114
PARTISAN REVIEW
burnt. I didn't want her to stop living and it was only then I
noticed the knife upright
in
her throat and all the blood on her
pale holiday dress.
Where I got the strength, I shall never know. I plunged
towards the window frame, head first, with all the strength
in
my
body, falling through like a pebble. I landed on a hillock of snow
heaped outside by the old Rabbi when he had cleared the cottage
for the Reception of the Bride.
A gust of pure air seemed to restore my wits. Marianka was
dissolving in a firework display, in shouts of joy and in shouts of
horror. Strident cries that pierced high into the sky and coarse,
raucous shouts that grazed the earth. Entirely naked, Marie
Baranko, an old woman of sixty, was hobbling in a pool of melted
snow, and a man stood behind aiming kicks at her backside.
"Dance, you cow, go on, dance!" he said. She danced, bending one
leg, then the other one, her breasts, shrivelled like dry salt fish,
flapping against her stomach in tune. "Ha ha hal ..." the man
said, and he kicked her buttocks apart.
Men were running about, and they were firing rifles, and they
were stabbing, and they were laughing. A great tall fellow stood
silhouetted against the light from a flame, looming like some giant
with the shadow he cast before him. By its legs, he held a squeal–
ing baby, head downwards, also naked. The man stooped over his
burden, delicately kneaded the tiny body as if to test its resistance,
then swung the child round and round above his head, beat the air
with it and threw. The little burden cut through the air like a cata–
pulted stone, described an arc, and landed with a squash on a
flaming wall. One second the man remained tense from the effort,
then he laughed with boisterous delight. He turned round, his
muscles taut. He clutched an escaping woman, at random, as you
might grab a fly in your hand. He bent his prey's neck, saw she
was old, and with one knife thrust slit her throat. And still he
laughed with boisterous delight.
Pursued by his laugh, pursued by the image of the little
naked burden describing an arc under the mauve night sky, I ran
in front of me, with all my strength, with my whole desire for life.
* * * *
At dawn, in a furrow of frozen soil, a detachment of red
soldiers stumbled on a youth half dead from cold.
Marianka was annihilated.
