PSALM 44 Read Online Free PDF

of her right hand, and then she put the folded portion of linen into place between her legs and slid her underwear back up.
    “ Yes, ” said Ž ana. “ She was one of those. You know. One of the chosen ones. Along the way she tried to flee. They gave her a thorough beating. Then she got sick and instead of taking her into the Lebensborn they dispatched her here. What saved her was the fact that she played the cello. I heard that the overseer who beat her was punished. The Germans regretted that a flower like her should end up on the inside . . . ”
    Then the straw beneath Ž ana began to rustle and Marija turned in her direction, following the narrow band of light; she was still lying on her stomach with the straw between her teeth and her eyes fixed on the crack: she was following the movement of the floodlight ’ s beam along the barracks and wire.
    The field guns, with their ever-faster salvos in the distance, suddenly fell silent.
    “ If Polja had lived — ” Marija said, and though she wanted to tell the truth: if she had stayed alive till two, in other words until the point at which Maks was going to give the sign, and if she had been left alone in the barracks (since, being so sick, she couldn ’ t go with Ž ana and Marija ) — tomorrow they would have crammed her into a truck anyway and taken her off to the gas chamber, she just couldn ’ t let it end that way for her, so she said: “ — she would have been in Odessa in a month or so . . . I believe she was from Odessa ” ; and Ž ana said:
    “ Or maybe if she had just lived a few more hours. ”
    “ They won ’ t take any risks , ” Marija said. “ That Maks is a damned clever fellow. ”
    “ Yes, ” said Ž ana. “ Damned clever, ” and then she asked, “ Have you ever seen him? Maks, that is? ”
    “ No, ” Marija said: “ Never . . . though actually — ” But she couldn ’ t finish her thought, and Marija should have said We ’ ll get through this or We ’ ll make it or something else just not They won ’ t take any risks . And even though she ’ d stopped with that, and had fallen silent, she began to get clumsily entangled in that heavy net of men, thinking that in terms of needlepoint it was a ridiculous pattern and with the delicate, finely pointed needle of a woman ’ s passivity she began poking into its empty spaces until she found herself wrapped up in the tough, thick threading of the nets and had to call for help from more men, first from Jakob — in her mind — and then, aloud and with desperate entreaty in her voice, that other man too, Maks. The Maks she had still never seen but who had existed for her for months now as a synonym for salvation, the incarnation of masculine god-agency. That ’ s why she ’ d wanted to say I ’ ve known him as long as I ’ ve known Jakob , but she changed her mind, for she remembered that the true sense of Ž ana ’ s question lay elsewhere. At least it seemed that way to her. Ž ana simply wanted to point out that she herself (Marija) wasn ’ t in any condition to do for herself or for her child anything other than submit to the fate that she identified with Jakob, and that that Maks (and she always said “ that Maks ” herself) was merely the executor of the will of fate-Jakob, and wasn ’ t even a concrete person, with no face and shoulders, no hairy chest and great, powerful hands. Instead: an unknown agent, the hand of God, or the devil himself, or precisely some invisible and unknown powerful third thing that works miracles: he flips some unseen lever or cuts a wire and darkness breaks in . . . Like that night in the corridor when she was coming out of Jakob ’ s room. And before that, too. Ten minutes earlier: all at once the darkness fell. And it was like this:
    When Dr. Nietzsche halted in front of Jakob ’ s door he screamed: “ These working conditions are impossible! Every five minutes, that power plant! This smells like sabotage to me , ” and then Jakob