In the fog (Bykau)

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Wassil Bykau in 1944

Im Nebel ( Belarusian У тумане, Russian В тумане ) is a novella by the Belarusian writer Wassil Bykau , which was written in 1987 and published in the July issue of the same year in the Moscow literary magazine Druzhba narodov - translated from Belarusian into Russian.

In 2012, Sergei Loznitsa filmed the novella at Belarusfilm in Minsk with Vladimir Swirski as the railway worker Sushchenya, Wladislaw Abashin as the reconnaissance partisan Kolja Burau and Sergei Kolessow as the former party worker Wojzik. The film was released in German cinemas on November 15, 2012 under the original title.

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Late autumn 1942 in occupied Belarus: On the railway line that runs over the Vyspjansky Bridge near the village of Maszishcha, a repair team of Belarusian railway workers unscrewed a rail joint and moved a track to one side when repair work was required on the track bed . The railroad workers wanted to give their new boss Jaraschewitsch, a favorite of the Germans , a lesson . The next German train with supplies for the Eastern Front had derailed. Three of the railway workers were hanged by the Germans and one - 37-year-old Sushchenya from Maszishcha - was released. Sushchenya had been against the rash action, but had taken part because he didn't want to appear as a crawl in front of the Germans.

The partisan detachment in the forest about thirty kilometers from Maszishcha had decided to shoot Sushchenya. The commanding officer, Lieutenant Truschkewitsch, then sent the two partisans Burau and Wojzik on two horses to carry out the death sentence. The experienced 26-year-old scout and scout Burau was in command. Before the war he had served in the Far East . Burau does not just shoot Suschtschenja, who is present in his farmer's kate , but instead talks to his former neighbor for half an hour in the kate. Sushchenya expected the partisans and came to terms with the death sentence. The father of the family appeases his young wife Anelja and their little son Hryscha. Both men then go out to Wojzik, who is waiting by the horses in the dark of the evening. Sushchenya, who knows what to expect, takes a spade with him to dig his grave. However, it turns out differently. When the grave - away from the village in the forest - was almost finished by Suschtschenja, a commando of the local police opened fire. Burau is going to get a bullet through his hip. Sushchenya does not try to escape. Not at all like a traitor, the railroad worker drags the seriously injured man out of the line of fire. The scout is slowly bleeding to death.

With time, the reader believes that Sushchenya is not a traitor and does not know why he was released by the Germans. The reader suspects that the SD in the person of investigator Dr. Grossmeier set a diabolical trap for the partisans, which promptly snapped shut.

The rest of the action takes place in the eponymous Belarusian November fog, which oozes cold from under the fir trees of extensive forests. Wojzik - out in the bush - lost his horses in the police fire . He stayed away for a long time in search of a team to transport the wounded. When he comes back without a ride, Burau has since succumbed to his injury. Sushchenya has taken the dead man's black revolver. On the march to the partisan camp, the gigantic Sushchenya carries the dead heavy man on his back. Even after Burau's death, who believed in his former neighbors during his lifetime, a glimmer of hope gleams in Sushchenya, which can be paraphrased: Maybe the partisans will take me in after all.

The feeble Wojzik has enough to haul with the two partisan rifles. Wojzik leaves the tour to the local Suschtschenja. When Wojzik finally recognized the area around the partisan camp, he wanted to shoot Sushchenya. How else is he supposed to face the unyielding Commander Trushkevich with a living traitor? Before that, the death row inmate Sushchenya had to help the overcautious partisan Wojzik with the dangerous crossing of the highway. Sushchenya first crosses the street with the dead man on his back. When Wojzik tries to follow, he is hit by firing police officers. Wojzik is still alive after the first hit. Wojzik's very last insight: the policeman who finishes him off with a shot in the head is a neighbor whose family Wojzik once helped in an emergency.

Sushchenya, who - like the other railroad workers involved in the act of sabotage - was interrogated and tortured by the SD every morning and evening after his arrest, has been a broken man since his release. Burau had been the first and only one who had apparently believed in Sushchenya's innocence. Because he had said to Wojzik: “Don't touch Sushchenya!” Regarded as a traitor by everyone in the village - even by Anelja - after the death of his two captors, he no longer hopes that the partisans will live on and shoots himself with Burau's revolver.

Wojzik

In the course of the narrative - due to the relatively early death of Burau - Wojzik, initially colorless, becomes the protagonist of this psychological novella. With concise statements from the narrator, the railway worker is quickly declared to be a simply structured person: “You hang your coat in the wind. But that was exactly where Sushchenya's misfortune lay, he couldn't. Yes, he had never wanted it, had always wanted to be what he was. " But not Wojzik!

Wassil Bykau strikes a completely new note in this late work. In the author's early partisan stories the protagonists were mostly scattered soldiers who continued to fight to the death after breaking out of the encirclement, the reader is presented with the partisan Wojzik, a Belarusian with every imaginable human weakness. While the technically skilled Burau makes his GAZ-AA unusable before he goes to the partisans, the departure into illegality of the former employee in the Executive Committee Wojzik is anything but glorious. Wojzik surrenders his own mother to the enemy by diving down. The latter kills the selfless elderly woman.

Wojzik, who was an instructor in the agriculture department in the Lepel district before the war , soon notices as a simple soldier among the partisans that such practitioners as Burau, in contrast to him, can take on a lot. The firmness of principles of the “party workers” is less in demand among partisans in the forest. Rather, physical strength and endurance are needed. The real traitor in the novella is not the thoroughly honest Sushchenya, but Wojzik, who delivers three former employees of the Kreissovjet who are hiding in a mud hut in the Wojnouski forest.

Avoiding any black and white painting appears to be one of the strengths of Vasily Bykau's late work compared to earlier partisan stories. Everything essential in the novella is veiled in the fog of the title. Every thing - or every person worthy of closer inspection - has at least two sides. Whoever marks Wojzik as a traitor has to remember that Wojzik as a party worker - that is, as a member of the district active - was hunted by the Germans in 1942 .

German-language editions

  • Wassil Bykau: In the fog. Translated from the Russian by Werner Rode . Soviet literature issue 6/1988
  • Wassil Bykau: In the fog. Novella. Translated from the Russian by Werner Rode . Publishing house Volk und Welt. Berlin 1990 (1st edition, edition used), ISBN 3-353-00604-4

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Russian Дружба народов (журнал), in German: Friendship of the Nations
  2. ↑ Belarusian: Беларусьфільм
  3. ↑ Russian Владимир Свирский
  4. ↑ Russian Абашин, Владислав Владимирович
  5. ↑ Russian Сергей Колесов
  6. ↑ engl. Entry in the IMDb
  7. ↑ Edition used, p. 67, 12. Zvu
  8. ↑ Edition used, p. 73, 2nd Zvu
  9. ↑ Edition used, p. 106, 14. Zvo
  10. ↑ Edition used, p. 99, 6th Zvu
  11. ↑ Edition used, p. 57, 13. Zvu
  12. ↑ Edition used, p. 123, 12. Zvu
  13. ↑ Edition used, p. 93, 20. Zvo