See Under by David Grossman (famous ebook reader TXT) 📕

German Mauser, except with the Mauser you can load ten bullets at a time.) The gun traces a couple of tentative circles around Wasserman’s temple, where beads of sweat are glistening. (“Through the window I saw the red flame, the eternal light, atop the great smokestack, and also the blue lightning from the torches the guards flashed at the fences. Neigel’s hand is steady but tense.”) (Naturally I’m talking about the semiautomatic Mauser here, not the automaticMauser with a 25 [!]-shot barrel, the kind they say you can actually feel the bullets shooting through at a fantastic speed.) And here’s one more attempt by Neigel to stop (“Look here, Wasserman, this is pretty stupid now that we’ve gotten … well …”), an attempt that provokes a theatrical explosion of anger from Wasserman (“In dreierd, Neigel! You gave me your word, the word of a German officer!”), and Neigel, in a rage: “But that was before, before we started telling the—” And Wasserman, mercilessly: “You slay thousands every day, Jews from all over the world pass before you like sheep to the slaughter, and I have seen you dispose of many with your own hands without a moment’s hesitation, heaven forbid! And what am I asking of you now? A mere trifle! To do what you always do, only this time willingly, as a matter of choice. Or are you unable, Herr Neigel? Shoot me, let fly, nu! Ashes in your eye, a bullet! Feuer, Herr Neigel, feuer!”

Neigel closes his eyes and fires, emitting a strange sound, a moan or a strangled groan of fear. Wasserman is still standing safe and sound, with a peculiar expression on his face, as though listening to something. (“In me, between the ears, flew the familiar buzz.”) Behind Wasserman a windowpane is shattered. Neigel stares at it with trembling hands. He makes no attempt to hide the trembling. His face is contorted, as though someone were crushing it from the inside. To me Wasserman says, “In any case, Shleimeleh, when the shot rang out, an exceptional message was engraved in my heart: Unto my tale shall a child be born.”

Sometimes he tells me a little about his wife, producing a distinct if incomplete portrait of her. Sarah Ehrlich entered his life when he was a confirmed bachelor, forty years old. She was the daughter of Moshe-Marizi Ehrlich, the owner of a small café in Praga, and her mother had died when Sarah was three years old. Sarah worked in the Schillinger wig store. Wasserman said he remembered that once, on the eve of a holiday, when the store was empty of customers, he had walked by and seen the “thin gray girl” behind the dingy glass playing her recorder for two of the other salesgirls. He remembered the look of elation softening her sharp features, the mocking smiles of the two salesgirls, and the way her black hair fell on her cheek. He wondered how he could ever have felt such strangeness toward the woman who later gave birth to their daughter. It seems to me this disappointed him. Anshel Wasserman, despite his humble, rather dry appearance, was a romantic at heart. I asked him whether he ever felt the same strangeness afterhis marriage, and he was silent. I told him I believe that in marriage one is destined to know the whole gamut of feelings between any two people anywhere. He looked at me in bewilderment. I don’t believe he expected such a remark from me.

The best time to get him to talk about his former life is when the trains arrive. Wasserman can hear the train from miles away. Then he starts digging in the garden with renewed industry. He abandons himself completely to the digging. A few minutes later the train sounds one long and two short whistles. This is the signal for the Ukrainian guards from all corners of the camp to take their places on the rooftops and watchtowers overlooking the Himmelstrasse. The engine throttles as the train silently enters the station, sliding over the rails with an eerie hush. Then there is a loud screeching of brakes and sparks fly. One can see the eyes peering through the slits in the boards nailed to the windows. Looking out, they see the well-kept grounds of the camp, the benches and occasional flower beds along the handsome boulevard. They see the little signs pointing TO TRAIN STATION, or TO GHETTO, arrow-shaped signs with the figure of a bowed and bespectacled Jew carrying a suitcase (“Zalmanson, may he be healthy, would have said this Jew was the image of me”). Now they’re getting off the train, hundreds of them from every car, and the Ukrainians hie them on with shouts and blows. The arrivals are stunned, numbed from standing throughout the long journey here. They are still dressed, but in Wasserman’s eyes they are already naked. Though they are alive, he can already see them piled on top of one another. He groans in the dirt. His tears are spent.

He’s talking. At times like this he seems almost eager to talk, forthright and uninhibited. He talks fast, frantic to drown out the other noises. Sarah was twenty-three years old when they met. Wasserman: “Nu, what could we do? We were married in four weeks, with Zalmanson for a witness.” The chuppa ceremony took place at the home of Zalmanson and his wife, Zilla, who, as may be expected, invited many of their own friends. “Believe me, Shleimeleh, most of the guests were strangers to me. Nu, well, I hardly even knew the bride …” But the marriage seems to have turned out well in the main. His forty years of dour loneliness had been shattered the very first time he acknowledged his need for another person. In the eyes of her family, Sarah had been an old maid, and her father never believed she would marry. Oneflaw he saw in her was her lively intelligence and education. “No one wants to marry