THE JOURNEY
385
shimmered with an arctic glitter. Jews were being flung out of
the cars on the roadbed. Shots rang out like exclamations. A
peasant in a fur hat with dangling ear-flaps led me behind a
frozen woodpile and began to search me. A cloud-dimmed moon
shone down on us. The violet wall of forest was smoking. Stiff
icy fingers like wooden stumps crept over my body. The tele–
grapher shouted from the open door of the car:
"Jew or Russian?"
"Russian," the peasant muttered, feeling me over. "Some
RussianI' He'd make a fine rabbi...."
He brought his crumpled worried face closer to mine, ripped
out the four ten-ruble gold coins my mother had sewn into my
underpants for the journey, took off my boots and coat, then
turned me around, struck the back of my neck with the edge of
his hand and said in Yiddish:
"Ankloif,
Chaim.... Get going, Chaim...."
I walked away, my bare feet sinking into the snow. My
back lit up like a target, its bull's eye centered on my ribs. The
peasant did not shoot. Between the columns of pines, in the sub–
terranean shelter of the forest, a light swayed in a crown of
blood-red smoke. I ran up to the hut. Its chimney smoked from
dung fire. The forester groaned when I burst in. Swathed in
strips of cloth cut out from overcoats, he sat in a little bamboo,
velvet-cushioned armchair, shredding tobacco in his lap. His
image was drawn out in the smoky air. He moaned. Then, rising
from the chair, he bowed low before me:
"Go
away, my good man.... Go away, my good citizen.
"
He led me out to a path and gave me rags to wrap my feet.
By late morning I had dragged myself to a little town. There was
no doctor at the hospital to amputate my frozen feet. A male
nurse was in charge of the ward. Every day he raced up to the
hospital on a short-legged black colt, tethered him to a post and
came in blazing, with glittering eyes.
"Friedrich Engels," he would say bending over my pillow,
