Post by Bonobo on Jun 4, 2009 0:09:06 GMT 1
Zofia Nałkowska Medallions (1946)
By the Railway Track
Yet another person now belongs to the dead: the young woman by the railway track whose escape attempt failed.
One can make her acquaintance only through the tale of a man who had witnessed the incident but is unable to understand it. She lives on only in his memory.
Those who were being transported to extermination camps in the lead-sealed boxcars of the long trains would sometimes escape en route. Not many dared such a feat. The courage required was even greater than to go hopelessly, unresisting and meek, to a certain death.
Sometimes escape would succeed. The deafening clatter of the rushing boxcars prevented those on the outside from hearing what went on inside.
The only means of escape was by ripping up the floorboards. In the cramp of jammed-in, starved, foul- smelling, filthy people, it seemed an improbable gambit. Even to move was impossible. The beaten human mass, wriggling with the rushing rhythm of the train, reeled and rocked in the suffocating stench and gloom. Nevertheless, even those who, weak and fearful, would never dream of escaping, themselves understood their obligation to help others. They’d lean bac, pressing against one another, and liftr their shit-covered legs in order to open a way for freedom for others.
Succesfully prying open one end of the floorboard raised a glimmer of hope. A collective effort was required to tear it up. It took hours. Then there remained still the second and the third boards.
Those closest would lean over the narrow aperture, then back away fearfully. Courage was called to crawl hand and foot through the chink into the din and crash of iron, into the gale of the smoking wind below, above the gliding bases, to reach the axle and, in this catch-hold, to crawl the spot from which jumping would guarantee the best chance at salvation. To drop somehow, some way, in between the rails or through the wheels. Then, to recover one’s senses, roll down unseen from the mound, and escape into the strange, temptatingly dark forest.
People would often fall under the wheels and be killed on the spot, struck by a protruding beam, the edge of a bar, thrown forcefully against a signal pole or roadside rock. Or they’d break their arms and legs, and be delivered thus unto the greater cruelty of the enemy.
Those who dared to step into the roaring, crashing, yawning mouth were aware of what they risked. Just as those who remained behind were, even though there was no possibility of looking out through the sealed doors or high-set windows.
The woman lying by the track belonged to those who dared. She was the third to step through the opening of the floor. A few others rolled down after her. At that moment a volley of shots rang out over the travellers’ heads – an explosion on the roof of the boxcar. Suddenly the shots fell silent. The travellers could now regard the dark place left by the ripped-up boards as though it were the opening to a grave. And they could ride on calmly, ever closer to their own death, which awaited them at the crossroads.
The smoke and rattle of the train had long since disappeared into the darkness.
All that remained was the world.
The man, who can neither understand nor forget, relates his story once again.
When the new day broke, the woman was sitting on the dew-soaked grass by the side of the track. She was wounded in the knee. Some had succeeded in escaping. Further from the track, another lay motionless in the forest. A few had escaped. Two had died. She was the only one left like this, neither alive nor dead.
She was alone when he found her. But slowly people started to appear in that empty space, emerging from the brick kiln and village. Workers, women, and a boy stood fearful, watching her from a distance.
Every once in a while, a small chain of people would form. They’d cast their eyes about nervously and quickly depart. Others would approach, but wouldn’t linger for long. They would whisper among themselves, sigh, and walk away.
The situation was clear. Her curly, raven hair was obviously disheveled, her too-dark eyes overflowed the lowered lids. No one uttered a word to her. It was she who asked if the ones in the forest were alive. She learned they weren’t.
The day was white. The space open onto everything as far as the eye could see. People had already learned of the incident. It was a time of terror. Those who offered assistance or shelter were marked for death.
She begged one young man, who was standing for a while longer, then started to walk away, only to turn back, to bring her some Veronal from the pharmacy. She offered him money. He refused.
She lay back for a while, her eyes shut. Then she sat up again, shifted her leg, clasped it with both hands, and brushed her skirt from her knee. Her hands were bloodied. Her shattered knee a death sentence. She lay quietly for a long time, shutting her too-black eyes against the world.
When she finally opened them again, she noticed new faces hovering around her. The young man still lingered. So she asked him to buy her some vodka and cigarettes. He rendered her this service.
The gathering beside the mound attracted attention. Someone new would latch on. She lay among people but didn’t count on anyone for help. She lay like an animal that had been wounded during a hunt but which the hunters had forgotten to kill off. She proceeded to getr drunk. She dozed. The power that cut her off from all the others by forming a ring of fear was unbeatable.
Time passed. And old village woman, gasping for breath, returned and, drawing near, stole a tin cup of milk and some bread from beneath her kerchief. She bent over, furtively placed them in the wounded woman’s hand, and left immediately, only to look on from a distance to check whether she would drink the milk. It was only when she noticed two policemen approaching from the village that she disappeared, drawing her scarf across her face.
The others dispersed, too. Only the slick, small-town guy who had bought her the vodka and cigarettes continued to keep her company. But she no longer wanted anything from him.
The police came to see what was going on. They quickly sized up the situation and deliberated how to handle it. She begged them to shoot her. In a low voice, she tried to negotiate with them, provided they keep the whole thing quiet. They were undecided.
They, too, left, conferred, stopped, and walked on further. What they would finally decide was not certain. In the end, however, they did not care to carry out her request. She noticed that the kind young man, who had lit her cigarettes with a lighter that didn’t want’t to light, followed after. She had told him that one of the two dead in the forest was her husband. That piece of news seemed to have caused him some unpleasantness.
She tried to swallow the milk but, preoccupied, set the cup down on the grass. A heavy, windy, spring day rolled over. It was cool. Beyond the empty field stood a couple of huts; at the other end, a few short, scrawny pines swept the sky with their branches. The forest, their destination, sprang up further from the railway. This emptiness was the whole of the world she saw.
The young man returned. She swallowed some more vodka and he lit her cigarette. A light dusk brushed across the sky from the east. To the west, skeins and smudges of clouds branched up sharply.
More people, on their way home from work, turned up and were told what happened. They spoke as though she couldn’t hear them, as though she was no longer there.
“The dead one there’s her husband,” a woman’s voice spoke up.
“They tried to escape from the train into the forest. But they shot at them with a rifle. They killed her husband, and she was left alone. Shot in the knee. She couldn’t get any further…”
“From the forest she could easily have been taken somewhere. But here, with everyone watching, there’s no way.”
The old lady who returned for her tin cup said those words. Silently she watched as the milk soaked into the grass.
So no one would intercede by removing her before nightfall, or by calling a doctor, or by taking her to the station so she could get to a hospital. Nothing of the kind would happen. She could only die, one way or another.
When she opened her eyes at dusk, there was no one around except for the two policemen who had come back and the one who would no longer go away. Again she pleaded with them to kill her, but without any expectation that they would do so. She covered her eyes with her hands so as not to see anymore.
The policemen still hesitated about what to do. One tried to talk the other into doing it. The latter retorted, “You do it yourself.”
Then she heard the young man’s voice saying. “Well then give it to me.”
Again they debated, quarreled. From beneath her lowered eyelids she watched the policeman take out his revolver and hand it to the stranger.
A small group of people standing further back watched as he bent over her. They heard the shot and turned away in disgust.
“They could at least have called in someone. Not do it like that. Like she was a dog.”
When it grew dark, two people emerged from the forest to get her. They located the spot with a bit of difficulty. They assumed she was sleeping. But when one of them took her by the shoulder, he understood at once that he was dealing with a corpse.
She lay there all night and into the morning, until just before noon, when a bailiff arrived and ordered her buried together with the other two who had died by the railway tracks.
“Why he shot her isn’t clear,” the narrator said. “I couldn’t understand it. Maybe he felt sorry for her…”
By the Railway Track
Yet another person now belongs to the dead: the young woman by the railway track whose escape attempt failed.
One can make her acquaintance only through the tale of a man who had witnessed the incident but is unable to understand it. She lives on only in his memory.
Those who were being transported to extermination camps in the lead-sealed boxcars of the long trains would sometimes escape en route. Not many dared such a feat. The courage required was even greater than to go hopelessly, unresisting and meek, to a certain death.
Sometimes escape would succeed. The deafening clatter of the rushing boxcars prevented those on the outside from hearing what went on inside.
The only means of escape was by ripping up the floorboards. In the cramp of jammed-in, starved, foul- smelling, filthy people, it seemed an improbable gambit. Even to move was impossible. The beaten human mass, wriggling with the rushing rhythm of the train, reeled and rocked in the suffocating stench and gloom. Nevertheless, even those who, weak and fearful, would never dream of escaping, themselves understood their obligation to help others. They’d lean bac, pressing against one another, and liftr their shit-covered legs in order to open a way for freedom for others.
Succesfully prying open one end of the floorboard raised a glimmer of hope. A collective effort was required to tear it up. It took hours. Then there remained still the second and the third boards.
Those closest would lean over the narrow aperture, then back away fearfully. Courage was called to crawl hand and foot through the chink into the din and crash of iron, into the gale of the smoking wind below, above the gliding bases, to reach the axle and, in this catch-hold, to crawl the spot from which jumping would guarantee the best chance at salvation. To drop somehow, some way, in between the rails or through the wheels. Then, to recover one’s senses, roll down unseen from the mound, and escape into the strange, temptatingly dark forest.
People would often fall under the wheels and be killed on the spot, struck by a protruding beam, the edge of a bar, thrown forcefully against a signal pole or roadside rock. Or they’d break their arms and legs, and be delivered thus unto the greater cruelty of the enemy.
Those who dared to step into the roaring, crashing, yawning mouth were aware of what they risked. Just as those who remained behind were, even though there was no possibility of looking out through the sealed doors or high-set windows.
The woman lying by the track belonged to those who dared. She was the third to step through the opening of the floor. A few others rolled down after her. At that moment a volley of shots rang out over the travellers’ heads – an explosion on the roof of the boxcar. Suddenly the shots fell silent. The travellers could now regard the dark place left by the ripped-up boards as though it were the opening to a grave. And they could ride on calmly, ever closer to their own death, which awaited them at the crossroads.
The smoke and rattle of the train had long since disappeared into the darkness.
All that remained was the world.
The man, who can neither understand nor forget, relates his story once again.
When the new day broke, the woman was sitting on the dew-soaked grass by the side of the track. She was wounded in the knee. Some had succeeded in escaping. Further from the track, another lay motionless in the forest. A few had escaped. Two had died. She was the only one left like this, neither alive nor dead.
She was alone when he found her. But slowly people started to appear in that empty space, emerging from the brick kiln and village. Workers, women, and a boy stood fearful, watching her from a distance.
Every once in a while, a small chain of people would form. They’d cast their eyes about nervously and quickly depart. Others would approach, but wouldn’t linger for long. They would whisper among themselves, sigh, and walk away.
The situation was clear. Her curly, raven hair was obviously disheveled, her too-dark eyes overflowed the lowered lids. No one uttered a word to her. It was she who asked if the ones in the forest were alive. She learned they weren’t.
The day was white. The space open onto everything as far as the eye could see. People had already learned of the incident. It was a time of terror. Those who offered assistance or shelter were marked for death.
She begged one young man, who was standing for a while longer, then started to walk away, only to turn back, to bring her some Veronal from the pharmacy. She offered him money. He refused.
She lay back for a while, her eyes shut. Then she sat up again, shifted her leg, clasped it with both hands, and brushed her skirt from her knee. Her hands were bloodied. Her shattered knee a death sentence. She lay quietly for a long time, shutting her too-black eyes against the world.
When she finally opened them again, she noticed new faces hovering around her. The young man still lingered. So she asked him to buy her some vodka and cigarettes. He rendered her this service.
The gathering beside the mound attracted attention. Someone new would latch on. She lay among people but didn’t count on anyone for help. She lay like an animal that had been wounded during a hunt but which the hunters had forgotten to kill off. She proceeded to getr drunk. She dozed. The power that cut her off from all the others by forming a ring of fear was unbeatable.
Time passed. And old village woman, gasping for breath, returned and, drawing near, stole a tin cup of milk and some bread from beneath her kerchief. She bent over, furtively placed them in the wounded woman’s hand, and left immediately, only to look on from a distance to check whether she would drink the milk. It was only when she noticed two policemen approaching from the village that she disappeared, drawing her scarf across her face.
The others dispersed, too. Only the slick, small-town guy who had bought her the vodka and cigarettes continued to keep her company. But she no longer wanted anything from him.
The police came to see what was going on. They quickly sized up the situation and deliberated how to handle it. She begged them to shoot her. In a low voice, she tried to negotiate with them, provided they keep the whole thing quiet. They were undecided.
They, too, left, conferred, stopped, and walked on further. What they would finally decide was not certain. In the end, however, they did not care to carry out her request. She noticed that the kind young man, who had lit her cigarettes with a lighter that didn’t want’t to light, followed after. She had told him that one of the two dead in the forest was her husband. That piece of news seemed to have caused him some unpleasantness.
She tried to swallow the milk but, preoccupied, set the cup down on the grass. A heavy, windy, spring day rolled over. It was cool. Beyond the empty field stood a couple of huts; at the other end, a few short, scrawny pines swept the sky with their branches. The forest, their destination, sprang up further from the railway. This emptiness was the whole of the world she saw.
The young man returned. She swallowed some more vodka and he lit her cigarette. A light dusk brushed across the sky from the east. To the west, skeins and smudges of clouds branched up sharply.
More people, on their way home from work, turned up and were told what happened. They spoke as though she couldn’t hear them, as though she was no longer there.
“The dead one there’s her husband,” a woman’s voice spoke up.
“They tried to escape from the train into the forest. But they shot at them with a rifle. They killed her husband, and she was left alone. Shot in the knee. She couldn’t get any further…”
“From the forest she could easily have been taken somewhere. But here, with everyone watching, there’s no way.”
The old lady who returned for her tin cup said those words. Silently she watched as the milk soaked into the grass.
So no one would intercede by removing her before nightfall, or by calling a doctor, or by taking her to the station so she could get to a hospital. Nothing of the kind would happen. She could only die, one way or another.
When she opened her eyes at dusk, there was no one around except for the two policemen who had come back and the one who would no longer go away. Again she pleaded with them to kill her, but without any expectation that they would do so. She covered her eyes with her hands so as not to see anymore.
The policemen still hesitated about what to do. One tried to talk the other into doing it. The latter retorted, “You do it yourself.”
Then she heard the young man’s voice saying. “Well then give it to me.”
Again they debated, quarreled. From beneath her lowered eyelids she watched the policeman take out his revolver and hand it to the stranger.
A small group of people standing further back watched as he bent over her. They heard the shot and turned away in disgust.
“They could at least have called in someone. Not do it like that. Like she was a dog.”
When it grew dark, two people emerged from the forest to get her. They located the spot with a bit of difficulty. They assumed she was sleeping. But when one of them took her by the shoulder, he understood at once that he was dealing with a corpse.
She lay there all night and into the morning, until just before noon, when a bailiff arrived and ordered her buried together with the other two who had died by the railway tracks.
“Why he shot her isn’t clear,” the narrator said. “I couldn’t understand it. Maybe he felt sorry for her…”
