MARIANKA
109
parent's health, it was soft and drawling like the dialect of South–
ern countries.
Again with his pistol butt he smacked the prisoner's face. He
would have stunned him, but Kolenko jumped to one side; even
then the metal struck his nose and chipped off a fragment. The
man yelled and fell on his knees. His body pitched forward, he
rocked sideways, the blood still spurting from his wounds. The
others burst out laughing, tickled to see a great tall fellow wriggle
like a worm and all because a miserable little bit of nose was
missing.
You know, when in fancy I travel back to Marianka, accursed
Marianka, under the domination of Petloura's recruits, I can still
hear their boisterous laugh, so soon stinking of vodka, so soon
husky with delight. I listen: there's no malice in that laugh, it is
the honest and spontaneous laugh that is generated with torture and
with the blood of a man yelling for fear. It is because for them
life held no meaning, neither their own lives nor other people's,
and what we don't drink an·d embrace today,-well, perhaps, we
never shall have a chance to drink and embrace. Instinctively, of
human qualities the only ones they possessed were the inhuman
ones.
The Rabbi's wife felt
ill.
While Myriam tearfully ran to
fetch more bottles of spirits, the venerable Master and I hurried
to the invalid's side. Though she made heroic efforts to control
herself, she couldn't master a nervous fit that shook her like a bout
of fever. Gasps would escape from her throat, intermixed with
hiccups, seeming to float up from her belly to her mouth, and
suddenly she was sick, luxuriantly sick, a thick jet that bounced
her out of her chair, as if all her insides must gush from her
mouth. She cringed in humiliation and shame. Rabbi Mellakh,
yriam and I, we stood helpless and perplexed staring at this
·gnoble sight, at this lump of living womanhood, horribly tar–
ished. We made her sip water and pushed her into a chair, but it
rought no relief. She continued to hiccup and everytime she was
haken as though by a tidal wave. The knights of the Ukrainean
ndependence gulped the vodka and laughed.
"Hey,.Jew! ..."
Rabbi Mellakh raised his head. In the old man's eyes shone
e immense serenity of the ancient martyrs: what had just hap–
ned, what would happen, was ordained....
