572
PARTISAN REVIEW
our time, formerly unknown and impossible; formerly a man might be
capable of evil-doing but would feel this as his misfortune, and, escaping
it, would once again press himself against the warm, accustomed gladness
of life; now, however, man has been forcibly reduced to the capacity to live
and warm himself by self-immolation, destroying himself and others.
Gershanovich reached us with the help of the partisans, who had been
surprised and interested by so rare a man-rare even to them, who had
known all fate had to offer-a man able to accommodate death within him
self and endure it; they led him through the lines, protecting him with
their own bodies, and carried him in their arms past fortified enemy posi–
tions, so that he should move away in his heart from suffering, even from
the memory of it, and begin to live normally.
Gershanovich's speech was like the speech of a man in a dream, as
if
the main part of his consciousness were engaged in a world that was invis–
ible to us and all that reached us was the weak light of his thoughts that
had moved far away. He called himself the seventh man and said that he
hadn't pulled the pin of the hand-grenade because the pin was stiff and
there hadn't been time to pull it, and that the pin had been stiff because
the work of the quality control department was not good enough, not like
in his Province Artisans' Union in Minsk.
Then Gershanovich spoke to us more clearly, saying he used to take work
home with
him
in
the evening; he needed money because he had fathered
five children and all five had grown up healthy, and they ate well, and he was
glad they were eating up his labor and not leaving any over, and he had taught
himself to sleep little, so as to have time to do extra work, but now he could
sleep for a long time and he could even die--there was no one left for
him
to feed. All his children, and his wife and grandmother, were lying in a clay
grave near the Borisov concentration camp, and an additional five hundred
people lay there with them; they had been killed too-they were all naked,
but they were covered over wi th earth. There would be grass in summer, and
snow lying there in winter, and they would not feel cold there.
"They'll get warm now," said Gershanovich. "Soon I'll join them too;
I'm lonely without my family; there's nowhere else for me to go; I want
to visit their grave."
"Live with us," one of the soldiers invited him.
"Me live here, while they don't live there!" exclaimed Gershanovich.
"They're in a bad way, it's very difficult for them-where's the justice in
it? No, I'll try and get to them again through death. I didn't reach them
the firs t time, now I'll try again."
And he suddenly shuddered from a dark memory: "And again I won't
die. I'll kill, but I won't die myself."
