CHAPTER 5

THE BREAD
THAT SHOWED
THE WAY
TO A HEART

The Bouncer’s expansive satisfaction at taking a prisoner became less disturbing as the nights passed. Our lair, with its tomblike smell, was painfully crowded and the Bouncerp. 24 himself had to sit in his niche in the earth wall. When he was sure that everybody was asleep, he allowed himself to sigh laboriously and sometimes attacks of cramps twisted his great legs. But in the daytime he gave the appearance of being at peace with the world. He would move around imitating Ledin, and he always wore a gun on each shoulder — one double‐barreled, in case he should come upon a rabbit or a bird — and looked particularly warlike. The thing that amused him most was the way the less hardy soldiers were suffocated by the smell that came from his black fur coat. He was still a long way from humility. Particularly as it soon became apparent that we got a good deal of use and pleasure out of the prisoner.

From the beginning the Russian maintained a quiet reserve and never mingled in anything that didn’t concern him. He ate nothing unless he was told to and unless the food was placed in his hands. He asked no questions, not even about Kámenka — as far as that goes, our commander had forbidden us to talk to the prisoner about the village. During the hearing, the prisoner responded most cooperatively, in a friendly and straightforward fashion. But he didn’t know much, not even how he had wandered into our hands. We were surrounded by a mine belt, and how he penetrated it was inexplicable to him as well as to us. A light snowfall the day after his arrival had obliterated his tracks completely. Otherwise it appeared that he had only one wish, to be useful. We set him to work watching the stove, cutting wood, and melting snow. He took care of everything like a faithful old watchdog. We soon came to trust him enough to use him as an aircraft lookout. His ear was sharp and so was his vision. It was touching how anxious he was to warn us of enemy planes in good time. Recently it was only planes that disturbed our isolation. He was as dependable as a listening machine and seemed top. 25 know instinctively when something was going to happen. He would lumber around from hole to hole gesticulating with his great, black hands, full of a kind of thoughtful intensity. When he was rewarded with a half‐smoked cigarette, he would bow with painful politeness. He was also a very capable cook. One day he went out in search of that reindeer corpse that I had heard him telling the moon about, and cut out a quantity of frozen meat which he dragged home to us on a pulka that he had fashioned out of spruce branches. During the meal he kept asking us: Well, how does it taste? Or: What can you expect, under the circumstances? Or: I don’t suppose you want me to fetch any more for you, do you? And after every question, he peered at us with a kind of guarded curiosity through his little eyes that shone like a light spring sky and looked from one to the other of us — Tom, the Bouncer, and me.

How we ate and drank that evening! We had woody carbide, meat, and vodka. The vodka Tom had collected from the pocket flasks of the dead Russians scattered thickly about the woods. The prisoner became talkative from the liquor and asked us to call him Plennik, which quite simply means “prisoner.” I interpreted and asked him to give a full account of the dead man who had owned the dogskin coat and for whom he sacrificed his cloak in the woods. He laid the cloak over him, he confessed with some embarrassment, so that his woman wouldn’t be disturbed by such a sight in the moonlight. She knew the dead man. He was from Kámenka too.

Plennik — the prisoner, that is — said that he had been away from Kámenka for all of twenty years, in fact since the first war. When he returned several years ago, he was forty years old. He returned one cold, windy autumn evening, he said, and he was starved and frozen through. The village was entirely changed. None of his old friends werep. 26 left, no relatives, no one who knew him. People had changed character, he said, and they all looked at him with suspicion. They were afraid of him and hastened to lock their doors in his face. That evening he gave up all hope and all faith in life. But then life came back to him. He died, he said, and was reborn.

He described Kámenka for us. The village lay in the middle of an open swampland where no tree grew, not even a bush. The woods were thick and warm around the swamp, but in the flat village itself it was always colder than anywhere else. Precisely in the center of the swamp, where the rivers Bjélaja and Chalódnaja converged, lay Kámenka with its dark, low log cottages and smokehouses. The autumn day he arrived it was so cold that all the inhabitants had moved into their kitchens to keep warm. You can see such a thing from the outside, because parts of the wall are chalkwhite against the usual black of the unpainted outer surfaces. The warmth from the heated room penetrates the walls and causes a layer of luminous white rime frost on the outside. On such a day you could see from a distance, in fact from the edge of the woods, where the wall‐fast furniture was located. He had walked around looking at the houses and then wandered down in the direction of the river, on the point of tears. But then he suddenly stopped and pricked up his ears like an animal. His nostrils had detected a smell that reminded him of something. It was the odor of dog — the strong, rank smell of dog. Just that moment something dark and about his size had moved past him. It was a man dressed in a dog‐skin coat which was quite black and reached almost to his feet. He moved soundlessly because he wore ónutji, or white rags, wrapped around his legs and feet. Earlier that evening a man in just such a coat had given him a blank stare when Plennik had asked for something top. 27 eat, and now he felt a sudden hatred for the stranger and his dog smell. A hatred stronger than any he had felt before. A hate that he was aware of but could not control. And he suddenly noticed that he had a heavy weapon in his hand, a stone. He really had no idea whether he wanted to rob the stranger, take revenge upon him, or merely take from him that long, stinking coat. But in that instant one thing became clear to him: it was his own life he wanted to destroy, and not someone else’s.

He stood by an old oven which had been used for smoking fish, and waited for the man with the dog smell. Nobody else was about. It was dark, except for a small lantern which threw a weak, yellow light for a few meters around it. When the man in the fur coat took quite a different direction from that which Plennik had anticipated, he had to take a shortcut. But he miscalculated. The man wandered about irrationally, almost as if he were trying to fool someone. It irritated Plennik. He no longer had the patience to keep hidden behind the woodpile where he was now standing, but wanted to rush forward and do the job without any precautions whatsoever. But just at that moment the man turned and came straight toward Plennik without seeing him. They were quite close to the river, near a small wooden quay. The edge of the quay was only a step from where Plennik stood, and the dogskin man would have to go close, very close to him. He approached, and came into the pale circle of light from the quay lantern, walking slowly with his head thrust forward into the gusty evening wind. The river was not entirely frozen over since it was still autumn, and the convergence of the two streams caused currents and whirlpools. Two or three lights shone weakly from a houseboat on the other side of the river and from that same point came the voice of a man singing.

p. 28

The dogskin man approached slowly. Plennik stood with the rock raised over his head. The wind blew and the lantern light seemed to shrink as if it didn’t want to watch. Only one step more. One step. Then the man stopped. Right in front of Plennik.

He did not stop as if he had discovered Plennik or sensed danger. He stopped quite calmly, as if during his whole erratic walk his intention had been to stop at just that point. The dog smell stabbed at Plennik’s nostrils and his only thought was that it was exactly the same smell he had noticed earlier when he had been turned away. The man stood stock‐still looking at something in the river that completely captured his attention.

Plennik himself looked out over the river and discovered an object. The ice extended only a few meters from the quay edge, and then open, black water took over. The object, which was no bigger than an open hand, lay on the ice. Plennik couldn’t tell at first what it was, but when the lantern light flamed up for a moment, he decided it must be a piece of bread, a little round bread of a special kind — a prosphorá, holy bread blessed by a priest. Some kindly soul had put it out on the ice for the birds.

The man in the dogskin coat stood for a long time looking at the bread, as if he couldn’t turn away. Suddenly he glanced about to see that no one was watching. He was completely unaware of Plennik and his raised arm.

The man moved. Not toward Plennik, but toward the bread. He went down to the quay edge, squatted by the piles, looked around once more to see that nobody was watching, and then began to let himself down awkwardly and laboriously to the ice.

Plennik slowly lowered the stone. He now understood that the other man suffered from hunger too. His anger disappeared and he only stood and watched.

After he had got a foothold, the man carefully tried thep. 29 ice’s strength. Once, when the ice gave a dull, unexpected sound, Plennik jumped and made a noise. Both men were frightened. The man on the ice reassured himself once more that no one was about. Then he continued toward the bread. The ice was weak, but the bread drew him on.

Plennik was no longer so immobile. He had discarded the stone and his hands opened and shut as if they were eating the air, and he breathed in gasps, all the while ready to jump out on the ice — not to hurt the man but to help him.

It wasn’t necessary. The man reached the bread, stretched out his hand, and got hold of it. But it was frozen fast!

It was completely imbedded in the ice! And then, oh merciful God, the man on the ice was seized by irrational violence like that Plennik had just known. He began mumbling to himself and kicking at the ice in order to release the bread. Then the ice broke.

It happened suddenly. He sank gently and without a sound. He disappeared completely, but only for a moment, Then he shot up as if propelled from below. An almost circular piece of ice had separated from the mass, with the bread at the center, like a handle. Even then the man couldn’t forget that wretched piece of bread. He stretched out his arm and got hold of it once more. The ice fragment was strong enough at least to hold him up.

But the current had caught it and carried it out into the stream. Plennik sprang from his hiding place. It was as if someone threw him into the river, precisely where the fragment had been. He went deep under, deeper than the other, and came to the surface. He fought with all his strength against the fluid cold about him and moved out toward the block of ice.

The current was strong and full of whirlpools caused by the convergence of the two streams. But he reached thep. 30 spinning fragment, and in spite of the weight of the cold water he was able to reach his arm up and get hold of the bread. But the other screamed at him:

“Let go of the bread! It’s mine! I saw it first! It’s holy bread — and a sin to throw it out on the ice!”

He fought for the bread as if it were a precious stone. He exhausted himself completely and understood none of Plennik’s efforts to calm him. Then, suddenly, he became less agitated and said:

“I don’t want it for myself. The bread. But for the wife of our nadsmótrtjik our overseer. It’s holy bread and nothing for birds!”

Then he was silent. The ice had floated a long way from the quay lantern and Plennik could see nothing at all. After a time it penetrated his frozen brain that the other had let go. Plennik called out, louder and louder, but got no answer.

The singing from the barge had stopped. His voice had been heard, and a couple of men came out and called back. They jumped into separate skiffs and rowed quickly out toward Plennik. One of them, an old man with a bushy red beard, picked up Plennik and took him to the barge where he was offered brandy and a bunk for the night. The other bargeman, who was younger and stronger, stayed out in the river looking for the man in the fur coat. And he found him. The coat had held up its owner after cold and exertion had robbed him of all strength. The bargeman helped him home.

But Plennik had stubbornly hauled the ice fragment to the barge and there cut the bread out with an axe. He had got it into his head that he must deliver it to the wife of the overseer. The next day he would make every effort to locate her.

And he did. And as he told his story — our dear prisoner,p. 31 there in our den — he smiled with a good deal of embarrassment, and looked from one to another of us as if to ask pardon for having tired us. Then he went on to explain:

“Anyway, now you know how I came to meet the man who’s lying out there with my cloak over him. But not only that. Now you know how I found my woman, my dear, beautiful wife in Kámenka. It was to her that the bread led me. It was she who was the overseer’s wife. She whom you have come to call Lúnnaja.”

He stood up and as he began to open the frozen little cardboard door in the ceiling, he said solemnly:

“Lúnnaja is a good name for her. A fine name. I’ll call her that myself. Because she’s not earthbound. She believes in love, and people don’t very often. But she believes blindly. Maybe you can understand. You know how I came to her. Poor, frozen, almost a beggar, almost a — murderer. I told her everything. But she loved me immediately, without asking about anything else.”

And then Plennik smiled and clambered out, as eagerly as if she awaited him out there in the frozen forest.