Kaputt
beds unmade. It was certainly no peasant's home. Perhaps it belonged to a Jew. In the room I chose, the mattress on the bed had been ripped open. The windowpanes were intact. It was very hot. A thunderstorm, I thought, as I closed the window.
    Night had fallen and the large, black, golden-lashed eyes of the sunflowers shone in the faint light. They gazed at me swaying their heads in the wind, already damp with the far-off rain. Romanian cavalrymen walked along the road leading their horses after watering them—fine full-hipped horses with yellow manes. The sand-colored uniforms stained the shadows with yellowish spots,- they seemed like large insects entangled in the thick and sticky air of the coming storm. The yellow horses followed them, raising a cloud of dust.
    There was still some bread and cheese in my knapsack, and walking up and down the room, I began eating. I had taken off my boots and barefooted I paced the packed-down, earthen floor along which columns of large black ants were marching. I felt the ants crawling over my feet, squeezing between my toes, climbing upward to explore my ankles. I was dead tired; I could not even chew, my jaws were so heavy and my teeth were so tender from fatigue. Finally, I threw myself on the bed and closed my eyes but I could not sleep. Once in a while close by or far away a shot pierced the night. They were shots fired by the partisans concealed amid the wheat and the sunflower forests that cover the vast Ukrainian plain toward Kiev, toward Odessa. And as the night grew thicker, the stench of carrion merged with the smell of grass and sunflowers. I could not sleep. I lay stretched out on the bed with my eyes shut and I could not fall asleep, my bones were too sore from fatigue.
    Suddenly the stench of the dead mare penetrated the room; it stopped on the threshold. It looked at me. I felt that the smell was gazing at me. Half asleep, I thought, it's the dead mare. The air was as heavy as a woolen blanket, the impending storm crushed the thatched roofs of the village. It rested its heavy load on the trees, the wheat and the dust on the road. Now and again the noise of the river sounded like bare feet shuffling through the grass. The night was as black, thick and clammy as black honey. It's the dead mare, I thought.
    The squeaking of cart wheels across the fields, of those four-wheeled Romanian and Ukrainian carutza, drawn by little lean, hairy horses that follow the armies with loads of ammunition, clothes and arms along the endless Ukrainian tracks—the squeaking of these cart wheels reached me from across the fields. I thought the dead mare had dragged itself to the threshold and that it was gazing at me. I cannot say how I came to believe this. I was dead tired, drugged with sleep. I could not rid myself of these thoughts. It was as if the heat and the stench of carrion had filled my room with black slimy mud into which I was slowly sinking, and my struggles were growing more and more feeble. I cannot say how I came to think that the mare was not dead, only wounded, its wounds festering; that it was already rotting and still alive, like those prisoners whom Tartars tie to corpses, stomach to stomach, face to face, mouth to mouth, until the corpse devours the living. That stench was there at the door, and it was gazing at me.
    I felt all of a sudden that it was approaching, getting slowly closer to my bed. "Off—off with you!" I shouted in Romanian. "Merge! Merge!" Then it occurred to me that perhaps the mare was Russian, and I shouted: "Poshol! Poshol !" The stench halted. A moment later it began getting closer to my bed again. Then I became frightened. I clutched the automatic that I had shoved under the mattress, and sitting up suddenly, I turned on my flashlight. The room was empty,- nothing was on the threshold. I jumped out of my bed and barefooted approached the door. I looked outside. The night was empty. I went out into the orchard. The sunflowers were bending mildly

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