We hoped we could find a farm quickly, so that we could come back before evening and go to the pond. We didn’t like these expeditions. Something bad always happened.
I walked next to Pavel. Nothing on his face betrayed the terrible fear he’d felt during the night. Pavel and I never talked about any of it in the daytime, about his nightmares or our nocturnal outings. I think it was better that way. Though of course, if he’d wanted to talk about it, I would have listened.
Kyabine and Sifra knew nothing about Pavel’s nightmares. Perhaps one or the other might have heard us get up in the middle of the night, but they didn’t know why. I was the only one who knew and I felt proud of that.
We walked for an hour.
Sergeant Ermakov remained ahead of us the whole time. He tore up stems of grass and chewed them as he walked.
We saw smoke in the distance.
We found a road and spotted a small village. Sergeant Ermakov made us toss away our cigarettes and button up our coats. But below our coats were the German boots worn by Pavel and me, Kyabine’s big civilian shoes, and Sifra’s cavalry boots. Only our coats and our caps were regulation uniform.
Sergeant Ermakov went into the courtyard of the first house. We waited for him on the road. We weren’t allowed to sit down or smoke. And we had to leave our rifles slung over our shoulders.
Sergeant Ermakov knocked at the door, then at the window. A man came out into the courtyard. He was wearing a forest ranger’s uniform. They talked for a little while, then went over to the vegetable garden at the foot of the courtyard. The forest ranger started pulling up winter leeks. Sergeant Ermakov helped him by removing the earth that clung to their roots.
The forest ranger looked cheerful as he pulled up the leeks. He knew he was getting off lightly. His garden was full of leeks.
Behind me, Pavel muttered: ‘Hey, stick one of those leeks up Ermakov’s arse, would you?’
Kyabine started silently laughing, mouth shut tight and shoulders shaking. The forest ranger and the sergeant went back up to the courtyard. The sergeant took out the requisition papers to fill out, but the forest ranger put his hands on the sergeant’s, as if to say: no need for a receipt, these leeks are a gift from me to you and the Red Army.
Sergeant Ermakov put the papers back in his pocket and the forest ranger tied up the bundle of leeks with a piece of string. After that he went back into the house and he came back out with a sack of potatoes.
12
THE SECOND HOUSE was unoccupied. I suggested we go in anyway to take a look around, but Sergeant Ermakov didn’t want to. Kyabine carried the bundle of leeks over his shoulder. He smiled every time he looked at Sergeant Ermakov, and you could tell that he was still thinking about what Pavel had said earlier about the leeks and Ermakov’s arse.
I was carrying the potatoes. They were from last year, of course, and were starting to sprout. They smelled of old potatoes. They smelled of spring, because it’s at this time of year that you sort through them all, throwing away the ones that have sprouted so much that there’s hardly any flesh left on them.
There was a pig in the courtyard of the third house. It was digging in the ground with its snout. It lifted its head to look at us when we arrived. Kyabine and I put the leeks and potatoes down on the road. Sergeant Ermakov went into the courtyard alone. He walked past the pig, looked around, and knocked on the door.
A man and a woman came out and they started talking with Ermakov. We could hear what they were saying. The man and the woman had two sons in the Shuyski regiment. They asked if we knew where the Shuyski regiment was at that moment. Sergeant Ermakov shook his head and told them that we didn’t know where any of the other regiments were.
Then they talked about a distribution problem, although we couldn’t hear the details of what they were saying. Sergeant Ermakov seemed to agree with them, in any case.
Suddenly the woman went back into the house and came out with a chicken. She must have been about to pluck it because it was steaming and dripping with water. But Sergeant Ermakov told them they could keep the chicken because unfortunately we had to take their pig. The woman let the chicken dangle from her hand and the man cried out breathlessly that it had been too hard to feed it all winter for them to let it go now. I wanted to yell at him that, if he wanted, we could tell him all about our winter in the forest and what we had to eat there.
Sergeant Ermakov took a few steps back because the man was yelling louder and louder, and he was looking threatening now. In the meantime the woman had gone to sit on the front doorstep of the house. She put the chicken between her knees and started crying.
Ermakov turned to us.
It was time. Pavel and Sifra went into the courtyard. The man fell silent. His face tensed. His hands started trembling so much that suddenly we felt sorry for him, despite our winter in the forest. His eyes were full of tears. But it was his hands that were unbearable to watch.
Pavel and Sifra walked between the sergeant and the man and went over to the pig. And while they were shoving it out of the courtyard, Sergeant Ermakov kindly asked the man what his sons were called.
13
I CARRIED THE potatoes and Kyabine the leeks. Ahead of us Pavel and Sifra herded the pig. Sergeant Ermakov walked at the back of the procession.
Sometimes, when the pig started slowing down or moving sideways, Pavel would shove it with the butt of his rifle and yell at it: ‘Come on, get a move on, Kyabine!’
Or: ‘Oh, Kyabine, what the hell are you doing? Keep going straight!’
This made Kyabine laugh.
Behind us, Sergeant Ermakov said nothing. I could tell that he was thinking about the man and woman in the courtyard, and that the memory tormented him. We’d requisitioned food with Ermakov before, and he was always like that. He always acted as if it was his own home that we were raiding. We knew he owned a farm somewhere. At the rate we requisitioned other farms, he must have had the impression that there would be nothing left of his own farm by the time he went home. But what could we do about it?
Without turning around, I asked him what the Shuyski regiment was. He replied that he had no idea. So I asked him why he’d asked those people for the names of their sons, who were in that regiment. He told me to advance.
I advanced. But I did so ever more sadly. The sadness was stronger than me. It was because of the smell of the potatoes slung over my shoulder. It didn’t evoke anything precise, that smell. Not one specific event, in any case. What it evoked was just a distant time.
In the end I started feeling really low.
I lengthened my stride to catch up with Pavel and walked beside him. I needed to feel him next to me. I didn’t want to tell him how sad I was, I just wanted him beside me. But he was busy herding the pig. He didn’t have time to pay any attention to me. He started talking to the pig as if it were Kyabine again. Behind me, I heard Kyabine laugh. That gave me an idea.
I slowed down, and when Kyabine had caught up with me I offered to swap my sack of potatoes for his bundle of leeks. He gestured sideways with his head at his empty shoulder. I slung the sack over it and was about to take the leeks from him. But he made a sign to say that he was fine like that, that he could carry it all.
In front of us, Pavel shouted at the pig: ‘Come on, Kyabine, are you going to advance or what?’
Laughing, Kyabine called out: ‘You’re the pig, Pavel!’
Behind us, Sergeant Ermakov barked: ‘For God’s sake, just shut your mouths, all of you!’
14