Psalm 44

And now she thought once more — still lying there motionless and watchful next to her child — among a great burst of other thoughts about the future (in the distance, the artillery had again begun to sing): How will I find Jakob? Quite directly, and barely acknowledging the sense of peace and security with which she said this to herself, she thought once again: How will I find Jakob? as though that were the only thing remaining to do and as if she were thinking all this from the other side, outside of the wire and outside of the past, even outside of the present: as if this thought had begun to take wing from some already achieved future here at one’s fingertips; all that separated her from it was an insignificant revolution of the clock and two or three relaxed steps as when you’re heading out on an excursion and the shady woods come into view and you begin to smell the wildflowers and conifers and there’s a bit of something to eat in the basket along with a thermos and white napkins and all you have to do is sprawl out on the grass and take out the tablecloth and spread it out over the same rustling green grass: and in her mind reverberated, almost audibly, the words HOW WILL I FIND JAKOB? like a leitmotif that disappears and then rushes back in more and more powerful bursts. She had wanted to say to Žana How will I find Jakob so that Žana would notice that she wasn’t sleeping but then it occurred to her that if she were to announce her thought aloud then it might flinch at the immediate future and collide with this grubby barracks, with Polja’s dead body, and with all the rest of it, and then it would plummet into the straw and remain lying there like a bloody bird with a bullet wound that trembles and squirms before it croaks; and this wouldn’t only happen if she were to say it aloud like that, How will I find Jakob, but really even the fact that she would think it, thereby clearly underscoring that there was no longer any doubt in her mind about Jakob’s freedom or her own — even that was enough to set off a revival of doubt. That decisively articulated thought, aimed squarely at the future, was enough to turn all of her thoughts around toward the past, like a triple echo. Anyway it was only because her newborn thought was incapable of locating Jakob in a clear future perspective that she devoted herself with all her strength to a Jakob who was nonetheless more reliable in the past. And in the present, of course. Therefore she said nothing to Žana. Even if she wanted to say it the way it had arisen in her consciousness — it would be too late. Her thoughts were already seeking a different Jakob in the past. A less optimistic Jakob. But clearer, more real. He was still the only genuine Jakob, perhaps no longer of flesh and blood but only a frozen film frame in her mind: he stands there with raised hands, making some restrained gesture (the way she had last seen him): momentum at a standstill.

That was the most recent and only real Jakob, the last one she’d seen with her own eyes. Not, therefore, the phantomlike and unreal Jakob about whom she was receiving news through the even less visible Maks. For how could she have a clear conception of Jakob when from somewhere or other, like a bolt from the blue or straight out of hell itself, she’d get coded messages like “The trip went fine” or “The weather was nice” and all sorts of other such meteorological issues in which she was supposed to, first of all, unearth a meaning such as “Jakob has been moved” or “Jakob will contact you” and so forth, but also, secondly, discover under all of it a living, real character, that of Jakob. Even the infrequent oral statements that reached her third-hand from Jakob by way of Maks’s representatives, even these reports didn’t help her much to see Jakob — nothing did — apart, of course, from things she remembered, insofar as she had any memory at all and could recognize even for a moment the face that with all of her powers she was always trying to call to mind.