The Simplest Words

by Alex Miller

  ‘Oh would you really!’ I replied sarcastically and, reassured, I turned over and faced the other way. I knew how Pawel was tortured by a craving for tobacco, but I had no sympathy for his suffering. I must add, however, that Pawel was a man who could keep his troubles to himself, and he never pestered people with complaints. So it was rather a surprise to me when a moment later he whispered, ‘Janek! Are you awake?’

  ‘Yes,’ I replied quickly, again alarmed, for my nerves were very much on edge. ‘What’s up?’

  He sighed deeply. ‘I can smell their Havanas, eh Janek?’ he said, as if it were the most solemn disclosure of which his soul was capable.

  ‘Damn your triviality!’ I whispered fiercely at him, thoroughly angered by the fright he’d given me, and feeling immeasurably superior to this man who had permitted himself to become so slavishly dependent on such an irrelevant thing as tobacco (how truly young I was then!). ‘Listen here, Pawel,’ I said, almost gritting my teeth, ‘why don’t you have the guts to go and ask them for one if you’re so unhappy?’

  He didn’t reply, just hugged his knees closer to his chest, like a man who is very hungry.

  I think I must have felt that he despised me. ‘All right, if you’re too cowardly,’ I said scathingly, ‘I’ll go and ask them for you.’

  He stared at me and said nothing. I think my challenge had really surprised him. Certainly it had surprised me. I mean, when I spoke I did so without being thoroughly prepared, if you see what I mean, to go through with it. I was thoroughly dismayed therefore when I saw that Pawel had taken my words seriously. I wanted to say, Now look here, Pawel, we’re comrades after all you know, and you can’t really expect me … and so on. But, and here I must explain my peculiar position, I was a Communist, and Pawel knew it. I was, despite my youth—though in some ways no doubt because of it—the Secretary of a certain province. And ever since the first day I had met Pawel, there in the front line, I had been at great pains to convince his simple intellect that the salvation of mankind depended entirely on the Party. Not only this, I had I believe bragged a good deal about the courage, among a host of other things, that being a member of the Party enabled one to possess. Courage, I had carefully explained to him, was not, as he and the rest of his untutored fellows believed, simply a matter of dashing blindly into the most dangerous situation without fear, it was, I insisted, the ability to overcome fear by considering consciously the principle behind one’s action.

  Oh yes, there is little doubt that I had managed to say a great many interesting and very intellectual things to Pawel about courage. And there is even less doubt that the net result of all this had been to convince Pawel that I had not the least idea of what I was talking about. He, on the other hand, had never said a word about courage. And now that I had rashly stated that I would go and ask the officers for a cigar he just sat and silently stared at me. And I, nonplussed as I was at finding myself in such an awkward situation, just sat and stared back at him.

  The silence between us dragged on for several minutes and finally became too much for me. ‘Well,’ I said angrily, ‘why don’t you say something?’

  He certainly took his time about replying, and indeed I was almost on the point of cursing him, when finally he said, with a sense of immense gratitude in his voice, ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I see,’ I said icily, meaning by this, So you are going to insist, are you? You are going to let me risk my life for a stupid cigar, is that it? What kind of man are you then, if you will permit a comrade to risk his life because he was rash enough to offer you a smoke? Are you a typical example of our common people? Are you—I asked myself, though of course I said none of this aloud—are you worth it? And so I went on for quite some time, sitting there mumbling to myself and trying to outface him—to beg from him, if you like, a reprieve. But his silence was much stronger than mine. It was simpler. For him, if I did not go then I was a coward and there was an end of it.

  I believe in the end I said something like, ‘Yes, well, I see that you are quite immovable,’ and at once began making a great show of discarding my blanket which, until that moment, I had kept securely wrapped around me. But Pawel did not say a word either to encourage or to discourage me. He just sat and watched me and waited to see what I would do.

  Of course it was strictly forbidden for us to leave our sectors. In the strained atmosphere of our long vigil, during which nervous guards mistook their own shadows for a sinister prelude to the expected attack, it was undoubtedly an almost suicidal act to get out of the trench and start walking about. And this was especially true at night, when spies and deserters were known to make their moves. And these must have been desperate men, for as everyone knew they were shot without ceremony. Despite this there were a great many desertions from among our ranks, and some even got clean away, though to what ultimate refuge I could not say. Most, however, were caught. I had myself, only a few days earlier, been detailed to assist with the burial of one of these unfortunate men from our own sector. So, you see, for the sake of a cigar I had placed myself in a rather bizarre position—though it is true to say that really the escapade had reached a point where considerably more than a cigar was actually at stake for me. But, never mind, it was not that but the grotesquely ridiculous nature of my position if I were caught that struck me at the time. Who, except perhaps someone as unbalanced as myself, would believe me if I said that it was not my intention to desert, but that I was simply on my way to get a cigar? And from whom? From officers who neither knew nor cared to know whether the men under their command even got enough to eat, let alone smoked expensive cigars.

  As I carefully and very slowly folded my blanket, watched all the while by the silent Pawel, it is no exaggeration to say that I felt like weeping and begging him to let me off. And why I did not do so remains a mystery to me to this day. At last I was ready and there was nothing else for it but to climb out of the trench. I found it a dreadful struggle to get up onto that low earth parapet, over which in the normal course of my duties I would leap easily. And the more careful I was to proceed silently the more noise I seemed to make—and still that cunning peasant watched my struggles without uttering a sound.

  At last I was out of the trench, sprawled on my belly on the muddy ground, and awaiting with terror the inevitable bullet. It is difficult to say how long I lay like that, but I felt dreadfully short of breath, and I think it must have been for some time. From where I lay I could clearly see the truck in which the officers were having their party, for the canvas had been carelessly fastened and a warm shaft of light struck outwards into the dark. I must say that I cannot express to you how difficult it was for me to stand up. I can only say that if you have ever been forced to jump from a great height then you will know something of my feeling at that moment. My desire to crawl back into the shelter of the trench was so powerful that when instead I suddenly stood up, indeed leapt to my feet, I felt as though I had cunningly tricked myself, and I even wanted to laugh.

  Standing there on the plain, alone under the faint starlight, I experienced a dizzy exultation, and so great was my irrationality that I actually felt safer than I had when I’d been lying in the mud. And instead of sneaking fearfully forward, inch by inch, I stepped out boldly, and with almost a feeling of arrogance, towards the truck. I might say honestly that I did not want my courage to go unnoticed and I dare say I could have walked to Warsaw in such a mood—or so I felt during the thirty-metre walk to the truck. On reaching the truck without being challenged, however, my careless optimism subsided as quickly as it had arisen, and gave way again to a painful uncertainty. The officers were making a great deal of noise, shouting and laughing and forgetting their worries with the help of vodka, and I could scarcely bring myself to imagine the kind of reception they would give me. Timidly I raised my hand and shook the canvas backdrop so that the metal rings clattered noisily against the wood. The noise inside the truck stopped as if it had been switched off, and for a moment the night around me was still. Then, v
ery slowly, the canvas was pulled back an inch or two and the startled face of Captain Sienko peered cautiously at me. No more than a foot separated us and for a moment we stared uncertainly into each other’s eyes. When at last he recognised me, a bemused rage overcame his features and he violently wrenched the canvas aside, so that I stood in the full glare of the pressure lamp.

  ‘Why it’s that fucking little red Jew!’ he shouted, and so relieved were the other officers to discover how groundless their fear had been that they too began immediately shouting abuse and threats at me—all, that is, except the colonel. He just regarded me with a peculiarly malevolent stare, as if I were a cockroach that had dropped from the roof.

  ‘Get him in here,’ the colonel said quietly—and such is the nature of real authority that no amount of noise will drown it out.

  Captain Sienko not only heard the colonel’s order above the din but immediately put it into effect. He reached down and, grabbing the front of my blouse with both his huge hands, he hauled me bodily over the tailgate of the truck and set me down in front of him. I stood there and immediately the rest of the crew quietened down and waited to see what would be done. The captain appeared to me to be very drunk, for he swayed about as if he could hardly contain his impulse to murder me.

  Without so much as glancing at me, the colonel addressed himself quietly to Sienko. ‘What does he want?’ he asked, and it seemed to me that he was very much enjoying the spectacle of the captain attempting to keep his rage under control. And perhaps it was the colonel’s sinister enjoyment that gave me courage then—heaven knows, my position was desperate enough—for invariably in such circumstances one notices little things that might be to one’s advantage. But whatever it was, I drew myself up, stared Sienko squarely in the eye and, with the arrogance of an assumed equality, said, ‘Could one of you gentlemen spare me a cigar?’

  At this the officers’ hilarity burst out like a firework display, though not Sienko’s of course. For their laughter was as much directed at him as it was at me. He screamed at me, almost choking with bile, ‘I’ll shoot your fucking balls off first, you pismired little yid!’ and with that he drew out his revolver and rammed it against my crotch. I have no doubt that he would have carried out his threat there and then and without any hesitation if the colonel had not said in a tone of voice that would have befitted the atmosphere of a drawing room, ‘Put away your gun, Captain, and give the young man one of your cigars.’

  There was a stunned silence. All eyes, including my own, were focused on the captain’s face. Like an enraged bull that has received an electric shock and does not know which way to turn in order to crush its adversary, Captain Sienko shivered and rocked his head from side to side. The colonel did not repeat his order, but waited silently in the expectation of being obeyed, no doubt revelling in the exercise of such refined cruelty. After what seemed to me to be at least an hour of agonised suspense, during which the point of the revolver remained pressed against my body, Captain Sienko at last, slowly, and with the greatest reluctance and disgust, sheathed his revolver and handed me a cigar.

  As I took the cigar from him our eyes met, and I knew in that instant and for a certainty that, as soon as he could arrange it, this man would have me killed. Undoubtedly the colonel knew it also, but for him my fate was a matter of the utmost indifference.

  I got back to my sector and slid into the trench beside Pawel. My teeth were chattering and I was shivering violently with the effect of delayed shock. I was quite sure I had just accomplished the stupidest and the last thing of my life—but fate, as you see, was not to let me off so lightly. Pawel, who still sat with his knees drawn up and his back against the earth, did not turn to look at me as I wrapped myself in my blanket beside him. I took his silence for the usual stoic indifference that was so characteristic of him, and in that moment I hated him for it, and determined that he would beg me for the cigar before I was finished with him. I am quite certain now that I was wrong in my interpretation of Pawel’s silence on that occasion, and that it was not indifference but a surfeit of feeling which prevented him from speaking. Had I handed him the cigar without a word, I am quite certain now that he would have generously given me his friendship in return, for he perceived in my action none of the complexity and self-interest that I have attributed to it, but saw in it rather the simple action of a sincere comrade. For him, in that moment of my return with the cigar, I suspect that I was the hero I had so often claimed to be. But I had determined in my heart to humiliate him, to demand from him what he would freely have given.

  When I had recovered a little, and Pawel had still not acknowledged my presence, I began to toy with the cigar as if I were considering what I should do with it. I rolled it between my palms as I have seen smokers do, and I sniffed it and altogether did my utmost to tease the poor fellow out of his wits. At last my game proved too much for him, and he turned and looked at me. Then, very quietly, and as if he had been dealing with any common dealer in the marketplace, he said, ‘How much?’

  I pretended not to have understood him, and turned towards him with an air of surprise, as if I had until that moment been unaware of his presence. ‘What did you say, Pawel? How much? How much what?’

  There was a sort of grim inevitability, a, to me, frighteningly self-conscious offer of surrender in his voice when, after a considerable pause, he said, ‘How much do I have to pay you for the cigar?’

  ‘Pay me?’ I laughed with feigned incredulity and thrust the object at him. ‘Here, take it! Whatever made you think I wanted payment for it?’

  He took the cigar and gazed at it, nodding his head and saying nothing.

  Fearing suddenly that I had dangerously overplayed my hand—as indeed turned out to be the case—I said, with an effort at cheerfulness, ‘Come on, Pawel, light it up.’

  Ignoring me and with much care, as if it were his most precious possession, as I suppose apart from his life it was, he hid the cigar away inside his blouse—such was his self-control! Then he turned to me. ‘By my true mother,’ he swore solemnly, ‘I shall pay you, Janek, everything that I owe you.’ And with that dreadful promise he turned away from me and lay down.

  I did not sleep again that night. I sat hunched in my blanket in that damp and chilly trench and contemplated the inevitability of my imminent death. Gone was all my anxiety about the coming attack, my fear of enemy bullets, thoughts of my membership in the greatest movement in human history; all this dissolved in the face of the certainty that for personal reasons two men would soon seek to kill me. Why didn’t I run away, take to my heels and risk being shot as a deserter? I didn’t think of it, it’s as simple as that. Does a rabbit struggle when the jaws of the hound are on its throat?

  The morning brought with it a partial and very welcome distraction. As it turned out I had not been the only one to have been awakened by something mysterious during the night, and at breakfast the whole regiment was astir with speculation. Pawel offered no opinion on the matter. Understandably I watched him that day with a special interest, and was deeply impressed by the way he remained unaffected by the general mood of instability. It was as if he already possessed a secret certainty and was sure of how to act in the face of it. I looked again for a sign of the hawk, but it did not reappear.

  By the early afternoon it was possible to feel a continuous tremor running through the ground. I am certain that not one man among us had any doubt as to what this phenomenon signified, yet everyone went on acting as though its cause were a mystery, and as the tremor increased so the theories grew increasingly fanciful.

  Towards mid-afternoon the cavalry mounts began to grow restive, so much so in fact that their attendants soon had their hands more than full coping with them. Some foolish officer decided that what was needed was for some of the infantry occupying the trenches closest to the troop to come in and assist with quieting the frightened beasts. Naturally enough such inexperienced handling, by men who were themselves nervous and overwrought, only resulted in the hors
es becoming even more disturbed.

  Pawel, who was himself a horseman, was for once noticeably affected, and indeed thoroughly disgusted by the scene of confusion that was rapidly developing. But for all his cursing and pleading, our lieutenant wouldn’t permit him to go to the picket lines. Pawel even raised his fist and threatened to slit the lieutenant’s throat, but the officer just laughed and told him to calm down and to stay at his post. But the confusion grew, and with it the noise. It was soon impossible to converse in a normal tone, if one wished to be heard one had to shout and it seemed that all at once every man of us wished to be heard above the others. Some took advantage of the situation, and there was a good deal of nervous hilarity and abuse. And when the order came to stand-to it had to be repeated several times and accompanied by threats before it had the least effect. It was quite late in the afternoon before some semblance of discipline had been restored to the lines by the officers, but even so the atmosphere was more like that of a country wedding than a front line.

  Then, quite suddenly, the mood of everyone took a different and rather more sombre turn. A low rumbling, rather like a distant goods train passing slowly over a trestle bridge, became faintly audible in the west. Gradually this noise increased, and, as it did so, the noise of shouting began to subside. At first in ones and twos, but soon in large groups, and finally in a body, the men turned and silently watched the horizon. It was, as I mentioned earlier, late summer, and as the sun was about to set it was impossible to see anything clearly for the glare. When finally the sun did sink below a ridge of cloud which hung over the horizon, the stupefying scale of the German attack was revealed to us at once. The horizon, from one end to the other and without a single break, was entirely obscured by a line of tanks which were thundering towards us under full power and with an irresistible momentum. No man, however pessimistic his soul, could have foreseen this. Shocked and dumb, we stood like corn in the path of the mower.