I told him about the lush meadows still under snow, only awaiting spring. I admitted that if I succeeded in bringing him back to the local village and returning him to his owner, my relations with the local people might improve. I might even be able to stay on the farm. He listened, squinting at me from time to time to make sure that I was telling the truth.
I stepped back and urged him to walk with a gentle tap of a twig. He swayed, lifting the injured leg high. He hobbled, but finally I persuaded him to move. Progress was slow and painful. The horse occasionally stopped and slumped motionless. Then I would put my arm around his neck, hug him, and lift the broken leg. After a while he would start walking again, as if moved by some recollection, by some thought that had temporarily slipped from his mind. He missed a step, lost his balance, stumbled. Whenever he walked on the broken leg the splintered bone emerged from under the skin, so that he walked in the snow and mud almost on this stump of bare bone. Each of his pained neighs shattered me. I forgot the clogs on my feet and felt for the moment as if I were walking on the jagged edges of my shinbones, heaving a moan of pain with every step.
Exhausted, covered with mud, I reached the village with the horse. We were immediately surrounded by a pack of snarling dogs. I kept them at bay with my comet, singeing the fur of the most vicious ones. The horse stood by impassive, sinking into a torpor.
Many peasants came out of their huts. One of them was the pleasantly surprised owner of the horse, which had bolted two days previously. He chased away the dogs and examined the broken leg, after which he declared that the horse would have to be killed. His only use would be to provide some meat, a hide for tanning, and bones for medicinal purposes. Actually, in that area, the bones were the most valuable item. The treatment for a serious illness consisted of several daily draughts of an infusion of herbs mixed with ground horse bones. Toothache was treated by a compress made of a frog’s thigh with some powdered horse teeth. Burnt horse hoofs were certain to cure colds within two days, while the hipbones of a horse, placed on an epileptic’s body, helped the patient to avoid seizures.
I stood aside while the peasant checked the horse. My turn came next. The man looked me over carefully and asked me where I had been before and what I had done. I answered as cautiously as possible, anxious to avoid any stories which might arouse his suspicions. He wanted me to repeat what I had said several times and laughed at my unsuccessful attempt to speak the local dialect. He asked me time and again if I were a Jewish or Gypsy orphan. I swore on everything and everybody I could think of that I was a good Christian and an obedient worker. Other men were standing nearby watching me critically. Nevertheless, the farmer decided to take me on as a workhand in the yard and in the fields. I fell to my knees and kissed his feet.
Next morning, the farmer took two big, strong horses out of his stable. He hitched them to a plow and drove them to the crippled horse waiting patiently by a fence. Then he threw a noose over the crippled horse’s neck and tied the other end of the rope to the plow. The strong horses twitched their ears and looked with indifference at the victim. He breathed hard and twisted his neck, which was being squeezed by the tight rope. I stood by wondering how I could save his life, how I could convince him that I had no idea that I would be bringing him back to the farm for this . . . When the farmer approached the horse to check the position of the noose, the cripple suddenly turned his head and licked the farmer’s face. The man did not look at him, but gave him a powerful, open-handed slap on the muzzle. The horse turned away, hurt and humiliated.
I wanted to throw myself at the farmer’s feet and beg for the horse’s life, but I caught the animal’s reproachful look. He was staring straight at me. I remembered what would happen if a man or animal about to die counted the teeth of the person responsible for his death. I was afraid to utter a word as long as the horse was looking at me with that resigned, terrible look. I waited, but he would not drop his eyes from me.
Suddenly the farmer spat on his hands, grabbed a knotted whip, and lashed the rumps of the two strong horses. They bolted forward violently, the rope grew taut, and the noose tightened on the neck of the condemned. Wheezing hoarsely, he was dragged down and fell like a fence blown over by the wind. They pulled him over the soft ground brutally for a few more paces. When the panting horses stopped, the farmer walked up to the victim and kicked him a few times on the neck and on the knees. The animal did not stir. The strong horses, scenting death, stamped their feet nervously as though trying to avoid the stare of the wide-open, dead eyes.
I spent the rest of the day helping the farmer skin off the hide and cut up the carcass.
Weeks went by and the village left me alone. Some of the boys said occasionally that I should be delivered to the German headquarters, or’that the soldiers should be told about the Gypsy bastard in the village. Women avoided me on the road, carefully covering the heads of their children. The men looked me over in silence, and casually spat in my direction.
They were people of slow, deliberate speech who measured their words carefully. Their custom required them to spare words as one spares salt, and a loose tongue was regarded as a man’s worst enemy. Fast talkers were thought devious and dishonest, obviously trained by Jewish or Gypsy fortunetellers. People used to sit in a heavy silence broken only infrequently by some insignificant remark. Whenever speaking or laughing, everyone would cover his mouth with a hand to avoid showing his teeth to ill-wishers. Only vodka managed to loosen their tongues and relax their manners.
My master was widely respected and often, invited to local weddings and celebrations. Sometimes, if the children were well and neither his wife nor his mother-in-law objected, I was also taken along. At such receptions he ordered me to display my urban language to the guests, and to recite the poems and stories I had learned before the war from my mother and nurses. Compared to the soft, drawling local speech, my city talk, full of hard consonants which rattled like machine-gun fire, sounded like a caricature. Before my performance I was forced by my farmer to drink a glass of vodka at one gulp. I stumbled over feet which tried to trip me and barely reached the center of the room.
I started my show at once, trying to avoid looking at anyone’s eyes or teeth. Whenever I recited poetry at great speed, the peasants opened their eyes wide in amazement, thinking that I was out of my mind and that my fast speech was some sort of infirmity.
They were entirely convulsed by the fables and rhymed stories about animals. Listening to stories about a goat traveling across the world in search of the capital of goatland, about a cat in seven-league boots, the bull Ferdinand, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Mickey Mouse, and Pinocchio, the guests laughed, choking on their food and sputtering vodka.
After the performance I was called to one table after another to repeat some poems, and was forced to drink new toasts. When I refused, they poured the liquor down my throat. Usually I was quite drunk by the middle of the evening and hardly knew what was going on. The faces around me began to take on the features of the animals in the stories I recited, like some live illustrations in the children’s books which I still remembered. I felt as though I were falling down a deep well with smooth, moist walls coated with spongy moss. At the bottom of the well, instead of water, there was my warm, secure bed where I could safely sleep and forget about everything.
The winter was ending. I went every day with my farmer to fetch wood from the forest. Warm moisture filled the air and swelled the woolly mosses hanging from the boughs of great trees like graying, half-frozen rabbit skins. They were soaked with water, dripping dark drops over the sheets of torn bark. Small streams spilled in every direction, gamboling here and diving there under swampy roots to emerge and playfully continue their erratic childlike scamper.
A neighboring family held a big wedding reception for their handsome daughter. Peasants, dressed in their Sunday best, danced in the barnyard, which had been swept clean and decorated for the occasion. The groom followed ancient tradition by kissing everyone on the mouth. The bride, dizzy from too many toasts, wept and laughed in turns, paying little attention to men who pinched her buttocks or rested their hands on her breasts.
When the room emptied and the guests started dancing, I rushed to the table for the meal I had earned by my performance. I sat in the darkest corner, anxious to avoid the jeers of drunks. Two men entered the room with their arms over each other’s shoulders in a friendly hug. I knew them both. They were among the more prosperous farmers in the village. Each had several cows, a team of horses, and choice pieces of land.
I slid behind some empty barrels in the corner. The men sat on a bench by the table, still loaded with food, and talked slowly. They offered each other portions of food and, as was the custom, avoided each other’s eyes and kept grave faces. Then one of them slowly reached into his pocket. While picking up a piece of sausage with one hand, he slid out a knife with a long pointed blade with the other. Then he plunged it with all his strength into the back of his unsuspecting companion.
Without looking back he left the room munching the sausage with relish. The stabbed man tried to rise. He looked around with glassy eyes; when he saw me he tried to say something, but all that came out of his mouth was
