Vol. 65 No. 4 1998 - page 578

578
PARTISAN REVIEW
mind had lost consciousness of its own accord, protecting the man from
despair.
On waking, Gershanovich tried his forehead: it was smooth and clean.
"The bullet's inside my mind," he decided. Then he tried the back of his
head and felt there only the old dent of his previous injury. ''I'm still alive,
I'm in this world; it's like I thought," the prisoner reflected. "This new
gun of theirs is no use at all: the cartridges don't have enough powder; I
knew it. So how many have they killed with one bullet? Three or four,
probably, but last time the bullet killed the sixth man and got as far as me.
The enemy of mankind is growing weak, he's growing weak-I can feel
it! "
As he lay there, Gershanovich became used to the dark, which was still
illuminated by a mysterious, scarcely breathing light that trembled in the
distance. Near him lay the man who had stood in front of him, the bald
old man with child-like down on the clean skin of his head. Gershanovich
put his hand to the head of the old man; his head had grown cold and the
whole man had died, even though he had not been harmed in any way.
"Just what I thought-one mustn't be afraid," thought Gershanovich.
"The world itself could come to an end from fear, and then what would
there be? One mustn't be afraid."
He worked out where he was; this was the cellar where they had been
shot, eight of them, and the candle in the distance had still not burnt
down. "It's a shame we're in here," thought Gershanovich. "It's going to
be death. But what of it? Before death there's also a little life. Last time
they carted me off to a grave, and that didn't stop me living."
An officer bent down towards him. Gershanovich sensed him from his
foreign breath-a stinking foulness carried out from his innards.
"So what is it you Bolsheviks say?" said the officer. "Didn't work out?!
Wanted to live did the Jew, standing seventh in the queue!"
''I'd say it's your idea that didn't work out," answered Gershanovich.
"I'm alive!"
"You're dead now!" stated the officer, aiming the barrel of his small
personal revolver at Gershanovich's forehead.
Gershanovich looked into the officer's pale eyes, which had been dead–
ened by a secret despair, and said to him, "Fire at me....My life is here,
but my children are there--I'll be all right wherever I am. We were peo–
ple here--we were humanity-but there we'll be something higher still:
we'll be eternal nature, giving birth to people."
The bullet entered one of Gershanovich's eyes, and he went still; but
for a long time his body remained warm, slowly taking leave of life as it
returned its warmth to the earth.
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