sound like the sound of the martens that make their nests in the attic, he’d caught one of them yesterday, and the creature’s fur is now hanging over the railing of the little balcony, once more a rustling comes from behind the wall in which the shallow closet is set. The young Red Army officer gets up quickly, before there’s even time for him to think that if things are as they should be, there’s no room for a marten inside a wall. He opens the door, and at once everything falls silent behind the wall on which the morning coat is hanging. Only now does he step back and examine the shallow closet from top to bottom, he examines the wooden columns that flank it, and only now does he see that they don’t quite reach all the way to the floor, in the few millimeters left between the columns and the floor, he sees, kneeling down on the floor now, the outermost curve of tiny wheels almost entirely concealed in the interior of the columns. Only now does he see that the soft cork floor directly in front of the shallow closet has been polished in a half-circle, even though the door with the mirror on it always opened easily. In the remaining fractions of a second in which he thinks and grasps all these things, he also thinks and grasps that on the other side of the shallow cupboard someone is breathing who already knows all his thoughts and is now awaiting the end of this very, very long second.
He reaches for his revolver, quietly closes the mirrored door, and then gives a strong quick tug on the metal knob without turning it first. As expected, one of the wooden columns now emerges from the paneling of the wall, and with a faint squeaking sound the shallow closet follows his energetic tug as if the youth had just opened the thick page of a wooden book. He peers into a deep closet that had previously been hidden, he sees jackets, dresses, coats, shirts and blouses hanging close together one beside the other, and in a compartment above them sweaters, scarves and hats. The closet’s rod and shelf extend off into the darkness to the right of the door. And there something is rustling, but the young Red Army officer cannot see. A vibrant odor—urine and feces—engulfs him, and beneath the hanging clothes he sees a pot filled to the brim with filth. Some defecate out of fear, others because they cannot come out of their hiding places, and still others out of anger, he thinks, and all of this together is called war. Maybe the Germans used to hide too much, it occurs to him, now that he has happened upon this secret closet, they even hid the bedclothes in the wall and put up wooden gratings to hide the radiators. And they weren’t even taking into account that the war might come washing back over them, they concealed all these things from their own eyes alone. Now finally everything is being dragged back out again: clothes, jewelry, bicycles, livestock, horses and women. Now everyone else sees it, and they themselves are being forced to see it as well. Everything is being dragged out into the light and put to use, anyone still alive stops washing himself, and anyone buried beneath the rubble rots and thus also begins to stink.
The Red Army officer forces his way between the clothes, his revolver pointed into darkness, to the back of the closet where he encounters a body that mutely begins to put up resistance when he reaches for it. Before the war, the Red Army officer was still a child, and making use of women had never interested him during the war, but here, as he puts his revolver away so as to be able to use both hands to hold fast what is struggling here in his grasp, he is so occupied with seizing and grasping and forced by this seizing and grasping into such close proximity that before he can even consider what he is doing, he touches the warm breasts of a woman in the dark, a woman who is continuing to struggle and in this struggle forcing him to ever greater proximity, then he feels her hair on his
He reaches for his revolver, quietly closes the mirrored door, and then gives a strong quick tug on the metal knob without turning it first. As expected, one of the wooden columns now emerges from the paneling of the wall, and with a faint squeaking sound the shallow closet follows his energetic tug as if the youth had just opened the thick page of a wooden book. He peers into a deep closet that had previously been hidden, he sees jackets, dresses, coats, shirts and blouses hanging close together one beside the other, and in a compartment above them sweaters, scarves and hats. The closet’s rod and shelf extend off into the darkness to the right of the door. And there something is rustling, but the young Red Army officer cannot see. A vibrant odor—urine and feces—engulfs him, and beneath the hanging clothes he sees a pot filled to the brim with filth. Some defecate out of fear, others because they cannot come out of their hiding places, and still others out of anger, he thinks, and all of this together is called war. Maybe the Germans used to hide too much, it occurs to him, now that he has happened upon this secret closet, they even hid the bedclothes in the wall and put up wooden gratings to hide the radiators. And they weren’t even taking into account that the war might come washing back over them, they concealed all these things from their own eyes alone. Now finally everything is being dragged back out again: clothes, jewelry, bicycles, livestock, horses and women. Now everyone else sees it, and they themselves are being forced to see it as well. Everything is being dragged out into the light and put to use, anyone still alive stops washing himself, and anyone buried beneath the rubble rots and thus also begins to stink.
The Red Army officer forces his way between the clothes, his revolver pointed into darkness, to the back of the closet where he encounters a body that mutely begins to put up resistance when he reaches for it. Before the war, the Red Army officer was still a child, and making use of women had never interested him during the war, but here, as he puts his revolver away so as to be able to use both hands to hold fast what is struggling here in his grasp, he is so occupied with seizing and grasping and forced by this seizing and grasping into such close proximity that before he can even consider what he is doing, he touches the warm breasts of a woman in the dark, a woman who is continuing to struggle and in this struggle forcing him to ever greater proximity, then he feels her hair on his
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