We are in the middle of the wetlands and the middle of autumn. The sky is dark even during the day. Every few feet there is a stream or bog, and a lake not far away. The ruin we’d hoped would shelter us turned out to be dangerous, and we went back to living in tents.
It’s strange how this much water and the smells of the damp forest can affect you. At first you don’t feel a thing; only after a few weeks do you feel the heaviness. You lean on a tree or lie down on a mat of twigs. Before long, the head grows dizzy. This isn’t the dizziness of hunger or weakness: it’s the start of the wetlands delirium.
A few days ago one of the fighters approached Salo and said, “I need to go home.”
“Why?”
“I saw my father today, and he is very ill.”
“We have no home, dear fellow. This is our home.”
“Salo,” said the fighter, “you’re wrong. I saw my father very clearly, lying in bed, very ill. I can tell the difference between imagination and reality.”
When he heard this assertion, Salo lowered his head, then raised his eyes and said, “Dear fellow—I won’t keep it from you—you’ve got the wetlands delirium. We’ve all got it, to some degree. You need to tell yourself: The base is my home. These are my friends. We are fighting together for our existence and to eradicate the evil.”
“And I won’t be able to go back home?”
“After the war, all of us will.”
“And what will happen with my father?”
“The people near him will help him. We are obligated to help one another, here and there.”
The fighter smiled, as if he understood something he hadn’t grasped before. It was a different smile, the smile of someone with wetlands delirium.
After the conversation, the man lay down and fell asleep.
Salo saw him sleeping and said, “The wetlands delirium has hit him hard, but sleep, I assume, will calm him.”
Without a doubt, the water and dampness affect us powerfully. First they attack your body, and then they play tricks with your mind, show you things you cannot change. Kamil warns us not to let the delusions drive us mad; they are as lethal as drunkenness. We must fortify the heart with simple things.
When Kamil speaks of strength and a joyful heart, you get the feeling he isn’t the commander of fighters who have lost their families but a prophet training us to reach a new spiritual level.
Kamil used to say that fear is a parasitic emotion and must be erased completely. Back then his voice had a mysterious sound. But later on he became thin, his face grew hard and bony, and his eyes sank deep into their sockets. He sleeps very little. It’s amazing that he keeps on going. Another man would surely collapse, lose hope, frighten his soldiers.
Kamil is not like other people. His external appearance is sometimes deceptive. He can seem distracted or lost in thought, but those who know him know he is extremely down to earth. Yes, his pragmatism has an air of mystery, but he’s as solid as a rock.
He doesn’t deny that a long bumpy road lies before us, but if we will learn to conquer despair, to stay fixed on our goal, and to understand that being a Jew is no small matter, we will live to see the downfall of the enemy.
Where does this clear conviction come from, people ask themselves. Once, in a burst of euphoria, he exclaimed, “Our war is not merely to stay alive. If we do not come out of these forests as complete Jews, we will not have learned a thing.” It’s hard to get to the bottom of his thinking. It sometimes seems that he, too, is trapped in the wetlands delirium, yet his words sound lucid, purified by experience, and the separation of body and spirit does not apply to him.
When Kamil is excitedly delving inside and striving to uplift us, Felix is curled up, asleep. His day is clearly divided: after his activities, he rests his head on a pile of twigs and falls asleep. Kamil sometimes watches him, marveling.
A true fighter needs to sleep. It cleanses his body of accumulated rubbish. Only after sleep are the legs faithful and the mind focused. This is Felix’s credo in a nutshell, and he fulfills it in practice. He always exudes patience and quiet and a hint of indifference. Compared with him, we seem in constant panic. When he wakes up, he goes to the kitchen, pours himself a glass of tea, and sits down. Sometimes he lights a cigarette. He’s not a compulsive smoker, unlike many of us. It’s immediately apparent that sleep has renewed him.