had been seized at that moment by a feeling of exaltation.
The column moved on beside the barbed wire and the ditches, past the reinforced concrete towers with their machine-guns; to these people, who no longer remembered freedom, it seemed that the barbed wire and the machine-gunes were there not to stop the inmates from escaping, but to stop the condemned from hiding away in the camp.
The path turned away from the barbed wire and led towards some low squat buildings with flat roofs; from a distance, these rectangles with grey windowless walls looked like the children's bricks David had once glued together to make pictures.
As the column turned, a gap appeared in the ranks and David saw that some of the buildings had their doors flung wide open. Not knowing why, he took the little box out of his pocket and, without saying goodbye to the chrysalis, flung it away. Let it live!
'Splendid people, these Germans!' said the man in front – as though the guards might hear and appreciate his flattery.
The man with the raised collar shrugged his shoulders in a manner that was somehow peculiar, gave a quick glance to either side of him and seemed to grow taller and more imposing; with a sudden nimble jump, as though he had spread his wings, he punched an SS guard in the face and knocked him to the ground. Sofya Levinton leapt after him with an angry shout. She stumbled and fell. Several hands grabbed her and helped her up. The people behind were pressing on; David glanced round, afraid of being knocked over, and caught a glimpse of the man being dragged away by the guards.
In the brief instant when Sofya had attempted to attack the guard, she had forgotten about David. Now once more she took him by the hand. David saw how clear, fierce and splendid human eyes can be when – even for a fraction of a second – they sense freedom.
By now the front ranks had already reached the asphalt square in front of the bath-house; their steps sounded different as they marched through the wide-open doors.
47
The warm, damp changing-room was quiet and gloomy; the only light came through some small rectangular windows.
Benches made from thick bare planks disappeared into the half-darkness. A low partition ran down the middle of the room to the wall opposite the entrance; the men were undressing on one side, the women and children on the other.
This division didn't cause any anxiety: people were still able to see each other and call out: 'Manya, Manya, are you there?' 'Yes, yes, I can see you.' One man shouted out: 'Matilda, bring a flannel so you can rub my back for me!' Most people felt a sense of relief.
Serious-looking men in gowns walked up and down the rows, keeping order and giving out sensible advice: socks, foot-cloths and stockings should be placed inside your shoes, and you mustn't forget the number of your row and place.
People's voices sounded quiet and muffled.
When a man has no clothes on, he draws closer to himself. 'God, the hairs on my chest are thicker and wirier than ever – and what a lot of grey!' 'How ugly my fingernails look!' There's only one thing a naked man can say as he looks at himself: 'Yes, here I am. This is me!' He recognizes himself and identifies his T, an T that remains always the same. A little boy crosses his skinny arms over his bony chest, looks at his frog-like body and says, 'This is me'; fifty years later he looks at a plump, flabby chest, at the blue, knotted veins on his legs and says, 'This is me'.
But Sofya Levinton noticed something else. It was as though the body of a whole people, previously covered over by layers of rags, was laid bare in these naked bodies of all ages: the skinny little boy with the big nose over whom an old woman had shaken her head and said, 'Poor little Hassid!'; the fourteen-year-old girl who was admired even here by hundreds of eyes; the feeble and deformed old men and women who aroused everyone's pitying respect; men with strong backs covered in hair; women with large breasts and prominently veined legs. It was as though she felt, not just about herself, but about her whole people: 'Yes, here I am.' This was the naked body of a people: young and old, robust and feeble, with bright curly hair and with pale grey hair.
Sofya looked at her own broad, white shoulders; no one had ever kissed them – only her mother, long ago when she was a child. Then, with a feeling of meekness, she looked at David. Had she really, only a few minutes ago, forgotten about him and leapt furiously at an SS guard? 'A foolish young Jew and an old Russian pupil of his once preached the doctrine of non-violence,' she thought. 'But that was before Fascism.' No longer ashamed of the maternal feelings that had been aroused in her – virgin though she was – she bent down and took David's narrow little face in her large hands. It was as though she had taken his warm eyes into her hands and kissed them.
'Yes, my child,' she said, 'we've reached the bath-house.'
For a moment, in the gloom of the concrete changing-room, she glimpsed the eyes of Alexandra Vladimirovna Shaposhnikova. Was she still alive? They had said goodbye. Sofya had gone on her way, and now reached the end of it; so had Anya Shtrum.
The machinist's wife wanted to show her little son to her husband, but he was on the other side of the partition. Instead she held him out, half-covered in diapers, to Sofya Levinton and said proudly: 'He's only just been undressed and he's already stopped crying.'
Behind the partition, a man with a thick black beard, wearing torn pyjama bottoms instead of underpants, called out, his eyes and his false teeth glittering, 'Manechka, there's a bathing-costume for sale here. Shell we buy it?'
Musya Borisovna smiled at the joke; her low-cut shift revealed her breasts and she was covering them with one hand.
Sofya Levinton knew that these witticisms were anything but an expression of strength. It was just that terror became less terrible if you laughed at it.
Rebekka Bukhman's beautiful face looked thin and exhausted; she turned her huge, feverish eyes aside and ran her fingers through her thick curls, hiding away her rings and ear-rings.
She was in the grip of a cruel, blind life-force. Helpless and unhappy though she was, Fascism had reduced her to its own level: nothing could break her determination to survive. Even now she no longer remembered how, with these same hands, she had squeezed her child's throat, afraid that its crying would reveal their hiding-place.
But as Rebekka Bukhman gave a long sigh, like an animal that had finally reached the safety of a thicket, she caught sight of a woman in a gown cutting Musya Borisovna's curls with a pair of scissors. Beside her someone else was cutting a little girl's hair. A silky black stream fell silently onto the concrete floor. There was hair everywhere; it was as though the women were washing their legs in streams of bright and dark water.
The woman in the gown unhurriedly took Rebekka's hand away and seized the hair at the back of her head; the tips of her scissors clinked against the rings. Without stopping work, she deftly ran her fingers through Rebekka's hair, removed the rings and whispered:
'Everything will be returned to you.' Then, still more quietly, she whispered:
Rebekka at once forgot the woman's face; she had no eyes, no lips, just a blue-veined, yellowish hand.
A grey-haired man appeared on the other side of the partition; his spectacles sat askew on his crooked nose and he looked like a sick, unhappy demon. He glanced up and down the benches. Articulating each syllable like someone used to speaking to the deaf, he asked:
'Mother, mother, how are you?'
A little wrinkled old woman, recognizing her son's voice amid the general hubbub, guessed what he meant and answered:
'My pulse is fine, no irregularity at all, don't worry!'
Someone next to Sofya Levinton said:
'That's Helman. He's a famous doctor.'
A naked young woman was holding a thick-lipped little girl in white knickers by the hand and screaming:
