Why should I feel that? There must have been some point when
I had tacitly, unknowingly agreed to play this game? Otherwise why should I
feel guilty?
"We were still sitting on the cold concrete floor, which was strewn
with brick rubble. In the semidarkness the broken bricks looked like stains
of blood on the floor.
" 'Oh, hell!' he said, and began to brush himself down. 'This seems to
be something one never really gets used to.' He rummaged in his overcoat and
took out a packet of cigarettes.
" 'Have a smoke?'
" 'No,' I said. He flicked his lighter several times before he got a
flame, then his round head stood out plainly against the glow of the
cigarette. Just like target, I thought suddenly, as it melted into the
darkness. The decision formed spontaneously in my mind. His head will show
up like that another three times, I decided, and I'll do it. And yet after
the third time I felt I must ask him once again.
" 'Listen, Emil,' I said. 'Who was that you nodded to in the street?'
"He must have noticed something in my voice. I sensed it in the damp,
menacing stillness of the shelter. Soil trickled down between the beams of
the roof. I heard the tiny grains pattering on the floor.
" 'Well, he was a Gestapo man, if you must know. What of it?' he said.
Everything seemed to go limp inside me.
" 'How did you come to know him?' I asked.
" 'We were at college together. He was offered the job in his last year
and he thought fit to ask my advice about it.'
" 'Did you give him any?'
" 'Are you mad?' he shouted suddenly. 'If a man asks your advice on
whether to join the Gestapo, it means he has already decided to join. It
would be crazy to advise him against it. Still, what is all this about?'
" 'Give me a cigarette,' I said. He held out the packet in the
darkness. Only then did I notice that my right hand had been clutching a
heavy lump of brick. I released my grip on its cold, slimy surface. Emil
appeared not to notice. I told him everything.
" 'And you could think that of me?' he said offendedly.
" 'Why didn't you tell me the truth straightaway?' I countered.
"I felt him staring at me intently in the darkness.
" 'It was rather unpleasant to have to tell you I knew someone in the
Gestapo,' he said, after a pause. I felt a slight chill had come between us.
He must have felt the same.
"Soil was still sprinkling off the ceiling.
" 'It seems to have quietened down,' he said, standing up. 'Let's get
out of here before the whole place collapses on top of us.'
"And all at once I was overcome by laughter. Either it was hysterics or
simply a kind of relief. I had remembered the safe shelter the Gestapo man
had offered me. Somehow I had recalled everything they had promised Germany
and what they were still promising her, and the whole history of Germany
over the past decade struck me as monstrously absurd.
" 'I don't know what you find to laugh at,' Emil said, when we were
above ground again. 'Look what they have done to us.
" 'I can see,' I said, not realising at the time the full significance
of his words. And the significance of them was apart from anything else,
that our friendship was over. He had been ashamed to tell me that he was
acquainted with a Gestapo man, and because of that I had not been ashamed to
think that he might betray me. Perhaps that was too little to end a
friendship? Actually it was more than enough. Friendship does not like being
tested. Testing degrades it and destroys its value. If friendship demands
testing, some kind of substantial guarantee, it means that it is nothing
more than an exchange of certain intellectual commodities.
"Friendship is not merely trust that can be bought by testing, but a
trustfulness that exists before any testing takes place, and at the same
time it is a happiness, a delight in the very fullness of giving spiritually
to a person who is near to one.
"If I say I am a friend of this man it means that I trust him utterly
and completely because my feeling implies a realisation of the great
fraternal predestination of man. And as for tests--should fate send them,
they will be only a confirmation of that surmise, and not a signed and
sealed recommendation of a partner's good faith. But I think I have been
talking too much..."
"Let's drink to that never happening again," I said, taking advantage
of his unexpected pause. I felt that his reminiscences had overexcited him
and we were beginning to attract attention.
"Yes, let's drink to that," he agreed, apparently somewhat embarrassed
at having told such a long story. We drank. The champagne was tepid by now
and my toast did not strike me as very convincing. My acquaintance had
obviously tired himself with his recollections and seemed a little bemused.
To revive him I said that the previous autumn I had visited West Germany,
where the thing that had struck me most had been the friendliness of
ordinary Germans towards our delegation. He nodded, and seemed to be pleased
at this information. And then he was brilliant once more, if what he had
been relating up to then could be called brilliant.
"We, Germans," he said, barely restraining a smile that now seemed not
half so asymmetrical, if asymmetrical at all, "are very slow to lose our
respect for the big stick."
This set us both laughing. And perhaps we should have gone on laughing
for eternity had I not noticed that people were coming up towards us from
the pier. Apparently the launch had arrived.
"Ooo-hoo!" he exclaimed with a kind of plaintive dignity and hurried
off to the pier.
From this strange sound that had risen so suddenly from the depths of
his German soul I concluded that he had had quite enough of the Russian
language and decided to call it a day. Some of the holiday-makers were still
walking along the pier when he reached it. I heard them greeting each other
loudly from a distance and scraps of their noisy conversation. We, Russians,
had also greeted one another in this noisy fashion while travelling in
Germany. Once you get accustomed to the idea that no one around you
understands the language you are speaking, you even forget that they can
hear it.
The pensioner was still sitting at the table with his faded lady
friend. I felt his gaze upon me.
"So he's a German?" he asked in surprise.
"Yes," I said. "What of it?"
"Well, I thought he was Estonian," he observed with a touch of
annoyance, as though, if he had only been informed beforehand, he might have
been able to do something about it.
"Democratic or Federal?" he asked a moment later in a tone that
dismissed the possibility of taking any action but showed a desire to know
the extent of the error he had committed.
"Federal," I said.
"What does he say about Kiesinger?" he asked unexpectedly, leaning
towards me with a kind of communal curiosity.
"Nothing," I said.
"Aha! Humph," the pensioner pronounced with sly pomposity and shook his
pink head.
I laughed. The old man was really rather amusing. He also broke into
silent triumphant laughter.
"What could he tell us anyway?" he said, addressing his companion
between chuckles. "We know all about it from the newspapers as it is."
The German came smilingly to the table with his wife and daughter. He
introduced us and purely for the sake of rhetoric proposed another bottle.
His wife shook her head and, lifting a brown young arm, pointed to her
watch. Like all of them, she was wearing a very low-cut dress and looked
youthful and athletic. It was rather strange to see a woman who had lived
through a whole epoch in the history of her people and looked none the worse
for it. As for the girl, I had the impression that she would have been only
too glad of some champagne if her parents had agreed. Her father and I shook
hands firmly and they went off in the direction of a hotel.
"We won the war and they go about enjoying themselves," said the
pensioner, and laughed good-naturedly as he watched them go.
I made no reply.
"If you like," he said, addressing his companion much more sternly, "I
can bring you a book tomorrow by the French Academician André Maurois, The
Life and Adventures of Georges Sand.
"Yes, I should like that," she replied.
"That's a rare book too," the pensioner said. "It describes all her
lovers, to wit--Frederic Chopin, Prosper Merimé, Alfred de Musset..."
He paused, trying to remember the rest of Georges Sand's lovers.
"Maupassant," the woman suggested doubtfully.
"In the first place, you should say not Maupassant but Guy de
Maupassant," he corrected her sternly. "And secondly, he is not included,
although a number of other great European figures are there."
"I shall be extremely grateful," the woman responded, gently evading
any further discussion.
"You should indeed, it's a rare book," the pensioner observed and
dropped his beads into his tunic pocket. "Wait for me here at the same time
tomorrow."
"I'll make a point of it," the woman said respectfully.
"Expect me," the pensioner repeated and, inclining his pink pate,
stalked away across the boulevard. The woman watched him go, and then asked
me rather anxiously, "Do you think he'll come?"
"Of course, he will," I said. "What else can he do with himself?"
"There are all sorts, you know," the woman sighed. She sat stolidly at
her table and now seemed very big and lonely. I paid the bill and went off
to a coffee-house. The sun had sunk rather low over the sea. The launch that
had brought the wife and daughter of the German physicist left almost empty
for the beach. When I reached the coffee-house I found the pensioner there,
already surrounded by a gang of other old men. Among their withered
coffee-coloured faces his pink countenance displayed a rubicund
independence.
--------
Catching trout on the upper Kodor
I awoke early and remembered that the evening before I had made up my
mind to go fishing for trout. Probably it was this that had woken me. I
raised my head and looked round. The lads were all sleeping in the strangest
attitudes as though sleep had caught them by surprise, certain movements
half-completed. A lilac dawn showed through the window. It was still very
early. The bare log walls glowed faintly golden and smelled of fresh resin.
All the week we had been trekking in the mountains, visiting places
where there had been fighting in defence of the Caucasus. The expedition had
been planned long ago by students of our Geography Faculty and was led by my
friend Avtandil Tsikridze, a physical training instructor. It was he who had
suggested I should join them. I had gladly agreed.
On our last day, spurred on by lack of food--somebody had miscalculated
student appetites--we had done our longest hike and by evening reached this
village.
Fortunately, we did not have to pitch our tents because the local
militia chief had hospitably provided us with accommodation for the night in
what was either a former store-shed or a future club-house. He appeared,
fishing rod in hand, when we, having dumped our rucksacks, were lolling
blissfully on the grass over a bend in the river.
After climbing down the steep slope, he set about making his casts in a
businesslike fashion, evidently into pools with which he was thoroughly
familiar. He would make a cast, wiggle his rod a bit, and pull out a trout.
Then he would walk on a few paces, make another cast, jerk and wiggle his
rod again--and out came another trout. From a distance it looked as if he
was simply pricking out the fish with the long thin needle of his fishing
line. Having caught a dozen fine trout in the space of half an hour, he
quite suddenly, for no apparent reason, as though he had collected his day's
quota, reeled in his line and came up to us.
That evening, despite our weariness one of the students and I cut
ourselves rods from a hazel bush and fitted them out with lines. The
student's name was Lusik. In some Abkhazian villages they give their
children Russian names or simply call them by some Russian word, usually a
resounding one often repeated on the radio. For instance, I used to know a
lad whose name was Voina (war). Possibly a little worried by his own name,
he always behaved in a markedly peaceful manner.
Lusik was the same. As though bewitched by his feminine name, he was
shy and stood out among the other lads by a scrupulous respectfulness that
never degenerated into servility. He was sturdy as a little donkey, and his
amazing stamina had put to shame the toughest members of our expedition,
which included two trained athletes.
...I took a big clasp-knife out of my rucksack and two match-boxes, one
with some caviar in it, and the other with spare hooks, and pushed the
rucksack back against the wall.
The match-box of caviar had been given to me by a man who had come up
to our fire when we were camped at the foot of Marukh.
He had arrived in a helicopter belonging to a party of geologists who
had set up camp here before us and were working in this locality. He was a
fair-haired man of about thirty, already running to fat. He was wearing new
shorts and heavy, also new, climbing boots, and carried an ice-axe. For some
two hours he sat with us by the fire, taking an unobtrusive interest in us
and our expedition. He did mention his name, but I immediately forgot it.
One of the lads, choosing the right moment, asked him where he worked.
"In a certain high-level department," he said smiling amiably, as if
hinting at the relative nature of departmental heights compared with the
height we were now at. The pun received no further explanation, but then we
were not particularly interested in where he worked anyway.
The next morning, when we were packing up to go, he brought me this
match-box full of caviar. The evening before he had heard me complaining
that the local trout were not attracted by grasshoppers and for some reason
worms were hard to come by.
"I suppose the earth, like any other product, gets worm-eaten in the
warmer places," I had remarked to my own surprise.
He nodded understandingly, although I myself was not too clear about
the implications of my schizophrenic image. And the next morning he brought
me the caviar.
I was touched by his thoughtfulness and regretted that I had forgotten
his name, but it would have been awkward to ask again at this juncture.
Anyway I made an effort to show that I believed in his work in a certain
high-level department, although he may not have noticed it. That is, he may
not have noticed my effort.
When we went off in single file with our rucksacks on our backs, he
stood by the helicopter in his new shorts with his ice-axe in one hand and a
Svan hat, also new, in the other and waved good-bye with the hat and I
finally forgave him for his innocent Alpine masquerade. Especially as all
this put together, he and the helicopter on the green meadow surrounded by
the stern mountains, looked superb and could have been used as an
advertisement for air tourism.
...I buttoned up the pockets of my rucksack, ran my hands over my
clothing, trying to remember anything I might have forgotten, and stood up.
I decided not to wake Lusik. He'll come if he wakes up, I thought. Perhaps
he has changed his mind, and anyhow it's better to fish on one's own.
On the table lay several loaves of white bread with glowing russet
crusts. The militia chief had gone to the village shopkeeper in the evening
and he had opened his shop to provide us with bread, butter, sugar and
macaroni. Bread in such quantity was a pleasant sight.
I went up to the table, took out my knife and cut off a big crust. The
bread resisted resiliently and with a little squeak as I cut it. One of the
lads, without waking, smacked his lips and it seemed to me as if this was
his response to the sound of bread being cut. There was also a small cask of
butter. I spread butter thickly over the crust, took a bite out of it and
involuntarily glanced at the lad who had smacked his lips. This time he had
felt nothing.
I went out on to the veranda and knocked the knife on the rail to close
it. For some reason it would not close any other way.
Only then did I notice that Lusik was standing by the porch steps,
where the fishing rods were leaning against the wall.
"Been up long?" I asked, chewing.
"No," he answered hastily, looking up at me with his big phoenix-like
eyes. I could see he was afraid that I might feel embarrassed to find him
here waiting for me.
"Go and cut yourself a slice," I said, and offered him the knife.
"I don't want any," Lusik said, shaking his head.
"Go on," I repeated, biting into my crust again.
"I swear by my mother that I don't like eating so early," Lusik said,
wrinkling his nose and raising his eyebrows almost to his schoolboy fringe.
"Let's go and dig for worms then," I said, and walked down the steps.
Lusik picked up both rods and followed me.
We walked along the village street. On our left were the public
buildings, the collective farm management office, the restaurant, and the
barn with its amber, freshly planed log walls. They all stood on the edge of
a cliff. From below came the roar of the invisible river. On the right was a
maize field. The maize was ripening and the shucks were sticking out from
the well-formed cobs. The street was deserted except for three pigs of the
local breed, black and long like artillery shells, that were slowly crossing
it.
The sky was a pale-green, exquisitely tender. Ahead of us to the south
shone a huge bedraggled star. There were no other stars and this solitary
one looked as if it had somehow got left behind. As I walked down the road I
kept admiring this big wet star that seemed to be ashamed of its bigness.
The mountains, as yet untouched by the sun, were a sombre blue. Only a
small golden spot on the jagged peak of the highest was ablaze.
Beyond the maize field on the right there was a school yard in which
there stood a small, very homely village school. The door of one of the
classrooms was open. All the classrooms opened on to a long veranda with a
porch. At one end of the veranda there was a pile of desks standing one atop
the other.
A track ran past the school yard in the direction of the street. It was
scattered with pebbles and large stones carried down by heavy rains.
Here we decided to make our first search. While I was still finishing
my buttered crust, Lusik propped the rods against the fence and started
heaving the stones.
"Anything there?" I asked when he had lifted the first stone and was
peering under it. He was still holding it half raised as though, if there
turned out to be no worms under it he was going to put it back in exactly
the same position.
"Yes, there are," Lusik said, and heaved the stone away.
I swallowed my last mouthful and felt in need of a smoke but,
remembering that I had only three cigarettes in the breast pocket of my
shirt, I decided to try and last out. I took out the matchbox that was in
the same pocket, tipped the matches out of it and kept the empty box ready
for the worms. Lusik was already collecting his in a tin.
Turning up the boulders in this fashion we gradually made our way up
the track. There were not many worms to be had and under some of the stones
there were none at all. Little Lusik sometimes shifted really massive
boulders. You could see his arms were used to hard work. In fact, everything
about his sturdy stubborn little figure suggested that he was used to
overcoming the resistance of gravity.
As we moved gradually up the track we drew level with the school. When
I raised my head for a moment I noticed a woman on the veranda. She was
squeezing a wet rag out into a pail. I was surprised that I had not noticed
her before, and even more surprised to see that she was a fair-haired
Russian woman. That was unusual here.
"Good morning," I said, when she turned her head.
"Good morning," she replied amiably, but without any sign of curiosity.
A girl in her teens came out of the open classroom carrying a besom.
She dipped it in the pail, shook it and having whacked the steps with it a
few times, gave us a silent look and went back into the classroom. She was
beautiful and walked away with her back perfectly straight, conscious of
being looked at. The charm of her face lay, probably, in the rare
combination it achieved of Oriental brilliance and a Slav softness of
feature.
I looked at Lusik. He was staring open-mouthed with his innocent
phoenix-like eyes.
"Where did she spring from?" he asked me in Abkhazian.
"Come back in about three years' time," I said.
Lusik sighed and set about lifting the next stone. I bent down with
him.
I could hear the woman scrubbing the veranda floor with her rag and
sluicing it with water. It must have been the postwar shortages that drove
her up here into this remote mountain village, I thought. Then she had this
girl by some Svan and stayed on here, I decided, surprising myself by my own
insight.
"How do we get down to the river from here?" I asked.
She straightened up and eased her head back to relax her neck muscles.
"Over there." She held out a bare arm that was wet to the elbow.
"You'll find the way down as soon as you get to that house. "
"I know it," Lusik said.
The girl with the besom appeared again.
"Is that your daughter?" I asked.
"My eldest," the woman affirmed with a quiet pride.
"Why, have you any others?"
"Six altogether," she smiled.
That was a real surprise. She looked far too young for a woman who had
borne six children.
"Oh! Does your husband work at the school?"
"He's the chairman of the collective farm," she corrected me and added,
with another nod towards the house across the road, "That's our house."
It was barely visible through the fruit-trees but I could see that it
was the kind of roomy well-built place that might belong to the farm
chairman.
"My regular job's at the weather station," she explained. "This is just
something I do on the side."
The girl, who had been listening to the conversation, knocked out her
besom against the porch steps and with a severe glance at her mother
returned to the classroom, still keeping her back very stiff and straight.
"Pretty hard for you, isn't it?" I asked, trying to include in my
question household matters, the children and, above all, living among a
strange people.
"Not so bad," she said, "my daughter helps..."
We did not talk about anything else. Having collected enough worms,
Lusik and I picked up our rods and set off. I glanced round to say good-bye,
but now they were carrying the desks into the classroom and had no time for
us.
As I walked past the house opposite the school I saw four youngsters
with fair hair and dark eyes. They were clinging to the new fence and
staring out into the street.
"What is your father?" I asked the eldest, a boy of about six.
"Chairman," he gurgled, and I noticed his fingers tighten round the
stakes of the fence.
We turned off the track and made our way down a very steep path. Tiny
pebbles went bouncing away from under our feet and sometimes I had to use my
rod as a brake. Thickets of hazel, elder and blackberry overhung the path on
both sides. One spur of blackberry was so heavily loaded with dark dusty
fruit that I could not resist.
I planted my rod on the path and, holding it with my chin to stop it
slipping away, carefully bent the branch and gathered a handful of berries.
Having puffed the dust off them, I poured the cool sweet berries into my
mouth. There were plenty more on the branch but I decided not to let myself
be diverted and took to the path. The sound of the river was becoming more
audible and I was eager to reach the bank.
Lusik was waiting for me below. As soon as I came out on the bank I
felt a rush of cool air on my face. It was the air stream carried by the
whirling waters.
The nearness of the water spurred us on and we crunched over the
pebbles of the dried-up channels towards it. About ten meters from the water
I signed to Lusik not to talk, and trying not to make so much noise on the
pebbles, we crept to the water's edge. An experienced angler had taught me
this. I had been amused at the sight of him crawling down to the water as if
he were stalking game, but when he fished out a score of trout and I caught
no more than a couple of miserable troutlets in a whole day I had to believe
in the advantage of experience.
Lusik was making signs and pointing. I looked downstream and saw a lad
with a fishing rod about fifty meters away. I recognised him at once as one
of our party.
It was unpleasant that he had forestalled us. We had not even known
that he intended to go fishing. As if sensing our gaze, he looked round. I
made an inquiring gesture: how goes it? He replied with a limp wave of the
arm: nothing doing. I thought I glimpsed a frown of disappointment on his
face. He turned away and applied himself to his rod.
If that's how it is, I thought, we can consider that he arrived with us
and we began fishing at the same time. After all, the fish don't know he was
here first... I signed to Lusik to go on downstream and keep his distance
from me. He did so.
I took the matchbox out of my waterproof jacket, selected a fat worm
and fixed it on the hook, leaving its tail wiggling.
At this spot the river split in two, forming a long island overgrown
with grass and stunted alders. The main channel was on the other side. The
near channel began with a shallow rapid, below which I noticed a small deep
pool. I crept over to it and, holding the line by the sinker with one hand,
drew the rod back with the other to judge the length of my cast more
exactly. Then I swung the rod gently and let go of the line. The sinker
plummeted neatly into the pool.
Now the main thing is not to get snagged, I thought, trying to take in
the slack so that the hook was not carried round an underwater rock or
branch. Something plucked at the line and my hand gave an involuntary jerk.
The hook came up with nothing on it. After a few more false alarms I
realised that this was due not to a fish biting, but to the tugging of
underwater currents; but my wrist still jerked each time as if from an
electric shock. My mind was always a fraction of a second behind the reflex.
Tap! I felt the faint tug and forced my hand to keep still.
Still crouching on my heels and very excited, I waited for another
bite, impressing on myself that I should not jerk my hand when I felt it.
He'll try again in a minute, I told myself, but be patient. The fish
did nibble the bait again and my hand scarcely moved. This time the fish was
more careful. That's good, I thought, keep that up a few times until you
feel that it's taken the bait.
The fish attacked again, I made my strike and the next moment a wet,
gleaming trout was fluttering in the air. I swung the rod towards the bank
and the line with the heavy fish dancing on the end of it came before my
eyes. In my excitement I did not seize it at once. Eventually I reached out
and got a firm grip on that cold living body, laid my rod down carefully,
and holding the fish even more tightly, with my other hand freed the hook
from its soundlessly hiccupping mouth.
I had never caught such a big one before. It was the size of a
full-grown corn cob. Its back was speckled with red spots. I carefully
unbuttoned the flap of my jacket pocket, dropped it in and buttoned the
pocket again. In the pocket it writhed with fresh strength. I had a knife
there and decided that it might bruise itself on the haft. So I opened the
pocket again and with the coldness of the fish on the back of my hand took
the knife out, transferred it to another pocket and again buttoned the flap
over the fish.
I straightened up, feeling a need for distraction after such a large
and almost sickening dose of happiness. I took a deep breath and looked
round. The water was noticeably lighter and the airstream above it had
warmed a little. The mountains on the other side of the river lay in sombre
blue shadow but the peaks of those behind me were a blaze of gold.
Lusik was not far away downstream. I realised that he had not seen
anything, otherwise he would still be looking in my direction. Lusik had
never done any fishing before, except for a couple of attempts at trout up
here with me in the mountains. But there had been no catch, so he had not
yet experienced the real thrill.
You seldom find an angler among the Abkhazians. This is a strange thing
for a people who have lived by the sea for centuries. I think it was not
always so. The unfortunate migration to Turkey in the last century probably
took with it most of the inhabitants of the coast and the river valleys and
with their departure the Abkhazian fishing industry came to a sudden end.
If such blank spots, such oblivion can occur in a people's memory, of
such a visible thing as fishing, I thought, how carefully must we guard the
more fragile values against the danger of disappearance, evaporation...
The student who had arrived before us had changed his ground.
He had told me once that he and his father had a motor boat and often
went fishing at sea. I had asked him if he ever sold fish because with a
motor boat you can nearly always find a shoal and there are plenty of fish
to be caught when trolling in a good shoal.
He looked straight into my eyes and said that he and his father never
sold fish. I felt that he was offended. But there had been no offense meant.
I baited my hook again and made a cast. Now I fished standing up. I
felt that the expedition was going to be a good one. I don't know why, but I
was sure of it.
In a little while I again felt a nibbling, and tried to keep my hand
still. There were a few more stirrings, then stillness, but I went on
waiting, determined to outwit the fish. When I pulled in the line, however,
the bait was gone. The fish must have quietly nibbled it away and I had been
waiting for it to snap at a bare hook.
I baited the hook again and made a careful cast. The line circled
smoothly in the eddying waters of the pool and I kept it there with a light
flick of the rod whenever it floated away. When there was still no bite, I
decided to let the bait go downstream a little, then drew it back against
the current to tempt some of the bolder fish.
The trout that I had caught was slapping me on the belly and every slap
helped me to be patient. *** At last I caught a medium-sized trout and put
it in my pocket. The first one, which had been still for a while, began to
flap about with the second. It must be glad of the company, I thought,
perhaps it has given it fresh hope. But then I decided that the second trout
had brought the first to life with its wet oxygenated gills. I squatted
down, opened my pocket and poured in a few handfuls of water.
Now the two trout flapped about in the water and from time to time
nudged me almost gratefully in the stomach, giving me a strange sensation of
rather foolish joy.
There seemed to be nothing more going for me on this spot, so I decided
to move on. I drew in my line, wound it round the rod and planted the hook
in the soft fresh wood.
I might have tried upstream, but the cliffs on either side fell
straight into the water and there was no way round them. Further up the
river the bank was much more accessible, but it could not be reached from
here, I moved downstream.
By now the sun was shining brightly and gave a pleasant warmth. A mist
was creeping up from behind one of the mountains. In the shallows the water
was clear and every pebble shone joyfully, casting a quivering shadow on the
sandy bottom. Now and then for no apparent reason little underwater tornados
whipped up the sand.
I came up to Lusik. Waist deep in the water, he was leaning over and
groping in it with an alert expression in his big, phoenix-like eyes. His
clothes were lying neatly folded on the bank.
"Snagged up?" I asked as I approached.
"I can't reach it," he said in an unexpectedly old-mannish voice. The
poor fellow was hoarse from the cold. "Come out," I said and picked up his
rod.
"I'll lose the hook," Lusik croaked, just like a thrifty old man, and
climbed reluctantly out of the water.
He was almost black with cold.
I pulled the line till it broke, selected a new hook and tied it on.
Holding the hook in one hand, I put the other end of the tie between my
teeth, tugged it tight and actually bit off the end, which I was not usually
able to do.
"There we are," I said, spitting out the end.
"Have you caught anything?" Lusik asked with his teeth chattering.
"Two," I said, and opened my jacket pocket. Lusik put his hand in and
pulled out the big one. It was still alive.
"What a whopper, " he croaked, shivering. " I can feel them nibbling,
but they don't bite."
"Don't hurry over your strike," I said, and when he had replaced the
trout in my pocket went down to the edge and poured in a few more handfuls
of fresh water.
"Aren't we going yet?" Lusik asked.
"No fear," I said, and walked on down the bank.
"I'll stay a bit longer, then go back. The lads will be waiting," Lusik
shouted after me. His voice was coming through clearer now.
I nodded without looking round and walked on. Far ahead I caught a
glimpse of the other student. He had again shifted his position. He kept on
shifting it--a sure sign of failure.
I wanted to be left quite alone and decided not to try any more until I
had passed the student. I was sure he had disturbed all the fish around here
and it would be no use trying, although there were some very good pools.
At one of them I did stop make a cast. I got a bite straight away, but
after that came a lull. Grudging the time I was wasting and yet determined
to turn it to some use, I went on waiting stubbornly.
Snap! Snap! It was double bite. I made my strike and pulled out a
trout. Good for you, I told myself, you had the patience and here's your
reward.
But as soon as I tried to get my hand to it the fish wriggled off the
hook and fell on the bank. I dropped my rod and tried to grab it, but with a
desperate agility it slipped away into the water. In its terror it seemed to
have grown feet on its belly.
Cursing myself for the delay, I reeled in my line somehow and set off
downstream almost at a run.
The student was fishing knee-deep in the shallows. Here the river was
racing noisily over a series of small rapids, and he did not hear me
approach. His whole posture suggested that he had no faith in the enterprise
and was merely amusing himself for want of something better to do.
"How's it going?" I shouted.
He turned and shook his head.
"How about you?" he asked.
The river drowned the sound of his voice and I indicated with my
fingers that I had caught two fish, then pulled the big trout out of my
pocket to show him.
I went on further and decided not to stop until I found the finest spot
of all.
This was a huge pinkish-lilac boulder. It was separated from the bank
by a narrow strip of water. On one side I could see a deep pool and I
guessed that there must be another deep, quiet backwater on the other side.
My excitement returned and I crept over to the boulder, trying not to
make a noise on the pebbles. Having silently reached the water's edge I
propped the rod against the boulder and sprang on to it.
The boulder was cold and slippery. On this side the dew had not yet
dried. I pulled my rod up and climbed cautiously to the top. Here it was dry
and on both sides there were deep green pools of quiet water.
Let the bait be worthy of the place, I decided and, trying not to give
my presence away, took the matchbox of caviar out of my pocket. I had to
press hard to open it. The caviar was of an unusual kind. I had never seen
anything like it even on the Kommandorskiye Islands, where people go to
collect caviar with pails and baskets, as if they were picking berries. The
grains lay in a compact amber-coloured bunch, each as big as a currant.
That comrade really must be working in some high-level department, I
thought. I wonder what the fish is that spawns such caviar. I wish I could
ask him.
The sun shone pleasantly warm on my back. The rivet was murmuring
quietly. The green water offered its tempting depths. The grains of caviar
gleamed with a noble transparency in the sunlight. I fixed two on the hook,
squeezed them a little to make them stick together and still trying not to
show myself, made a cast.
For a few seconds the red blob of caviar glimmered in the green mass,
then vanished. I felt the sinker hit the bottom, flicked it up a little and
waited motionless. After a while I raised the rod a little and drew it back
and forth a few times then let the sinker touch the bottom again. I was
trying to give the impression of an alluring Queen Caviar dallying under
water.
Snap! I felt the tug on the moving bait and paused in expectation of a
second attack. There was a pause. It was as if the fish couldn't believe how
lucky it was to find such a tasty morsel. I gave the rod a flick and the
trout touched the bait again. I decided to get my line moving, but on a
wider track and without stopping at the first bite, so that the temptation
would not merely be moving but going away and thus call for more resolute
action.
Snap, snap, snap, snap! I made my strike. The fish tugged back hard in
the depths, but I hauled on my rod and a trout was soon flapping in the air.
In its own element, when first struggling in the depths and as it came out
of the water, it had seemed huge, but it was not actually so big as the
first. Still it was pretty big.
As soon as I put it in my pocket, all three fish livened up and flapped
about in what was left of the water. It was like a new prisoner bringing
life to the exhausted inmates of a goal.
I looked down at the other side of the boulder. This side was in the
sun and the water was lighter, but even so the bottom was not visible. The
pool was very deep. I decided to try this side and then fish steadily now on
one side, now on the other.
I put two more grains of caviar on the hook, sat down in a more
comfortable position, so as not to press on m