Steps

by Jerzy Kosiński

  In the first days of the month the regiment started its preparations for the National Day parade, and several hundred of us, chosen for our uniform height and familiarity with parade-ground drill, began our daily rehearsals.

  We used to muster at dawn on the packed, sun-baked earth of the parade ground, surrounded by forest. Despite the summer heat the drills lasted all day, and we marched up and down in a single column four abreast, goose-stepping along the whole length of the parade ground, all six units wheeling and turning, crossing and recrossing each other’s tracks like so many shunting railroad cars.

  After a month of this arduous training we had become a single entity, marching as one man. We breathed in unison and saluted with a single gesture; we swung our rifles that had become an extension of our bones and muscles. All that we could think of during those exhausting days was the pain of our swollen, burning feet, and our warm, coarse uniforms rubbing against our sweaty skins. It seemed we were forever marching toward the motionless forest, but invariably the column would turn about before reaching the shadow of the trees.

  On National Day reveille came earlier than usual. The parade was to be held some distance from the camp. It was then I realized that I could miss the entire tedious day. If four of us, the three men who marched abreast of me and I, should quietly disappear and spend the rest of the day in the forest, it would be extremely unlikely that our overanxious officers would detect our absence. In the evening we could easily reenter the camp and lose ourselves among the returning soldiers.

  I spoke to my fellow soldiers; they agreed to the plan and we decided to leave the camp before the first muster was called. Instead of going to breakfast in the canteen we marched over to the dumping ground, as though we were the men attached to the sanitation detail. Then it was merely a matter of affecting the confidence to stand about at the loading platform and signal the trucks in and out, until a suitable moment would present itself to walk off into the forest. We were not challenged, and as soon as we had burst through the first bushes, we began to run, dragging our rifles. The jays screamed as we plunged ahead, and occasional squirrels leaped from bough to bough ahead of us. We were deep in the forest before stopping. We stripped and lay down.

  As the sun climbed higher, the forest floor steamed. A single distant bugle call broke into the myriad sounds of chirping and buzzing that drifted into the clearing. We fell asleep.

  When I awoke I felt heavy, my throat burned; I grew more alert and stood up. The sun touched the treetops, the light in the clearing was dim. My fellow absentees were still asleep, their uniforms hanging on the nearby bushes. A sound was approaching from the depths of the forest: it was getting louder and closer every second. Suddenly I realized that it was the band. I peered in the direction of the sound. What I saw shocked me: less than two hundred yards away our regimental band was marching through the trees toward us, the bandleader’s gilded staff flashing as it caught the light, the white leather aprons of the drummers standing out clearly against the green of the foliage.

  I sprang to my uniform, for a moment thinking only of making a run for cover. Then I jumped over to my lazily stretched-out companions and shook them from their sleep as they mumbled abuse at me. When they finally grasped what was about to happen, the same panic hit them. They grabbed their uniforms, boots and rifles, and plunged into the tangle of bushes and trees.

  Impulsively I threw myself forward, and was instantly gripped by an immobilizing tremor. Within seconds the seizure passed, but I still could not flee. I simply stood in the clearing, naked, my rifle and uniform at my feet, as though I had consciously decided to hold my ground and wait for the column to arrive.

  The leading ranks were only yards away. They had now perceived me, for the band stopped playing and several mounted officers detached themselves from the body of the troops and galloped toward the clearing.

  There was pandemonium in the column; some men had broken ranks and others were shouting and gesturing at me. The regimental standard swung into sight and I was possessed by the reflex to salute. I reached for my cap, drew myself to attention, and raised my hand to my brow. A derisive cry went up from the nearest soldiers, a single bugler raised his instrument and gave a hunting call, breaking the sequence of my movements. I stared down in horror at myself: there was nothing I could do—I was aroused.

  Commands rang out: the column halted, and though the sergeants ordered the men to hold their ranks, they could not prevent them from laughing. Two soldiers advanced toward me, followed by a mounted officer. A second officer dismounted and bellowed that I was under arrest. Other commands were given: the column re-formed and marched off, continuing on its short cut through the glade to the camp. I dressed and was led away by the guards.

  I was charged with absenting myself without leave and with deserting my place of duty. I was called upon to name my companions; but I stated I had acted entirely alone, maintaining they must have arrived in the clearing independently while I was asleep. I insisted that I was guilty only of the minor charge of not signing out of the camp, claiming that I had been released from the parade during a drill by one of the officers; and though he no longer chose to recall it, my absence should not be held against me. To the charge that my salute, when naked, was a studied insult to the flag, I pointed out that there had been many occasions when soldiers who were caught naked by surprise attack had been compelled to fight in such a state.

  Are you circumcised? I’ve always wondered. Not that Tm sure I would know the difference anyway.

  Why didn’t you ask me before?

  It’s really not that it’s important, and I was afraid to ask the question. You might have interpreted it as some sort of expectation on my part, even as disapproval. Aren’t men very sensitive about thing? like this?

  I don’t know; men vary.

  Is circumcision really necessary? Like having your appendix out, for instance?

  No, it isn’t.

  Today it seems so cruel and unnecessary; a part of an infant’s body is removed without his consent! Isn’t it possible that as a result of mutilating him, the man becomes less sensitive and responsive? After all, a delicate organ that nature intended to be covered and kept tender becomes exposed, and almost like one’s knees and elbows, is constantly chafed by the linen, wool, and cotton one wears …

  I was ordered to camouflage myself in a forest several miles from any settlement I selected a full-branched tree and prepared a comfortable perch, remaining diere for several hours during the maneuvers. Scanning the surroundings through my field glasses I noticed another camouflaged soldier from my regiment, positioned about half a mile away. Since I had been ordered not to reveal my position, I remained hidden, looking at him occasionally through my binoculars. Suddenly I was alerted by his movement and followed the arc of his rifle barrel: on the border of a distant field, just outside the boundaries of the regiment’s territory, two people were walking slowly. The soldier’s rifle kicked twice and muffled shots cut into the silence. When I looked at the couple again, they lay in the swaying grass like two surfers abruptly swept off their boards by an unpredictable wave.

  I watched the sniper closely now. Though I could not see his face, it occurred to me that he might have seen and recognized me, and I felt my heart contract; but his rifle lay across his knees and he lolled peacefully against the boughs that gave with the drowsy sway of the forest I peered at him cautiously until the bluish air drooped over the scraggly trees, and darkness rose as though born from the dew which covered the ground.

  The next day the adjutant announced that two civilians had been killed by stray gunfire. The in* vestigation did not produce any results, since we were all able to account for our allotted ammunition.

  Later two truckloads of regimental soccer players took a short cut through a field reserved for artillery practice. The field was supposed to be marked as a danger area, but either the drivers did not see the warning signs or someone in the regiment had removed the signs; in any case, the so
ccer players never arrived. The trucks must have traveled halfway across the field when the artillery opened fire: all that was left was a pair of surprisingly clean white tennis shoes.

  SUPPOSE HE WOULD BEGOME my lover? To kill that thought you’d have to destroy him, wouldn’t you?

  I don’t know. Tm not sure.

  Once, when we were buying a coat for me, the salesman came over to help me try it on. When he put his hand on my neck to adjust the collar, you came up to him and without a word took his hand and removed it—just as though it were an object. You must have squeezed his hand terribly hard: he froze. His face was almost purpie and his mouth opened as if he were going to cry out

  I took his hand off your neck because I didn’t want him to touch you.

  He certainly didn’t mean to be personal.

  I don’t know what he meant and you don’t either. I was thinking about what you might be feeling when he touched you.

  To kill your thought you actually had to remove his hand from my neck?

  Yes.

  Could you kill a man? I mean: for some important reason?

  I don’t know.

  Work was scarce during the war; I was too thin to work in the fields, and the peasants preferred to use their own children or relatives on the farms. As a vagrant, I was everybody’s victim. To amuse himself the former with whom I was finally boarded would take hold of me by my collar, drag me up close and then strike me. Sometimes he would call his brother or his friends to share in a game in which I had to stand still—staring ahead with open eyes—while they stood a few paces in front of me and spat at my face, betting on how often they could hit me in the eye.

  This spitting game became very popular in the village. I was a target for everyone—little boys and girls, farmers and their wives, sober men and drunkards.

  One day I attended the funeral of a child who had died of mushroom poisoning, the son of one of the richest farmers in the village. Everybody who came to the funeral was dressed in his Sunday best, looking meek and humble.

  I watched the mourning father as he stood at the open grave. His face was yellow as the newly turned earth, his eyes red and swollen. He leaned on his wife, his legs unsteady, barely able to bear his weight When the coffin was brought to the graveside he threw himself on the polished lid, babbling and kissing it as though it were his child. His cries and those of his wife broke the silence, like a chorus on an empty stage.

  It became clear to me that the peasants’ love for their children was just as uncontrollable as an outbreak of fever among the cattle. Often I saw a mother touching her child’s soft hair, a father’s hands flinging the child into the air and catching it safely again. Frequently I watched the small children wobbling on their plump legs, stumbling, falling, getting up again, as though borne up by the same force that steadies sunflowers buffeted by the wind.

  Then one day I saw a sheep writhing convulsively in a slow death, its desperate bleating bringing terror to the entire flock. The peasants claimed that the animal must have swallowed a fishhook or a shard of glass in its feed.

  Months passed. One morning a cow from the herd in my charge strayed onto a neighbor’s property, damaging the crops. This was reported to my master. Upon my return from the fields, the farmer was waiting for me. He pushed me into the barn and whipped me until the blood oozed from my legs. Bellowing with rage he finally hurled the leather thong into my face.

  I began to collect discarded fishhooks and bury them behind the barn. After the farmer and his wife left for church I slipped into my hiding place and kneaded a couple of fishhooks and crushed glass into balls of fresh bread which I had torn out of the day’s newly baked loaves.

  I liked to play with the youngest of the farmer’s three children. We often met in the farmyard, and she would laugh uproariously while I imitated a frog or a stork.

  One evening the little girl hugged me. I dampened a ball of bread with my saliva and asked her to swallow it in one piece. When she hesitated, I took a piece of apple, put it into the back of my mouth, and pushing it with my forefinger, instantly swallowed it The girl imitated me, swallowing the balls, one after another. I looked away from her face, forcing myself to think only of the burning of her father’s whip.

  From then on I gazed boldly into my persecutors’ eyes, provoking their assault and maltreatment. I felt no pain. For each lash I received my tormentors were condemned to pain a hundred times greater than mine. Now I was no longer their victim; I had become their judge and executioner.

  There were no doctors or hospitals in the area —the nearest railway only carried an occasional freight train. At dawn crying parents carried their gasping children to the church so the priest could purify them with holy water. But at dusk, in a more desperate mood, they took the dying to the distant huts of the local witches who practiced sorcery and healing.

  But death continued to levy its toll, and children went on dying. Some of the peasants blasphemed God, whispering it was He Himself who had dispatched His only son, Jesus, to inevitable crucifixion, in order to redeem His own sin of creating so cruel a world. Others insisted that Death had come to dwell in the villages to avoid the bombed cities, and the war, and the camps where the furnaces smoked day and night

  There was a man at the university who had wronged me. I discovered he was of peasant stock and therefore privileged among those whom the Party had pushed into the university for political reasons. I could not change the climate which favored him and thus saw no way of countering his enmity. It occurred to me that to blame the system was simply an excuse which prevented my facing him.

  At that time we were all required to join the para-military student defense corps. Every unit in turn had to guard the university arsenal, which was under the jurisdiction of the city garrison. We regularly had a two-day guard duty, which was organized along military lines: the guards’ quarters occupied a wing of the university and were run like an army barracks. Telephone messages had to be recorded and acted upon as set forth in the military manuals, and instructions had to be followed with the utmost precision, since, as we were often warned, the city military commander might at any time declare a full-scale alert to test the efficiency of the student defense corps.

  One day I observed this man reverently acknowledging instructions from the headquarters of the university arsenal, his knuckles tense and white as he gripped the telephone receiver. I looked at him closely again. I now had a plan.

  By the time he was appointed guard commander for a weekend, I had already spent many hours practicing a brusque military voice, smart with clipped arrogance. On his first day of duty I telephoned him at midnight, and in the most urgent and authoritative tones announced I was the city garrison duty-officer and that I wished to speak directly to the guard commander. In my assumed voice I proceeded to inform him that an army exercise was in progress, and that in accordance with the plan, he was to muster the university unit and move through the park for a surprise attack on the city arsenal. Once there, his unit was to disarm the regular guards, force an entry and take over the building until the exercise was called off. I asked him to give the instructions back to me: he excitedly repeated my orders, obviously failing to register the omission of the daily password, which I could not give him.

  When half an hour later I telephoned the post again, there was no answer: his unit had probably left to storm the arsenal.

  On Monday all of us heard about what had happened. Exactly as I had intended, his unit had advanced and attacked the arsenal. In the garrison a fullscale alert had been set off, since it was assumed that there was either a mutinous invasion under way, a counterrevolution, or some secret regional exercise. The university unit was promptly rounded up and arrested; its commander was charged with armed insurrection.

  During the court-martial he insisted that backed by the password he had acted under direct orders from the city’s garrison. He clung pathetically to his story.

  She said she was the only girl in the family, but that she
had an older brother. He liked her very much, she said, the two of them hardly ever quarreled. But he seemed to like only the boys she wasn’t interested in, and he became quite difficult when she was with someone she really liked. He would follow her then, and it was obvious that he didn’t intend to leave her alone with any man. He provoked fights with the young men who danced with her or who embraced or attempted to kiss her. He often acted as though he were her boy friend himself. Yet, she said, she was proud of him. He was very good-looking and the best student in his class. And many girls fell in love with him.

  At one time she had a boy friend who told her that he thought her brother and she were made of the same substance and that theirs was the temperament to which he was most strongly attracted. Her brother, he said, was an extension of her, and she an extension of him. He added that being in love with her meant also being emotionally involved with her brother.

  She realized that she and her brother could become allies against the rest of the world. They should choose each other, she said, they should become attached and committed to each other, and they could still treat their relation as an experiment; if it didn’t work out, she said, then they could blame their failure on the fact that they were brother and sister. But if it did work out, it would be so comfortable, so convenient. She didn’t see anything unnatural about such a relationship; certainly there was more of a difference between her brother and her than, say, between two women who fall in love with each other and have the physical relationship she had come across so often in college. It would be an alliance unlike one she could have with anyone else. The two of them could do or say whatever they pleased; she could never be so free, or so much herself, with any other person.