It was during the first few weeks when people were just starting to return from evacuation. Few had dared to believe that the dark destruction would ever end, and even if it would, would we live to see it?
But the troubles really did end, and on top of that, we were victorious. This was impossible to understand intellectually, even if you were an expert on Tolstoy’s greatest work. Perhaps you could find an explanation as to how a people could reach victory after so many defeats, defeats from which it seemed impossible to recover no matter what you did.
The war ended. Victory was ours. We even managed to return home to our murdered, tormented houses with their windows knocked out and doors unlocked. The buildings had suffered many injuries inside and out, lumps and bumps everywhere. Nonetheless, the joy, the joy of our homecoming, kneaded and shaped by hope, this joy was impossible to describe.
There was a grocery store on Khreshchatyk, small but bright. Everything in it sparkled: the walls, the ceiling, and even the handsome saleswomen in their white coats. The store let us have some things on credit. There was plenty of food available—and not the worst kind—stored in sacks, containers, and on the shelves. We kept on coming back to this tasty store with our ration cards. If you had only change in your pocket and the necessary numbers on your ration card weren’t punched yet, you could take a little bag, a sack, or a purse, and go. You would be served in the most affable manner and would receive everything you had a hankering for. It goes without saying that I wasn’t the only one there, and I used to meet people like me, people I knew and people I hardly knew. The sense of starting again touched everyone. We all seemed pleasantly surprised. Every encounter meant something. It was there one afternoon that I ran into my young translator, Doba Lazebnik. She had grown harder, more masculine, but still had a healthy face, round cheeks, firm hands, and lively, bright eyes, brimming over with vitality. Her big eyes revealed to the world that this rather stiff and even prudish woman was not above grabbing what came her way and what she wanted. She wouldn’t postpone it even for a week.
“Well now, look who’s here!”
“It’s you!” She beamed with joy because our meeting was one of many joyous unexpected encounters. She enthusiastically stuck out her firm, kind hand to say hello.
“Skol’ko let? How long has it been?”
I embraced her with my other arm and pressed her closely to me. She looked around foolishly. I say “foolishly” because the joy we felt at seeing one another again was usually reserved for intimates, people you were related to. If she hadn’t looked so shocked, it would have been better, perhaps we would have been taken for members of the family unexpectedly reunited.
I asked, “When can we get together?”
“As soon as today.”
“Where?”
“Come with me to the cemetery. I haven’t been to my mother’s grave yet. I know, it’s terrible that I haven’t gone.”
“Okay, I’ll go, what time?”
“Six.”
“Where are we meeting?”
“Are you back at your old place?”
“Yes.”
She thought it over for a while. “At around six, wait for me at the tram stop. If we catch the number 40 at the corner of Vorovsky and Chekhov streets, it’ll take us right there.”
Doba was not the most beautiful or refined woman. But I was attracted to her. I liked her energy and determination, which she didn’t overdo. In a nutshell, this was a woman you could count on, but she wasn’t rushing into any obligations.
Our upcoming walk preoccupied me the whole morning. I had already been to the cemetery, but I couldn’t help lingering over Doba. For me a trip to the cemetery was not the sort of date you arrange by some chance encounter. Whenever I was there, I would feel a distant inkling deep inside that everything had ended—that much was true. But our cemeteries were clothed in green splendor, and, though it might have seemed strange, whenever I visited them, I sensed a greater vitality and beauty than when I was at the theater amid an elegantly dressed audience.
If I hadn’t been so embarrassed, I would have gone to the tram stop an hour earlier. I used every trick I could to stave off my impatience. I tried to do all kinds of unnecessary tasks, because when I tried to read, the words couldn’t enter my brain. As far as the members of my household were concerned, I came up with some kind of pretext for why I wasn’t going to be home that evening. I was going to be busy, but not for long.
At ten of six, I couldn’t make myself wait any longer and went off to the tram stop. Of course I spruced myself up a bit, took more time combing my hair than usual, and tied my tie with greater care.
*
I love people, men and women, and children, but at that moment, I couldn’t take much in. People were streaming toward the tram stop, some with packages under their arms, some with baskets, still others with briefcases. You didn’t have to stand around long before several people started asking questions. Some, without even asking, just threw up their hands, and, annoyed, picked up their pace and kept walking up Vorovsky Street.
Finally, I overheard something that irritated me. The trams hadn’t been running for several hours. The reason? There were plenty of reasons. Maybe there was a power shortage. Or maybe the track was being repaired somewhere.
My girl arrived. Her step was firm yet light. She grasped my hand, but not the way other people usually greeted one another. She impetuously pulled me close to impress upon me her approval that I kept my word. But she saw on my face that something was wrong.
Then she asked, “Well? What’s going on?”
I told her nobody was bothering to wait for the tram. Everyone probably knew that the trams weren’t running.
She took my hand again, as if she were a relative, or someone even closer. She was around seventeen or eighteen years younger than me. But maybe this wasn’t such a big difference after all? In fact, I liked how she made me feel so comfortable.
“Well?” she repeated, restlessly.
The seventeen–eighteen years I had on her and the family those years were responsible for quietly prompted me. “Let’s not rush into things. We can put this off for another time.” But was I entitled to my own opinion? Couldn’t I say what tempted me? I looked into her eyes and was silent. This was supposed to signal that I was obedience itself.
“Poshli? Are we going?” She grabbed my arm higher than the elbow, and although she looked at me with some hesitation, there was both intimacy and resolve in her gaze. And then we set off along the tram track that had gone dead quiet.
“And if the tram overtakes us,” she said jokingly, “there would still be a good part of the way left to go, right?” Again, she looked me in the eyes as if she wanted to press herself against me. That look stirred me and made my heart jump. If only for a little while!
Why just for a while? The day was almost done, and it was also starting to get cloudy.
When I didn’t feel like doing something, but had to, I could always encourage myself. This time I told myself that there was no other way. In evacuation, when you got off the train and had to walk several kilometers in an unfamiliar area, you were never sure whether the train would still be waiting for you where it first stopped. In a word, if you have to, there’s no choice. Only I didn’t have to pretend to be her beau the whole time. I could let my pace slacken and allow myself to feel my age.
But she was a good kid. She could make me feel more at ease. She pressed her shoulder against mine and said cunningly, “You are going to tell me where you were all these years. We won’t even notice how long it takes us.”
I wanted her to be mine, just a little. I wanted us to be free with our desire. I also wanted to be more of a man. I would soon tell her I wasn’t afraid of being at a cemetery while the sun was setting. I didn’t fear the dead. There would be the two of us, and that would make it easy for me. But in our day and age, I did fear the living, especially at night and far from the city. They could take everything, leave you as naked as the day you were born, and you couldn’t even make a sound.
“When you were a child, what did people call you?”
“Doba.”
“But your real name is Dvoyra, right?”
It turned out that Doba was the name on her birth certificate and that’s what she was called from childhood on. Her cheeks were full, her mouth was firm, and she had vibrant, lively eyes.
In the meantime, night fell. We had left the city streets behind. It was right after the war, and people didn’t feel safe in empty, uninhabited corners. This preoccupied me, but we kept going. Small houses started to appear—no longer apartment buildings. I could sense their friendliness. The day with all its cares was just about to end. People were lighting their stoves, there would be a hot meal tonight. Through one small low-lying window, I noticed an honest-to-God sewing machine. That meant that the mother or sister could sew, either to make money or just for the needs of the household.
I love houses. I love children. I love the inner warmth that flows from people to things, from things to people, and from children to grownups, from husbands to wives, and from children to their parents.
A few cows coming back from pasture made their way across the broad road. Big bellied cows with fat udders and stately horns. The impact of their hooves lifted the dust from the road. They would soon be home. They wouldn’t have to worry about the gathering rain clouds that might burst open at any moment. Dear cows! What abundance in your faces, what prudence in your steady gait! Your owners love you, providing you with hay, water, and clean stalls. They’ll relieve your heavy udders so that there will be fresh milk in the early morning.
Here began the stiff, long fence of the familiar Lukianivske cemetery.
I was a frequent guest but never before had I come for a stroll at such a late hour. Now everything looked different to me, even the office building. A Jewish family lived on the second floor, and they looked like country people. The young wife took care of the children and ran the entire household. She was chopping up a bundle of heavy branches, probably getting ready to cook something for supper. I called out to her, and she answered that her husband would soon be back from work. Her sons were doing their homework. The youngest was sticking close to her.
“Do you have running water in the house?”
“No, no, the tap is right there,” she answered, pointing to a spot almost in between the gravestones, to the left of the house, a small work area with a pipe and a faucet to draw the water. For the first time I sensed how the residents of the house had to spend their nights with a whole city of the dead: young and old, grooms and brides, rich and poor, those who had been cared for and those who had been neglected. I was more privileged than this family of country people. Regardless, the wife was healthy and strong, no evil eye should befall her, she had already given her husband seven children. I hoped to God things would go on the same way for them. My Doba pulled me by the sleeve. She didn’t want us to stay there too long.
“Do you know the way?”
Did I know? I might as well have forgotten. The Germans ruled here with complete disregard for common decency. Many gravestones were broken and lay crumbled on the ground. Some were even in a worse state. I wanted to ask her about her mother, who died young, but I didn’t dare. When the right time came, she would tell me herself. An annoying drizzle began to dust the earth. More like a promise of rain. Our clothes soon became damp. Evening was coming. It was not yet evening, but late dusk, the beginning of evening. And we had undertaken to make a journey to the land of the dead.
By day the place was filled with different sorts of tombstones, many of them inside ornamental enclosures. But by night this was the land of the dead. I wasn’t supposed to be afraid. I had a strong young woman by my side. She was life itself. She belonged to the living kingdom of women, which had taken a lot out of me over the years. But something gnawed at my heart. We turned into a side alley. The fences around the tombstones and the tombstones themselves were all of a piece, yet each one also proclaimed its difference from the other. The cemetery was a communal space, yet each fence demarcated a private domain—my nature, my virtues, my gait, my mood.
Doba walked a little ahead of me. Last year’s dead leaves and branches, still not cleared away, lay on the ground, entangling our feet. A bit of rain misted the earth. The hour of twilight grew denser. Doba swiftly bent over one gravestone, then another, and finally, with the satisfied air of someone who has found what she was looking for, stood still. I went up to her and read the inscription: “Fayge Lazebnik, the daughter of Zalmen Hirsch.”
The address was found, and the apartment, but the door was barred, and no key would fit it. If necessary, a pickaxe and a shovel would work. I wanted to step aside for a moment and let Doba be alone with her memories. But she tugged me by the sleeve firmly and drew herself to me as if we were very close. I kissed her moist cheek. She nestled her head against my chest. My damp clothes didn’t bother either one of us. I was certain that our intimacy didn’t profane or even touch the quiet, sacred rest of eternity.
Doba raked the leaves around the grave with a branch from the ground. She stopped at the iron fence, which had not yet lost its original shine. She didn’t throw away the branch, but grabbed me by my wet arm, and we set off. Without parting from the house of the dead, we returned to the world in which we lived. We passed the two-story cemetery office, as if we were saying, “We’re not asking for lodging or a meal—we have an hour and a half or less until we reach our own homes.”
We had no need to fear the passersby whom we met, and they had no need to fear us. Doba accepted my kiss without pulling away from me. She even responded, readily and quietly touching her lips to my face, and it felt good… It wasn’t like always. It was a separate, brief good feeling, but no matter how brief, it ran deep.
In the meantime, we caught sight of illuminated windows approaching us from a distance.
“Look! The trams are running again! Thanks for nothing. Motion and light, light and life.”
In front of us was the end of the line where the tram would come to a stop with its own special lively clang. It would wait a while and then head back in the direction of the city.
People both young and old, lonely and less lonely, those blessed with a family home, and even couples freed up the tram for us. We could now take a seat next to other passengers like us. Some shoved their way in to get the best spot. Others took their places calmly. Doba and I shared a seat. She leaned against me and closed her eyes. She didn’t look around the way she did that one time in the grocery store when we unexpectedly ran into each other. Would things turn out well for us?
The half-empty tram set off.
1945–1946
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Excerpted from In the Shadow of the Holocaust: Short Fiction by Jewish Writers from the Soviet Union edited and translated by Sasha Senderovich and Harriet Murav, published by Stanford University Press, ©2026 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All Rights Reserved.
