300
PARTISAN REVIEW
muring. Since the lane, I reasoned, must lead somewhere, I tiptoed for–
ward. I had covered maybe a couple of yards when the silence was
shattered by a cry, the cry of a woman shouting:
"Kartoffeln!
Potatoes!"
And on the instant, all about me, the grave-like rubble leaped to life.
In the gloom, dark figures appeared from nowhere, scurried like frantic
rats over the hills, some rushing headlong into a hole I hadn't noticed,
and from which, as I was about to pass it there came, like something
solid, the appalling stench of sickness. I stood a few yards from the hole
and saw that it was a kind of cave covered over by some canvas and
sheets of corrugated iron, that within there flickered the light of one
candle, round which I could see the blurred glowing outline of five or
six faces, and beyond them, in the background, a dark mass which I took
for coats or blankets covering many living, prostrate people.
I walked quickly on, thinking of the witches of Endor, and · all of
a sudden there came over me the feeling that I was being followed; so
I walked faster, stumbling over rocks and refuse, and then I knew that
I was lost. So I stopped, stood still, and all round
rna
I could hear the
sound as of many muffled voices murmuring. At first, in the darkness,
I could see nothing but the rubble and smashed walls, all indigo against
the ink-blue sky and stars. Then, right beside me, something moved.
I heard a sound like a spoon or fork hitting a plate, and I could see
the form of a woman, in a seated position, outside what looked like a
small hut.
"Could you tell me where I am?" I asked, and my voice seemed as
loud, as sinister as a fog-horn at sea. "Could you tell me how I can get
to the Konigstrasse ?"
"Tcha," a female voice said, "that's complicated."
And she got up and in the dark began giving me the most compli–
cated instructions. When she'd finished, I asked her if this ·was where
she lived.
"Ja," she said, "would the Herr like to see? But, unfortunately, I
have no light, no matches.... "
I struck a match and followed her over the few yards of rubble to
where she had been sitting. Here she bent down and, picking up a sheet
of old newspaper, rolled it tight and lengthwise and put it over the
dying flame. In the sudden flare of light I saw that she was a wGman
of about forty, ashen pale but quite good-looking, with a long scar across
her forehead .
"Here is my home," she said. "I made it all myself."
You could just manage to entey her home without getting down
on your hands and knees.
It
was like a large dilapidated dog-kennel,
made of planks about four feet high, with a sheet of corrugated iron for
roof, and another 'sheet, covered with two overcoats, on the floor.
"That's where I sleep," she said. "And there's my table."
The table was a board, charred black, nailed to four rickety pieces
