yakov_a_jerkov | Почти забыл

Почти забыл, что нужно закончить цитировать отрывки из "2666" Боланьо к записи "Про бродячих собак".

Вот предыдущие отрывки: Первый, Второй и Третий.

What to do? The work was too much for us. Man wasn't made to bear some tasks for very long, I said to myself as I contemplated the horizon from my office window, striped in pink and a cloacal murk. It was too much for me, anyway. I was doing my best, but I couldn't stand it. Nor could my policemen. Fifteen, all right. Thirty, fine. But when one reaches fifty the stomach turns and the head spins and the restless nights and nightmares begin.
I put a halt to the work. The boys went back to playing soccer in the street. The policemen returned to their duties. The peasants returned to their farms. No one from the outside showed any interest in the Jews, so I started up the sweeping brigades again and let some, no more than twenty, do farmwork, making the farmers responsible for their safety.
One night I was gotten out of bed and told I had an urgent call. It was an official from Upper Galicia with whom I had never spoken before. He told me to prepare for the evacuation of Germans from my region.
"There are no trains," I said, "how can I evacuate them all?"
"That's your problem," said the official.
Before he hung up I said I had a group of Jews in my power, what to do with them? He didn't answer. The line had gone dead or he had other people like me to call or the Jews were of no interest to him. It was four in the morning. I couldn't go back to bed. I told my wife we were leaving and then I sent for the mayor and the police chief. When I got to my office they were there, looking as if they had slept little and poorly. They were both afraid.
I reassured them, I told them that if we acted fast no one would be in danger. We put our people to work. Before dawn the first evacuees were already on their way west. I stayed until the end. I spent another day and night in the village. In the distance the sound of artillery could be heard. I went to see the Jews, the police chief is my witness, and I told them to leave. Then I collected the two policemen who were on guard and abandoned the Jews to their fate in the old tannery. That's freedom, I suppose.
My driver told me he had seen some Wehrmacht soldiers passing through without stopping. I went up to my office without knowing very well what I was looking for. The night before I had slept on the sofa for a few hours and I had already burned everything that needed to be burned. The town streets were empty, although women's heads could be glimpsed at some windows. Then I went down the stairs, got in my car, and left, said Sammer to Reiter.
I was a fair administrator. I did good things, guided by my instincts, and bad things, driven by the vicissitudes of war. But now the drunken Polish boys will open their mouths and say I ruined their childhoods, said Sammer to Reiter. Me? I ruined their childhoods? Liquor ruined their childhoods! Soccer ruined their childhoods! Those lazy, shiftless mothers ruined their childhoods! Not me.
"Anyone else in my place," said Sammer to Reiter, "would have killed all those Jews with his own hands. I didn't. It isn't in my nature."