slowly dawned on me that Tur Prikulitsch had something else in mind. That he had made an agreement with the young man, who was supposed to work me all day long and then shoot me in the evening, as I attempted to escape. Or else he was supposed to stick me in my own private hole for the night, since I was the only man here. And probably not just for tonight, but for every night from now on, and I’d never make it back to the camp.
When evening came, our guard, nachal’nik, foreman, and inspector also became camp commandant. The women lined up to be counted. They stated their names and numbers, opened their fufaikas to the left to show their pockets, and held out their hands with two potatoes in each. They were allowed to take four middle-sized ones. If a potato was too big it was exchanged. I was the last person in line and held out my pillowcase. It was filled with twenty-seven potatoes, seven middle-sized and twenty larger ones. I, too, was allowed to keep four middle-sized potatoes, the others I had to take out. The pistol man asked my name. I said: Leopold Auberg. As if in response to my name, he took a middle-sized potato and kicked it over my shoulder. I ducked. The next one he’s not going to kick with his foot, I thought, he’ll throw it at my head and shoot it in midair with his pistol and blow it to shreds along with my brains. He didn’t take his eyes off me as I was thinking that, and when I stuck my pillowcase in my pants pocket he grabbed my arm, pulled me out of the line, and, as if he were once again mute, pointed me in the direction I had come from that morning, at the evening, and at the steppe. Then he left me standing there. He commanded the women to march and set off behind them, in the opposite direction. I stood at the edge of the field and watched him march away with the women. I was certain that he’d leave his brigade any minute and come back, that he’d fire his pistol just once, that there’d be no witnesses, only the verdict: Shot while attempting to escape.
The brigade moved off into the distance like a brown snake, smaller and smaller. I stood rooted in front of the big pile of potatoes and now began to think Tur Prikulitsch’s agreement wasn’t with the guard but with me. That this pile of potatoes was the agreement, and Tur wanted to pay for my scarf with potatoes.
I stuffed my clothes with potatoes of all sizes, all the way up to my cap. I counted 273. The hunger angel helped me—he was, after all, a notorious thief. But after he’d helped me, he was once again a notorious tormentor and left me to fend for myself on the long way home. The potatoes were heavier than I was.
I set off. Soon I was itching everywhere: the head louse, the neck-and-throat louse, the armpit louse, the chest louse, and the pubic louse. My toes already itched from the footwraps in the galoshes. To scratch anywhere I would have had to lift my arm, which I couldn’t do with my overstuffed sleeves. To walk normally I would have had to bend my knees, which I couldn’t do with my overstuffed pant legs. I shuffled past the first slag heap. The second heap didn’t come and didn’t come, or maybe I’d missed it, and now it was much too dark to make out the third slag heap. Stars were strung out across all parts of the sky. I knew the Milky Way ran north and south, because Oswald Enyeter the barber had explained it to me after the second one of his countrymen tried to escape and failed, and was put on display at the roll-call grounds. To travel west, he said, you have to cross the Milky Way and turn right, then go straight, always keeping the Big Dipper on your right. But I couldn’t even find the second and third slag heaps that now, on my way back, should be coming up on my left. Better to be guarded all around than lost all around. The acacias, the corn, even my steps were cloaked in black. The cabbages followed me like human heads in a fantastic assortment of caps and hairstyles. The moon wore a white bonnet and