It won't work!
I'm not going to suffer because of you.
I'll be the first to point you out.
I know you're a Communist. I remember how you tried to get me to join the Party. Now you're going to answer for it.'
That was the one· sitting nearest to me, on the left, and on the other side of him, a young voice answers:
'I always suspected you were a rotten type, Kryzhnev.
Specially when you refused to join the Party, pretending you were illiterate.
But I never thought you'd turn out to be a traitor.
You went to school until you were fourteen, didn't you?'
And the other one answers in a casual sort of way:
'Yes, I did. So what?'
They were quiet for a long time, and the platoon commander- I could tell him by his voice-says softly:
'Don't give me away, Comrade Kryzhnev.'
And the other one laughed quietly.
'You've left your comrades behind on tlie other side of the line,' he says, 'I'm no comrade of yours, so don't plead with me. I'rp going to point you out all the same.
I believe in looking after my own skin first.'
"They stopped talking after that, but the vileness of what I'd heard had given me the shivers.
'No,' I thought, 'I won't let you betray your commander, you son-of-a-bitch.
You won't walk out of this church on your own two feet, they'll drag you out by the legs!'
Then it began to get light and I could see a fellow with a big fleshy face lying on his back with his hands behind his head, and beside him a little snub-nosed lad, in only an undershirt, sitting with his arms round his knees and looking very pale.
'That kid won't be able to handle this great fat gelding,' I thought.
'I'll have to finish him off myself.'
"I touched the lad's arm and asked him in a whisper:
'You a platoon commander?'
He didn't say anything, just nodded.
'Thar one over there wants to give you away?' I pointed to the fellow lying on his back.
He nodded again.
'All right,' I said, 'hold his legs so he won't kick!
And quick about itP And I jumped on that fellow and locked my fingers round his throat.
He didn't even have time to shout.
I held him under me for a few minutes, then eased off a bit.
That was one traitor less. His tongue was hanging out!
"But I felt rotten afterwards and I wanted to wash my hands something terrible, as if it wasn't a man I'd killed but some crawling snake. It was the first time I had killed anyone in my life, and the man I had killed was one of our own. Our own? No, he wasn't.
He was worse than the enemy, he was a traitor.
I got up and said to the platoon commander:
'Let's go away from this spot, comrade, the church is a big place.'
"In the morning, just as that Kryzhnev had said, we were all formed up outside the church with a ring of submachine-gunners covering us, and three SS officers started picking out the ones among us they thought were dangerous.
They asked who were Communists, who were officers, who were commissars, but they didn't find any.
And they didn't find anybody who was swine enough to give them away either, because nearly half of us were Communists, and there were a lot of officers, too, and commissars.
They only took four, out of over two hundred men.
One Jew and three Russians from the rank and file.
The Russians landed in trouble because they were all dark and had curly hair.
The SS men just came up to them and said:
'Jude?'
The one they asked would say he was a Russian, but they wouldn't even listen.
'Step out!' and that was that.
"They shot the poor devils and drove us on further.
The platoon commander who'd helped me strangle that traitor kept by me right as far as Poznan. The first day of the march he'd edge up to me every now and then and press my hand as we went along.
At Poznan we got separated. It happened like this.
"You see, mate, ever since the day I was captured I'd been thinking of escaping.