The Trap. Ludovic Bruckstein

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СКАЧАТЬ no business to attend to. He did not feel any need to read a book. He did not wish to look through the newspapers or to arrange a date with a girl. He did not have to be home at set times to eat meals with his family. He did not have to work on the designs for some house or villa, to fray his nerves because of some irascible, snobbish patron or because of some rival young architect cleverer than him. This was what had happened three months previously, when he had designed a villa, but the patron had opted for the plans drawn up by another architect, because he had put a completely pointless and unsightly turret above the front door. But it was precisely that turret that had delighted the patron, who had accepted the design, compensating Ernst with a niggardly sum for the hours of work he had invested.

      No, there was nothing to fray Ernst’s nerves up here. He was free and he felt like gambolling through that vast space, gambolling, running like a thoroughbred dog released from its master’s leash. He felt like rolling down that immense valley, which was as round as a cauldron, rolling down to the bottom, where stood a solitary, lightning-blasted tree, and then, thanks to the momentum he would gain, rolling up the other side and back down again.

      He had an unquenchable thirst to walk. He reached the lightning-blasted tree. It was a large, magnificent oak, which had been struck many years ago. Since then, it had stood majestic, powerful, its thick roots and black leafless branches infinitely confronting Time. The tree had not rotted. It had a large hollow, the inside of which was scorched. The soot had in time hardened and gleamed like ebony.

      All around that broad valley, over the hills that rose from its rim, there were groves of oak trees at the edges of the forests of tall firs. Higher up, the vegetation thinned, and stunted pines dotted the mountaintops.

      The whole of that realm of silence now belonged to Ernst Blumenthal. But like every realm of that kind, it also had an egress to the land of people and cares… At the top of Solovan Hill there was an old wooden watchtower, which had once served as a lookout post for spotting fires. From the tower it was possible to see the town of Sighet in the valley, clasped between two rivers: the Tisza and the Iza.

      Ernst looked down at the town. Viewed from up there, it looked as small as a toy, and the people were small too, as they went about their petty business.

      The town’s age-old tranquillity was not to last for long. The time was mid-April, in the year 1944. Ernst lay in the grass, among the trees, his hiding place by the lookout post on Solovan Hill, and gazed at an anthill. Each ant was working assiduously, carrying heavy weights: seeds, all kinds of crumbs. They moved rapidly back and forth, without bumping into each other, without traffic accidents, without workplace accidents. It was something admirable and wholly incomprehensible.

      All of a sudden, as if in a dream, he seemed to hear strange sounds from the town in the valley below: weeping and wailing, sighs, yes, even the sighs reached up into the mountains, wafting ever higher. Ernst quickly climbed the watchtower and looked through his binoculars at that other anthill. A human anthill. Along the town’s streets, motley columns of people, carrying heavy suitcases, pillows, quilts, some of them pushing handcarts, were all heading in the same direction, towards the western edge of the town, where there were a brickworks and the poorest residential quarter.

      What did it mean? What was happening down there? Ernst wondered in alarm. He would ask Ionu Stan to go into town straightaway and find out what was happening.

      Ionu took his knapsack with the two canisters – the house had almost run out of lamp oil and matches – and went into town. He returned that evening and the news he brought was not at all encouraging. The Blumenthals’ house was shut up, the door sealed by the town hall. And all the Jews had been taken to the tanners’ quarter and the brickworks. It was not possible to enter the quarter because a barbed wired fence had been erected and gendarmes with cockerel feathers in their caps guarded the entrances.

      Ernst chanced to discover more a few days later. He was coming down Meia Hill when he spotted a group of excursionists climbing his way. He knew where they would stop for a picnic and so he concealed himself in some undergrowth. The excursionists came closer and Ernst was amazed to see his old acquaintances, the group in whose company he had used to go on outings.

      Dr Daoben, the tall, bony, suntanned judge, was climbing the hill, alongside his wife, a strong, muscular, taciturn woman, who always let her husband put forth his opinions without interrupting him. Behind them, puffing and panting, came lawyer and notary public Zeleznay. Short, plump, he leaned on a hunting cane, which, when thrust in the earth, also served as a seat. He was accompanied by his wife, a garrulous, anxious woman, who was always worried about her husband’s health, fearful lest he be struck by a bout of apoplexy. At every step she begged him to stop and take a breather. They lived next door to the Blumenthals; a plank fence separated their back yards. The two couples were attended by Pritko, who obligingly ran back and forth between them.

      This Pritko – nobody knew his first name, and if Pritko was his first name, then nobody knew his surname – was a kind of town idiot, who accompanied excursionists of every walk in life, from the highest to the lowest. He was a bachelor, always rather unwashed, rather longhaired, rather unshaven. He used to talk about big subjects, such as the creation of the world, whether God existed, what would happen at the end of the world. It was said that he had once studied chemistry at university, but because of an unrequited love, he had ended up in the Sighet Mental Hospital, which after a time had discharged him with the assessment ‘placid, not a danger to society.’ At home, rather than a cat or a dog, he kept two snakes: a large python in a chest with lots of air holes, and a smaller, non-venomous snake from the Solovan Mountains.

      Ernst hid among the trees at the edge of the clearing where the excursionists sat down on the soft grass. Mrs Zeleznay, the notary public’s wife, laid a white tablecloth on the grass, on which the picnickers placed loaves of bread, cheeses, pastrami and the other good things they had brought from home. Pritko lit a fire, over which he placed a griddle for the trout he had skilfully caught with his bare hands in the clear stream in the valley they had crossed.

      Judge Rudolf Daoben continued the conversation he had begun:

      ‘Whatever you might say, colleague Zeleznay, there has never been such an avalanche of laws. They’re not allowed to hold public office, to work as functionaries in town or village halls. Not even the most rundown village in the back of beyond is allowed to have a Jewish secretary or night watchman now. And then, a few days later, yet another new law: professionals – physicians, lawyers, engineers, dentists – are no longer allowed to practice their professions. Then the yellow star law, then the law restricting the food they are allowed to consume, the elegantly named ‘law to limit the supply of foodstuffs to the Jews.’ Then the law forbidding the Jews to keep shops or restaurants, to own factories, workshops or farms. We cannot keep pace with all these laws and regulations, and quite simply, we cannot see any point to them. But now, all these laws have in effect been abolished by the imprisonment of all the Jews in a ghetto. We have examined the text of these laws and have come to the conclusion that in the final instance they remove the right to work from this category of citizen. And removal of the right to work means nothing less than removal of the right to life –’

      ‘Oh, it’s hardly that serious,’ muttered notary public Zeleznay. ‘They have tidy sums of money, which they’ve accumulated over the years.’

      ‘What does money matter in the face of eternity?’ said Pritko, unexpectedly.

      ‘Some have money, others don’t,’ continued the judge. ‘The majority have nothing. They lived hand to mouth. I know them from cases brought before the court. And those that do have money will spend it all sooner or later, if they are not able to work.’

      ‘It’s their own fault,’ said the notary public, eating a chunk of bread topped by a thick slice of toasted bacon fat. ‘They were too stuck-up, showing off their СКАЧАТЬ