by Ezra Glinter
All around it was quiet. In the black night you could hear the piercing sounds of shooting, and again and again there were flashes of light and gusts of wind followed by a screeching noise, as if the bombs wanted to awaken the air.
The soldiers lay in their trenches for a long time, protecting their heads with sand. In the distance you could see small fires where the enemy was stationed. But the command was given not to shoot until ordered to do so—this had something to do with tricking the enemy into abandoning its fortified position. They wanted the enemy to think that we had retreated after their heavy bombardment of our position the previous day. Meanwhile, overnight, we had quietly added reinforcements so that if the enemy should even think about moving out of its position to encroach on our territory, we would take them in close combat with our bayonets—since we felt much stronger in such a fight. But the soldiers couldn’t hold back, and they exchanged some fire with the enemy, their shots echoing in the darkness of the night.
When Asnat found his way into the trenches, he felt something soft underneath him. At first he drew back in fear, and then he heard a voice: “Have mercy, brother.” He turned and noticed a soldier.
“Give me something to drink, brother,” the soldier moaned. “I’m dying of thirst.”
Asnat gave him his flask and the soldier took a drink.
“What’s wrong, are you wounded?” Asnat asked him. “Why haven’t you been evacuated from here?”
“There’s no time, no one came to ask. Everyone here in this trench is either dead or wounded. Bombs fell the entire day, like thunder. God’s curse, brother, God’s curse has been set upon the world.”
“How did they let us trample on people, on living people?” Asnat asked.
“We too trampled on dead bodies. Look, there is someone else under me. He was warm for most of the day, he drank all my water, and I used my shirt to dress his wound. Now he is cold. He’s bled out. He’s been cold since dusk, God have mercy on him. He was a Catholic, Valentine Stekhovitsh was his name, from the eighty-seventh rifle regiment. I remember all of this very well. He asked me before he died to remember his name and to notify his regiment so they can write to his mother. Now I pass on his name to you. Remember it, I repeated it a whole day. Remember my name too: Ivan Maladets, from the fourteenth rifle regiment, the sixth company. Remember it well, remember . . .”
“You’ll yet live, brother! We’ve arrived, so many of us have come—we’ll take revenge for you!”
“No, dear brother, no. I won’t live to see it,” the wounded soldier coughed. “You might, but I won’t! I have no blood left. It’s coming hand over foot, like a warm river. And there’s no water left. I’ve drunk all of it and I’m thirsty for more.”
“Wait, I’ll move him from underneath you, so you’ll be more comfortable,” Asnat said.
“No brother, don’t do it. He’s safer here. Out there the grenades will blow him to bits and even God won’t recognize him. The face of God will be destroyed. He won’t be accepted in heaven. Let him be. Have mercy.”
“Where is your wound? Show me and I’ll dress it for you,” Asnat said.
“There’s nothing left to dress it with. I’ve used everything I have. My blood is running out. Everything is wet.”
“I have a handkerchief here,” Asnat answered him, taking out the handkerchief he had attached to his chest. “Take it.”
But the handkerchief didn’t help. Blood from the wound was everywhere, and his clothes and the mud had become one mass that bound his body to the ground. After a short while, the handkerchief had disappeared among the rest of it.
Asnat felt connected to the soldier after he gave him the handkerchief. And the feeling did him good. He had never imagined that war could be so cruel and terrible, but for a moment it did not bother him that he had come to know the terrors of war.
He became happier and prouder of himself, and not a trace was left of that ugly feeling or those superstitions that had exhausted him during the day. Now he no longer hesitated or overanalyzed; he just sat in the dark and felt the ground underneath him, the black, cold earth, and he had the feeling that he wasn’t going to war for anyone—only for the land. For the land upon which he was born, and upon which his father’s father was born, and upon which they had always lived. For her and only for her did he now sit in the trenches, not letting anyone take her away. This is what connected him to the wounded soldier whom he did not know, and who might very well be his enemy or someone that he may have offended; or maybe he had taken part in pogroms against Jews. But the land brought them together. The two of them—no, all three of them, since Asnat now remembered Valentine Stekhovitsh—were defending the strip of land upon which they were born.
He looked into the dark night that stretched over the land, and it seemed to him that he had set out to free this strip of land from the black and terrifying night. In the distance the enemy’s fires still shined, flickering like the eyes of a poisonous snake that had taken hold of his mother’s neck. Asnat had come to free his mother from the snake. He had the feeling that the earth was sick and that was why she had been so cruel to him—it was only because she had that snake around her neck. She needed to be freed from the poisonous flames that appeared in the distance. He now felt inside himself the strength and the courage to go over there and stamp out their fires with his feet. He felt that he was young and strong and that he could free his sick mother from the poisonous snake.
And so he lay for half the night in his trench, passing the time in thought and looking into the black night and into the fires across the field. The wounded soldier did not stop groaning and asking for water. Asnat had already asked for his neighbors’ flasks of water though they too had wounded comrades who were dying of thirst. For a while the wounded soldier was quiet. It appeared he had fallen asleep. Asnat was about to wake him when all of a sudden he called out:
“Brother, I feel I’ve made a turn for the worse. Make the sign of the cross over me, before I die.”
Asnat thought for a moment, and then made the sign of the cross over the wounded soldier while explaining: “I’m no Christian, but even so . . .”
The soldier was silent for a minute.
“What, you’re a Muslim?” he asked suddenly.
“No, a Jew,” Asnat answered back.
“Oh, a Jew,” the wounded soldier responded, as if to himself. “Well, it’s all the same to me. There is one God in this world. Kiss me, it’s so painful to die alone.”
Asnat and the soldier kissed.
“And don’t forget Valentine Stekhovitsh, a Catholic, and Ivan Maladets, an Eastern Orthodox. Repeat the names, or you’ll forget.”
“And Asnat Meir, a Jew,” Asnat said to himself.
And then the soldier was silent.
After a half-hour Asnat started to feel cold. He turned and nudged the wounded soldier, but the soldier did not respond. Asnat prodded him with his hand and asked, “What’s with you? Can you hear me?” but he did not answer. Asnat was seized by fear. Instinctively he moved away from the dead body, but he could not remain calm. He very much wanted to see the soldier’s face. The whole time they had spoken, his face had been hidden in the ground. But Asnat was afraid of turning him over, despite his curiosity. Lighting a match was forbidden, so the enemy would not know their position. Finally, he lifted the dead man’s head and looked deeply into his face by the faint light of the stars. In the dim light he looked just like Arbuzov from his company, and it seemed to Asnat that Arbuzov was in fact lying there.
The rest of the night Asnat remained cold and felt like he had been abandoned.
THE LANDSCAPE BRIGHTENED with the first rays of morning light. At first Asnat felt a dampness all around him, and he didn’t know whether it was dew or the blood of the dead soldier. Then the horizon reddened and everything was covered in fog. And soon from among the clouds the field and a few trees appeared, and then a tall rampart made out of dug-up earth topped with white structures. Immediately an order was gi
ven to shoot. The whole front exploded with fire. The blasts deafened the ear and all senses were deadened. No one knew or had any sense of what was going on; all they could see was a white line where everyone aimed their weapons. Something flew over their heads and to their right and left, but no one paid it any mind. As in a dream, they were vaguely conscious of something flying by them while their thoughts were focused on the white streak across the hills.
After a short while the command was given to advance a few meters forward into the next trenches. Asnat saw other soldiers running, so he ran after them into the trenches and then into the next ones that they had abandoned. Like the other soldiers, Asnat dug deeper into the ground to pile the dirt above his head to protect himself and then continued shooting.
Asnat looked at his people’s flag, which was carried with them to each position. Wherever the flag went, he knew he had to follow. He was conscious of his actions and did as was expected of him. But he felt nothing: all of his senses were focused on one goal. Every once in a while the flag would rise up over their heads and run forward and Asnat would follow. But each time there were fewer soldiers with the flag. They sank into the ditches that opened under their feet. He then saw how the flag tottered and fell to the earth. A thought flew through his mind:
Levin with his tzitzis, the Jewish flag—every Jew is buried wrapped in this flag . . . Asnat sprang from his trench and ran towards the flag. Something flew past him and stung him along the way, as if he had been burned, but he continued running. He felt as if he was running to save something essential, not a man but something more than a man, and if he were to save it he would save the land under his feet. He ran forward, another stinger, another burn, and a searing sensation around his head. But he felt nothing; it seemed as if he had lifted up the whole earth with all the fallen soldiers. He waved the flag over his head and ran forward.
Again something whizzed by him and he felt another burn. Now it felt as if his head was burning, his hair too and his face. But he continued to run. He looked around to see if anyone was running with him. He saw no one behind him, it was as if everyone had sunk into the earth. Suddenly he came upon the white strip. He saw some movement, figures starting to run at him. He stood standing for a moment in the field with the flag in his hand. There was no one around him, everything had faded away. And his head was burning—soon the flag would begin to burn as well.
From a distance something sparkled and trumpets sounded. He came to himself and charged the enemy. He could see how the small people from the other side started running at him. They were coming quite close. He turned around and started running in the other direction with the flag.
Over his head little flames flew by. The earth was full of holes, full of ditches. In one ditch there lay spread out a pair of tzitzis. He wanted to cry out: Levin! But he just jumped over the ditches with the flag in his hand. He tripped but continued running.
Gradually everything became lighter. He felt as if he had wings. And he flew off with the flag and the soldiers were flying with him on flaming horses. He too had a flaming horse. He jumped with his horse over the dead in the black ditches.
Suddenly he fell off his horse. He wanted to get up and continue running . . . on the ground . . . but the fire was already extinguished. Two soldiers took him under his arms and dragged him, with flag in hand and covered from head to foot in blood, to the general.
The general tried to speak with Asnat, but he could not understand him. He thought only of having seen the tzitzis as he jumped over the trenches, and how the tzitzis looked among all of the faces . . .
When he opened his eyes, he found himself in what seemed to be a huge field crowded with beds. Soldiers dressed in white looked at him. There was a great noise: the sound of groans came from every direction. In one corner a soldier cried out in a loud voice. It seemed to Asnat that he was on the battlefield and that the soldiers in white had been placed in beds in the trenches. He looked up to the ceiling, expecting that something would fall from the sky, and by instinct he felt the compulsion to grab for his rifle. He made a quick movement and immediately felt a searing pang in his head, in his sides, in his feet, as if he were being stabbed with spears. He then remained still, indifferent, and his head and heart became empty.
Someone spoke to him from the bed next to him.
“Soldier, what regiment are you from? What battlefield?”
He understood the question, and he thought that he had given some sort of answer, but the solider asked again:
“Soldier, what regiment are you from? What battlefield? Can you hear me?”
“A Catholic, a Russian, and a Jew,” Asnat mumbled to himself, so that the one talking to him couldn’t understand.
Soon a young woman approached him, dressed in white (everyone looked like soldiers to him), and spoke to him in plain Yiddish:
“You’re going to live, Asnat, you’re going to live. The head doctor himself is taking care of you. The operation was successful. The doctors are doing all they can.”
Asnat didn’t understand what she was talking about.
He drank some kind of liquid that she gave him and his sight became clearer. He realized that he was not in a field but in a very large room filled with beds.
“Where am I?” he asked quietly.
“You’re in the Warsaw Jewish hospital. Everyone here knows about you, the newspapers are all writing about you. You’re a hero Asnat, a hero. We’re all proud of you.”
Asnat didn’t quite understand what she was saying, but just hearing her voice made him feel better.
“And the governor came by asking about you, the general and the high-ranking officers too. Everyone is talking about you. And they’ve hung a Cross of St. George over your bed. The general himself came and hung it here. We’re all proud of you, Asnat, that you’re a Jew. All the Jews are overjoyed.”
Asnat now began to understand, but he had a strange feeling. It seemed to him that something was missing. Some part of his body was missing—but this wasn’t what bothered him. He felt as if the missing body part was trembling, moving somehow, looking for its former place. And that trembling came from where his legs used to be . . .
Slowly and quietly he felt around with his hand under his blanket and he noticed something strange: he couldn’t find his legs . . . they seemed to be there, he could feel them, they were trembling . . . but he had no idea where they were. They were hiding somewhere. He had a funny thought: he was sitting in one bed and his legs were in a second bed . . . Can one’s legs be taken away from one’s body? But, still, he could feel them, he felt the nerves . . . something was tickling the pinky toe of his left foot, he had an itch there. He searched with his hand, slowly, for his legs . . .
Suddenly, it all became clear to him. He trembled and asked the young woman uneasily:
“What, did they cut off my legs?”
The young woman became pale. Two enormous tears formed in her eyes. She bent her head over his and kissed his forehead. Her tears dampened his face and she said quietly:
“You’re a hero, Asnat. You’re a hero.”
A moment later the doctor appeared, having observed the scene from afar. He took the Cross of St. George down from the wall and gave it to Asnat, declaiming with a cheerful tone:
“The general entrusted me with the task of presenting this to you, in the emperor’s name, upon your waking.”
Asnat held the steel cross in his hand for a minute: under the blanket he could still feel the nerves of his amputated legs . . . He thought to himself: would he really never walk again? He had the sense that in a minute he would jump out of bed—that is how strongly he felt his legs.
A FEW WEEKS later Asnat was released from the hospital. During his time there he had become a real celebrity. But other heroes like him soon came through the hospital and attention shifted away from him. With time he became somewhat used to his wooden legs and his two crutches, which he had already begun using in the hospital. The longing for his own legs fade
d and he slowly got used to walking on his prosthetic legs. He began to grow fond of his new legs. Often he had the strange feeling that the nerves of his natural legs were now trembling within the cold wood, and so he even began to love his new wooden legs.
He couldn’t stay long in the hospital. Thousands of others now needed his bed. He was sent to a small town, far away in Russia. There he was still an attraction. He waited in the town for his father to come and take him home. He had sent his father several telegrams, but he had yet to receive an answer. He had heard already in the hospital that his town, Yanov, which was not very far from the border, had been overrun a couple of times by the Russians and then by the Germans and that the town had been destroyed. But where was his father? Where was his mother? Where was his little sister?
Jews from the town he was stationed in cobbled together a few rubles, enough to send him home. He traveled for two weeks in freight cars until he finally reached Yanov. He didn’t recognize the town. The trees in the surrounding orchards had all been cut down; the fields and the roads had been destroyed; the market was burned down; the chimneys looked like black demons between sunken white walls. Here and there a few houses still stood with knocked-out windows and torn open walls. There was no one on the streets, save for a few soldiers, who had built a fire in the middle of the market square and sat around it, warming their hands. He searched for the ruins of his father’s house and saw from a distance the walls of his mother’s bedroom; he recognized them from the white wallpaper. The frame of a photograph still hung on the wall. The courtyard was strewn with beams and pieces of the building. Stones and straw were scattered everywhere and among them he found his mother’s silk dresses, a wig, a holy book, and a broken table.
He left the ruins and wandered the streets, searching for someone, anyone. But he found no one. Just a few hungry dogs roamed around the market looking at him with crazed eyes, not understanding why everything was like this. At the end of one street he noticed the old study house. It was still standing, as it had before, and a light was shining in its windows. He went inside. A single candle was burning and a few old Jews, in thin, torn coats, were shaking—from the cold, from fear, from hunger—while sitting around the enormous cold oven.
