The Most Precious of Cargoes Read online

  Then a voice, a voice at once feared and hoped for, rings out:

  “Who goes there?”

  “The poor woodcutter’s wife,” she cries as the fox cubs scamper on.

  “What does she want, the poor woodcutter’s wife?”

  “Sanctuary! Sanctuary for me and for my . . . gift from the gods.”

  The voice comes again:

  “I heard gunshots. Were they aimed at you?”

  “They wanted . . . they wanted to . . . they wanted to take . . .”

  “Step forward! Walk without fear!”

  “They wanted to . . .” The poor woodcutter’s wife is out of breath. Her voice deserts her, her legs give way. Even the fox cubs come to a halt, thwarted by the roots, by the brambles, by exhaustion.

  The poor woodcutter’s wife longs to tell all to the man with the rifle and the goat and the broken face, to tell of her fears, of the heartless, and of the ax. She tries again, with difficulty:

  “They wanted to . . . they wanted to take . . . so my poor woodcutter husband . . . and his ax . . . and he . . .”

  The man appears.

  “You need say no more, I know the blackness of men’s hearts. Your husband and his ax did their valiant best. And if your tormentors warrant, I too will do my valiant best.”

  He shifts his rifle from one shoulder to the other and reaches out his arms.

  “Give me your precious cargo and follow.”

  The poor woodcutter’s wife tenders the child, and the old man with his rifle, his goat, and his shattered face receives her with a gentle dignity befitting one carrying a sacred object.

  All three advance in silence. A clearing opens in the dense forest to reveal a garden that the poor woodcutter’s wife has never seen. She received her daily ration of milk on the outskirts of the forest, and it was here too that she deposited her bundle of sticks.

  In this late spring, in this early summer, the fruit on the trees seems to stretch out toward the child. The flowers stand tall, offering themselves up to be picked, as though to comfort the poor woodcutter’s wife and her daughter. The gods are just on this side of the forest, she thinks. Yes, the gods can do good when they reflect and choose to do so.

  Still cradling the child, the man walks toward a cabin, a cabin fashioned from logs just like her own, which stands next to a rock. He does not go into the cabin, but heads straight for the rock and steals into a grotto in which a diminutive goat, with large swollen udders, gambols about in joy at this visit.

  The man with the rifle and the shattered face then sets the child down facing the goat. They are the same height. The man introduces them in this fashion: “Daughter of the gods, this is your wet nurse, your third mother.”

  The delighted child hugs the goat, which melts into her arms, gazing into that distance where goats are wont to gaze. Then they bring their heads together and stand motionless, goat and girl, staring into each other’s eyes, forehead pressed to forehead, as the poor woodcutter’s wife sobs and the man with his gun and his goat and his shattered face whispers: “Why do you cry, poor woodcutter’s wife? Now you shall have all the milk you need for her, and you will no longer have to gather kindling. Granted, I lose a bundle of firewood, but I gain a playmate for my lonesome goat, so all four of us are better off. In this mortal world, to gain something is to lose a little something in the process, be it the life of a loved one, or one’s own.”

  17

  Day followed day; train followed train. In the overcrowded wagons, humanity lay dying. And humanity pretended to ignore it. Trains came and went from every capital city on that vanquished continent, but the poor woodcutter’s wife was no longer there to see them.

  They came and went, night and day, day and night, and no one showed the slightest interest. No one heard the cries of the transported, the sobs of mothers mingling with the death rattles of the old men, the prayers of the credulous, the whimpers and terrified screams of children separated from parents who had already surrendered to the gas.

  18

  And then, and then, the trains ceased to run. And having ceased to run, they ceased to deliver their wretched cargo of shaven heads. No more trains, no more shaven heads. Meanwhile, our hero, former father of twins, former husband to his beloved wife, now suddenly a former shaver of heads, collapsed, overcome by starvation, sickness, and despair. Around him, the scant survivors who were still conscious murmured: “We must hold on, hold on, hold on, and hold on some more, it is sure to end in the end. Already we can hear the distant roar of cannons.” A comrade even whispered into the canal of his ear: “The Reds are coming, the Death’s Heads will end up shitting in their boots.”

  In the meantime, those same Death’s Heads forced them to dig trenches in the snow so they could burn the glut of corpses piled high around the crematoria, which they were forced to hastily destroy so that, along with these surviving witnesses, they might eliminate every trace of their monstrous crime. Hair that only yesterday had been so prized went unharvested. Worse still, the hair that was already packed, ready for use, went unshipped. It piled up, abandoned, next to the mountains of spectacles, wedged between the heaps of men’s, women’s, and children’s clothes. They too had to disappear.

  Hold on, hold on, hold on, it is sure to end in the end. Now he too longed to disappear, to end, to end, to end. Night and day, he was delirious. As he tramped through the snow he was delirious, as he dug he was delirious, remembering, worse still, reliving the fatal moment when he had torn one of his twins from his wife’s arms, endlessly reliving that moment when he had tossed the child from the train into the snow. That snow through which he now plodded, plodded, as he dug the hole where he in turn would eventually be burned. Why, why, why that frantic, fatal gesture? Why not accompany his wife and their two children to the end, to the ends of this journey? To rise together, the four of them together, to rise into the heavens in plumes of smoke, dark, oily smoke? Suddenly, he collapsed. At the risk of their own lives, two comrades dragged him into a nearby shack so that he would not be hurled, still half-alive, into the flames.

  When he regained consciousness, he felt at ease there in the shack, amid the piled corpses. He found it an appropriate place to wait for death, for deliverance, at the end.

  19

  Death did not come, and deliverance appeared in the guise of a young soldier wearing a red star whose bulging eyes bore witness to the horrors he had just discovered. Having realized that the corpse staring at him was still alive, the young starred soldier pressed the mouth of his canteen to those lips and biscuits into those hands, then gathered him in his arms, snatching him from the mass of death and laying him outside the shack on a patch of ground without corpses, beneath the reawakening spring sun.

  In the very place that, only yesterday, was ruled by snow and boots and riding crops, by caps emblazoned with Death’s Heads, the grass now grew, lush and thick, speckled with crowds of small white blossoms. It was then that he heard a bird sing, a hymn welcoming him back to life. And it was then that tears flowed from the eyes that had grown as dry, he thought, as his heart. The tears reminded him that he was a living being once more.

  How did he find the strength to stand, to walk, and walk, and carry on walking? Had the song of the nightingale been enough to kindle the thought that his daughter, his beloved, unknown little daughter, might also have survived? And that if she had survived, then he had a duty, a responsibility, to do everything in his power, everything in his power, to find her.

  And so he set off walking, following the Reds as they marched steadily west. He collapsed from starvation outside a church. He was helped to his feet by a priest who fed him, prayed for him. Then he set off again, walking, walking.

  At length, he came to what was called a reunification camp filled with refugees and displaced people who had fled the Reds, only to be overtaken by their rapid advance. His ghostly appearance, together with the number tattooed on his forearm, served as his passport. Here he had room and board, but no sooner had h
e settled in than he found himself reliving that fatal moment, the train, the snow, the forest, the prayer shawl, the old woman, and also the hope. But mostly, mostly, the eyes of his wife as she turned away from him forever and for always. Why, why had he not allowed fate to obliterate the four of them together, together?

  The poor woodcutter’s wife did not notice that the cargo trains no longer crisscrossed her forest, so enraptured was she by the sight of her little cargo, growing and thriving before her very eyes. The little girl was constantly laughing, singing, babbling, and dancing with the goat that had become more than a sister to her, beneath the watchful gaze of the man with the rifle and the shattered face.

  The poor woodcutter’s wife could not remember ever experiencing such happiness in all the long, long course of her life. As for the man with the rifle, he kept a watchful eye and kept his ear cocked to the east. He knew the Reds were advancing. He rejoiced even though he feared them. He feared the Reds as he had feared the Gray-Green of the Death’s Heads with their minions and their collaborators. Once a week, he visited one of the villages that bordered the forest in order to barter his goat cheese for basic necessities. There people talked only of the looming end of this terrible war, with hope or with regret. Before long, planes emblazoned with red stars were bombing the positions of the Gray-Green, and then the roar of cannon fire took over. The hunters of the heartless had gone to ground or had fled to the west.

  Rifle in hand, the man with the shattered face patrolled the eastern flank of his fiefdom, determined that his right of property be respected by the new invaders. Two Red soldiers stole stealthily into the forest. Seeing a man armed with a rifle, they laid him low with a burst of machine-gun fire. Then, warily, one of the soldiers approached, turned the body over with the toe of his boot, and, seeing nothing appealing in the man’s face, shot his comrade-in-arms a disgusted look and said in a contemptuous voice: “An old man, ugly.” Noting that the man lying on the ground was alone, they departed to rejoin the main phalanx of Red Stars who had elected to skirt around the forest rather than go through it.

  The following morning, after an anxious night, the poor woodcutter’s wife discovered the body of the man with the shattered face and the tender heart. She wept bitterly, which caused her little cargo to weep too. Even the tender-eyed goat wept. Deciding not to bury it, the poor woodcutter’s wife covered the body with blossoming branches, then she contrived a prayer that expressed both her gratitude and her wish: may this good man finally find the peace and happiness denied him here on earth among the gods that welcome him. She thought about the gods of the train but did not mention them: she no longer trusted them.

  She realized that if the child, her child, had survived, it was no thanks to them, it was thanks to the hand that had dropped her from the train into the snow, it was thanks to the righteousness of the man with the rifle and the goat. “May they be blessed,” she said at length.

  She gathered up the few old clothes, carefully wrapped the freshly made cheese and the tools for making it in the prayer shawl, and, taking her daughter by the hand and leading the goat like a pack animal, set off. Not knowing where to go, she walked straight ahead, toward the east, the place where, they say, the sun still rises.

  Along the way, she passed hundreds of tanks and trucks emblazoned with red stars. She wandered through countless ruined villages, and, after a time, she stopped in one of the village squares, chose a ruin that looked inviting, and there she settled. She spread the prayer shawl on a section of wall that was still standing, and on it she laid the few cheeses that had survived and sat to wait for customers, her daughter comfortably settled on her lap while the little goat grazed on a bank.

  20

  In the so-called reunification camp, former victims commingled and clashed with their former tormentors, the former seeking to “start afresh,” as people did not say in those days, the latter seeking to melt into the throng of refugees. Do not stay here, go, flee again, but go where? Where could he go, wondered our hero, former shaver of heads, former medical student, former father, former living creature turned shadow. Back to the country he came from by train after being rounded up by the police of that same country? Which way to go? To the north, the east, the west?

  And once there, was he to take up his medical studies again? Open a hairdressing salon so that he might impose upon the world a close-cropped style, a fashion for shaven heads? No, no, besides, he could not leave the region without knowing whether his daughter, his fragile little girl, his little . . . what was her name again? What name had he given her? What was she called? He no longer knew, no longer remembered his daughter’s name.

  That same day, he left the camp, his pocket jingling with a pittance given by the camp authorities so that those who wished to leave could leave and thereby free up space by vacating the straw mattress they occupied. He walked, he walked, he walked some more, reaching for the railway, the forest, the bend in the line, the old woman kneeling in the snow. Finally, he found an abandoned railway line, already overgrown with weeds.

  He followed these tracks. He came to a forest and carried on, he came to another, he carried on, he came to another. There was no longer any snow, nothing seemed familiar except the old women, who never responded to his greeting. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack. He abandoned the railway, which had already been abandoned by its trains, and wandered through towns and villages. Everywhere celebrations were in full swing. The war was over for everyone, except for him and his kin.

  There were songs, and flags, and speeches, even firecrackers. All this folly, all this joy, reminded him that he was alone, he would forever be alone, alone in mourning the dead, alone in grieving for humanity, in grieving for the slaughtered, in grieving for his wife, his children, his parents, her parents. He passed through towns and villages like an apparition, a witness to celebration, to jubilation, to salutes, to oaths: never again, never again.

  He did not know precisely what he was looking for. He simply walked. He felt his head spin and remembered that he was hungry. In spite of everything, he was hungry. On a little table he saw cheeses, tiny cheeses, and suddenly he longed for some cheese. These little cheeses were laid out on a curious tablecloth ill-suited to displaying cheese, a cloth that seemed to have been woven with threads of gold and silver. He laid a hand on the cloth, set down a few coins, and suddenly, suddenly, he remembered. Then he looked up at the old woman, who was not so old, seated behind the little table covered with this curious cloth. The woman had a child in her lap. They both smiled at him and seemed to be encouraging him to pick one of the cheeses. The old woman spoke to him in a language he did not understand. She gestured for him to help himself, but he had eyes only for the little girl. The child, too, gestured with her eyes, her hands, for him to help himself. She praised the quality, then pointed to the goat next to her, indicating that the cheeses were made from the milk of this goat. He did not understand everything, but he understood the gist. His daughter, this was his daughter, the daughter thrown from the train, the daughter destined for the ovens, the daughter that he had saved.

  A cry, a terrible cry, a cry of joy, of grief, of triumph, a cry took shape within his chest but no sound, no sound came from his lips. He snatched up a cheese, still staring at the little girl, his little girl. She was alive, she was alive, she was happy, she was smiling. He too gave the ghost of a smile, then reached out a trembling hand toward the little girl’s cheek, to stroke this tempting cheek. The girl grabbed his hand and pressed it to her lips before bursting into laughter. He quickly pulled his hand away.

  Feeling uneasy, he stepped back, still gazing at the old woman, the goat, and the little girl he had just brought into the world a second time. With searing intensity, he gazed at this cheesemonger and his own girl sitting on her lap, kissing her. He stared intently as though to burn onto his pupils, his heart, his soul, this image of their shared happiness. Why reveal himself? Why upset the balance? What did he have to offer his own daughter? Nothi
ng, less than nothing. He took a few steps more, then stopped again. Perhaps, after all, he should . . . perhaps he might . . . then with a superhuman effort of mingled joy and sorrow, he tore himself away. He quickly strode off.

  He had vanquished death, he had saved his daughter with a senseless act, he had triumphed over the monstrous extermination machine. He summoned the courage to take one last look at the daughter he had found and lost again forever. Already, she was singing the praises of the cheeses to a new customer, her tiny gesticulating hands explaining its provenance, pointing from the little goat to her beloved mother.

  Come, it is time that we leave our little cargo and allow her to live her life. Sorry? You want to know what happened to her former father? People say—but people say so many things—that he went back to the country where he and his wife and his two young children were rounded up together with thousands of other men, women, and children, people say that he went back there and completed his medical studies, that he became a pediatrician, that he devoted his life to looking after and caring for the children of others.

  The little cargo, for her part, grew up to be a young pioneer. She was given a red scarf and also a red star that she could pin to her white blouse. A photo of her appeared on the cover of a magazine, and she looked radiant. The photographer had asked her to smile.

  People even say—though, as I’ve said, people say so many things—that the great doctor, while visiting that country—for every year he came to commemorate the anniversary of the liberation of the camp that had swallowed up his wife and one of his children, along with his parents and those of his wife—people say that he saw the photograph and he felt as though he recognized his wife and his own mother, people even say that he wrote to the state magazine Youth and Joy to try to contact the young pioneer Maria Tchekolova, who had been presented as the most deserving pioneer, being the daughter of a poor woman, a poor woodcutter’s wife who had become a cheesemonger.