Miklós Vámos - The Book of Fathers

They were fighting their way through scrubland, the thorny branches tore at their skin. They lost track of the stream. They reached the trail that crossed the scrubland bleeding from a number of wounds. Fresh wheel tracks in the mud indicated that carts plied their way through here, and that meant there must be a settlement hidden somewhere nearby in the hills. Dr. Pista Kádas had a lucky coin that they tossed to decide which way to go. The track took whimsical turns to the left and right. Soon they reached a wooden hut with black smoke rising from its chimney towards the steel-gray sky. A chained wolfhound noticed them and began to bark loudly. They flattened themselves on the ground, just watching for a considerable while.

From behind the house there emerged a squat shape they at first took to be a man, but which turned out to be an old woman in a fur hat. She told the dog to stop that row, but the dog continued to bark away. The old woman threw him something and the dog jumped up and clamped the item in its jaws, gnawing and then swallowing it with much growling and snarling. It made Balázs Csillag and Dr. Pista Kádas salivate. They began to inch their way towards the house, slithering along the ground with great care. But the beast kept barking at them, though he could not even have seen them. The old woman again gave it a piece of her mind and a piece of something more solid, and when they heard the jawbone crack hard, a shiver ran down Dr. Pista Kádas’s back.

“Steady,” whispered Balázs Csillag.

And that was when the old woman noticed them. She stared in their direction and then went back indoors.

“Let’s get out of here!” said Balázs Csillag. Dr. Pista Kádas shook his head in resignation; he felt he could not stand up.

By then the old woman had popped up again. She brought steaming hot food in a wooden bowl and left it on the snow-covered grass. The dog detected the smell, but his chain did not stretch that far and his eyes swam in blood as he threw himself around and whined. Balázs Csillag straightened up and ran for the food. He wanted to thank the old woman, but she had gone indoors again. The bowl contained potato soup, with two dark-brown Russian rolls on the side. Not having a spoon, they used the crust of the rolls to measure the food into their mouths. It was, they thought, a feast fit for a prince. After so long on almost empty stomachs, they were a little unwell after they had had their fill.

In the course of their seemingly endless wanderings they received food any number of times in this manner. It was as if the old women of Russia were hoping that this would ensure that their sons and grandsons, ordered to fight so far from home, would also be fed like this in other lands. Balázs Csillag reminded himself a thousand times, and Dr. Pista Kádas a hundred thousand times, that such experiences should not make them lower their guard. They were in an enemy empire, where they were prey to at least four sets of uniforms. To make real progress they continued to consider the dark of night safer. Since they had no map, they walked for a long time northwards instead of west, almost as far as Kursk. They had difficulty crossing the rivers Sosna and Tuskar; at the former they built a simple raft, while the latter, where they were disturbed as they were slipping the mooring rope of a boat, they decided to swim across.

From the shoulder bag of a dead German they liberated a map, a compass, binoculars, and a quantity of marks and rubles, so they were now able to buy themselves bread and salt fish on the way. Using the map they could plan their route more accurately: Glukhov, Konotop, Nyezhin. They were on the Ukrainian slopes. They had to cross two more wide rivers before reaching the vicinity of Kiev. Here they spent a few days in an abandoned granary, where the former owner had left two dogs on chains; both had starved to death.

Then they set off towards the southwest. For days they were battered by icy sleet. One night Dr. Pista Kádas felt unwell and voided all of his contents through every orifice. Balázs Csillag suspected that his friend was beyond saving; here exanthematic typhoid was untreatable.

They hitched a ride on a cart. Balázs Csillag feared that the peasant with the deeply lined face would realize what state his friend was in, whip up his horse in terror, and leave them standing. The elderly Ukrainian was, however, made of sterner stuff. He helped to lay Dr. Pista Kádas, who was now delirious and babbling continuously, on an improvised stretcher. He was imploring his mother not to beat him on account of the Chinese vase.

Balázs Csillag sat up on the driver’s seat. The Ukrainian peasant could manage a little Russian and complained that times were hard and that everything had been destroyed by the Nemetska. Balázs Csillag thought this was the local term for the Germans but it turned out to be the name of the river. “All three villages,” the Ukrainian explained, “are waist-deep in water, the foundations of the houses are being washed away; they will slide down the hill and we shall all be made homeless.” Then he asked where the two of them were from. Balázs Csillag explained as best he could with the vocabulary at his disposal. Every time he mentioned their word for Jew, “Yevrei,” a flash of fear lit up the peasant’s eyes. Balázs Csillag did not take any notice; he thought the man would say if their company was proving burdensome. At the end of his story, they were silent for a while, then the Ukrainian mumbled: “ Nye kharasho.”

“ Da ,” nodded Balázs Csillag in agreement.

The peasant offered him some Mahorka tobacco. He had five sons, he said, three at the front, one already in the ground, having fallen at Volokalamsk, and one buried by the chimneystack-he had been born limbless.

“A blessing not to die here,” said Balázs Csillag.

“ Da ,” agreed the Ukrainian.

He then came up with the suggestion that his friend should perhaps be taken to Doroshich as soon as possible… The kolkhoz village of Doroshich lies west of Kiev, near Zhitomir; there the authorities had set up a temporary typhoid hospital where the unfortunate victims were being sent from all over the Ukraine-there was an epidemic. They say no papers of any kind are asked for.

“Are you not afraid you will catch it from him?” asked Balázs Csillag.

“Who can know the dispensations of God on high, apart from God Himself?” and he made the sign of the cross in the Slav manner.

He had to beg two more carters to take on Dr. Pista Kádas, and he needed constant support walking, until they reached the kolkhoz village of Doroshich. The sizable but crumbling brick building bore a huge notice: QUARANTINE. The scene depressed him. This was no hospital; rather, some kind of isolation ward had been created not in the interests of the sick but of those who were still in good health. In various outhouses and farm buildings, even roofless sheds, lay the dying; many had no bed, or even a sack of straw, but just lay in the mud with eyes fixed upon the sky.

Balázs Csillag sought the reception office, but there wasn’t one. A fat fellow in a leather apron was boiling injection sharps over an open fire, in a utensil that resembled a small cauldron. Balázs Csillag tried to explain why he was here; without hearing him out, the man jerked his thumb behind him and said: “Number three.”

The barns and sheds had been given numbers. Balázs Csillag slung Dr. Pista Kádas over his shoulder and hauled him into number three. He passed a huge stable packed six feet high with dead bodies. He had to stop to vomit. In number three he found not a square inch of free space. The heaving smell of human bodies stung his nostrils, at last suppressing the smell of corpses. When he managed to lay Dr. Pista Kádas between two others, he hunkered down by his feet, though he knew it would be wiser to flee this place before he took ill himself; but he had no strength to stand up. This is what life is, he thought. Through the gaps between the wooden roof-slats the freezing rain poured in, washing his face clean of the drops of sweat he had acquired while bringing in the patient. To have carried Dr. Pista Kádas for so many kilometers only to end up in this ghastly hole… It was a pity to have made such an effort.