Psalm 44

For several days already, people had been whispering the news that she was going to attempt an escape before the camp was evacuated. Especially once (and this had happened five or six nights earlier) the thundering of artillery had first become audible in the distance. But then the whispering had died down somewhat — at least it seemed that way to her — since those three other women had been killed on the wire. One of them was Eržika Kon, who’d shared the same barracks.

That’s why all she could do now was listen intently to the cannon and wait for something to happen. She felt every bit as capable of doing something (if only she knew what it was — like, for example those lightbulbs that they knocked down with a stick last night as if they were pears dangling from the arbor in their garden, though it was only thanks to Žana that she was able to do that, thanks to being led by her, because it never would have occurred to her personally to smash lightbulbs and to think of it as anything other than an unnecessary risk, as suicide) as Polja probably felt, Polja who was now lying delirious next to her in the straw. Marija could only wait for Žana to tell her now (in the same way she had until now been saying “not yet,” or less than that, really: only “we’ll see” or “we’ll do something all right”), and then she’d take her child in her arms like a piece of luggage filled with valuables that one had to spirit unseen out the rear entrance right under the noses of the agents who knew that those purloined valuables were about to be removed and probably through that very door. And whenever Žana finally told her it was time, she would take that camouflaged and deliberately inconspicuous suitcase and walk with it through the cordon of agents and police officers, desperately resolved to pass unobserved and proceeding precisely as she’d been told and ordered to act, conscious of her obligation to her instructions, for in this moment (if something unforeseen were to occur), if someone came up to her from behind (let’s say) and tapped on her shoulder to ask her to show her bag, her only defense, the only one she could think up in time, would be to shield the precious bundle, the child, with her own body, perhaps harboring the secret and irrational hope into the bargain that the ground underneath her would open up in that moment and that she would find herself down below in some shadowy courtyard where, with a nod of his head, a deus ex machina would introduce himself to her: that would be Maks. For Maks, invisible and omnipresent, was going to appear and intervene decisively, and the fact that he had already committed himself to the escape — that much had been clear to her from the first instant. Actually from the time (and that was three evenings ago) that Žana had brought hope into the barracks, the hope concealed in her eyes, and she’d said in a whisper that “all is not lost.” And indeed all was not lost. Though Polja was lying in her delirium for a third day on account of malaria and people kept expecting them to come take her away at any moment; it was incomprehensible that they hadn’t taken her away that very first evening when she came back sick and feeble. Perhaps they were showing her (Polja) a little extra consideration on account of her playing cello in the prisoners’ orchestra, right at the entrance to the gas chamber (or so people said) for such a long time; or else — and this was more likely — because of the rapid advance of the Allies and the booming of those heavy guns, ever nearer, forcing the commanders of the camp to postpone any further executions.

That evening Žana returned to the barracks a little late. It was a wet November night, ice cold, and the grim wind carried the worn and ill-tuned sounds of the prisoners’ orchestra playing Beethoven’s Eroica as well as the camp tune “The Girl I Adore.” Polja was still babbling unintelligibly. In Russian. Dying. No one dared light a lamp and Žana made her way, groping, over to her bunk (she oriented herself by Polja’s death rattle). Marija feared that Polja, however, was beyond hearing. Then she freed her child from the straw and rags in which it was sleeping: a little wax doll. Marija didn’t dare get too close to Polja. She feared for her child. And for herself. His mother.