Psalm 44

But she only felt a sharp pinch in her heavy shoes. And that was all. But the sensation that followed — and it came immediately after she forced herself to let go and grasped that she was on firm ground — was that every one of these steps she was now taking, after so long a wait, was being taken by her free will alone, free of commands, free of inspections (albeit still accompanied by the fear of sneak attacks), and pervaded by such a sense of ease that she no longer felt her tight boots and the weight of her steps. And she hardly even felt her fear. Or at least not the same fear that she had almost always felt up to the present moment: the fear of events developing so as to carry her along without a single iota of involvement on her part. This new kind of fear, she thought, is the kind that men feel. And Žana, of course. She called it active fear. It was something completely different. Her hands were on at least one of the levers controlling these events.

They lay pressed to the damp earth, which had just barely begun to thaw. The baby was lying between them and Marija thought for an instant how he knew nothing about what was taking place around them and within them; he just felt the humid and viscous stain, and this place, where he could barely be seen among his cloth rags, and where his tiny nose was probably a little flushed and reddened by cold, and what’s more: the sweet-insipid and thick, sticky taste of warm milk in his oral cavity and sometimes a confused, hesitant rocking. Then she felt hard dirt scattering against her lips and face and its fragile flavor and the nearly imperceptible yet heavy scent of soil that her sense of smell scarcely registered and that anyway you take in more through your tongue and guts: it crackled on her palate and crunched between her teeth while the pores on her skin absorbed it, and then it began to circulate in her blood, which grew thicker because of it and became strong like wine. But she wasn’t thinking about all that; it was only a dim, instinctual feeling in her guts as she flattened herself on the ground and tasted the flavor of earth on her lips.