rose within him.
“Lie down,” he said, and fell asleep almost immediately.
A bright light woke him. A rod of some kind was digging into his shoulder. He opened his eyes and lay motionless. He had drawn the blinds the night before and the room was dark. Several tall people were standing at his bed. Groggy with sleep, he shielded his eyes: one of the men was shining a powerful flashlight in his face.
“Wer bist du?” Who are you?
“He’s all right. He’s a doctor,” another voice, somehow familiar, said in German. Stefan gave a start. There were three Germans in dark raincoats, automatics slung over their shoulders. The door to the hall was open. He. heard the heavy tread of hobnailed boots outside.
Sekulowski was standing in the comer. Stefan noticed him only when the German shined the light in that direction.
“Is he a doctor too?”
Sekulowski replied in rapid German, his voice breaking. They left one by one. Hutka stood in the door. He left a young soldier in command, ordering him to bring the doctors downstairs. They took the rear staircase. In the pharmacy they saw Pajaczkowski, Nosilewska, Rygier, Staszek, the dean, Kauters, and the priest, all guarded by another soldier in a black uniform. The soldier escorting Stefan and the poet entered, closed the door, and took a long look at them. The director stood near the window with his back to the others, his shoulders hunched. Nosilewska sat on a metal stool, Rygier and Staszek in chairs. The day was cloudy but bright, the white of the clouds showing through the rusty leaves. A soldier blocked the door. He was a peasant with a dark, flat face and a crooked jaw. He breathed more and more heavily, and finally shouted in Ukrainian, “Well, doctors, what about you? The Ukraine lives, but you’re finished!”
“Please do your duty, as we have done ours, but do not speak to us,” said Pajpak in Polish, his voice surprisingly strong. He turned nimbly, drew himself up, and looked at the Ukrainian with his dark eyes.
“You!” murmured the soldier, raising his lumpy fist. The door flung open and hit the soldier in the back.
“What are you doing here?” growled Hutka in German. “Out!” He was wearing his helmet and held his automatic in his left hand, as if about to hit somebody with it.
“Silence!” he shouted, though no one had spoken. “Stay here until you get further orders. No one leaves. I repeat: if we find a single patient hidden, you all pay.”
He looked at them with his watery eyes and turned away. Sekulowski called out hoarsely, “Herr… Herr Offizier!”
“What now?” snarled Hutka. His dark brown face showed under his helmet. His hand rested on the doorknob.
“Some patients have been hidden in the living quarters.”
“What!? What!?”
Hutka rushed toward Sekulowski, grabbed him by the collar, and shook him.
“Where are they, you bastards?”
Sekulowski began to groan and tremble. Hutka called in the duty officer and told him to search all the apartments. The poet, still held by his coat collar, whined rapidly in Polish, “I didn’t want all of us to be—” His sleeves were pulled so tightly that he could not move his arms.
“Herr Obersturmfuhrer,” shouted Staszek, deathly pale, “he’s not a doctor, he’s a patient, a mental case!”
Someone sighed. Hutka was stupefied.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” the German retorted. “What’s the meaning of this, swine of a doctor?”
Staszek, in his poor German, repeated that Sekulowski was a patient.
Niezgloba slouched toward the window. Hutka looked around at them, beginning to understand. His nostrils flared. “What bastards these swine are, what liars!” he wailed, pressing Sekulowski against the wall. The bottle of bromine on the edge of the table teetered and fell, shattering and splashing its contents over the linoleum.
“Well, we will straighten everything out. Let me see your papers!”
A Ukrainian—apparently a senior aide, because he wore two silver stripes on his epaulets—was called in from the hall to help translate the papers. Everyone except Nosilewska had them. A guard accompanied her upstairs while Hutka stood before Kauters, examining his papers at great length and seeming to calm down.
“Ah,” said the German. “Volksdeutsch, are you? Excellent. Why did you get mixed up in this Polish swindle?”
Kauters explained that he had known nothing about it. He spoke harsh but correct German.
Nosilewska came back with her Medical Association identity card. Hutka waved her away and turned to Sekulowski, who was still standing by the cabinet against the wall.
“Komm.”
“Herr Offizier… I’m not ill. I’m thoroughly well.”
“Are you a doctor?”
“Yes—I mean, no, but I really can’t—I’ll…”
“Komm.”
Hutka was now completely calm—too calm. He stood still, nearly smiling, his raincoat rustling with every movement. He signaled with his index finger, as one would to a child: “Komm.”
Sekulowski took a step and fell to his knees.
“Mercy! Please! I want to live. I’m not insane.”
“Enough!” Hutka roared. “Traitor! You betrayed your poor, crazy brothers.”
Two shots rang out behind the building. The windowpanes rattled and the instruments on the shelves trembled.
Sekulowski, wrapped in the folds of his doctor’s coat, fell at the German’s boots.
“Franke!” Hutka called out.
Another German came in and jerked Sekulowski by the shoulders so powerfully that the poet, tall and fat though he was, snapped upright like a rag doll.
“My mother was German!” he squealed in a falsetto as he was dragged to the door. He grabbed frantically for a handhold, squirming and gripping the doorframe but not daring to defend himself against the blows. Franke raised his rifle butt and methodically smashed Sekulowski’s fingers.
“Have mercy!” howled Sekulowski in German, and then “Mother of God!” in Polish. Fat tears rolled down his face.
The German lost his temper. Sekulowski now had hold of the doorknob. Franke took him around the waist, leaned into him, tensed, and pushed with all his might. They flew into the corridor, Sekulowski falling to the stone floor with a thud. The German reached back to close the door, giving the doctors a last glance at his flushed, sweaty face.
“Disgusting!” he said and slammed the door.
A large clump of bushes blocked the pharmacy window. Further on, beyond scattered trees, a blank wall rose. The cries of patients and the rasping voices of the Germans were distinct, though muffled. The crack of rifle shots seemed louder, somehow solidified. First there was a thick volley, then a sound like soft bags falling. Then silence.
A strident voice called in German: “Twenty more!”
Shots trilled off the wall. Sharp, melancholy whistles marked the occasional ricochet. At one point an automatic rifle barked, but generally it was small arms. Another silence was followed by the scraping of many feet and the now monotonous cry: “Twenty more!”
Two or three pistol shots, high-pitched and terse, sounded like corks coming out of bottles.
One inhuman penetrating scream rang out. There was a sound of crying from above, as if coming from the second floor. It went on for a long time.
The doctors sat motionless, their eyes glued to the nearest objects. Stefan felt stuporous. At first he had tried to cling to something: perhaps Hutka, who made the decisions, might somehow… there was life even in death… but a German shout interrupted his last reflection. There was a crashing of broken branches, red leaves fluttered outside the window, and breathy sobbing and the sound of boots on gravel were heard quite close by.
