Devil's Workshop
Jáchym Topol








'The devil had his workshop in Belarus. That's where the deepest graves are. But no one knows about it.'

A young man grows up in a town with a sinister history. The concentration camp may have been liberated years ago, but its walls still cast their long shadows and some of the inhabitants are quite determined to not to allow anyone to forget. When the camp is marked for demolition, one of the survivors begins a campaign to preserve it, quickly attracting donations from wealthy benefactors, a cult-like following of young travellers, and a steady stream of tourists buying souvenir t-shirts.But before long, the authorities impose a brutal crack-down, leaving only an 'official' memorial and three young collaborators whose commitment to the act of remembering will drive them ever closer to the evils they hoped to escape.

Bold, brilliant and blackly comic, The Devil's Workshop paints a deeply troubling portrait of a country dealing with its ghosts and asks: at what point do we consign the past to history?






Jáchym Topol




Devil's Workshop


on a river of emotion

on a hillside without emotion

a tin sun

founds

a colony of terror

    

Pavel Zajíček






Look, I’ve got someone else’s scars, how did they get there?

    

Dorota Masłowska








1


I’m on the run to the airport in Prague. Run, well, more like I’m walking along the roadside ditch, wrapped in a dizzying cloud, from my drinking.

I’ve been drinking a lot lately.

Now I’m walking along the highway. Every now and then I get down in the ditch and crawl so the cops won’t be able to spot me from their patrol car.

So they won’t catch me and ask me about the fire in Terezín.

Sometimes I throw myself down in the ditch, wedge myself in with my back pressed up against the dirt, and just stay there like that.

Little by little, I’m making my way to the airport in Prague.

There’s still some of Sara’s wine left in the bottle. I ate all the meat that they gave me.

At first I didn’t want to, but eventually I forced it down. I need the energy.

The moon’s almost full now.

The redbrick walls of Terezín are far behind me, the walls of my hometown.

The town that, as my dad used to say, was founded by the Empress Maria Theresa, since whose reign hundreds of thousands of soldiers from many an army have passed through its gates. The Empress Maria Theresa was fond of military parades, said my dad, a major of military music who loved the Terezín parades and their marching bands.

I’m walking along with my back to the town, all those enormous eighteenth-century buildings far behind me — storehouses for millions of bullets, stables for hundreds of horses, barracks for tens of thousands of men. I left, like all the defenders of the town left before me. The influx of soldiers to this town created for soldiers had come to a halt.

And, without an army, the town was falling apart.

They sold my goats, who used to graze on the grass inside the fortress walls.

Most of them.

My dad didn’t live to see it.

I’m one of the few who wanted to save Terezín.

My mum said she and my dad weren’t expecting it when I came into the world. She also used to say that it would’ve been just the most beautiful thing if I had stayed so tiny I could’ve hidden inside a thimble. I could’ve lived on peas, fought over drops of milk with the cat, and walked around wrapped in a little rag of cloth, her very own Tom Thumb.

At first it delighted me, how could it not?

But there was no avoiding it: I grew up the same as everyone else.

I no longer rejoiced when my dad went off to work with his baton in a red case painted with a yellow hammer and sickle and my mum sealed the windows and doors with pillows and blankets.

When I was very young, I’m told, I used to clap my little hands when my mum pushed the furniture away from the walls.

In the middle of all the cabinets and chests, the cupboards, overturned chairs, armchairs and the fancy divan, she created a safe hiding place, a nest for just the two of us.

I was overjoyed when my mum and I would huddle up close in our warm nest and hold each other till my dad came home and dragged us out of our safe place.

The world outside was huge and my mum refused to set foot in it.

As soon as I could, I started running away from her.

I’m not really sure how it happened, but one day I wrenched myself out of her grip, unwound myself from her sweet embrace, pushed away her outstretched arms, crawled under the divan, climbed over the armchair, tugged at the door handle, opened the door, and scooted out.

I joined the other kids, racing back and forth along the ramparts, falling down in the grass like we’d lost our senses, and getting back up and doing it all over again.

And Lebo! Everybody knew him, there was no way not to in Terezín.

Then there was also that business with my mum.

Lebo was her only friend. Oh, not like that, but he brought her flowers.

The aunts also took care of my mum.

She wouldn’t even leave our flat.

But whenever Women’s Day rolled around, or the anniversary of our liberation by the Soviet army, she could always count on Lebo to give her a huge bouquet of flowers he had picked under the ramparts, out of reach of my greedy goats. Even on Mother’s Day, which wasn’t celebrated under communism, he would secretly hand her a bouquet dusted with red from the town’s walls. Uncle Lebo always made sure to give my mum a bouquet.

Supposedly there was once a time when he and my mum actually talked, but I don’t remember it.

What I do remember is that she hardly spoke in the end.

All she ever wanted to do any more was curl into a ball and take up the smallest possible space, searching for a spot just big enough to take a breath, that was all she needed.

All of the kids in Terezín knew Uncle Lebo.

We used to think that he was called Lebo because of his long skull, which didn’t have a single hair poking out of it. We just assumed his real name was Lebka, which is Czech for skull, but Aunt Fridrich explained to me that when she was a girl in the concentration camp here during the war, she had hidden the newborn Lebo in a shoebox under her bunk, safely off in a corner of the room for condemned women and girls, and the way it was with his name, she said, was the bunkroom elder was a Slovak, and a midwife, as luck would have it, and when she delivered the baby she said, out loud but in a whisper, what everybody in the room was already thinking: Bude potichu, alebo ho udusíme — Either he’s quiet or we’ll suffocate him — and that Slovak word lebo became his name.

Giving birth and hiding a baby in the bunkroom wasn’t allowed, but the women hoped the Red Army was making its way to Terezín, and they turned out to be right.

None of my aunts, including Aunt Fridrich, was actually at the birth itself. It was overseen by older, experienced women, who are all dead now. If only my aunts hadn’t been so young, they could’ve told me who Lebo’s mum was, but who cares! The girl who had Lebo probably lost her life during the war. Maybe she went off on one of the last transports to the East, or maybe, like my aunts said, she met her end in a typhus grave. If she’d been caught giving birth illegally, it would’ve meant a bullet for her anyway, Aunt Fridrich explained.

But none of us took precautions! she said as she sat there reminiscing about the old days in Terezín, her gaze sliding along the walls of her tiny flat. Then the sound of suppressed laughter came bubbling up from her throat, until she burst out laughing, and Aunt Holopírek and Aunt Dohnal, who had also spent their youth in Terezín, laughed right along.

Lebo was our uncle, he was uncle to all the little tots in Terezín.

It was for him we combed the tunnels. Being small, we could fit into every sewer and drain, where the build-up of fence boards, washed out of the meadows by floods, sometimes made the water bulge in strange ways. Nothing rotted underground. The warning signs posted by the Monument staff were a joke, even a child’s hand could push them out of the way, and the bunkers in the outermost bastions had an irresistible charm.

It was great finding a hollow pipe, or an old cowshed just for yourself, a parapet out on the ramparts where nobody went much, with bottles and condoms lying around, and squeezing right into the corner, feeling the edges and curves of the walls.

My mum didn’t even want to let me go outside.

You should’ve stayed inside me, she used to say. What were you missing? She herself didn’t go out at all.

Crazy lady.

That’s the kind of thing my aunts, the old ladies from the neighbourhood, would say — Aunt Fridrich, Aunt Dohnal, Aunt Holopírek and the rest — when they got together and gabbed about my mother: It’s because of what happened! It isn’t her fault! She suffered like an animal!

My mum never went outside, she needed a room’s edges and corners behind her back, just a tiny space to breathe in was enough. Still, she didn’t die in the nuthouse, they never did take her away. Even after the time when she tied me up in the pantry so I couldn’t go to school, even after that and all the other times my mum didn’t want to let me out in the world, they didn’t lock her up. My mum was a martyr, in other words a war hero, so she could do just about anything she wanted, and even though she took her life when I went away to school, nobody dwelled on it or blackened her memory, and nobody said a word about it to my dad either, because he was a war hero too. There were lots of them in Terezín. Even Uncle Lebo, who gave my mum those huge bouquets, was considered a hero, including by the eggheads and the board of the Monument, and even though he was only born in Terezín during the war, so he was actually too young to remember any of it.

We were the last stubborn handful of defenders of Terezín, and Uncle Lebo was our leader. He had been born here, gone to school here, worked at the Monument here, then walked away from it, but most important, he collected objects.

Together with Uncle Lebo and Sara, who was the first person to come to us from the world, we founded the Comenium commune, our international school of healing for students from around the world.

Lea the Great, who showed up in Terezín right after Sara, was the one who came up with the name Comenium, after John Amos Comenius, the Czech educator known as ‘the teacher of nations’, who said that school should be play.

But the whole thing ended in ruins, not only that but in flames, and now I’m on the run to Prague.

Alex, from Belarus, arranged the trip for me.

He arranged it because I’m the only one with a head full of Lebo, Lebo and his plans, especially all the addresses and contacts that we milked for cash, and I’ve got it all hidden away on a flash drive, a teeny-tiny techno thingamajig I call the Spider.

Lebo is unique because he’s the only person on earth who was not only born in Terezín but spent his entire life there.

Lebo had a passion for everything connected with Terezín — not so much its glorious military past but its horrifying wartime history. He spent dozens of years gathering objects and collecting the contacts that would help him save the town. And he turned the contacts over to me, so we could milk them for money to support the Comenium.

You see, Lebo insisted that Terezín be preserved whole. Not just its tunnels, bunks, cellars, and words scratched on walls, but its life and all its inhabitants too: the greengrocer’s, the laundry, the cookshop, and all of the people who worked in them.

I knew every one.

Lebo didn’t want to see Terezín reduced to a Monument and a few educational trails. None of us wanted that.

So now I’ve got the Spider with all Lebo’s contacts tucked away in my pocket, clenched in my hand.

And because I’ve got the Spider, I’ve got somewhere to go. Alex arranged it. He wants me to come and help him in his country. He wants to carry out Lebo’s plan in Belarus.

Now I’m walking through a night full of sounds, the hum of cars zooming down the highway to Prague. I walk along the ditch by the roadside, sit down, make myself comfortable. Back pressed up against the dirt, I dream.

In Terezín I used to walk the goats around the ramparts. As my little flock nibbled away at the grass, it increased not only the walls’ defensive strength but also their beauty. I often led the flock to the outermost walls, my honourable duty, as Dad would say. They were the first thing the delegations from Prague would see when they came to pay tribute to the Czech patriots tortured to death in the Small Fortress, and the Jewish prisoners tortured to death and otherwise slaughtered all over Terezín, or exported to the death camps in the East. Yes, these redbrick ramparts, the last ones you saw as you left Terezín and the first ones as you arrived from Prague, are the fortress town’s calling card, as my dad the major used to say, and that was why they were graced with a huge red banner that read WITH THE SOVIET UNION FOR ALL TIME AND NEVER OTHERWISE. Every now and then I would drive my goats all the way out there, to the outermost rampart.

But usually my flock grazed on the grass right beneath the walls, they loved the grass with the red dust that flaked off the bricks.

My dad was one of the liberators of Terezín. He came to the town during the last days of the war, met my mum, and ultimately made his name putting on military parades on the town square, a huge appelplatz built in the days of Maria Theresa.

I can still hear the sound of my dad’s marching band. When I was little and I would hide in my mum’s arms, walled in behind the carpet, the couch, the mirrors, the chairs, and all the rest of the furniture, breathing in the delicious smell of her neck, and later, when I ran away from her to the ramparts and the bunkers, to play with the other kids, and we would graze and bleat like goats, even then we could hear the marching band. As the littlest in Terezín it was one of our duties to lead the goats around the fortress walls, until my dad put an end to it and I went off to military school, where they were supposed to hammer even more military marches into me.

Most of my peers also went to military school, and the ones who didn’t have what it takes went into the auxiliary army at least, the girls as laundrywomen or cooks or whores, the boys as coachmen and sappers. The dumbest ones found work as attendants in the slaughterhouse, but I was the son of a major, so the auxiliary army was out of the question for me.

I wouldn’t have minded working at the slaughterhouse. I could’ve brought the old goats there. It was a stone’s throw from the ramparts, right by the graveyard, but I had to go away to school, and my mum died the very next day after I left. My aunts told me afterwards how it happened: coming home from band rehearsal, my dad carried out the routine he had learned to get into the flat when the furniture was all stacked up and pushed together to create a safe crevice for Mum, just big enough so she could breathe, but this time when my dad pressed down on the door handle he hanged her as she was kneeling down to take up the smallest space possible, that was her thing.

She was crazy! said Aunt Fridrich. It was that shock she got in the pit! said Aunt Holopírek. Poor child! said Aunt Dohnal as I wept into her apron. But I wasn’t a child any more, I was a military school deserter and there were punishments for that — the alley of brooms, the hog-tie, hundreds of squats, the staff’s contemptuous laughter at the crack of the hazel rod, and most of all stinking jail, military jail — but I didn’t give a damn, I just wanted to get home to my goats. I didn’t give a damn what the punishment was, and I was right, too. Nothing happened to me that time or any other time either. My dad was a major, after all.

He was unhappy with me for deserting, though, and he gave me a beating, which he paid for in the end.

My own unhappiness sprang from the fact that I had to study. Stumbling around shooting ranges, stuck in classrooms with huge windows that let in the weight of the world, I ran away whenever I had a chance, and even when I didn’t. I could squeeze my way out even if all the doors were sealed. I always managed to escape somehow, even when they locked me up, and I would make my way home, and they’d come and find me in a nook of the ramparts, where the boards and bricks came together to form a makeshift goat shed.

My dad knew that’s where I’d be.

And whoosh, straight back to school.

At school they forced me to learn English, the language of our enemies, and Russian, the language of our friends. I studied constantly, surviving the weight of the world by not looking out the windows and keeping my eyes on my textbooks, scanning the pages up and down, propping myself up with my eyes. I made it through thanks to those languages, that’s the only thing I remember from school, and they were also the reason I became Lebo’s right-hand man, they were what made me useful in building the Comenium, so in fact I was carrying on my dad’s legacy. I was working on Terezín’s behalf, and as Lebo later explained to me, laying his enormous hand on my shoulder, in my own way I was defending the town. So maybe my father, in spite of our last argument, which he didn’t survive, would’ve been proud of me after all.

Maybe.

They threw me out of school in the end, even though my dad was a major. I wasn’t deemed fit for the army.

I went back to herding goats and I was happy. The other boys and girls had all grown up and there were no new little tots, so I was left on my own with the flock.

The goats in Terezín weren’t just a country pastime, or a way to make a living. Goats are the symbol of fortress towns, they’re biological war machines.

The goats cleared the weeds and grass and bushes from the passages through the ramparts, the weak spots in our fortifications. They may not have ranked with such wonders of technology as the Prussian cannon, the rounded bastion, the Tiger tank, the Katyusha rocket launcher, or any of the more recent artillery of the Cold War, but only the goats, with their greedy mouths and their endless consumption of grass, could keep the ramparts clean.

What good was all that advanced weaponry if a single determined foot soldier could creep through the weed-filled ditch to the city gates and blast open a hole with the most primitive bazooka?

Every fortress town falls if the goats disappear.

But my dad didn’t want me to herd goats. He wanted me to learn how to be in charge and give orders, to turn men into machines. And one day, up on the ramparts, which have been blasted by cold winds for hundreds of years, so the bricks give off these tiny little clouds of red dust, the two of us got into a nasty argument. And near the end my dad must’ve realized that I was too grown up for him to beat me any more, and he clutched at his heart and he clutched at my hand, and I thought he was going to throw me off, but I stood tight and he slipped and fell, and landed thump on his back in the grass. My goats went running in every direction, so I climbed down and called out to calm them, and I tried to revive my dad the way they’d taught us in school, but it was no use.

He had a huge military funeral. The units lined up on the main square and paraded through town till evening to the boom of artillery. They played all the most famous tunes from the nearby garrisons, and my aunts and Mr Hamáček, who ran the greengrocer’s, said it was the most beautiful funeral in all of Terezín’s history. Everybody liked it. And of course a lot of the soldiers who still lived in town congratulated me too. But then they locked me up.




2


They gave me a sentence of many years for my father’s death, but there’s no use talking about it. When they let me out, I headed straight for the nearest pub.

All the other prisoners said that was what you did.

That included the ones I had escorted to the trapdoor, they all said they’d rather be going to the nearest neighbourhood dive.

Mr Mára, the technician, had a big huge prehistoric computer on his desk in the execution room, with a flickering green screen. He’d been arrested and convicted in a trial of cyberneticists, ‘traitors of the people’. But the prison administration had recognized his skills and he ended up as the executioner. Socialist cybernetics remained his passion.

I was told the old hangmen needed vodka by the bucket-load to calm themselves down, but Mr Mára was a man of the modern era. He had invented a game. And that made everyone happy, from the high-ranking officers to the simple men who worked as guards.

I was his helping hand.

The way that happened was one day they were executing a gangster from Slovakia, a hulk of a man, shaking and kicking as they walked him down the corridor in chains. Four jailers had their hands full with him. He knocked over my pail while I was wiping the floor. But when he came to the threshold of Mr Mára’s room, he pulled up short, his legs frozen with horror, and I helped him.

So they called me back the next time. And the time after that.

The prison directors were amazed that when I walked with the prisoners, they didn’t whimper, didn’t scream wordlessly like animals, didn’t struggle. They were calm and quiet, I suppose because I was calm. My head, my mind, my legs were used to the twists and turns of Terezín’s tunnels, the gloom and concrete of the cells and bunkers, the iron of the bars, so nothing in my body or mind rebelled against the rooms of death, and I didn’t vomit, or pray under my breath, or have nightmares, or break down in tears afterwards, which, I was told, often happened to the jailers who were paid to escort the condemned to their end. I wasn’t paid, they just shortened my sentence. None of the jailers or other prisoners wanted to do it, but it didn’t bother me, walking past the death cells, trudging down the corridors that led to the trapdoor — I’d grown up playing in places like these. The people they executed in Pankrác in those days were serial killers, fraudsters, rapists, vicious gangsters. They weren’t war heroes like my parents any more, by that time most of the heroes like them were six feet under. So what? I thought as I led the prisoners on their last journey. Saboteurs of the socialist economy, rapists and heartless killers — they knew where they were going and why. Mr Mára and I were never rough with them, just firm.

In quiet moments I’d sit next to Mr Mára, watching him operate the equipment, his long fingers dancing across the prehistoric keyboard, waiting for the coded radio command from the central office: Block B, prepare for winterizing!

At this or some other agreed command I would get up and go to the cell and take the prisoner away under the jailers’ supervision and then calmly, by myself, lead him down the corridors to Mr Mára, who meanwhile made everything ready.

When we came to the last room, some of the prisoners had beads of sweat on their forehead, their legs would freeze up like the Slovakian giant’s. I would help them. Mr Mára and I called it ‘seizing up’, like an engine. Even the calmest ones, who were quiet as we walked, or who teased and joked with me, about how I must be looking forward to the swill tomorrow, say — even they would sometimes suddenly seize up in horror, feeling queasy, about to vomit. My strength and my calm sometimes ceased to work on the threshold of the ropery. But Mr Mára always knew what to do.

I wasn’t involved in carrying out the sentence.

I just assisted with the preparations, and sometimes when it was done I would go and clean up with the bucket and rags and detergent.

I don’t want to do that ever again.

There were often long spells between carrying out the sentences. Then Mr Mára would let me sit at the computer, and my fingers, pale and peeling from the harsh detergent and countless buckets of water, would whizz across the keyboard, playing a game with dots that floated around the screen, crawling through fences and shooting each other. I would play the game and forget where and who I was, forget the screams and death rattles, forget the shit running down trouser legs, forget the faces of men turned into puppets by death, forget that I too was turning into a mindless puppet, reacting to the orders from the prison radio and the orders of Mr Mára, forget that everyone else in the prison hated me. It was probably one of the world’s first computer games.

Thanks to Mr Mára’s teaching, I didn’t type with two fingers any more, like I used to on the old-fashioned typewriter at school. Soon I was almost as good as he was. He even had to adjust the game’s settings based on my scores.

He wanted it to be used as a war game, for training.

We were constantly improving it.

I would’ve done anything that Mr Mára asked me to.

By that point I had a cell to myself, since the prison officials were worried the other prisoners might try to kill me.

My great dream, Mr Mára said, is to use my game to prepare people everywhere, but especially children, who love new things, for the world’s triumph over fascism.

He may have been in prison, but Mr Mára was still a soldier and a communist. He couldn’t have been in his position otherwise, of course.

One day these little games, Mr Mára said, pointing to the flickering screen with wires and cables poking out every which way, will connect people all over the world, and I’ll be part of it. What do you plan to do when your sentence is done?

I think I shrugged.

This was shortly before they abolished the death penalty in Czechoslovakia.

Lucky for me that they did. Otherwise they probably wouldn’t have let me go.

One day my reduced sentence came to an end.

And I walked out.

The first thing I did was to go and look for a dive. I didn’t have anywhere else to go. No family, no girlfriend.

All that was about to change.

So many of my fellow prisoners dreamed about the Pankrác dives, where their fathers, mothers, friends, girlfriends, cousins, children and wives would be waiting for them. Often what they found instead was nothing but the warm embrace of their tattooed fellow-travellers.

I found Lebo waiting for me. He didn’t have any tattoos, though, since he was just a baby when he was in the camp. The authorities didn’t even know he existed.

Lebo stood in front of the pub. He said he knew they were letting me out, but he didn’t like the idea of waiting in front of the prison.

He looked exactly the same as I remembered him. An old man in a black suit. Lebo the giant, with his bare skull perched atop his veiny neck.

We didn’t even go in the pub. There wasn’t a moment to spare. We were going home.

Mr Hamáček, the greengrocer, drove us in his sputtering Škoda. He, like me, had grown old. He had some milk for me from the aunts, plus some bread with bacon fat, and hardboiled eggs from the Terezín hens.

We all called Lebo uncle, all of us little kids and older children born in the garrison town of Terezín.

Our fathers and mothers were soldiers, they didn’t have time for us, they kept the fortress town running and that was good enough.

My mother wasn’t a soldier, but even so it had been better for me to be with Lebo.

And now I was back with him again.




3


Lebo encouraged us as we crept through the maze of forbidden tunnels underneath Terezín, and he never gave us away when we trampled on some ancient sign saying 


 or ZÁKAZ VSTUPU! or ACHTUNG, MINEN! We kept finding more and more hiding places in the sewers sprinkled with sand, forgotten stores of planks and gas masks, passageways and crawl spaces, and it didn’t put us off one bit when we found an execution chamber filled with spent bullet shells buried in the sand. We brought them to Lebo and he stuck them in his satchel.

Lebo could make a bullet shell whistle louder than any of us. We would hold races in the catacombs, where he would clock our time with a stopwatch while we ran back and forth through the water that gushed from underground, and he always had some story to tell to comfort the littlest kids, who still got lost and frightened in the dark and felt cold every now and then.

Being friends with Lebo was the best.

And the thing that made him happiest was when we brought back tracings of the words we found on the walls of the tunnels and bunkers, deep underground — initials, dates, and messages carved with spikes, keys, and fingernails. He stuck them all in his big black satchel, because he was a collector: his passion was to know and remember everything connected with the days when the fortress town was a prison and a torture chamber and an execution ground.

He wanted to find it all and preserve it.

We were just kids, so we didn’t take it that seriously.

Creeping through the catacombs, wading through puddles with blind cave newts, we explored the bunkers and firing cabins under the outermost bastions. And as boys and girls, future male and female soldiers, enchanted by the perpetual gloom and dripping water, we were soon exchanging shy kisses and fleeting touches. Amid the flicker of candles and the smell of dripping wax, how could we not, given that we were practically always together, not to mention our sneaking suspicion that it wouldn’t be long before we’d be ordered off to school, or maybe to some faraway garrison. Our favourite place to play was in the crawl spaces between the ramparts and the other forgotten parts of town, as far away from other people as possible.

Some days we grazed the flock with stakes, some days without them. A goat on a chain would graze a circle in the grass by nightfall, and the next day we’d just move the stake. On sunny days — and there were plenty of them! — we often let the goats run free. They’d always find their way to where the grass was thickest. If a goat ran away, we could track it by its droppings. They were black, which made them easy to spot in the red grass.

But even back then Lebo knew it had been decided and that Terezín’s days as a living town were numbered. The army was leaving.

Lebo also knew the only part of town that would be preserved was the Monument, where the eggheads, in return for their cushy income, worked, as Lebo put it, hand in glove with the government, so they couldn’t have cared less that the town would be torn down.

That was why he was so obsessed with every spike, every inscription, every bullet shell, each and every human bone we brought him back from our wanderings.

He wanted to save it all.

Being a kid, I never thought to ask him why. None of us did. He wouldn’t talk to anybody who asked him why the town should be preserved. Rolf the journalist was the one who eventually came up with an answer for the world. And now, if I want to ask why we shouldn’t let this town of evil collapse and let the grass grow over all the long-ago death, all the long-ago pain and horror, why not just let it disappear, Lebo can’t answer. All I hear now is the rustle of the grass, all I hear is the echo of footsteps in the ruins, the drip of water in the catacombs. It’s over, and nobody can answer me any more, because it happened: the town of Terezín fell.

Mr Hamáček drove slowly while I just stared in amazement. In the days before I was in prison, every once in a while a swarm of Tatra 613s would come speeding down the road, which meant the government was coming to town for some war anniversary. The rest of the time it was just horse-drawn wagons, tractors from the collective farm, and every now and then a clunker or two like Mr Hamáček’s. Now the cars zoomed by, one after the other. Mr Hamáček explained that while I had been locked up, we had become part of Europe and there had been a tremendous influx of all sorts of new cars. I was amazed at the petrol stations, as lofty and clean as any spaceship I’d ever imagined, and as Mr Hamáček’s Škoda lurched to a stop at one of the pumps, I didn’t get out for fear of being crushed by all that open space, I didn’t even peek out of the window. And that was before I had any idea how Terezín had changed.

I kept an eager lookout for the sign that said WITH THE SOVIET UNION FOR ALL TIME AND NEVER OTHERWISE. For my whole life it had marked the goat herd’s outermost post. But now it was gone, disappeared, nothing but a long, soggy field at the edge of the ramparts.

As we drove into town we were greeted by silence, the silence of a destitute if not yet dead town, a town that had sunk into appalling poverty after the army left.

Almost no one came here any more.

What few tourists there were wandered around the Monument, up and down the educational trails they had put in to commemorate the genocide.

We drove through Manege Gate, the Škoda shuddered to a stop on Central Square, and I froze.

My aunts, among the few original inhabitants who had stayed, since they had nowhere to go, were now little old ladies, and the handful of other people stumbling towards us over the bricks and rocks and beams littering the ground, hair sticking out every which way, looked like castaways. They welcomed me back as a local son — old gents, old maids, and a couple of ghostly older men, mental cases and cripples who used to be soldiers. Now they were disabled and lived, literally, in holes in the ground.

The brick walls of Terezín’s underground tunnels were caving in, black groundwater lapped everywhere. The massive gates, designed to withstand Prussian cannons, were crumbling bit by bit. Nobody weeded the grass on the ramparts any more.

The goats? Mine had either all died or were so old I didn’t recognize them, except for a couple of young females and a single little billy goat, Bojek, headstrong, punch-drunk, and now nearly blind. I think he used to snuggle up to my scabby knees when I was a boy. I hadn’t forgotten that long-ago affection.

I made note of people’s warnings that the mental cases were stealing, eating, or selling the goats. I took up my duties with the flock as soon as I was settled in.

Lebo and Mr Hamáček brought me to one of the buildings on Central Square that they’d taken over and turned into the centre of the crumbling town.

They lived in a room filled with old bunk beds made out of planks, I was told Lebo’s illegal birth had taken place on one of them.

The Monument had been planning to build an office here, but the stubborn residents had blocked it.

On one of the bunks I tossed a plastic bag with a toothbrush and a half-empty tube of toothpaste, that was all I had.

My aunts gave me a facecloth, a sweater, some socks and a few other belongings from the people who had left, and I had a home.

The building, which soon came to be known as the Comenium, was a squat. Lebo had occupied it along with a few other people whose homes had been demolished, just like my family’s had. It served as a clubhouse for the stubborn residents who had decided to stay in town. Or had no choice but to stay, since nobody wanted them anywhere else.

Aunt Fridrich still operated her laundry, and on the ground floor she and the other aunts had brought in cookers, pans, pots and so on, and set up a cookshop.

Nothing fancy — after all those canteens of clamouring men and clubs for officers like my dad, it was a pitiful place. But you could almost always get a bowl of soup or cup of tea.

The scholars and eggheads and board members didn’t come here. They stayed in the Monument, tending to their state-funded trails that highlighted the wartime horrors, running their fingers over maps of the disappearing town hand in hand with the government engineers, carving out the lines of destruction.

Lebo had broken with the board members and scholars. At first they ridiculed him for his demand that not a single brick should disappear from the town, not even in the modern era, as he put it. Of course they did it behind his back, when no one was around. Lebo had been born in Terezín during the war, and that fact alone froze the blood in a lot of people’s veins, so it wouldn’t have been fitting for the researchers and board members to mock him to his bony face.

At first the researchers called in some of the people who’d passed through Terezín as prisoners, and a lot of them said: It’s about time, this whole town of death and humiliation can go to hell! Take this train station, where hundreds of thousands went east and never came back, and wipe it right off the map! It should only exist in textbooks!

But others were of a different opinion, and as one debate led to another the bricks continued to crumble.

Until the government, advised by the researchers and board members, came to a decision.

The Monument would be preserved, but not the town. There wasn’t money for it.

Lebo stayed out of the arguments and withdrew from the Monument. He had been hardened in Terezín as a baby, and as far as time was concerned he had a clear advantage over the older prisoners. He didn’t want to squander it debating.

Old homes. Broken cobblestones. Trickles of dirty water flowing from cracked sewer pipes. Collapsing barracks filled with cats and pigeons’ nests. The whole derelict town surrounding the Monument.

They didn’t want us there. We got in the way of the bulldozers. It was easy for them to round up a few unsuspecting mental cases and stick them in the nuthouse, hoodwink a couple of grannies and grandpas, nod them in the direction of some blocks of flats and watch all trace of them vanish from the world.

But we were the last inhabitants and we weren’t giving up.

Most of us moved into the building on Central Square.

The people from the Monument never liked Lebo. But compared to how much they hated him later, when we joined forces with the world and Lebo became the Guardian of Terezín, it was nothing.

The first few days I just sort of straggled around the sad town, reinforcing my heartache. Lebo left me alone.

But soon I realized: I was now the only one who called Lebo ‘uncle’.

All my fellow pupils, everyone from that bunch of kids who crawled through the catacombs under Lebo’s guidance, wading through underground streams looking for objects from his days as a child, was scattered around the world. Everybody who could had left the town.

That evening I stood on the crumbling ramparts alone, gazing out at the tall grass that hadn’t been properly grazed for years, and thought about Terezín.

I drove the little goats into their shed and fastened the shaky door with a chain as a warning, a sign saying, I’m here now, I’m back, look out! I didn’t want the mental cases killing and eating any more goats. The main ones I had my eye on were Kamínek and Kůs. I’m sure those bums would’ve been glad to drag their prey off into some cellar, their homeless berths stuffed with blankets and rags. Yes, my herd had been sold, killed off and plundered just like the town. Old billy goat Bojek, once a head-butting monster, now just limped along. Don’t worry, Bojek, I promised him, I won’t give you up.

Where is everyone? I asked the silent battlements.

And suddenly I realized I was standing on the spot where my dad had fallen from the ramparts.

It’s like there was never even anyone here, isn’t it?

Lebo. He had followed me. His black suit blended in with the gloomy mass of the night horizon. Only his eyes shone in his enormous skull.

You know, your father wouldn’t have agreed to end Terezín either. He was devoted to this town. It was right here somewhere — Lebo waved his hand towards a dusky patch of red grass beneath us — that he pulled your mother out of the grave.

Grave, well, Lebo said, pausing a moment to swallow. It was a pit. I was little, so I don’t remember, but they say there were pits everywhere.

What? I said. I didn’t know anything about this chapter of their lives.

That’s right, he pulled her out, Lebo said. And there, as night fell over the ramparts, Lebo told me the story my dad had told him once upon a time.

They were run ragged, all those Soviet troops and liberators of Terezín, when their formations came through Manege Gate to Central Square. There was typhus here, you know. They couldn’t even drink the water. Plenty of them had vodka in their canteens, but not your dad, he was just a boy, and that army drum weighed him down something awful.

And right here — Lebo gestured with his right hand — he came to lie down right here, set his drum down on the grass by the pits, and all of a sudden he looks! What’s that moving around in there? A naked girl, sitting on top of a pile of corpses, an absolute skeleton, and she’s waving to him. So he tears his strap off his drum, throws one end to her and pulls her out of the pit. She was Czech, he realized from the words rasping from her parched and blistered lips, which for him, being a Czech boy, was cause for celebration. In all those battles and offensives as the Red Army dashed to the aid of Prague, he just banged his drum, you understand, he wasn’t in a position to talk to any civilians.

The Red Army had scooped him up in some Czech village in the Carpathians, or maybe it was Ukraine, that’s right, and your father became the son of the regiment.

So he pulls the girl out, lays her on the grass, and peels off his shirt to cover up her shocking, skeletal nakedness. It was a sunny day in May when your parents met. And then he hears the Russians laughing and looks up and sees them walking along with the Czechs who took up arms and rebelled, and they’re putting the Germans they captured into the typhus camp, which had been emptied of Jews — about four thousand all together, hundreds of women and children died in there. Probably some of those little bones and messages and hairpins you brought me came from them, I can’t tell them apart. So the Russians and Czechs were herding the Germans past the typhus pits into the camp, but a few of the Russians turned aside and went over to your father, their brother-in-arms, and they had water! Right, so they gave the girl a drink too. You must keep that girl now! the Russians told him with a devilish grin. Whoa ho, the molodets has found a girl! So we hold wedding now, no? Teasing him like soldiers do, but your father was crazy with thirst, so he just nodded deliriously and that was it, the marriage was set. The army doctors managed to pull her through, against the odds. She had typhus, sure enough, not to mention being completely exhausted from giving birth! Just imagine, Lebo says, and I feel his hand on my shoulder and I don’t want to ask a thing.

You know why she was in the pit? Lebo says. The forces of law and order sentenced her to death for getting pregnant here in Terezín, that was her offence. But the Russians came so quick that the Krauts didn’t have time to shoot everyone they convicted. And that’s why you’re here, do you understand now?

No, I don’t, and I don’t care! I said, stamping so hard it raised a little whirl of red dust.

I know what you mean, Lebo said. I stopped caring who my father was a long time ago. They probably killed him anyway. Lebo shrugged.

We stood, looking out from the ramparts. The pit my mum was in when she waved to my dad was almost exactly the same spot where my dad fell off the ramparts. It was strange.

Ah, who cares, I said, shrugging my shoulders like Lebo.

We looked at each other, Lebo’s enormous hand on my shoulder. And in a flash of understanding, the two of us sealed a pact never to talk to each other about our parents again.

Then Lebo told me how the Russians held a wedding, a war wedding in Terezín.

Your father stayed here with your mum, and out of nothing he created the most famous regimental music in Czechoslovakia, the military band of the town of Terezín, known far and wide beyond the town borders, and believe me, for an army boy, a shrimpy little rat-a-tat-tat who grew up poor, that was no joke! Your father put all he had into this town! You should carry on his legacy.

And for the first time Lebo confided in me his plan to save the town. He had been drawing on his contacts for some time already, pleading and begging and sounding the alarm to all corners of the earth.

You know, he would have been proud of you, Lebo said, gesturing in the twilight at the spot down below us where the tall grass trembled in the gusts of evening wind.

That’s where my dad breathed his last.

If he hadn’t died that way, the town’s undoing would have killed him for sure, Lebo said.

He was probably right.

Just imagine a military marching band, the proud blare of brass, in these ruins!

That’s how my dad saw the town’s ramparts in his final moment, as he went flying past. It was a good death, especially for a liberator of Terezín.

And I made up my mind right then and there to dedicate the rest of my life to Lebo’s plan to save the town.

We set to work that same night.

Now I could finally view my childhood as a closed chapter.

We went straight back to our building, to my bunk. Lebo slid a desk next to it. He looked at me, smiled and nodded, then pointed to the wall: an Internet hook-up, the same as the one in Pankrác, a shiny, tiny thing.

I nodded. This was where the Monument had planned to put its office.

You know what I did in prison, Lebo?

He shrugged. Did he know or didn’t he?

We left it at that.

Lebo pulled out an old satchel filled with notebooks and scraps of paper, the satchel he’d stuffed with our copies of the messages scratched by fingernails. Sometimes there was also a name, and some of the people had survived, or their relatives had survived, and now they were out in the world.

He’d had decades to find them, based on all the notes we’d found beneath the town. He had pages torn from encyclopaedias, educational books and memoirs. Now Lebo sat down next to me and began to dictate from memory, weaving his web of connections and contacts that were going to save Terezín.

Yes, we spent that night, and the following days and nights, writing letters, cries for help, pounding on many doors. We fought for the dilapidated town by begging, sending pleas to everyone who’d ever been here, and their relatives and friends as well. We sounded the alarm.

As time went by, we partitioned off my bunk with boards to make a computer room. My desk was quickly covered over with notebooks, stacks of floppy disks. We didn’t want to move out of the bunkroom.

No matter what.

I would sit at the computer, fingers flying over the keyboard, while Lebo paced back and forth, or more often sat on a bunk and dictated.

Even later, when we had some of our students sleeping in the room, exhausted by the evening sittings, we didn’t care, we worked.

Lebo knew which important people we should contact. He’d had decades to seek them out, plus the Internet and me. He knew who to turn to.

He had gazed up at some of the survivors from his Terezín cradle, a shoebox hidden under the bunk he was sitting on right now. He wanted their money, and their influence, and the money and the influence of their relatives and friends.

I would never have believed the rocket-like rise of our cause if Lebo hadn’t been reading me the replies. Plenty of people agreed to help us, no questions asked. Those were the kind of people Lebo was looking for, people who didn’t wonder whether or not the old town of evil should be torn down, who didn’t need any deliberation or discussion, because they knew that every splinter of every bunk should be preserved, every battered brick, every corner of the old fortress. Every inch of Terezín should exist always and for ever, and, as Rolf would later write, feed the memory of the world.

I didn’t care about memory, though. I just needed a place to live.

I really hoped Lebo could save the town. And I hoped his contacts could feed us all — everyone living here, even the ones who were only half alive. My aunts, the old men and women, the drunks, cripples, and mental cases, the ones who couldn’t leave Terezín. If the bulldozers came, they’d have nowhere to go, as I’ve said before.

And that evening, when we walked home from the ramparts together, Lebo started broadcasting the news of the fortress town’s destruction to the world. From then on we wrote letters every day, oftentimes working for nights at a stretch.

Soon the replies started coming in. The people Lebo knew already wrote to the others that he was OK. And soon everyone wanted to get a look at Lebo, Guardian of Terezín, as Rolf dubbed him in his article.

Rolf’s reportage was published with a photograph of the giant Lebo dressed in black, gazing out from the ramparts into the reddening twilight as he declared, This place of dreadful horror must be preserved for the memory of humanity. Of course Rolf made up the ‘memory of humanity’ part — Lebo didn’t talk about his activities. And he had no intention of feeding the world’s memory. He just wanted to feed the dying inhabitants of Terezín.

Our work had just begun.

Rolf ’s article was reprinted in many languages, it was published all over the world, so it wasn’t just academics who could speak for Terezín any more, academics installed by a government that didn’t want to pour billions or even millions into a decaying town with no army. Now there were other spokesmen for the town besides the board members and researchers, feasting off of their cushy incomes and keeping quiet about the coming of the bulldozers. The world had found out about us. Visitors started arriving.

And that was the beginning of the Comenium.




3


One of the cornerstones of the Comenium student commune was laid the day I spied a gorgeous girl in shorts and a T-shirt stumbling across Central Square in the summer heat, a blond braid hanging down her sweaty back. There I was, merrily herding along my little flock, the few that had managed to escape both the auction block and the mental cases’ maws. The wind had long since blown the stink of prison off of me, and she recognized me. Yes, she had come because of Rudolf’s article, she felt aligned with us, she said, and wanted to meet Lebo and stuff, help us in our cause. Dazzled by this apparition of a girl, I said nothing, just turned and led her through the dust kicked up by the goat’s hooves. I was longing for twilight, eager for it to be sundown, so maybe she wouldn’t notice I was blushing with embarrassment, though I was also leaning in towards her, with a touch of hungry boldness. She gazed at me curiously as I led her to Lebo, the curtains stirring here and there in the hovels on either side, people peeking from half-open windows as Sara’s sandals slapped against the cobblestones. Not many found their way into our streets in those days, just buses with tourists visiting the Monument. Sara had set out for Terezín from Sweden to track down the bunks where her grandfather and grandmother had supposedly once rested their heads, before they were killed. She was one of the seekers of the bunks, young people with brains darkened by the cloud of the terrible past, by the horrors that had befallen their parents, grandparents, relatives, or just by the fact that those horrors had happened at all. Could they happen again? What is man capable of? How come it happened to them, but I was spared? What would I have done if it had been me being led to my death? Can it happen again? The seekers turned these morbid questions over and over again in their minds, a demon had taken hold of them, clouding their brains. Even now, they were tormented by the murders of yesteryear, making them ripe for the psychiatrist’s couch. But some of them took to the road, heading for the East, all on their own, with a backpack and a credit card from their parents in their pocket, and went digging through the damp ruins of Poland, Lithuania, Russia — in short, everywhere mass graves were common. The seekers, like drops of water, seeped into the underground currents of the mysterious East, so it was no surprise they often sank to the bottom in anguish. And occasionally one of them would turn up in Terezín. Longing to ease the painful pressure on their brain, these were no ordinary tourists, content to wander down a few trails of genocide, maintained for the world by the Monument. Ordinary tourists strolled through Terezín like it was a medieval castle, taking snapshots, shooting videos of the dungeons and torture chambers to show the family afterwards. The bunk seekers would never even think of such a thing. They showed up here crazed with pain, seized by the eternal question every seeker asked: If it happened here, can it happen again? They knew they weren’t in a medieval castle but in an abyss where the world had been torn apart, a place without mercy or compassion, where anything was possible. And it ate at their brains. Sara, too, had arrived sick like this, which was why she insisted on exploring every inch of the town. I have a feeling, she said over the trampling hoofs of my herd, that they left a message here for me … somewhere.

First she had wandered around the Monument, then she headed over to our seedy little town. I want to walk by every wall, every rampart in this town of death, I want to understand, to know, to feel, Sara said amid the clouds of dust and the bleating herd. She seemed a little dehydrated to me. I took her to Lebo.

That day, like every other day, I grazed my goats till dusk, but once the darkness had swallowed up the last shades of red, I was driving my flock back home, past Lebo’s ground-floor room, and the lights were on and I saw Sara, well refreshed now, thanks to my aunts. She was an important visitor, after all — she brought interest to our town of destruction, fresh air and life would follow in her footsteps, my aunts could sense it somehow.

Inside, Sara was listening to Lebo, the man who had drawn his first breath here at the eye of the hurricane, at the centre of all the horror, most likely right next to the bunk where Sara’s granny had slept. She paid close attention as Lebo opened his black satchel and showed her the old notes, spikes, and rusty bullet shells. I had completely forgotten that somewhere down in the catacombs, where nothing rots, we had found two fingernails, probably torn off scratching the plaster long since washed away by groundwater. Lebo had kept them, so Sara could touch them. She was hungry for details of life in the town of death, so Lebo talked.

The seekers of the bunks came thirsting for knowledge. All of them had been directly affected by what went on here and needed to hear that, despite all the horrible things that had happened to their grandparents or parents, in spite of it all and through it all, they could go on living. And the seekers spread the word about Lebo to each other, so more of them came, wanting to hear the witness who had been born in hell and survived and was now alive in the modern era. And coming face to face with the living Lebo and his objects helped them. And some — like Sara — stayed.

Sara! It wasn’t only her grandfather and grandmother who had breathed their last here. About twenty of her relatives had perished in Terezín or somewhere in the black holes of Poland. Only her dad managed to save himself. Thanks to the Swedish Red Cross, he made it out on a children’s transport to Sweden. Sara wasn’t interested in the streets the town and the government had designated to be preserved. She liked tramping along the crumbling ramparts, crawling through the overgrown drains, running her fingers over the scratches that might’ve been greetings from those going to their death. She also enjoyed taking part in the lives of those of us who were left, and that was the thing, that was the reason why they liked her. She enjoyed listening to the old codgers puffing away on the peeling benches of Central Square, speaking with pride of the days when the regiments of the Czechoslovak People’s Army paraded through, and how many of them had paraded with them, or even led those regiments. Sara spoke German, which all the old people here knew. She was the Swedish girl who had come to us from the world, an apparition, a sign of life. At first the locals just stared cautiously through the curtains, watching as she looked around and listened in fascination, here in the graveyard condemned by the world to ruin and decay.

But soon Sara had an open door wherever she went, probably because she reminded the old ladies of a granddaughter of theirs, or a little niece, and they loved telling her stories about their youthful years in Terezín. Maybe they had even known her grandmother — oh, definitely. Whenever Sara paid a visit to their homes, which had been spared so far, the old ladies wiped the dust off their plastic tablecloths and opened their glass-fronted cabinets, fumbling among the painted dolls, glass deer, and decorative cups and spoons, reaching for the brandy glasses and filling Sara’s to the brim. Afterwards when she came back to our squat, she would either whoop it up or crawl straight into her sleeping bag on the bunk, and while I pounded away on the keyboard, following Lebo’s instructions, or Lebo read out the news we had received from the world, Sara would sleep, puffing in and out. We were glad to have her here. Soon all of the town’s old folks and drunkards were saying hello to Sara, sometimes even the hopeless mental cases would shyly waddle along behind her in the dust, as though maybe she could take them away somehow. It fascinated Sara when, in her honour, Aunt Fridrich cut off a hen’s head and threw it out of the window, into the brook under the ramparts, the way it had always been done, and she was glad to help Mr Hamáček haul his basket of kohlrabi or sacks of potatoes to Central Square. She even got involved with the kitchen, helping to serve the tea. Sara had decided to live a normal life in this town of death, and I had the feeling she was recuperating, coming out of her grief, escaping the despair that can cloud a mind with blackness and, especially in young and innocent people, produce a shock of realization at how terrible evil is and can be.

One day Sara said we should take a trip to Prague to buy souvenirs, so we’d have something to sell the occasional tourists who wandered our way. The cloud was slowly lifting from her mind. Plus she was the practical type.

We were doing brilliantly with Lebo at the computer hunting for contacts, running fundraising campaigns, and sounding the alarm, but, maybe because she was a newcomer and saw the situation through the eyes of an outsider, Sara insisted that if we could attract more people to the town, it would be a big help against the bulldozers.

You have to bring in tourists, get the world’s attention.

Only if the eyes of the world are on Terezín can we begin the process of revitalizing the town, Sara said.

And revitalizing means revival, or even rebirth, she explained.

Sara had studied history, ethnography, literature, and religion. All of our students, before they came here, had studied a wide range of fields. Everyone except me. I’d only gone to military school, and even then not the whole thing.

Sara knew how to paint as well, and one evening as I was pounding away on the keyboard to Lebo’s dictation, we were interrupted by her cry, but it was a cry of triumph. She sat down on the bunk and showed us a T-shirt with a picture of a man she said was the writer Franz Kafka. She had bought it in Prague and added the word Theresienstadt to it, plus a gallows and the words If Franz Kafka hadn’t died, they would have killed him here. This could really catch on! Sara crowed. She wouldn’t dream of taking it to a printer’s, she said. We could produce the T-shirts ourselves, using her stencil, handcrafted and artistic, that was the only way it made sense.

Lebo and I nodded OK. We trusted her. She was from the world, after all.

Sara and I got on really well from the start. When she first arrived, consumed by sadness, wandering around the ruins, her brain clouded, I made sure that she didn’t fall down a shaft or get swept away by the current that wound its way through the catacombs, that she didn’t go too far into the old armoury, where a brick from the weathered walls might fall on her head. Sara had become used to me, and to my animals. I showed her my little shed, and she didn’t even mind Bojek and his head butts.

Sara loved my animals and I’m pretty sure I was in love with her. I doubt she felt the same about me, but now I’ll never know. Either way, we did share a few sudden outbursts of love — a roll in the grass was simple enough. And that’s all there is to say about it. Anyone who goes on about that sort of stuff in public should be put up against a wall, just like in the old days.

When evening came, we got up and drove the herd home. People teased us of course. The thing is, the dust from the bricks on the ramparts gets in your hair, in your clothes, into your skin. Everyone can see it on you when you roll around in the grass.

In Prague we stayed in a hotel. We had plenty of money in those days, so much we didn’t even count it, and our trips to Prague were for business, so they were paid for out of the money that gushed from Lebo’s contacts.

Whenever we needed funds, Lebo, usually accompanied by Sara, and sometimes by other girls as well, would make a trip to the bank in Prague and withdraw the required amount. Every now and then, of course, the girls needed a little something, as Lebo used to say, so they would also spend some time in the department stores. I didn’t pay any attention to money. Sara took care of whatever we needed for the computer room, and also chose my clothes.

She bought the T-shirts and other souvenirs, planned our promotional brochures, bought the crates of red wine for our celebrations. I mainly just carried stuff, lugging backpacks around the city with her. We travelled by taxi — Sara taught me to do that too.

Our room in the hotel tucked away off Old Town Square was filled with Sara’s scent. It was quite unlike the next hotel room I would be in.

In Prague there are more streets than you can count. Our hotel is on a long, narrow, crooked street, like all the rest. There is the occasional piece of dog shit and rubbish on the cracked pavement. I don’t feel at home here.

Terezín is a military town. It’s laid out in right angles. That’s why you can find your way around there, country boy. Sara is explaining to me why I would be lost here without her. Prague is medieval, so it’s convoluted, it’s twisted and contorted, she says.

We sleep here in this little room, organizing our purchases, holding each other, talking. This is where we stay on our business expeditions.

You know, Terezín actually reminds me a lot of Venice, Sara says, leaning nonchalantly against my shoulder. Stacks of Kafka T-shirts are drying on the floor around us. We got soaked in a downpour, now I’m breathing in the black damp of Prague rain from her hair. You know, St Mark’s and the gondolas? That’s how your government-backed Monument looks in the eyes of the world, but right nearby there are normal people, living behind peeling walls. She shakes her head. Normal, right. All over Western Europe there are mass graves from the Second World War, carefully tended and maintained, whereas in Terezín, amazingly, you’ve got Mr Hamáček selling kohlrabi on a slaughter ground, Mrs Bouchal and Mrs Fridrich swearing at their permanently jammed laundry press on the very same spot where trains used to leave for the extermination camps in the East. When you were kids, you played in morgues and felt each other up in bunkers! It’s a nightmare, you’re all perverted and you don’t even know it. In the West they wouldn’t allow kids to go in places like that. It isn’t allowed here either! I say. But you don’t give a damn in this country, she objects. Yeah, well, why should I care whether it’s allowed or not, just as long as I don’t get caught, I say. Sara shakes her head, we talk, a little later we go to sleep.

The next day the commandos from the Patriot Guard made a raid on the street where we were staying. We were coming back to our hotel, weighed down with bags, when we saw a crew of Roma kids dodging through the streets. The dark-skinned teenagers scattered down passageways, the lumbering Guards in their vests with knives and batons in hot pursuit. A few people leaned out of their windows, applauding the pursuers and pointing out which way their quarry had fled. Sara stood open-mouthed, her package of Kafkas dropped to the ground.

Two young guardsmen stood blocking the entrance to our hotel. They had their backs to us, so I looked to see if there might be a piece of scaffolding lying around, a plank or a loose cobblestone, thinking I could take them out, quick and from behind. But they’d already picked them all up for themselves, the brutes.

Then we heard them in the street behind us, chanting slogans, marching. Soon a procession of Patriot Guards in black shirts, with flags, filled the street. It was best not to tangle with these guys. All I knew about them was the stories my aunts in the laundry told, about the Nazis. So I grabbed Sara by the elbow — she was just standing there calling them names in Swedish — the young guardsmen made way for us, and as soon as we were through the door I heard, Hello! One of them, the one with the swastika tattooed on his neck, handed me Sara’s package. I grabbed it and dragged her up the spiral staircase to our room.

Sara sat down on the bed.

Wow, I just saw a pogrom. They even had uniforms. My first pogrom. I think I’ll mark it down in my diary, she said.

She might’ve helped me, instead of just rambling on like that. I was busy straightening out the T-shirts on the floor, even though I was still weighed down with the backpack and the bags.

Outside we could hear shouting and the wail of police sirens. And someone running down the street, screaming. And the noise of the mob moving slowly away.

You don’t look Jewish or anything, though. Good thing you’re blonde, I said. And they thought I was a tourist, ha ha ha! I thought it was hilarious.

I think I’m going to puke, Sara announced, stretching out on the bed and staring up at the ceiling.

You know, she said after a while, we look the same. Two legs, two arms, a freckle or two, we both get by in English, but it’s actually an illusion! Culturally we’re totally different! I mean, I’m completely untouched by communism, but you’re up to your neck in filth! And you don’t even know it. Your goats are dropping turds on a sacred memorial site and you don’t even realize it, none of you here in Eastern Europe realize how screwed-up you are still.

Now that got me mad, she should’ve left my goats out of it. Here I am slogging around Prague with her while my flock might be thinning out again, Bojek wasn’t keeping an eye on it, that’s for sure.

Hey, I heard you guys have a pig farm on the site of a former Roma concentration camp. Is that true? Can you take me? Sara went off again, but I didn’t know the first thing about pigs. We never had them in Terezín.

Jesus Christ, Sara said, does that seem normal to you? A pig farm on a killing field?

She doesn’t like it when I shrug, but then again I don’t like it when she yells. Maybe I could put a pillow over her mouth. I tell her how Lebo came to have his name, she doesn’t breathe a word, and when I look closer I see she’s sobbing.

Jesus, I mean that midwife could’ve been my grandma.

That’s right, your grandma almost suffocated him! She was angry! Just like you!

Quiet, goat king, Sara croaked into her pillow. Shut it, shepherd!

All right, I said, I’ll be quiet. I was actually glad, because when Sara came to us, she was a shadow of a girl, and now, damn it, she was alive. She said she’d never slept with anyone as old as me before, but here it seemed totally normal, since everything was so twisted and bizarre. I told her it didn’t matter to me how old she was either. Nineteen? Twenty? Twenty-one? I really don’t care, I said, trying to soothe her.

But I don’t think you’re an idiot! Sara leans on her elbow, looking at me. I guess the cultural difference between us must be even deeper now.

We lay on our backs, heaps of Kafka T-shirts all over the floor, plus some bottles of wine and other stuff, Czech crystal, cups and saucers we painted with Greetings from Terezín! plus a few other souvenir items in bags, and Sara gave me a lecture on Eastern Europe. There were times when she just couldn’t hold back with that education of hers.

I was searching for the East, Eastern Europe, but, you see, going to Eastern Europe means you never stop looking for it. My relatives are from Slovakia, Sara said, taking a deep breath to tell me how waves of evil had washed her relatives to Terezín and beyond, which is more or less how all the stories of the bunk seekers began — whether they made their way to our fortress town by hitchhiking or climbed out of an air-conditioned tour bus to shuffle through the piles of rubble to us in our hovels and tour the town of death. Their ancestors always came from some history-crinkled eastern metropolis, blackness lurking down every alleyway. They pronounced the names of those places, villages, towns through tight lips, like they’d learned them in front of the mirror at home, after long hours of searching, as an icy terror crept into their hearts, pierced with dread. Tell me again what happened to my relatives? And how come my grandpa, dad, uncle, great-grandma … back in Prague, Brno, Ubľa, Kyiv, Drogobycz, Pińsko, Kraków … didn’t hightail it out of there to NYC in time? they asked themselves as they looked in the mirror, rehearsing the opening sentences they would use to gain admission to our space. I was familiar with the bunk seekers’ confessions: they’d learned them long ago, and many of them had undergone all sorts of therapy, until finally they ended up in therapy with us.

My grandpa’s from Košice, Sara said. All right, I thought. Slovakia’s got railways and mobile phones, I’ll start there. So I set out for Košice, and I took a look around there, at the stores and the cafés and the little shops on main street, and the waiting rooms at the station where it’s probably the same hard wooden seats as seventy years ago. I wanted to work out what Eastern Europe really was, since we may look the same but culturally we’re different. So where is the real East? I wondered. The Slovaks all told me I’d stopped too soon — Slovakia was Central Europe, not Eastern! Same as those stupid Czechs back there, sorry to say, not to mention the Hungarians, they aren’t even really in Europe. Wouldn’t go there if I were you, they won’t understand a word you say, they explained at the information window at Bratislava station. Yes, they took pity on me, and when I insisted, they admitted that the real Eastern Europe was actually not far from Slovakia — of course I’d have to make it past the wolves and bears of Subcarpathian Rus. Ah, the Carpathians, Sara said. So you look at the map and off you go. But then the people in Subcarpathian Rus get mad when you ask if they’re in the East. That’s nonsense, they say, and send you packing to the real East, to Galicia! But the locals there, like all the Poles, say, This is Europe, not Eastern. This is the centre of Central Europe! And they wave their hand: You want the East? You’ve got to go to Ukraine, that’s a fair way away. And they spit, bitterly and knowingly. Listen here, the East is poor and broken! People from the East go to the West to work, not the other way round! Sara said, spitting too. The Ukrainians send you farther still, to Russia. But the Russians don’t think they’re the East, to them that’s an insult, seeing as they’re the centre of the entire civilized world, though they do allow that the true East might be in Siberia, right. So I travel all the way through Siberia, thousands of kilometres on the Trans-Siberian Railway, and at the end station, in Vladivostok, I climb out, all broken-boned, and the locals there tell me, East, young lady, are you crazy? Why, this is the West, the honest-to-God end of the West, this is the end of Europe!

Amazing, Sara! You’re a real world traveller. I’ve never been anywhere.

I didn’t mention that I’d lived in Prague for years, but only in prison, or what I did there. She wouldn’t have understood, and probably wouldn’t have believed me.

Vladivostok, hm. So you go and buy yourself something to eat, some vodka, of course, and walk out to the edge of town. There’s a bench, so you sit and look at the water — there it is, the end of the road: the Sea of Japan. So there is no Eastern Europe actually.

You’re right about that, Sara!

I still thank God, or whoever, that I was born in the West.

Yeah?

Most of my relatives got killed in Terezín, but my dad made it out to Sweden with the other Slovakian Jewish kids, on the Red Cross transport, like I told you before. He grew up normally. The movies were the only place he ever saw Nazis and Commies. Just like me.

Right!

So the cultural difference between you and me comes from dozens of years of terror, oppression and humiliation. That’s what makes you guys different! And I don’t think that’s about to change anytime soon.

Oh no?

My dad was a smart little boy. Sara clapped her hands. He made it to Sweden, and that means I’m normal. I can finish university, I’ve got a passport that’s good wherever I go, no debt. Eventually I’d like a kid or two, a man, a house, all of that.

Hm!

They stuck them on a train in Prague with signs around their necks, and off to Sweden you go! Did you know that Sweden was neutral during the war?

No. What does that mean?

Oh, never mind. Listen, you know why I like the East?

Yeah, you’re looking for your ancestors and roots here and stuff.

No, come on, you know why I feel so good here?

No.

I feel superior. You’ve all got complexes because of who you are and where you’re from. But I’ve just got my own personal complexes, you see? Now, good night!

All right, g’night, I said.

But she didn’t really mean it about going to sleep. We could hear the hum of Old Town Square nearby. The tension in the air from the battle had disappeared. We held each other tight for a long time. But I was glad when she fell asleep. At least I could put the T-shirts in my backpack in peace. Sara was too careful packing. Sometimes it took us hours. But if the T-shirts got a little squished, the aunts could always iron them. They didn’t mind.




5


Sara and I made it back to Terezín in under an hour. That time with Mr Hamáček in his beat-up Škoda, it had taken half the day.

Volunteers printed the T-shirts with Sara’s design, and as our revitalization movement grew in strength and more journalists and more bunk seekers began to seek us out in our broken little town, Sara and I went on more and more shopping trips to Prague. Our T-shirts, which the aunts peddled to tourists at the Monument, went like hot-cakes, and we sold other things too — pebbles from the riverbeds of the nearby Elbe and Eger, they made nice talismans. We numbered them in indelible ink, so every tourist who came to Terezín would know what number visitor they were.

And then Lea came to us.

It was Lebo himself who caught her, after she split away from her tourist group and wandered off the Monument’s designated trails and ended up in town. Almost six feet tall, with cropped red hair, even shorter than mine, she was staggering across Central Square in the midday sun, dazed by the heat, wearing nothing but green boxer shorts — she had torn off all her clothes and thrown them away, along with her backpack. Swaying and teetering, slowly, cautiously, she lifted her right hand, fumbling, groping in the air, eyes bulging. She smiled later as she explained that in her mind she had been trying to grab hold of the wires, to give herself an electric shock and put her out of her misery, to stop her marching, tortured brain that was trying so hard to understand. All those tours had driven her mad. She’d visited many sites in Poland, but the pivotal point, the place from which her family had set out for the wires of death way back when, was here in Terezín, and so here she was. With a fever. She felt awful.

Getting to know Sara helped the girl we sometimes called Lea the Great. For a whole day and night she slept on Sara’s bunk, and once she had pulled herself back together a bit, she listened to Lebo breathlessly. After reading so many encyclopaedias, tracking down her family and walking through museums and down educational trails, now all of a sudden she had a living witness, a witness who spoke healing words. And it was calming for her to share the objects left behind by the dead or disappeared. First with Sara, and later with Rolf and the others, she handled every little thing, every single item we’d found as kids in the tunnels under Terezín and brought back to Lebo. This sharing, along with Lebo’s strength, began to break up the black cloud in the heads of the seekers afflicted with the horror of the past. The well-travelled Lea meant a great deal to us. She gave our community a name.

And food. She copied the idea from the Kraków ghetto, so the tasty, crunchy pizza that Lea and the aunts began to bake in our kitchen became known as ghetto pizza. The secret ingredient was a light dusting of Terezín grass, a seasoning that didn’t exist anywhere else. And one day two girls showed up who Lea had met on a visit to Auschwitz — of course they were also from the second or third generation of victims and their minds were also shadowed with a black cloud. Lea had tipped them off to us, and after a few days our new students decided to stay. They looked after the tent on Central Square, which we called the Amusement Centre. A multicoloured T-shirt of Kafka flew above it and the delicious smell of ghetto pizza filled the inside. That alone was a sign of revitalization, since not only were the local people creeping out of the shells of their half-broken-down homes to experience the smells, the colours and all the movement in general, but more and more people were heading our way from the world outside. So we set up the Main Tent by our first stall on Central Square and during the day Lebo would talk to people inside. Sara and Lea were in there with him, protecting him from the new visitors. It’s true Lea provoked some amazement among the country folk, but children adored her, especially when the giant redhead made funny faces at them, and besides, towering in front of the tent, dressed as she usually was in a green track suit, she guaranteed no wise guys snuck in without paying. Sara collected the money at the entrance. There were people who came here just to get a glimpse of the famous Guardian of Terezín, and they had to put a coin in the dish. Now Sara would just shake her head when she saw me waiting for her to come out to herd the goats with me. In fact the day Lebo started talking to newcomers in the Main Tent on Central Square, Sara stopped coming to see me. I think that was one of the reasons why I said yes to Alex.

By then we were already calling ourselves the Comenium. Lea, who had come up with our name, thought we should offer instruction in the history of horror, as well as therapy for it, including dance. We agreed, since she had come to us from Holland, the country where Comenius had resided after his merciless expulsion from Bohemia.

The Happy Workshops were Sara’s idea.

*

I was out for a walk with Bojek and the other goats one day, strolling along, when one of the nanny goats squatted down, so we stopped to wait. Goats pee like girls, you see — not a lot of people know that — and it was a good thing we stopped, too, since all of a sudden I saw … Sara, in the grass down below us! Kamínek the mental case had knocked her down and was standing over her. I went tearing down there, screaming at him, and Kamínek grabbed his crutches and hobbled off, scuttling through the grass like some disgusting insect, rear end shining, clutching at his pants. Sara got up, her T-shirt torn across her chest. She was in shock, not even talking, so Bojek and I escorted her home. And that evening she came up with the Happy Workshops.

The mental cases stayed out of my way. I stopped by Mr Hamáček’s vegetable shop one day and Kamínek and this other bum took one look at me, got up and wobbled off, past the baskets of rotting potatoes, sacks of onions, and kohlrabi, crutches clattering, in those shabby army overcoats of theirs. They sure don’t want to talk to you! said Mr Hamáček. I hadn’t told a soul about my time in the slammer — why would I? — but the mental cases had somehow got wind of what I did there. Somebody from that loud-mouthed society in Pankrác Prison had recognized me, ratted on me, and passed it on. They may have been cripples, thieves, and losers, but they had feelers everywhere, they were all connected somehow.

Sara thought up, founded, and ran the Happy Workshops for them.

She even arranged it with the town, that is with the Monument, so they could work, which was unheard of.

The mental cases made brooms, then strolled around town with them, and along the Monument trails, and actually made some cash out of it.

And eventually they’ll gain some pride, Sara said.

She didn’t tell Kamínek off or anything. Instead she went and had her picture taken in a brand-new T-shirt, supervising the Happy Workshop that she set up on Central Square, next to the T-shirt stalls, not far from the ghetto pizza. All they needed for the first workshop was a wicker awning against the sun, and the mental cases sat on the ground, bearded, scarred, and scabbed, in their old scraps of uniform and tracksuits, whatever they’d managed to steal or beg, making brooms that instantly fell apart. That way they always had plenty of work. They nodded to Lebo respectfully whenever he strode by, and silently ogled the female students, especially Sara, but they didn’t pay any attention to me, and I ignored them too.

They strolled around the town with their brooms, sweeping stuff up into little heaps. None of them laid a paw on any of our students again, though I think it was less out of pride than because they were under supervision.

They need light, joy, and activity, Sara declared the evening I dragged her out from under the eager Kamínek, when she set out her plan for the Happy Workshops, and Lea the Great confirmed that, yes, a humane approach like this to human ruins was precisely in line with the thinking of John Amos, and so the project became part of the Comenium.

You can tell a society’s values by the way it treats those who are worst off, Sara explained when I marvelled at her reaction to having nearly been raped, perhaps even beaten to death or tortured in a lair under the ramparts, and the devil knows what else.

No one would’ve been surprised if you had gouged his eyes out. I would’ve held him down.

She gave me a look.

*

Then the summonses started arriving.

Lebo crumpled them up in little balls and tossed them on the ground. He had neither the time nor the inclination to answer some stupid questions from some stupid court, he was too busy teaching. Meanwhile I stood on Central Square, holding the goats by their tethers, watching as the court’s summonses disappeared in the dust, trampled to bits by tourists. We also had families come and visit us in Terezín, and to the delight of the children I sometimes brought my goats to Central Square. One day I placed the rope from around the neck of one of my last nanny goats into the age-and work-hardened palm of Aunt Fridrich, who led it away to the cookshop. I ran off to my office in the bunkroom. I couldn’t take care of the goats the way I used to any more — everything was in motion, things were going on.

Soon the first charges arrived from the Monument, claiming that the erection of the Main Tent on Central Square constituted a gross desecration of this sacred site, from which hundreds of thousands had gone to their death in the camps. All our hustle and bustle and selling was completely against the law, they said, and Lebo scrunched the charges up into little balls and tossed them on the ground. He never noticed that whenever I heard the word ‘charges’ I broke out in a hideous sweat. I was a former convict and didn’t want to go back to prison. I was pretty sure the prison directors couldn’t care less about me — they no longer needed my former speciality — but the rest of them in the slammer, especially the heartless gangsters, the bloodthirsty sickos and rapists, who nobody hung any more, had never forgiven me for running the Pankrác ropery. They all knew each other, and the world of bars and cells has a memory measured in decades.

I knew I didn’t want to go back to jail.

Nothing wrong with that, is there?

That was the other reason why I said yes to the Belarusians, why I went along with Alex.

I wanted to tell Lebo, after I had wiped the sweat of dread off my brow, but he was hurrying off to the evening sitting. Twilight was settling over the ramparts and the sittings were the most important thing for our society. Lebo didn’t pay as much attention to me as he used to, and no wonder! I wasn’t the only one whose shoulder he could lay his hand on any more. There were plenty of young people, younger than me, who called him Uncle Lebo now. And they kept coming, to the displeasure of the eggheads and the politicians from the Monument. More and more visitors were leaving the buses and heading straight to us, through the nettles and flattened fences, over piles of rubble, through Manege Gate. They found their way to Central Square and stuffed themselves with ghetto pizza, bought Kafka T-shirts, and took pictures of Lebo in his black suit bearing witness to the terrible times of long ago. And they also took pictures of Sara, of course, since she was a beauty, and of Lea the Great — they’d never seen anything like her before — and the girls at the stall always had a petition handy for visitors to sign, saying No to the Bulldozers!

That was when Rolf came and found us again. Rolf the journalist, who had set the whole revitalization of Terezín in motion, who had listened closely to Lebo, to all those horrible stories that ended somewhere in the black holes of Poland or Lithuania or maybe Belarus. Rolf came back and took pictures of the newcomers, the seekers of the bunks, who would turn up every now and then with a confused look on their face and head straight for the Main Tent. They’d already heard that nobody here could help them work out how all that horrible stuff could actually happen to people, but at least they could learn how to live with the knowledge of that horror, and Rolf’s pictures in the glossy magazines of the world — pretty pictures of pretty young people in T-shirts, shorts, ponchos, and capes of every colour, with alternative decorations, sporting shaved heads or dreads down to their waist — motivated other young people to come and see what was going on, and the battle to save the town felt absolutely right to them. In a world where everything’s relative, this is an ethically unambiguous issue, Rolf explained, and that means I’ve got a hit! he said, eyes smiling behind his glasses. Rolf walked around town rhapsodizing about the influx of young people and what fantastic material it was, since Lebo’s stories themselves wouldn’t captivate anyone, it was all too long ago. You’re in the heart of darkness here, touching the depths of horror, it’s irresistible! he assured us. The evening sittings with Lebo and the crowd filling up the Main Tent and our nightly dances in the grass below the ramparts — the newspaper world was enraptured by it all. Your energy is sending the world a powerful signal! Rolf said. He probably meant his memory of the world, since he lived with us too, drinking in the ordinary life of the town, helping old Aunt Fridrich lug the tubs of washing to the laundry at the station, which must’ve been pretty tough for a skinny guy like him. Then he’d stand around the crummy little station, lost in thought, while Aunt Fridrich washed and pressed and gossiped. Rolf would stand staring at the tracks, his eyes following the rusty rails to the point where they disappeared into Poland, just beyond the horizon, where all the trains from Terezín had gone. But the moment old Aunt Fridrich called him, Rolf was right there at her side, ready to lug the tubs again.

One day Rolf was walking me out to pasture with Bojek — we would do that together from time to time — and there, at the foot of a tall rampart, we ran into Alex, from Belarus. He had just arrived in Terezín, with Maruška, a redhead. Both of them had backpacks on. It was obvious she was with him.

We greeted the newcomers, shook hands, and Alex told us they had just chosen their names now, as they walked through Manege Gate. They sound Czech enough, don’t you think? he said.

Sure. I nodded. Rolf didn’t care, he didn’t speak Czech.

Alex explained that he had learned Czech as a soldier in the Soviet army that occupied our country after 1968. I kept Bojek on a rope. He didn’t mind Rolf any more, but I’m sure he would’ve been happy to butt Alex or Maruška.

While Alex stood there talking, waving his arms around, Rolf took out his camera — he often sold stories about newcomers to magazines so the world could see how the Comenium was growing — but at the sound of the first click Alex shot out his hand and Maruška twitched wildly. The next thing I knew they had Rolf boxed in and Alex was holding the camera, saying things were different in Belarus than in the rest of Europe and they weren’t too keen on any publicity, got it?

Got it! Rolf squeaked. Alex handed his camera back. I noticed his long, nervous fingers, which would really come in handy working at the computer, say, or using a scalpel — he had said he was a medic, worked at the Biochemical Institute at the Soviet base in Milovice. I think he told us that so we wouldn’t think he’d driven one of those tanks that shot people here in ’68, or even worse, that he was KGB. Are you kidding? A lowly medic? We kept the chatter moving so we could get acquainted, and also, I’m sure, to clear our minds of Alex’s brief act of violence. You’re from Belarus? And it’s different there? OK, we respect that. We nodded at each other, smiling.

Maruška stood with her hands folded across her chest, the smell of her body rising from her sweaty T-shirt. Horseflies, houseflies, and midges, baffled with bliss after flying through the zone of her aroma, were never the same again, I’m sure. Golden-red hair down to her shoulders, barefoot — which was a little bit reckless! — standing in the red grass like she had been here all along.

It was obvious the two of them weren’t your ordinary deranged bunk seekers, but they were extremely interested in our work to save the fortress town.

Then Rolf rolled an enormous joint — he’d tested the effects of the rust-coloured grass a while back, mixing it with tobacco — he rolled a joint for our little group and handed it to Alex. Lots of our students had taken a liking to the red grass. Nobody knew why it had such an uplifting effect.

Alex hadn’t come to heal, though. He was interested in our revitalization project and what he enjoyed most was coming to our little office, partitioned off from the rest of the bunkroom by boards, and standing beside my computer, stunned at some of the names we were working with in our campaign to save Terezín. He was truly in awe of our work to save the town of death. We had long since ceased writing only to former prisoners and relatives of the massacred. We were supplementing our contacts from the press and the Internet daily, and we didn’t hesitate to lean on captains of industry, coal barons, prime ministers, do-gooder fashion models, hockey stars, and giants of international politics. Sara or Rolf, depending on who had time, lent their excellent English to our appeals. Lebo was famous now, and as the Guardian of Terezín he knocked on nearly every door. He didn’t spare anyone. Many were glad to contribute, since they wanted to set the world’s memory straight, and some didn’t give a damn, but when Lebo himself made the appeal, it was easier for them just to throw some change his way than to go on ignoring him. Rolf and his journalist friends went on filling the pages of the world’s newspapers with confessions of the youthful bunk seekers, who described how they had sought therapy for their wounds, their derangement, how they wanted to be the same as their cheerful and happy peers, but couldn’t because of all the ghastly stories trapped in their minds, so they’d made a pilgrimage to the East, where there were still ruins that they could touch with their own hands, and how with Lebo they had found peace. And these confessions of second-and third-generation Holocaust victims were intermingled with the story of Lebo, and according to Rolf it was a tale that shook the world’s conscience, touching the depths of horror while at the same time offering hope. And then Rolf coordinated a couple of TV reports from our town, in which Lebo, standing tall and straight in his black suit, spoke about the horror of the world and how to live with it, to a crowd of tourists in the Main Tent on Central Square. The TV barely showed our sittings, because after Lebo’s evening lectures, after his teaching on the horror of the world, came play time, when we danced. We were also often happy just to sit around the ramparts, sipping red wine, smoking grass, gazing up at the stars or into the fires, acquiring peace of mind. What the TV broadcast to the world, of course, was the story of the bunk seekers, who had come to the town of death in search of the world’s most horrible mystery, namely, absolute evil. Dancing in our healing collective, yes, these victims of their own tortured thoughts cleansed themselves through dance. The healing force flowed visibly from dancer to dancer, bound to each other by burning sheaves and braids of sparks. The dances at the foot of the town’s steep red walls were led by the girls who sold our souvenirs, and by Sara and Lea the Great of course, who, as founders of the Comenium, sat on either side of Lebo during the evening sittings.

*

Yes, Rolf really pulled it off: there was some fabulous footage. The money just kept rolling in after that … and rolling and rolling — piles of cash.

Not only that, but our students came up with lots of ideas for grants and loans and subsidies to cover the costs of the launch of our educational centre, the only one of its kind in the world.

Sara, being practical, coordinated the operation.

The students started looking for money on their own, so their parents and relatives often ended up on our list, along with an impressive constellation of companies, firms, businesses, and other establishments.

That was the situation when me and Rolf and Bojek met the two Belarusians.

And from that moment on Alex didn’t let me out of his sight. As for Maruška, well, I would’ve loved to talk to her, to stroll around town with her or something. But she was with Alex constantly, like his shadow.

And one evening, during the dancing, Alex pulled the same move he had used against the camera, only this time against a person. Feita, one of the bunk seekers who had come out of his depression and landed back on his feet with us, was dancing, feeling no pain, and, emboldened by the red grass, he asked Maruška to join him. She of course declined — she never danced — but the blissed-out Feita tried to lift her up, and all of a sudden Alex was there and Feita was knocked to the ground.

Alex stood over him. Waiting to see what the other students would do? What I would do? We’d never had anything like that happen here before. Feita’s friends dragged him away, gave him something to drink. And went on dancing. The Belarusians walked around in a bit of a bubble after that. Maruška doesn’t dance, OK, now everybody knows.

*

We worked without rest, building a new life for the town on the ruins of its past.

And one day Lea remembered that before she went crazy with pain and confusion she had been an outstanding student of architecture, so I started riding around in taxis with her, lugging easels and drawing boards, all sorts of tools and supplies that smelled like the first day of school. We also bought a set of special erasers and some other stuff over the Internet. Lea and I never slept overnight in Prague.

At Lea’s urging, and under her supervision, many of our students left their computer games and blogs, or however they spent their free time, and cleared away some of the rubble, carting away fallen beams and piles of bricks, creating a clean and welcoming space for her studio.

In winter we’ll take over the barracks, Lea said, looking ahead.

And together with her fellow architects, and other artistically gifted students, she set to work.

We’ll rebuild anything in Terezín that has fallen or is falling down, she said. It goes without saying that we won’t look for guidance to the unresponsive Monument or the unwilling government. We’ll go our own way!

And when, one evening, Lea the Great laid out for Lebo her latest idea — namely, to team up with the eminent architects of the world, through her alma mater naturally, and launch a competition for the renewal and general beautification of the town — ahem, how about it?

Lebo beamed.

It’s going to cost some money of course, quite a bit in fact, said the slightly red-faced Lea.

Lebo laughed.

He walked happily among the easels as the students drew new versions of the fallen walls, collapsed homes, and flood barriers, boldly sketching the new, proud towers of an expansive town that up until now had existed only in our minds.

Lebo was central and crucial and indispensable to all of us, talking to the crowds in the Main Tent during the day and to us at the evening sittings. I often pounded away on the computer alone now, following his instructions and our previous efforts.

I had our contacts, the whole database, stored safely away in the Spider, and also on the computer, and I added to it constantly.

Alex sat with me at the computer in the bunkroom.

He must have had the plan in his head for a long time.

He quickly realized the only one with a full list of our lucrative network, from whales to minnows, was me.

Not all of the Comenium’s activities were suitable for television and the eyes of the world: the evening sittings in our squat were just for us.

Every evening the newcomers, as well as the old hands, would sit in a circle around Lebo.

Anyone could enter the Main Tent for a fee, but the evening sittings were just for the core of our community, the Comenium. Evenings were for the bunk seekers — we could always pick them out among the ordinary tourists and prying types, Sara and Lea the Great without fail, and even Rolf by now. They were the ones who brought the bunk seekers to Lebo. It was only truly worth it for the unhappy and ill. Here in the house of Comenius, in our squat, it was all for real. Lebo would sit on the bunk where his mother had given birth illegally and he had acquired his name and talk about the long-ago horrors of the town of evil, the death of tens of thousands within the walls where we now breathe, and all those who walked out of these walls to the trains that carried them to their death. Then he would pass around the objects, so we all had a chance to touch them, bringing his tale of the past so vividly to life that images of what had happened flashed before our eyes. Some would cry out, yes, many shed tears, but Lebo had a way out for even the most hopeless: It happened and it’s impossible to grasp, but despite all the horror you can live on. Look at me! I was born here and I’m still alive! Lebo’s words pierced the black clouds in the heads of those hypersensitive youths like a red-hot iron, and Sara got the idea of lighting the night with candles, so Lebo’s ideas would make even more of an impression. Lebo’s talk was more powerful than all the displays and textbook pages put together. Yes, the students loved his teaching, and during those long evenings in our squat, stoned on rampart grass, they trembled in their bunks, inserting their minds into Lebo’s like fingers in a wound.

But then something changed.

As our fame advanced around the world, as our fame increased, it happened.

The footage of our games, the images of dancing girls, flew around the world. We were famous. But a lot of journalists weren’t writing the same thing as Rolf and his friends. Newspapers still ran front-page photos of Lebo, proud and upright in his black suit, but surrounded by a group of girls in flowing dresses and skirts, adorned with blades of grass. ‘Hippie Commune in Town of Death’, read one caption. ‘Old Jew Operates Harem’, said another. And then they really started to write about us a lot, and we were getting too many people, and some of them were calling us names. According to our enemies, we were shamelessly milking people’s misery to pay for our orgies. They sent detectives and a taxman and the financial guard to investigate.

Naturally, accounting wasn’t our organization’s strong point.

Our strong point was enthusiasm.

Several investigations were opened. Inspectors raided our stalls and confiscated our goods, saying they wanted to ascertain if they were legally acquired. Hygiene officials, disguised as tourists, purchased large quantities of ghetto pizza and sent samples to a lab. We were forbidden to sell any more till the results came back. And more charges followed. There were summonses to interrogations crumpled up in little balls and tossed all over the place.

It wasn’t a good time for me.

I knew I couldn’t go to jail.

But where would I go?

Then I got a package. With a letter and a return address.

I thought maybe someone had spotted the picture of me as Lebo’s right-hand man, the way Sara had. No one had ever written to me before, let alone from America. I walked through the grass, taking Bojek with me, and opened the letter.

Dear co-worker,

I know your sentence is over. I found work in the US and I work in more than one state, so I’m confident that our profession has a future. The game that you once helped create has met with some success, so I’ve decided to pay you a small sum as a token of my gratitude. If you would like to continue our work, please let me know.

Sincerely,

It was signed Mr Mára. Bojek nuzzled the envelope. I pushed him away and grabbed it. A CD-ROM. Hidden and Dangerous Deluxe 5. Ha! That was the game the students at the Comenium played the most. Not me, I didn’t have time.

I didn’t read the letter again. I crumpled it into a little ball and threw it away. Let the wind take it, I thought.

I was sitting by the ramparts with Bojek, the only one left of my flock, blind and lame, poor thing, in his frayed collar.

All of a sudden Alex was standing there in front of me. With Maruška. She was smiling.

He offered me a job. In his country, Belarus. He said all I needed was the data from the Comenium, the contacts we had made with the generous financial world, tucked away inside my head and in the Spider, the flash drive, that tiny little piece of technology.

I’d get the details when I arrived.

Alex sat down in the grass and Maruška just stood, looking at me. I gazed up at her as Alex explained to me that the Comenium’s situation was untenable.

He talked about accusations of embezzlement, tax evasion, extortion, obstruction of government administration, contempt of court, occupation of public property, destruction of public property, disturbing the peace. He mentioned a section of the penal code on corruption of youth, and many other sections that would swoop down upon the normally tranquil surface of our lives in Terezín like gluttonous cormorants on a muddy pool swarming with fish.

He added that, according to his sources, it was already decided and the bulldozers were on their way.

How do you know? I said.

Alex motioned towards the ramparts, where a group of Happy Workshop workers were lounging around a sandy pit shaded by bushes, drinking and smoking, indulging their usual habits after calling it a day.

When?

Tomorrow.

Alex smiled and gestured towards the homeless group again.

I shut my eyes and believed him.

The mental cases were still shuffling back and forth between our damaged town and the state-sanctioned territory of the Monument. They had eyes and ears everywhere. If there was something in the offing, they would know.

When I opened my eyes I saw the beautiful face of Maruška. She held my gaze for an instant, then shut her eyes. I lingered in the gentle movement of her eyelids as long as I could, then nodded.

Alex handed me the key to a locker at the airport and described what was in it. He told me when and where to wait for my go-between, who would take me to their homeland.

I said to Alex I thought the best go-between would be Maruška.

We looked at each other. I had no idea what he was thinking.

Doesn’t bother me that you guys are going under, Alex said. You had a good plan. Didn’t work out. Authorities weren’t on your side. Where we live it’s different. You’ll see.

I was really wishing he’d walk away.

I made up mind to go to see Lebo before I left. Maybe Sara, too. I’d already told Alex yes, but still, what would Lebo say? I had to ask.

As soon as the two of them had gone, I grabbed Bojek and crossed the grass to the mental cases, a few dozen metres away.

As I came close, they stiffened. All of a sudden they shrank into a hushed knot of tattered blankets, limbs and rags, booze fumes, a mix of eyes, hair, beards. Now what?

One of them chuckled.

Dumped, huh, big man? I heard a voice hiss from the hole. Got used to marchin’ around like the big man, didn’t cha? And now it’s over, huh? What cha gonna do now, eh?

So Alex was right, it’s been decided, this is the end of the Comenium. Bojek was rubbing against my leg. I slapped him on the back to move along. But he stayed. To my surprise a hand reached out of the knot with a bottle.

Stop yer starin’ and come warm up, ya cunt, someone muttered. I took the bottle. Went and sat down on the edge of their hideout, swinging my legs. Bojek chomped grass, eyeballing me. I had brought this red wine here with Sara, she picked it out, seemed like ages ago. Huh, they must’ve swiped it from the Comenium. Well, what do I care now?

I wanted to go and see Lebo, get up and go rouse the Comenium. But instead I sank down into the pit. A layer of newspapers, rags, strips of blanket protected us from the cold ground. We breathed on each other.

Then someone uncorked a jug of alcohol. We didn’t talk much after that.

And the bulldozers came in the morning.




6


Early the next day the yellow and orange machines rolled through the rubble around Manege Gate. In the dim light of dawn the excavators levelled the goat barn. Machines crushed walls and buildings, bulldozers and wailing sirens driving our students out of their bunk beds. Excavators ploughed into the kitchen, demolishing the ghetto pizza oven. Someone kicked me in the head as they scrambled out of the pit and I started to come round, a siren sinking its teeth into my hungover brain. I heard choppers too. Where’s Lebo? I wondered, clawing my way through the sparse bushes that camouflaged the hollow where I’d spent the night. From the top I could see the Comenium building. Jenda Kůs came up to me, an old guy, maybe he was the one who’d handed me the bottle last night. It was no use trying to get any closer. We saw a swarm of black-clad commandos on Central Square. The excavators and bulldozers tore away at the brick buildings as the members of the demolition crews walked around in orange vests. There were ambulances and students in shorts and T-shirts. Girls, all in a clump, surrounded by cops, walking them to the patrol cars. A couple of them tried to make a break for it, but this was an organized action, they were rounding up everyone. Even Lea the Great! She was wielding a huge pair of compasses, battering them from on high. Then they threw a net, pulled it in, and she was on the ground. I scanned the area for the big man, Lebo. I knew he would put up a fight. We won’t give up a single brick, a single bunk, those were his words. Maybe he had run off and hidden between the buildings somewhere, or maybe he’d already taken a baton blow to the head. Being tall is no help when it comes to a direct hit — he was probably the first one they dragged away. I’m sure he stood up for his people, though, especially now! A blond ponytail flashed behind the backs of the commandos. Sara? Most people went to the ambulances voluntarily. At least they were ambulances, I didn’t see any vans. The police had the Comenium surrounded, and they were taking Aunt Fridrich, who looked huge in her nightgown! I had to laugh. Kůs burst out laughing too. She carried it off pretty gracefully, raising her hands above her head like she was surrendering! Hee hee, Kůs chuckled. We watched the last act of the Comenium through the blades of grass. It was hilarious — cops and doctors all over the place on account of a couple of grannies. Someone tossed a blanket over Aunt Fridrich’s back. I didn’t see the other old ladies, maybe they were already sitting in the ambulances. But what about Lebo? I looked for him till my eyes hurt. No sign of the Belarusians, but that didn’t surprise me.

A helicopter made another circle over Central Square and disappeared into the sky. The action was over. The ambulances, escorted by patrol cars, slowly pulled away, until the only sound from the square and the surrounding streets was the clamour of demolition crews following in the bulldozers’ tracks with crowbars and hooks. I made up my mind and ran, crouching, down the hillside, which was probably only possible thanks to the general vertigo I felt after all that booze the night before. It only took a minute, down the hill, along the goat track, to the square, dodging the fallen beams and chunks of brickwork, avoiding the men in orange vests shining their lights in the gloom. A couple of cops were still wandering around. I crept closer. The Comenium doors were wide open: this was where they’d brought the students out. Lebo, are you in there? I shouted as loud as I could. Hey, Lebo! All around me machines were rumbling, excavator shovels crushing bricks and beams, stacks of bricks and roofing tiles. So this is a funeral march, I thought. What a strange tune, the town’s last military music. The men with hooks and the cops hadn’t made it this far yet. I slipped into the corridor, tripping over a trainer, a sweater, stuff that people had dropped as they were being dragged away. The bunkroom was still clammy with the breath of sleepers, blankets scattered all over the ground. I slipped into the computer corner, behind the partition. I’d known what I wanted to do for some time, so I got on with it.

I needed to wipe all my fingerprints off that computer — I didn’t want to go back to jail, I couldn’t. There were notebooks all over the place, floppy disks, CDs, all sorts of junk. I couldn’t wipe my prints off everything, I’d never manage it, so I grabbed a bottle of thinner from under the desk and popped back out to the corridor, where the aunts kept their cleaning things. I took all the thinner, a bottle of alcohol, snatched just one thing off the desk, stuck it in my pocket, a scrap of paper, a piece of shiny envelope with Mr Mára’s US address. Never played that game of his and now I never would. I tore the cap off the bottle with my nails and poured it over everything. One match and the flame went shooting up. Like an idiot I scorched my hair, singed my arms — it hurt so bad my stomach flipped. The plastic melted as the flames went creeping across the boards. I couldn’t believe the way the wood was curling up. Bang! The bottle exploded, red-hot splinters of glass flying every which way. When I opened my eyes again, there were thin flames licking at the bunks, wood crackling. I kicked the desk as I groped my way across the room, my foot slipped on a blanket, there was smoke everywhere. Suddenly I was startled by a squealing sound, a moan. A hand poked out from under the blanket, a tear-stained face, glasses. Come on! I wanted to scream, but instead I just squealed too. I pushed Rolf ahead of me. He was crawling on all fours, I couldn’t get past him. I felt heat on my back, the bunk frames were collapsing. Rolf was hopping on one leg. I gave him a kick and pushed him out of the door, into the corridor. We stood panting, gasping for breath in the smoke. Rolf held on to the door, pointing. But I couldn’t understand, couldn’t hear.

Is somebody still in there? I asked, coughing. His terrified eyes, my eyes full of tears, the smoke: it was too late. If there was anybody still in there, it was too late, and we both knew it. I shoved him out of the door, jumped out after him. Rolf, the idiot, staggering — he’ll run right into their arms, in his underwear. They’ll catch him soon, I’m sure.

I squeezed myself in between the stones of a demolished wall and just kept staring at the Comenium door. I guess I was waiting. Would anyone else find their way out? I should’ve checked the bunks first. Stupid cops! They don’t do anything right! I should’ve checked! I know. There was a sharp stone digging into my back, but I ignored it.

I heard voices coming closer. Walking through the wreckage, men in hard hats and orange vests, putting out small fires, tearing down debris. They hadn’t reached the Comenium yet. They won’t find me, I told myself. No way. I blended in with the heaps of ruins and smoking debris. There were tyre tracks running all over the dust that covered the rubble of bricks.

Huh, they must’ve given Sara some kind of sedative! With that rage of hers! They never would’ve got her in that car otherwise, that’s for sure.

My scorched flesh throbbed through the ash and dust stuck to my hands. Nothing serious. But I didn’t spare the saliva, just to be safe. Suddenly a jolt of fear ran through me, I winced, singed fingers fumbling through my pockets, yes, got it, it was still there. My little Spider.

And the key to the airport locker too.

Hat, coat, good pair of boots, warm pants, socks — Alex had rattled them off like a list of presents I would find waiting under the Christmas tree.

It’s cold where we live, he said.

Your go-between, who has yet to be picked, will be waiting for you at the airport in Prague. At the full moon, he said.

It’s the only time they fly. He laughed.

I crept up the goat track to the hollow in the bushes and stayed there. A couple of others sauntered in towards evening. Most of them were excited about the fire. I guess they liked the change. Somebody gave me some ointment for my hands. A while back, they had picked the army warehouses clean, it was from there. Stank of the army, that’s for sure. But it cooled the burn.

Somebody pounced on my back and started throwing punches, a blind man screaming that I took his brother to the gallows. The others laughed and pulled him off.

Everybody around here’s been sayin’ that, said Jenda Kůs. Don’t worry, they’re just tryin’ to show off. And even if he did, so what? Kůs snarled, looking around. If he took him, he took him. He was a con, it was his job, what was he supposed to do? You’d have done the same.

They grumbled a while till somebody opened another jug. Apparently they had an inexhaustible supply. Also from the army.

Seeing as I was going to live with them, they left me alone.

I waited for the full moon. Till the moon was full, yep, round as Maruška’s face.

I was happy in our hole in the hill, my hands were healing. Sometimes Kamínek slept in there too.

And the bums brought news. Yeah, they’re lookin’ for you! Heh heh heh. They liked that I was dependent on them.

What about Lebo?

He split with that Swedish chick, been stickin’ it to her the whole time, said somebody in the hole. Ole Lebo, yep! Nobody puts one over on him. I bet he’s kickin’ it in the Caribbean right now, ha ha.

Bullshit, said somebody else. The cops cracked him on the head, he was the first one they got! I saw him in the ambulance. His head was all bloody and bandaged!

Who wouldn’t want that Swedish babe? Old Lebo took the money and ran, before the state could scoop it up! Good for him!

Nah, he’s still back there, said somebody else. In the bunkroom. Burnt to a crisp. He put up a fight. Got conked on the head and went down. By the time they went back for him, he was toast!

What about Rolf? Where’s he? I asked.

They didn’t know. They didn’t care.

But the scouts reported back that a lot of the Comenium’s students had been picked up by their parents, who descended on the town from every corner of the civilized world. The rest of them threw their packs on their backs, waved good-bye with their passports and credit cards, and went on their way.

You can stay here a while, Kůs assured me.

What about Lebo?

My idea was to comb through the wreckage of the Comenium and find out for sure. I would bury what was left of him at night, if I had to. But it was impossible. The cops had a barricade up and a guard standing watch.

Nobody was allowed to go poking around in the ruins. Everybody knew about the mental cases and their scavenging.

The moon grew. I watched it every night.

What about Lebo? And what about me? All I got out of these questions was sadness and the certainty that I had to get away.

One night, after yet another session of sitting around the fire, bickering and fighting over that nasty booze of theirs, I slipped away and crept down the goat track. Where there used to be houses, now there were machines. Steamrollers, levellers, crushing debris, tearing down foundations, knocking down walls, and bulldozing it all into pits. Instead of Central Square there was a plain littered with ruins. Where the Comenium had once stood there was nothing, just machines in the dark.

I went running back and stood above the hollow, breathing hard. I looked up: the moon was almost ripe.

I sat down on my behind and slid into the pit, our hole. No one said a word.

They were roasting meat, I could smell it, and then I saw, uh-huh, an old frayed collar lying in the dirt, something gleaming in the shadows behind a pile of branches: horns. It was Bojek’s head.

No, I said.

Listen! somebody said, practically shoving a bottle down my throat. Vojtek saw Lebo!

The Russkies snatched him! The whites of the blind man’s eyes bulged as the others roared with laughter.

The blind man stamped his foot, enraged.

I wasn’t going to make a fuss. They were already eating goats when I was walking around like the big man. The only reason I was here now was because they let me stay. So I kept quiet.

Lebo got snatched by the Russkies, the blind man yelled. He wouldn’t give up, he defended his position, so they took him off to Moscow, just like Dubček in ’68, the fuckers! the blind man said, flailing his arms.

Ha ha, Vojtek sees Russkies everywhere, he’s nuts!

I can tell a Russki by his smell, every time!

Russkies were the last people he ever saw, so now he smells ’em everywhere, ha ha ha!

It suddenly hit me. Vojtek used to be an explosives expert, a pretty bad one too, I guess. Burned his eyes out with a rocket during the fraternal fireworks to celebrate the Soviet invasion in ’68. That’s when the Soviets took over here in Terezín.

The blind man went on ranting, rattling off his nonsense. I grabbed him, along with everyone else, and held on. Took a slap or two in the face myself. At least it shook the image of Bojek’s head out of my mind.

They sat on top of him, pinned him down. Someone pressed a bottle to his lips.

I climbed out of the pit. Kůs came out after me. He knew I was going and he was glad. He didn’t want any more strife.

Here. Kůs handed me something wrapped in greasy foil.

Meat for the road, he said. And a bottle of red.

Take care.

Take care.

I had barely taken a step before my fingers, more or less healed, were fumbling through my pockets. The key and the Spider, my treasures, they were still there. I jogged across the rubble, slipping between the thistles and the nettles. I knew every blade of grass around here. I walked through Manege Gate, out of town, to the main road, and into the ditch. Not a soul around. I got a move on.

A cop car stops by the milestone.

I crouch right below it, blending in with the nettles.

I don’t move a muscle, taking care the bottle doesn’t clink. Hear a door slam, the radio crackles, cop gets out, pees in the ditch, the smell of wine, urine, and night. I don’t move. They leave.

The stream of cars is thinning out. I climb up on the road. Morning sun. And I see lights. Prague.

It’s daybreak.

I pull the piece of paper from my pocket with Mr Mára’s address. Just in case. It could come in handy, so I memorize it.

Where is your country anyway? I remember asking Alex.

Between Poland and Russia.

Now I take a step and WELCOME TO PRAGUE, WHERE YOUR LIFE IS GOOD, purrs a talking sign with the city seal. I smash the bottle against it, a few shards fall on the road, the rising sun leans into them, sparkling like it used to on my dad’s medals. That was a long time ago.




7


A rumbling. I open my eyes but I’m not yet awake. Blaring trumpets and the boom-tata-boom of drums. An army parade? First of May? V-Day? Review of troops? I spring to my feet. I want out of this dream. I twitch. Doesn’t work. I hear a blast of sound outside the window … open it, yep, troops parading down the street, far below. Military music, shiny trombones, drum corps, maybe a whole platoon, drums strapped across their chests, just like they’re supposed to be. Next the ranks of infantry, field uniforms and gleaming bayonets. I lean my head against the wall, breathe in, breathe out. The air from outside’s refreshing. I sit back down on the bed. Window, table, hotel room — I’ve been in one of these before.

Now I remember. Prague, me finally there, waving down a taxi, Sara taught me how to do that. Then the airport.

How did it happen?

Country boy scraped by thorns. Aching hands wrapped in rags. Nobody here cares. The airport’s huge, whole hall made of glass, full of light.

Lockers, luggage? There, someone waves.

I walk, squeezing the key Alex gave me tightly in my pocket. And the Spider.

Whoa, a uniform. I’m startled, scared. A minute ago I just ducked a whole row of police.

Brown, reddish hair. Big round eyes. It’s her.

Maruška takes my hand. Smiles. I feel like we’re connected.

She takes the key from me and opens the locker. Pants, jacket, boots, other stuff, just like Alex promised. I walk down the hall with the full plastic bag. She walks behind me. To the toilets.

Get in there and change!

What if somebody comes?

They won’t.

I clean myself up. Stinking of smoke, scratched, achy hands.

There’s a T-shirt in the bag too, dress shirt, all that stuff.

She walks in after me. All of a sudden it’s too much, her scent, the sweetness of her breath. And me in the hole, the fire, the long walk through the ditch. What now? Where am I going? I’ve hardly been anywhere.

She lifts my hands, looks at them closely. Reaches into a satchel she has over her shoulder.

Now she’s washing my hands. No one’s ever done that before. Gently, she spreads ointment on my hands, arms, the burned spots, then wraps them in a clean, dry bandage.

She rolls up my sleeve, gives me an injection. My knees wobble as the needle enters my arm.

She snaps the cuffs around my wrists.

Leave everything to me, she says, leading me down the corridor.

We passed through the checkpoints, I was like a ghost. She had all the papers, documents. I think I slept the whole time on the plane.

My memory of the hotel is also vague. We walked down some corridors. Went up in a lift. No more handcuffs.

And now I’m here alone. Where’s here? And where’s Alex?

I take a look around, run my bandaged palms over the hard walls. The carpet’s a little burned in places. Wrinkles, like somebody dragged something across it.

Bathroom: dirty, hair in the drain, stinks of chemicals. Some tools, tweezers, wires, on the floor, on a chair by the tub. Brown streaks on the curtain. Doesn’t bother me.

The room always smelled clean, though, when I was with Sara.

Ah, who cares. Maybe somebody’s doing business here too.

I go to the window just as the rumbling swallows up the music again. It’s getting closer.

And then it hits me.

I escaped the fortress town, I made it out of the ruins and the fire.

And they can’t get me now, that’s it, it’s over.

Good.

The rumbling’s closer, everything’s shaking.

I peek out again. I’ve never seen a street so wide in all my life, regiments marching past, soldiers swinging their legs.

Now I see, it’s a tank parade, there are tanks behind the infantry. The Terezín parades didn’t have any tanks, it would’ve disturbed the cobblestones, and my dad never took me to see a parade in Prague. I sit back down on the bed and wonder: What happened to Lebo? What happened to the aunts? What happened to the students? What happened to all my people?

The noise of an armoured vehicle comes through the open window, and the wind. A couple of snowflakes land on my face. Maruška walks in.

Get dressed, she says. It’s cold!

Where are we?

Minsk.

We eat in the hotel basement. Maruška’s face is smooth with sleep, her red hair falls across her shoulders. Fish, sausage, eggs, bread. There’s a queue at the table where the food is being served. But Maruška can take as much as she wants without having to wait. Must be the uniform.

There are no windows. Just a few chandeliers. TV in the corner. At the table next to ours some bullnecked guys in loud conversation, a couple of them with tattoos showing through their white polyester shirts, drinking beer, champagne. They speak Russian, or what sounds like it to me. No tourist types here, no families like you see in Terezín. Another table is occupied by young girls. Tall leather boots, shorts. Blouses. Leather vests over bare breasts. Make-up, jewellery. They don’t look like tourists either, they probably work here. They’re stuffing themselves.

You eat caviar? Maruška asks.

I nod. I eat everything.

You want pelmeni, or draniki?

Which one’s better?

Draniki are Belarusian, pelmeni are Russian.

They both taste great and there’s plenty of it. I start to relax.

Hey, Maruška! What was that injection you gave me back in Prague? And, thanks. I hold out my bandaged hands.

Something to calm you down.

She pulls a cloth pouch from her satchel on the chair next to her. Shakes out a blue pill and hands it to me.

What’s this?

Something to pick you up.

She eats one too.

Is that an army uniform? I examine the cloth. Touch her sleeve.

No, she shakes her head.

Are you a cop?

Of course I wanted to join the police or the army. But the bastards wouldn’t take me. This is from the Ministry of Tourism. I studied travel and tourism in Prague. That’s how I know Czech.

Interesting!

Are you still eating?

Yeah.

Hurry up, let’s go.

Where to?

You’ll see.

Will Alex be there?

You’ll see.

She gets up, pushes back her chair. Picks up the satchel, throws it over her shoulder. I follow her, peeking over at the table of girls. They’ve vanished into thin air, gone. Her satchel’s got a red cross on the corner. Aha, a nurse. And Alex is a medic, right, that fits.

We come out on a huge, wide street in front of the hotel. The soldiers have gone now. There’s a light dusting of snow on the pavement.

Not that I’m shaking with cold, but the wind, when it leans into us, is pretty icy. Maruška’s got a coat on over her uniform, green with epaulettes. Tall leather boots, same as me. Her red hair’s tucked under a beret. I’m grateful to Alex. For her, I mean. And also for the clothes he gave me. I wonder if these are his? We’re the same size.

Yep, sweater, jacket, all real nice.

My tracksuit top, hairbrush, the things I had from my aunts — all that got lost in the fire. The other stuff I left in the bathroom at the airport.

I never had too many things of my own. Even now I only have one. The Spider. It sits snugly in my trouser pocket. We walk and I feel warm.

This is the Boulevard of Heroes, Maruška says with a sweep of her hand. My eyes slide down its length, I can’t even see the end.

The buildings on this street are decorated with great big colour portraits of officers. They’re huge. Flat caps, medals, epaulettes, the works. Over six stories tall, I counted. My dad would’ve liked it. But I have to laugh.

All the inhabitants of our battered little town, including our cats, dogs, and goats, could easily have fitted inside any one of these buildings. Our whole squat, the Happy Workshop, all of it.

The street is coated in trampled mud, mixed with snow. The tanks have churned it into mush. The music sounds far away now, through the flakes coming down in clumps.

We’re going to visit Mark Isakyevich Kagan, Maruška says.

Whatever, I think. I couldn’t care less. I’m loving strutting around this strange huge city with her.

Maruška?

Mm-hm?

I feel unbelievable!

Want some more? She fishes around in her satchel. We both pop one.

It was a long trip, Maruška says.

So where’re we going?

The Museum.

All right! I can hardly wait!

Don’t scream.

Sorry.

I’m glad she’s leading the way. Not like at the airport, in handcuffs, down the corridors. Now she’s just leading the way with the calm sway of her hips. I walk beside her. It’s amazing, really. I slip, nearly fall on my behind.

There’s a patch or two of ice on the pavement. But except for that, and a heap of slush here and there, all of the streets are clean as a whistle. Not like in Prague, never mind Terezín.

We turn off of the Boulevard of Heroes, Maruška says the name of the street, it slips my mind as soon as I hear it. Same roadway, pavements, enormous buildings, a red banner or two up above. I stop in front of one that reminds me of the banner in Terezín. The last time I saw something like this was before I went to prison.

Some of the banners have yellow stars, a red flag or two flaps in the wind. Given how grey the streets are, it’s actually pretty nice.

There are no crowds strolling the streets. The people are tiny compared to the spectacular size of the buildings. I remember the way in Prague the streets twist and turn. Here you can see far into the distance and count everyone. We walk past another stunning palace. The pale yellow of its facade disappears up above in the snow.

Maruška, wait!

I tilt my head up. I’ve never seen such a thing.

You like it? Maruška asks. She stops too.

Yeah!

You should see the TV Palace on Communist Street. Or the Palace of Ground Forces. Now that’s something!

What’s this? I say, the back of my head feeling numb.

This? This is the Palace of the Party Central Committee. But the KGB Palace is just as big.

A crowd of people stands on the corner. The guys have jackets with hoods like mine, some have funny ear flaps or big fur caps. I wouldn’t want one of them. The crowd starts to move, spilling on to both sides of the street. Maruška stops.

We hear screams, the bang of firecrackers. Standing on the icy pavement, we’re not alone, a few other people have stopped to watch the crowd with us. And some are pretty nervous. An older lady in a flowered scarf with bags in both hands steps in front of Maruška, puts down her bags, salutes, and jabbers something. Maruška nods, points her towards the crowd, the woman picks her bags back up and scurries off.

What did she want?

She asked if she could pass.

She thought you were a cop, huh?

And then I hear a voice from a megaphone, it’s telling us to get out of here quick, that much I understand.

They run towards us, maybe they came through the crowd, I don’t know, men running towards us with shields and batons. One of them passes the woman Maruška talked to, a swipe of his arm and she flops to the ice, bags scattered around her.

The men come to a stop in the middle of the street and lean on their shields. I glance behind me and see some young men with long wooden sticks. A couple more running closer. Someone hurls a can, it slams against a shield, a cloud of smoke engulfs the cops.

Maruška takes my elbow.

Come on, let’s get out of here, they’ll move, they’ll let us go.

Around the corner it’s quiet. We turn back into one of those long drawn-out streets, striding beneath the enormous facades. I wonder if there’s a pub nearby where we could talk.

That was a protest, Maruška says. We get them all the time now. Don’t worry.

I won’t! You know any pubs around here?

We’re on assignment.

Right! So who is this Kagan, anyway? I ask. The name has stuck in my head.

He’s from the ministry too. He’ll be receiving you as a foreign expert.

In what?

The revitalization of burial sites.

All right, I say. So you know this guy well, this Kagan?

Yeah, very.




8


We keep striding along these straight, seemingly endless streets. Some with cars zooming by, some without. They all merge into one for me. What time is it? We had breakfast, what about lunch? I don’t know and I’m not going to ask. I don’t know where we are, either, and I don’t care.

Her bag bangs against my hip, that’s how close we are. Her head by my shoulder. Hair slipping out from under her beret. I wish I could touch it.

We walk, we keep walking. I don’t know any city except for my native fortress town and a few glimpses of Prague. So why do I feel so on edge here? The palaces are amazing. Straight, long, solid walls. Now I know what’s bothering me. I can be seen from all sides, just like on Central Square. Right, but in Terezín there were passages through the walls, and catacombs underneath them, and in Prague you could just slip into the nearest winding lane.

Here I’m out in the open. Where would I hide?

Do these buildings lock their doors? I ask.

Depends on the caretaker. The dezhurnaya.

This city is starting to get on my nerves.

Hey, Maruška, what’s with all the right angles here, anyway?

It’s all rebuilt. What you had in Prague, pshaw, that was nothing! A couple of buildings bombed. Here whatever the Nazis didn’t bomb or shoot to pieces, the Soviets finished off. After the war we had to rebuild. No more dark little alleys where people lived scrunched up like rats in a cage. No: nice wide boulevards. So the sun can get in everywhere. Sorry to say, but it’s pretty dirty and smelly in Prague.

It is not! This place is weird.

This is Sun City. It was a project after the war for the happy people of the future. They built cities like this in lots of places. Wherever a town had been burned down. They weren’t for everyone, though.

Why not?

Every Sun City had a burial site on the outskirts.

I didn’t know that.

You should. That’s why you’re here.

It is?

Shit! There are no taxis. We’ll have to take the underpass, OK?

Whatever you say, Maruška! You know best.

We stand waiting to cross the street. A feeble glow comes from the shop windows. It’s as gloomy now as it was in the hotel dining room. The clouds overhead are still swollen, ready to let loose the snow.

A gap in the traffic opens up. We run across and then down some stairs into the underpass. There are flowers strewn all over the ground, flowerpots, wreaths, burning candles. Maruška leads me through the crowd, shouldering past anyone who won’t move for her uniform.

A chill comes from the concrete. Somebody strums a guitar. A couple of people light candles from each other. Behind them yawns the dark maw of the underpass. That’s where the cold is coming from. A draught tugs at the candle flames.

Maruška, look!

A rat flashes past through the shadows. Now I can make out words in the hum of the crowd. Somebody’s saying names, women’s names. People around us are crossing themselves and bowing at the waist.

I guess we’re not going to get very far with the underpass either.

She grabs my hand and drags me through the crowd, bumping into people.

We stop at the coffin. That’s what they were all bowing to. The coffin is surrounded by pools of red and yellow wax. A girl lies inside. In a white dress. No, silver. A princess. Long hair, headband covered with pearls and glittering stones. She looks nice. I lean over the coffin, look at her face. It’s a mannequin. A fake. Maruška’s still holding my hand. We slowly walk around the coffin. Now we’re right at the entrance.

That’s a bride, you saw a bride, Maruška whispers to me.

There are candles flickering here too.

The girls that died in here are called brides, Maruška says, in a normal voice now. There were fifty-three of them.

During the war, huh?

No. In ’99.

What?

There was a concert. Awesome line-up: Mango Mango, I love them, Maruška says. She points to the wall. Scratches in the plaster. You could see them in the candlelight.

There were claw marks all over, Maruška says. The crowd crushed them up against the walls and the bars, down there. She waves her hand, there’s a grille. They got suffocated and trampled to death. High-heel wounds all over their bodies. The girls had their nicest dresses on, for the concert, of course. And they wore really high heels back then. Stilettos, they call them. Nasty things. I never wore them. I was at the concert too.

You were there, huh?

The underpass is long and dark. I’m glad Maruška’s telling me about her life, but I’m ready to leave.

Yeah, I came too, but I ran into some guys I knew! Coincidence. They stole a keg of beer somewhere. So I went with them. Lucky me! A storm got up. The people from the concert ran to take shelter in the underpass here. The crowd squeezed up against the bars, people kept trying to push their way in. They didn’t know the grille was closed. Two or three militiamen also got trampled to death.

How did that happen?

It just did. Which proves it was really an accident. Some idiots forgot to open the grille! The government didn’t plan the massacre to disperse the youth, get it?

I don’t get it. She stares at me, I nod. Black shadows flash past on the ground. I wonder whether Maruška’s scared of mice. Probably not.

You know how much it costs to train a militiaman like that?

I just wave my hand, like it’s obvious.

They say there was blood up to their ankles, Maruška says. She waves her hand too. It soaked into the ground. Into the river that runs underneath here. The Niamiha. That’s the river Minsk was founded on.

Uh-huh!

The bloody banks of the Niamiha, as The Song of Igor’s Campaign says. Ever heard of it?

I take a deep breath, preparing to answer her truthfully, but just then we come out of the underpass and a blizzard swallows us up, the whooshing wind lifting heaps of snow in the air. I grope my way through the white fog, a red sign flies by, slams into the pavement. I stand, spitting snow.

Where are you? I shout.

The hum of engines drowns out the whoosh of the wind. Trucks emerge from the fog, stop, bundled figures jump out, soldiers.

Damn, these guys don’t take a moment’s rest, I swear under my breath. Maruška knows what to do and where to go, dragging me by the hand again, the wind whipping snow all around us. We walk along the wall, to the next street and the next, and there are trucks here too. I hear commands muffled by the wind, the stomp of boots, as the team comes running down the street. We duck into a passageway. I hear — can it be? — Maruška laughing. We lean against the wall of the passage.

You wanted to go to a pub, right? she says.

Yeah. But what about Kagan?

Kagan can wait. We can’t get out of here now anyway. She laughs behind her hand.

What are you laughing at?

You.

How come?

You’re our expert and you don’t even know how to walk!

Wait till she finds out that I’ve never been in a pub either.

She raises her hand and points to the wall. Aha, a bell.

I go to ring it.

Wait a sec, she says. She pulls the pouch from her satchel, fishes around, we pop some pills. Maybe that’s what people eat here.

She rings, standing on tiptoe, holding her finger on the bell. Not long and thin and nervous like Alex’s: Maruška’s sweet little finger is perfectly ordinary, the nail bare, no polish globbed on. She keeps pressing the bell until the door opens.

We walk down a corridor, it’s quiet here, another door opens, I see a set of stairs. Light, warmth, music, conversation, the blaring of a TV. We walk down the stairs, leaving the wind, snow and fog behind.

Salodky Falvarek. I read the words on the pink neon sign: ‘Sweet Court’. We’re in a bar.

Tea? says Maruška. Or what do you want?

Again I see people’s backs, they’re squeezed into the corner, in front of a TV. The volume’s on high and a man in uniform, pale-faced with a moustache, is talking. He opens and closes his mouth, but there’s no life in his eyes — like that mannequin in the coffin, the bride. I start cracking up. Maruška elbows me in the ribs and a tall guy in front of me, also in uniform, with a leather jacket over it — you know the type — turns, frowns at me. Stop laughing, Maruška says in my ear, that’s our president.

A wave of panic and rage runs through the people around the TV, I can feel it.

Wow! He just declared martial law, Maruška says.

Really? What does that mean? I act interested, seeing as it will probably be a while before I get that tea.

Now everyone is talking, so somebody turns up the volume to full blast. Luckily I know enough Russian, since that’s what he’s speaking, to understand: ‘The German order was formed over a period of centuries, and under Hitler it reached its highest point,’ the pale-faced guy on the screen thunders. ‘Not everything associated with Hitler was bad. This is how we see our presidential government in Belarus today.’ All of a sudden a big man pops out of the swarm in front of the TV, knocks it furiously to the ground, and starts kicking and pounding it. A murmur runs through the room, somebody screams, and a few people laugh. Somebody starts to clap.

A little fellow sweeps through the room and hops up on the bar, holding a piece of paper. Quiet! somebody shouts. He’s going to recite. Maruška tugs at my sleeve, tilts her chin towards the door. What, you want to leave? And go outside in that mess?

Let’s go, c’mon, she says in my ear. We’re on assignment. We can’t stay here. They’ll come, you’ll see.

Yeah, but they’re out there too. The street is covered with them!

This way. She gestures with her chin towards the toilets. The silence is so tense now, she doesn’t want to talk. The only sound is the papers rustling in the hand of the guy on the bar. He tilts his head back, lifts his hands, and shouts:




Kill the president!

Murder the bastard!

Amid the voices of thunderous approval — apparently this is their favourite poem — I hear a woman shriek. The hefty guy in the leather jacket and somebody else rush the bar and try to grab the man reading, but the ones who want to keep listening form a wall and block them.

The little guy ignores them and goes on reading:




Kill the President!

Axe him, shoot him

Chop off his accursed head

Murder the son of a bitch!

Now the guy on the bar is yelling and tossing his papers into the crowd, people are clapping, whistling. I see the guy in the leather jacket has pulled out a gun, so I rush after Maruška. She’s gone to the ladies’, inconvenient for me, but we can’t go back out on the street, there are trucks full of soldiers out there. I burst in, lean back against the door. She’s climbing on to the radiator, her soggy clothes kind of get in the way, but now she’s wriggling out the window, she kicked the lock clear off the thing, the girl knows how to move! I jump down into the yard, land on all fours, sneak through the rubbish bins. The wind’s died down, it’s quiet now, no snow scraping between my teeth. And look, another rat. I just see the flash of its teeth, then the tail, its mangy behind covered in stains. All of a sudden, bang! We hear gunfire in the bar. I look around for a way out. Can’t stay here. At least now we’re touching, though. Hunched down in the courtyard, wedged tight together. Wow, Maruška’s really shaking. It’d be awful if you got busted, she says softly into my ear, if I lost you. That really got me. I snuggle closer. Alex would kick my arse, she says, if I fucked up my first assignment. A shadow slips across the lighted bathroom window, we pull apart. We’re not the only ones who want out of the bar, now that there’s shooting. I don’t know if the big man did the poet in or what, and with my foreigner’s accent I’m not about to ask. A guy with a beard lands in the yard, boots, quilted coat. Something’s blocking out the light, a big woman climbing out the window, they must be pushing her from inside. The guy that just jumped down reaches out his hands, she lands in the snow, right by me. Yeah, she’s big all right. Hair tucked under a scarf. Ula. But I didn’t know that yet.

I help her up. She’s from somewhere else, I can tell by the look in her eyes: they’re afraid. Not that I’ve met a lot of Belarusians, but the people here are like hawks, always on the alert. Well, she may have been scared in the yard that time, but I turned out to be wrong about her.

A few more people jump down. Talking under their breath. Someone, maybe one of the big guys that pushed Ula through the window, finds a metal door in the shadows behind the rubbish bins. He kicks it, hard. We creep out to the street one, two at a time. Nobody says a word. Maruška and I walk away. I don’t know how Ula got out of there.

We stride down a deserted street. No cars, no pedestrians, nothing. Well, we didn’t get much of a chance to warm up, did we? I say, wrapping my arm around Maruška. I tell her that I’m sure it’ll be safer if they’ve got martial law. We look totally normal. Just two ordinary people, maybe hurrying home to their sick kid. Maruška doesn’t object to having my arm around her shoulders. We walk. I feel lucky.




9


Evil, piercing eyes, pointy chin, this dezhurnaya is one nasty old bag. She won’t let us in. The uniform? Maruška’s ID? Barking orders in Russian? Pleading in Belarusian? None of it works. She’s like a stone wall.

Finally Maruška waved some money in front of her face and the old bag opened the museum’s heavy wooden door. It was a close call. We had to get in. And not just because of Kagan.

There were tents burning on the square. Hundreds of protesters surrounded by cops. We forced our way through the screaming crowd at the last minute. Protesters dropping under baton blows, cops packing them into vans, people fleeing left and right. I squeezed up against Maruška from behind, pushing her forward, covering her back as she cleared a path, kicking people out of the way as we slowly edged through the crowd surging back towards the tents, the epicentre of the madness. Then we broke into a run and didn’t stop till we reached the museum. We could still hear shouting and engines from the square. Finally the old bag snatched the note and opened the door.

It’s warm inside. But the old bag won’t let us go any farther. Maruška has some words with her — Russian or Belarusian, I can’t tell. I look around the entrance hall: the Museum of the Great Patriotic War. The walls are covered with yellowing maps of victorious campaigns, black-and-white photos of long-dead veterans, magnificent decorations, flags and battle standards, all long since chewed through by moths.

Maruška, I say, this is just like back home! It really does remind me of Terezín. With the display cases and everything, it’s a bit like the Monument.

The dezhurnaya is yapping away at Maruška. Then she points to me. She wants more cash because I’m an inostranyets. Ticket for foreigner! She’s all over us. Maruška tries to explain that I’m a Western expert, I work for the ministry. The ministries are all shut down, snaps the old bag, yanking on my sleeve. I give the dezhurnaya a little pat on the behind, trying to calm her the way Lebo used to do with the aunts when they got mad because somebody had trampled mud all over their kitchen. I get hit so hard I see stars. I fall on my back and see she’s getting ready to kick me.

Maruška makes her move. I see the gleam as she stabs a needle into the lady’s forearm.

The dezhurnaya topples. Maruška drags her off by the legs into the shadows. I should help, but I just sit there, where I landed, on the cold marble. Blood drips from my nose. Oof, that old bag really walloped me. I tilt my head back. I’m sitting under a big black-and-white picture. Guys throwing kids off a truck. A pile of bodies on the ground.

Fascists massacre orphanage, it says.

Maruška squats down beside me, breathing fast. Pulls out a handkerchief, wipes the blood off my face. Looks where I’m looking.

Yeah, and the reason they were orphans was the communists murdered their parents. Who would dare take care of them? They took the kids away to special camps where they died quick. That’s what’s happening in this picture. Azarichi or Chervony berag, Red Riverbank. You might want to remember that. If nothing else.

Awful.

Didn’t have that in your country, huh? Haven’t seen that, have you? But you should’ve, since you’re the expert. You are a Western expert, right?

She gives me the handkerchief. I press it to my nose. Maruška is trying to teach me. Just like Sara.

You know how many people the Nazis killed in Czechoslovakia?

No, not off the top off my head, but we can easily Google it.

Three hundred sixty-two thousand, four hundred and fifty-eight! And you know how many here in Belarus?

About the same?

She clenches her fist. Shakes her head. Rolls her eyes. She is seriously angry. She actually stamps her feet! She looks like an angry teacher, picking on a kid in class.

I give her the bloody handkerchief back. She shoves it in her pocket. My nose isn’t bleeding any more. But it’s all stuck together inside.

They killed four million people here. It’s in the Guinness Book of Records! And you know how many people there were in Czechoslovakia and how many in Belarus?

No.

The same. Ten million. But you in the West, you don’t have a clue! Terezín was nothing!

What is she getting so angry about? I guess the dezhurnaya got her upset.

The world never saw camps like we had here in Belarus! Maruška yells.

Maruška!

They say all the death camps were in Poland. That’s bullshit! All the tour operators only go to Auschwitz! But that’s going to change.

Maruška?

The Spider’s digging into my hip. But I don’t want to get up while she’s still squatting. I should’ve hidden it in my boot. Somewhere safer. Later.

She looks at me without seeing me, looking right through me.

I wave my hand in front of her eyes, back and forth.

Maruška, hello!

What?

What do we do with the dezhurnaya?

She’s asleep, Maruška says. At least I hope so.

She gets up, dusts off her skirt, not that there was even a speck of dirt on the marble. Let’s go, she says. I follow her.

We pass through enormous rooms full of display cases, weapons on the walls, ancient things manufactured during the war and before the war, there’s even a cannon. I don’t have time to check it out — where is she dragging me to?

The parquet floor creaks as we walk over it, plus I’m snorting a little through my nose, which echoes in the silence. I’ll wait till the blood congeals and deal with it later. My hands don’t hurt at all any more.

I stop at a display case with a miniature wooden model inside. A mock-up of the Trostenets extermination camp. Here in Minsk, it says.

Tiny little barricades, topped with barbed wire of thread. Flaming borders made of skewers. Teeny-tiny light bulbs represent the fire’s glow. Tiny little bodies stacked along the borders. Smoke rising from corpses painted on the plywood. The caption says: Jews from the West were murdered here.

Psst, Maruška hisses to me. I walk over to where she’s standing, by the wall. The darkened hall stretches behind us as far as I can see. A beam of moonlight falls through the windows. A huge map hangs on the wall in front of us. Maruška rolls it back. Well, look at that. A lift. I feel Maruška’s breath on my face. She isn’t angry any more.

An old wooden lift. Carved with stars, sickles, and hammers. Stalin himself probably rode in it, whenever he managed to tear a chunk of time out of his crowded schedule to oversee the construction. We sink into the depths. I hear ropes and chains unwinding, then there’s a jerk as we come to a stop. The door opens on to a gaping chill. I hope Maruška knows where we are. It’s dark and cold. Damp. Suddenly a bright light stabs me in the eyes.

He lowers his torch. Tall guy in a rubber coat. Craggy chin. Tough old guy.

Maruška talks a mile a minute, the old man keeps cutting her off. We walk behind him. Other lights flicker in the darkness around us. We come to a huge mound of dirt. This must be where the generator is, I can hear the engine humming. A dim yellow light shines on the heaps of damp earth around us. Light bulbs hang off a wooden flagpole. I see a tent. Crates, benches. I stamp my foot, dirt. Are we in a cave? The ceiling’s too high up to see.

The lights around us are head torches. Now I see them: silent workers moving all around us. Carting wheelbarrows of dirt out of a deep pit reinforced with wood. Long wooden crates sit next to the hills of dirt, stacked on top of each other.

The guy in the rubber coat is still giving Maruška a dressing-down.

I make a move, this is too much. The guy hisses, Maruška turns and disappears into the darkness.

Now he’s staring me in the eyes. I stand as if nailed to the spot.

Mark Isakyevich Kagan, he says, squeezing my hand. You were quite delayed. But the main thing is you’re here, my friend. I trust the journey from Terezín was satisfactory?

He turns away, uninterested in my answer, and we tramp along in the light of his torch. I look around for Maruška, and slip in the dirt. In my mind I thank Alex for giving me solid boots. We come to the big pit with the light bulbs on a pole.

He shines his light into the crates. They’re filled with corpses. Ancient, rotted corpses. One or two in each crate. Some are just a heap of bones. Their skin looks like an old rag or piece of paper with a coating of dried grey cement. In some there’s just a skull and bones. They must have a special rat patrol, that’s for sure.

We never found anything like this in the catacombs. Lebo would’ve pulled us out. That would’ve been too much.

But I know from the way the air rolls around underground why some of the corpses hadn’t rotted completely. You’d find a dog or squirrel like that in some of the Terezín cellars, but the work crews cleaned out most of the human remains after the war.

Kagan calls over one of the workers pushing a wheelbarrow out of the pit. He shines his light on it: yep, full of bones. The worker is a boy with a ponytail. He stops at an empty crate. Takes the bones out with gloved hands, lays them in the crate.

There’s a low, heavy table I hadn’t noticed before. Some coins, pieces of paper on it, a few bullet shells. Old, yellowed photographs. Kagan shines his light on them.

Naturally this is a secret operation, Kagan says. And you see what conditions are like. But we already have results. The Katyn massacre was a walk in the park compared to this, I’m telling you, friend! Kagan slaps me on the back. He’s trying hard to be friendly, but the tension’s coming off of him like a live wire. He picks things up from the table as he speaks.

The last layer’s pre-war, he says. There are thousands of them, maybe ten thousand. That’s why they built the museum here after the war. To cover the execution site.

He hands me a piece of fabric.

These are NKVD epaulettes, he says. Soviet secret police. There’s always something to find in those graves. A family portrait in the lining. Officer stripes. Break open a lump of dirt and you find a piece of newspaper the executioners used to roll their cigarettes.

We keep walking past the crates. To another pit, more like a crater. The light of the head torches reveals the pale, narrow faces of girls. They look funny, hunched down in the muddy pit like fireflies. Brushes and blades flash in their hands.

Classic wartime interlayer, Kagan says, pointing to the pit. Jews. The ghetto was here during the war, right over our heads. The Germans totally wiped it out, killed them all, burned it. Nobody knows it existed.

He points his torch back at the table. A small heap of rusty, twisted bits of metal. The same kind of stuff we used to fish out of Terezín for Lebo. Bent safety pins, hairslides, a small shiny something or other, maybe a flattened bullet. And that’s not all.

Teeth! Kagan raps on the table. None of the villagers ever had their teeth repaired, but the intellectuals all had a filling or two. Some even had dentures. Here they’re all mixed together. And what have we got here?

Kagan points out a badge: a tiny silver skull. He starts picking things out of the pile and holding them up in front of my eyes, flashing his light in my face. I back away and bump into the boy pushing the wheelbarrow. Must’ve wandered over when I wasn’t looking. He’s got one of his co-workers with him, also in muddy rubber boots. The girls start climbing out of the pit, walking slowly towards us. Like they don’t want to miss what their boss is saying.

German prisoners were shot here too. They had to dig their own pit, of course, not too far from the Jewish graves. Something of an irony of history, isn’t it?

Now Kagan is shoving uniform buttons in front of my face. A swastika belt buckle. A badge with a skull.

The girls take everything he hands them and lay the objects back on the table. I’d rather be talking to them. What do I want with some lecture? I’ve had enough of underground graves. For as long as I live. I was pretty angry that Kagan had chased Maruška away. Looking around at the girls, they remind me of someone.

Then it hits me: it was pale creatures just like them, all twisted up with pain inside, who used to come to us, the seekers of the bunks. The girl laying a buckle on the table right now had that same tough, hardened look — except when she looked at Kagan and a softness stole into her eyes.

Kagan turns to go and we follow along behind him, the boys covered in mud, the girls from the pit. Stretching out our stride, mud squirting at every step, we walk back to the pole where the generator hums. And I see more people, standing and sitting around on the crates and benches. Young people. All of them Kagan’s workers, to judge from the mud.

He steps up on a crate and reaches with both hands towards the depths of the cave, or whatever it is we’re in, as if he’s groping for the edge where the light gives way to darkness.

Now all we have left to uncover is the final layer, Kagan says loudly, towering atop the crate in his rubber boots, waving his hands like some spooky magician working his abracadabra. Everybody stands and listens, some clutch a pickaxe or shovel, but nobody so much as coughs or shuffles their feet. Then Kagan raises his voice even louder. The echo is pretty impressive.

Yes, now we will dig in the dirt where the tyrants forced your parents and grandparents to kneel. You know as well as I do that this government won’t allow a word about Belarusians murdering one another. But we will shatter the silence! To forget the horrors of the past is to consent to a new evil, Kagan thunders.

He snatches a shovel out of the hand of one of the girls from the pit and holds it in the air.

You see? Dig in the ground and the house of tyranny will collapse! he cries.

The girl looks happy Kagan chose her. But also a little embarrassed.

Kagan leaps down from the crate and seizes me by the hand. Then he goes on speaking.

Your work in Europe, your devotedly maintained and freely visited burial sites are a model to us, dear friend, he says, pumping my hand.

Terezín is in every encyclopaedia, every textbook, he says, speaking now just to me. We want to be on the world map too. We believe you can help us achieve that.

Kagan is shaking my hand, sealing our bond of brotherhood, when all of a sudden we hear it: a sharp, nerve-rending sound. A siren. It wails intermittently as the yellow bulbs blink on and off. An alarm.

Everyone freezes at first, then springs into motion, some people go running off into the dark as Kagan drags me towards the tent. I don’t resist, since all of a sudden I see her, holding open a flap. We slip inside, Kagan gropes around on the ground, lifts a wooden cover. I see stairs, the faint glow of light bulbs. Maruška’s right behind me, we clamber down the steps, there are others behind her.

I duck my head and follow Kagan down a long tunnel, till we come to a train. It looks like one of those rides for kids.

We sit down, Kagan, Maruška and me, some big guy squeezes in with us, plus two girls, panting for breath, smeared with dirt. People are coming out of the tunnel one by one and climbing on board. The carriage next to us, a little thing, is filled with wooden crates, sealed shut. Kagan chuckles softly.

I bet you didn’t know there are still countries where an archaeologist can feel like Indiana Jones. Eh, my friend? Ho ho ho!

And we’re off. The ride is bumpy in places, and slow, but we move right along. I can’t believe we didn’t think of this in Terezín! A little train like this — it’d be great for older tourists! From the Monument to the cemetery and the ramparts. And the kids! Then they wouldn’t be so worn out from walking.

Where’re we going? I ask Kagan.

Headquarters. Of our opposition party. Whatever we find, we store there, he says.

Is it safe? I ask. I have my doubts.

The government and the opposition both support our plan. So there’s no threat to your mission, he says, leaning in towards me. I can’t see his face, but I can smell the strong stink of his rubber coat.

Where’s your headquarters?

Minsk.

Oh no. And here I was hoping we were on our way somewhere else. But if I’d had any idea where I was going to end up, I would’ve stayed nailed to my seat in that train.

The last faint light disappears around the bend. Now it’s really dark and cold. I want to hold Maruška’s hand, but it’s too cramped to move. Still, I bless the darkness, at least now I can take care of the clot in my nose. I’d be embarrassed in front of them.

I reach into my pocket, take out the Spider, and stick it in one of my fabulous boots. Wiggle my fingers, feeling it through my sock. Slowly we wind our way through the dark, blacker than black, nobody talks. Why bother. It’s obvious they’re after us.




10


Finally the light appears and the train jerks to a stop. We get out and walk. Another narrow tunnel, another set of wooden stairs. We walk up, Kagan first, somebody up there is holding open the cover. We’re in a house. Bare wooden walls, high ceiling. No furniture, just crates. They’re everywhere, some new and smelling of wood, others ancient and warped, stinking of dried mud. All of them are shut. Kagan is greeted by a crowd of men and women. They exchange strong hugs, happy to see each other. I want to wait for Maruška, but then all of a sudden I see him. He splits off from the others, walks over to me.

You got the Spider? Alex asks.

Way back when, I had told him what I named it.

Better give me it now. I don’t know how much time we have, he says.

You mean martial law? I ask.

Whatever happens, stick with me. You got it or not? Alex asks again. Mr Hard-line. It actually hasn’t been that long since we saw each other in Terezín. Now he’s got a screwdriver in his hand, wires draped around his neck. Overalls with big pockets. Pliers, tape measure, a few other tools poking out. I haven’t seen him like this before. He looks like a handyman.

The people who were working under the museum come crawling out one by one. Next thing you know the wooden floor’s covered with footprints. Young girls, boys. We could’ve used them at the Comenium. They would’ve liked it there. I follow Alex as we walk towards the back of the room, working our way through the crush. These seekers of the bunks are a tougher bunch than our sensitive students. There’s anger on their faces. I bet they’re pretty pissed off they had to make a run for it. Everything’s tougher and crazier here. In our country the girls would be selling souvenirs instead of digging with shovels. Listening to Lebo’s talks instead of Kagan’s fiery speeches. At night they’d be smoking red grass, drinking and dancing. They wouldn’t be so pale. Ah, well! Wouldn’t that be nice? And then I see Maruška.

She’s cradling a little boy in her arms, with another one hanging on her skirt. Both of their faces are glowing as she whispers something into the down on the little one’s head.

In the corner of the room there are more kids, women, older ones too.

There’s something I want to show you, says Alex. You didn’t have this in Terezín.

We go behind a divider. Again I’m blinking in the dark. I can feel the Spider in my boot. Now what? After I give it to Alex, then what’ll happen to me? Where will I go? These are the questions I want to discuss with Mr Hard-line. The sooner the better. He takes me by the elbow, we keep walking.

In the murk of the back room I make out some human-size mannequins, standing and sitting, hunched on chairs.

These aren’t brides like the girl with the shiny headband. There’s a stench of old age coming off them.

One standing next to me moves, I almost scream. It opens its arms and I stare at the face in disbelief. A guy with leathery skin, shrivelled, nose like a beak. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a man that old in all my life.

I’m even more shocked when a voice issues from the ruins.

Welcome, comrade, he says in Czech. And wraps me in a hug. He staggers, I struggle to hold him up. His long, nervous fingers, like toothpicks, tremble before he drops into a wicker chair deftly pushed underneath him by Alex.

The most beautiful memories! he rasps. In Milovice everyone had a little house with a garden and flowers! he says, and his head drops to his chest, asleep, wheezing in and out of his nose.

He doesn’t smell like the other mannequins, though. He smells normal.

Alex tells me that Luis Tupanabi was his professor at the Institute in Milovice. Not far from Prague. Yep, the Soviets had a particularly large garrison there.

He’s also a concentration-camp survivor, Alex says, adjusting a warm blanket around the professor’s slumped shoulders.

The fascists forced him to make tsantsas, he goes on.

Tsantsas? I ask, wondering whether Alex is slipping back into Belarusian.

That’s right. I’ll show you later, Alex says. Luis has done tremendous work on behalf of our museum. But now he’s really old. I think he’s going to die soon.

He wraps another blanket around Luis’s shoulders. Throws one over his legs. Luis has polka-dot slippers on his feet.

You know, says Alex, I went to see Spielberg in Los Angeles. He’s got a Holocaust archive with thousands of survivors telling their story on thousands of screens. Not bad. But when people see something on TV they forget it right away. What they see in our museum they’ll never forget.

Museum, I say, looking around. What museum? Besides the mannequins there’s nothing here but crates. Crates full of specimens.

The museum we’re building in Khatyn, Alex says. It’s going to be the most famous memorial site in the world. The devil had his workshop here in Belarus. The deepest graves are in Belarus. But nobody knows about them. That’s why you’re here!

Uh-huh, I say to say something.

This Alex is different from the one I knew in Terezín. There he was learning. Here he’s in charge.

I need all of Lebo’s databases immediately, he says. I need your help. I need cash, snaps Mr Hard-line. He’s getting fired up like Kagan at the burial site.

Then we hear it and freeze. Bang! Like a battering ram against the walls of the house. Everything shakes. And again. Explosions. Firecrackers, not grenades. But powerful ones.

We make our way back around the divider. Everyone’s running around. The explosions still ring in our ears. Somebody shouts, a girl. Or one of the children. And crack, into the wall again.

Nobody needs to explain to me what’s going on. They’re back. The cops, they’ve been on my heels at every turn since I got here. Well, I was slightly mistaken. They weren’t cops.

The message from the megaphone isn’t complicated. Come out with our hands over our heads. Somebody opens the door. It feels chilly out, but not actually cold. It’s early morning. The sun is coming up.

I want to get out, in the air. I put my hands over my head, take a step. Alex pulls me back. And grinning at me from the other side is Kagan.

Stick with me, Mr Hard-line repeats. I think I might be getting a tad allergic to him. People start walking out. The voice from the megaphone repeats its request.

They walk out silently. No panic, no fuss. Did they prepare for this moment? They walk slowly past me, the girls from the pit sticking close to each other. I think I recognize the boy with the ponytail. Faces with burning eyes. I don’t actually notice it right away. But these seekers of the bunks don’t have their hands up.

The guy walking past me now is swinging a lathe with nails sticking out of the bottom, another ragtag type in rubber boots has a pickaxe. They’re a regular army, these guys and girls in glasses with the gaunt appearance of mathematicians, deranged poets, computer geniuses. Youngsters in torn jeans, corduroy jackets, overalls and muddy trainers, marching out like they marched through the tunnel, quietly, one by one, but almost everyone’s carrying something they can whip or swing to defend themselves.

The one I’m looking for isn’t with them. Either that or she was one of the first ones out.

I’ve got Kagan on one side of me, Alex on the other, holding my elbow. We walk out. Alex kicks the door shut behind us.

Frosted bushes stand out against the white of the snow. I see prefab blocks of flats off in the distance. A scattering of stunted birch trees, shrubs, a heap of bricks here and there, rusty sheet metal on the ground. Looks like a construction site.

We hear a roar, screeching metal, coming closer. Then we see it, crushing trees, bushes, in its path, stones shooting out of its treads. An armoured personnel carrier, red stars painted on its green and sandy-yellow sides. A tall man in fatigues stands next to the driver, holding on with one hand, megaphone in the other. A flank of men advances through the bushes, also dressed in fatigues, helmets on, weapons in hand.

Should I jump into the bushes, crawl back in the house, scream that I’m an inostranyets? I guess Alex can sense my confusion. He says, absolutely calmly: Follow my lead, got it?

The vehicle and the soldiers pass the piles of bricks, the phalanx quickly cutting a path through the shrubs. Our crew is surrounded in front of the house.

Now we see them, straggling in behind the soldiers, in ones and twos at first, but as the phalanx comes to a stop they fuse into a mob. There are people in the trees everywhere, shaking their fists, some clenching sticks, chunks of brick. A stone zips through the air, then another. A boy in front of me collapses, bleeding from the head. A shriek of hate erupts from the crowd. Women scream at the soldiers’ backs. The men facing us are wearing quilted coats and overalls, some of them are in track jackets. I know these overfed jailer types, I can spot them a mile off. The commander in the personnel carrier lifts the megaphone to his mouth, shouts a command, and the soldiers turn and point their guns above the rabble-rousers’ heads. They’re protecting us from the mob.

Then the commander points at us.

The patience of the Belarusian people is at an end! he thunders.

The boy’s knuckles next to me are white from his tight grip on the lathe, but his hand is shaking.

The big man in the APC lifts a sack in his hand. An ordinary grey sack.

Our investigation of the Jewish scum has led us here! the commander says into the megaphone. He points to the house.

From here the opposition and Jewish organizations are poisoning our city!

The mob roars, another stone flies, somebody cries out in pain. The soldiers raise their weapons. Suddenly it’s silent.

The commander shows the sack to the mob, holds it up over the heads of the soldiers, turns toward us.

The Jews and oppositionists feed the rats with their faeces, he says into the megaphone. That’s why they shit in the gutters. They want to destroy Sun City. Are we going to let them? he shouts. The people start screaming in hatred again.

The commander raises his hand. He’s doing a real ballet up there.

The president is watching! he shouts, and he hurls the sack to the ground. It sits a moment, bulging and thrashing, then everyone gasps as a ball of giant rats scrabble out, hairless, toothy, filthy things, feverishly gnawing each other, and suddenly, Bang! Bang! Bang! The commander empties his magazine, shooting the rats to bloody bits, and somebody in the crowd cries out with glee.

What shall we do with this nest of traitors? Spare them? Or punish them? the commander says through the megaphone.

It’s quiet for a moment. Then there’s a roar as the people hurl themselves at the soldiers. The soldiers lower their guns. And the attackers run right through them, rushing us in bunches, clubs and sticks coming down on heads, backs, all around me. I take a nasty blow. Somebody throws something over me, grips my head, drags me away. I hear gurgling, clomping feet, my forehead slams into something. The crowd is crushing me up against the APC. The commander offers me his hand, I grab hold, push off something soft with my feet, roll into a seat. The commander hauls someone else up: Alex. We start to move, cutting slowly through the crowd. I see some of our crew fighting. A few of them are standing backed against the wall of the house, swinging their sticks, there’s the flash of a pickaxe or two, it’s the last time I’ll see the grim, hard faces of these seekers of the bunks. We leave the battlefield, crossing a stretch of snow on to an asphalt road. The commander sits in front of me, driving now, Kagan squats beside him. And peeking out of the blankets next to him is Whistling Beak, Professor Luis. I turn around and see Maruška on the seat behind me. I close my eyes to give myself time to believe she’s really there. This part of town’s quiet and deserted, must be the outskirts of Sun City. We pass the hunched box of a prefab housing block.

Maruška has tears in her eyes.

I lean towards her, into her breath, and she smacks me in the face.

I thought you’d be glad we were back together again. I wrench the words out, slowly, to keep from biting my tongue as we jolt along the road.

You better fucking believe I am! You’re my assignment. But I had to leave my kids back there. Thanks to you.

We didn’t talk after that.




11


The sun climbs through the mist above the trees. The APC rolls onward, the forest around us thick as night. We climb a slope, and when we come to a bend in the road I do it, before I can change my mind. I slide down the side of the carrier into a snowdrift, and once the APC has rumbled out of sight, I take a breath, stand up, and scramble into the woods. Along the way I tear off the bandages Maruška put on, no need for them any more. Everywhere I’ve been I’ve run away, as soon as I had the chance. I think of Maruška’s children, her relationship with Alex, nothing I can do about that. I take another couple of steps and Kagan’s standing right there. He walks up and gives me a slap.

I’m not his apprentice, though, or some wimpy little student. I look around the woods. I could bury you right here, Kagan, after I get through with you. He laughs in my face.

What about those students of yours, you shithead? I say. He just snickers, doesn’t even get mad.

The best of every generation are sacrificed, Francysk Skaryna said that, and he was a true humanist, not like us, Kagan says, grinning at me. He turns and walks away and I follow him — what else can I do?

Alex helps me up and says, Don’t try anything stupid or we’ll tie you up. Besides, where would you go? You’ll freeze to death!

We drive off. A tap on the shoulder. Maruška opens the satchel with the red cross on it, offers me a pill, a sweet. I take it. She pops one too.

A big man stands by a spruce tree, its branches sagging with snow. Fur hat, rifle across his chest, dark glasses. He waves. We turn down an inconspicuous path into a forest so dense it takes a moment before I can even breathe.

A wooden cottage, a fence, a table with a roof over it, surrounded by wooden benches, a fire pit of glowing logs, some bearded guys in fatigues. One of them, in a red ski cap, clicks his heels and salutes. The commander leaps down from the APC. The men gently carry the professor, wrapped in blankets, his long thin legs dangling in slippers. Alex is giving them orders. Some other guys with beards are carrying plates and bottles to the table under the roof. I’m hungry and all of a sudden I realize that maybe I should hide the Spider someplace else, since who knows what’s going to happen to me? Out here in the wilderness. After I’ve given it to Alex.

The commander shakes my hand and says, I’m Arthur. Welcome to our partisan brigade, brother!

The burning wood is warm and tangy. We sit down at the table under the roof: Kagan, Arthur, Alex, and me. Maruška stands behind the commander like a new recruit waiting to report. Alex hands her a plate. She nibbles daintily while we wolf down our food. Then Arthur pours vodka all round. Kagan unbuttons his coat, plants a cigar in his mouth. We sit like that a while.

Forgive me the drama, brothers, Arthur says, hanging his head.

I think it’s just for show, he’s actually enjoying himself.

Nobody says a word.

I had to satisfy the mob, you understand, don’t you, brothers? He drops his head again.

We’re all still waiting.

I have my orders, I’m a soldier! Arthur cries. You know my only access to the president is as a soldier serving my homeland, he says.

Right, that’s why you’re the one who always leads the clean-up actions, Kagan says icily.

Oh, come now, brother! Don’t you believe me? Arthur lays one hand on his heart and grabs Kagan’s hand with the other.

No, says Kagan, and Alex laughs. Alex sits, legs stretched out, also puffing away.

I get results, Arthur says sternly. I saw the president and the president agrees.

Kagan and Alex act like it’s nothing, but they prick up their ears.

The president has an interest in utilizing burial sites and developing tourism. As do the opposition leaders. So it’s been decided. This entire zone — he waves his hand around the trees — will be off limits to both sides. Khatyn will be home to the Devil’s Workshop, a museum for Europe, for the world. And this partisan unit — he points to some of the bearded guys staggering around — will be neutral, and answer to no one but the Ministry of Tourism. Not bad, right? What do you say?

Arthur leans back and stretches his massive body, cracks his knuckles, folds his arms on his chest.

Excellent, Alex says finally. Smiling.

Let’s have a toast, then, Arthur says, rising to his feet. To the Devil’s Workshop!

We stand and drink. Alex gives Maruška a glass as well.

Arthur loosens his belt, lights a smoke.

We’ll remain neutral, whoever wins, the opposition or the president. One day this little civil war of ours will end. And the country will open up. With or without the president. We need to have something to offer the world. Something no one else has got.

Arthur steps behind me and throws his arm around my shoulder like we’re long-lost friends.

My Czech brother, he says, crushing my arm. Syabro! You’ve done a fine job! You captured the attention of the world. You turned — what is it called? He snaps his fingers at Maruška.

Terezín! she blurts out. In the middle of eating a plum. Nearly chokes. She puts down her plate.

You turned Terezín into a real cause célèbre. You had contributions from politicians, governments, arms dealers, pacifists, nationalists, Madonna, and all within a short time, eh?

Five months, Maruška peeps.

And how much was it? Arthur asks.

Maruška says a number that takes my breath away. I feel for the Spider. Still there. In my sock. I had nothing to do with the money. The board members and the eggheads from the Monument probably gobbled it up.

Brother — Arthur leans towards me, breathing in my face — you know how many tourists a year come to Belarus?

Three thousand five hundred and something, Maruška answers for me. I have no idea.

It’s high time that changed, Arthur says. Guess who had the most casualties during the war? We did! Guess who had the most people murdered under communism? We did. And guess who still has people disappearing, eh? We do! That’s the division of labour in the globalized world of today, dammit! Thailand: sex. Italy: paintings and seaside. Holland: clogs and cheese. Right? And Belarus? Horror trip, right? Don’t look so serious, for fuck’s sake! Arthur bellowed. You could tell he was used to giving orders.

Visit the Devil’s Workshop, the European monument to genocide! Arthur declared in a booming voice, pouring everyone another round of vodka.

Do we have the sea, the mountains, historic buildings? No, all our historic buildings were burned. So we’ll build a Jurassic Park of horror, a museum of totalitarianism. Belarus will get on the map thanks to our bags of bones, our bundles of blood and pus. Good, right? Catchy, right? What do you say?

I think Arthur would’ve been happier giving his speech from on top of the APC.

We drink a toast. And another. Arthur gets his breath back.

It’s a disgrace! he says, slamming his fist down on the table. They’ve got burial sites from the war in Western Europe. The concentration camps were all cleaned up ages ago. In Dachau you can eat off the floor. I know, I had experts look into it. Do you realise the cleaning ladies in Drancy — those black bitches — earn higher salaries than our teachers? Look at Auschwitz! Those whores the Poles, they know how to do it. A nice little hotel, bus ride from Krakow, tour of Auschwitz, lunch included: fifty-two euros, please. That’s how it works! And our burial sites? We’ve still got ravens pecking skulls, and the devil only knows who’s in those pits. It tears at a man’s soul. Arthur grips my elbow and I see tears have suddenly sprung to his eyes.

This is about the souls of our ancestors, he whispers.

I keep quiet.

Syabro, friend. Do you know what is written in The Song of Igor’s Campaign?

I still keep quiet.

Until the dead find peace, the living will live in shame.

Mm-hm.

Will you help us? Arthur cries, tears streaming down his face. He’s only talking to me now.

Sure! What else can I say?

All right, Arthur says. Give your contacts to Alex. You’ll be project secretary. Just like you worked for Terezín, now you’ll work for the Devil’s Workshop. Tomorrow you leave. He nods his chin at Alex.

Arthur lays a hand on Kagan’s shoulder.

There is one thing, though, that our president strongly insists on, Arthur says, using his free hand to wipe his tears with a napkin.

What’s that? Kagan says.

You and your people need to step aside for now. Just for now!

Kagan’s spine stiffens. He’s furious.

I will explain! Arthur roars. Where is that girl from the ministry? Christ!

Maruška hasn’t moved from the spot.

How many millions were killed? he snaps at her.

Under the communists? she says meekly.

No, the Germans.

In 1941 the population of Belarus was 9.5 million, in 1945 it was only 5.2, Maruška recites.

Of course, Arthur snaps his fingers impatiently. And how many of the dead were Jews?

Maruška reaches into her satchel, pulls out a file and leafs through it.

Roughly, dammit! Screw the details, Arthur barks.

About a third, Maruška says. According to Wikipedia!

There we have it. Arthur bangs his fist on the table. That’s an awful lot, you understand? Now he’s talking to all of us, not just Kagan.

A third of the Devil’s Workshop money should go to Jewish victims.

That’s an awful lot. The president is concerned that our people won’t allow it.

Kagan is silent. All of us are.

You saw what they’re like, Arthur says. There’s no way to contain them. Simple people. Devoted to the president. They’ve never eaten so well. They’re not anti-Semites, God forbid, but they really believe that stuff about poisoned rats. He shrugs.

Kagan squeezes his fingers, his knuckles crack.

You need to find a way to explain to your people, Arthur tells Kagan. The president is appointing you head of the Committee for Coordination with Jewish Groups on the Devil’s Workshop Project. Fixed salary. Are you in?

I didn’t care how Kagan answered. I just sat there listening to the crackling wood. A few other modest little fires blazed around us. The partisans crawled into sleeping bags laid on top of beds of pine needles. The one in the red cap brought us blankets. I threw one over my shoulders. Nobody objected.

I open my eyes and see Alex lying on a bed of needles. Maruška’s hair is under his elbow, as red as the coals I was staring at as I fell asleep, thinking of her. What did I expect, though? They had come to us together. But back then I didn’t know she had kids. I certainly do now. My road to Maruška was at an end.

OK. I get up and walk away. Past the fire pit with the glowing logs. I steal into the forest and head for the broken asphalt road.

How far from here to Minsk? I’d walked from Terezín to Prague. But back then it wasn’t freezing. And there were cars going by.

Suddenly I hear the hum of an engine. I dive into the snow behind a tree and see them. The commander driving, Kagan beside him, arm around his shoulders. Singing, laughing, passing a bottle back and forth. Couldn’t thumb them down, obviously.

I try to walk through the forest, but the trees are too thick here. I sit down on a trunk, apparently felled by a storm, pull off my boots, take out the Spider. It only takes three tries, with the help of some wet snow, to get it down my throat. Now it’s inside me. That’s what I wanted.

I don’t have to wait long. Red Cap is the first to spot me, sneaking around with his Kalashnikov. He sees me, gives a whistle. The next thing I know, Alex is on top of me, throwing a noose around my neck. And we start back.

You amaze me, Alex says. This is a chance for you to continue what you started with Lebo. Don’t you think he’d be happy?

I don’t know, I say. But yeah, I’m glad they found me. In spite of the rope around my neck. The forest here makes me sick.

Are you nuts, trying to run away?

What should I tell him? That I’m used to crawling through catacombs, but this forest makes me want to throw up? That, yes, I helped Lebo, and had a crush on Sara, and Maruška too, oh well, but I don’t give a damn about his plans? He wouldn’t understand.

Hey, guess what we’ve got? Alex says. Duschegubky. Soul eaters. This is where they tested out the gas vans. We found two, if you can believe it. Rusted out, but the whole system is intact. The locals kept chickens in them.

Are you serious?

Yeah! You had two villages razed in Czechoslovakia, right? Lidice and that other one — Maruška would know the name. But they torched nine thousand here, some of them people and all. That was the Ost Plan, extermination of the Slavs. Don’t tell me you wouldn’t like working on that.

He’s dragging me behind him. Too fast. The noose cuts into my neck. He stops.

Know what? Alex says. Hand over the archive and you can go wherever you want.

I look around the woods. Shake my head. There’s nowhere for me to go.

Where is it?

I try to say in the hotel, but I can’t, because of the noose.

You didn’t leave it in the hotel, Alex says. I already looked. Did some tidying up, too. They didn’t do a very good job of cleaning before you came! Sorry ’bout that, syabro! We sometimes work in that room. I bet you’ve got it on you, haven’t you? If I make you strip naked, you’re going to catch cold.

I keep my mouth shut.

You swallowed it, didn’t you? Alex laughs. Of course, what else? Well, let’s go, c’mon. He jerks the rope.

Where to? I rasp.

Khatyn. You can give me it there.




12


Maruška, you cute little decoy, leading all the other goats and goatlings under the knife. We’re driving along, sitting under a tarpaulin, Alex is across from me, Luis Tupinabi’s head in his lap. The old man’s eyes are closed, if his face didn’t twitch every now and then I’d think he was dead. We sit stiffly in the piercing cold. I look over at Maruška. I couldn’t be with the flock, or with Sara, or with you, or with anybody I wanted to be with, but here we are, riding together across this chilly land. Alex slaps his palm on the tarpaulin from outside. Don’t sleep, he shouts, we’re almost there! The sputtering tractor that’s towing our cart up the wooded slope is driven by my old friend Red Cap. A guy with glasses sits with us, Kalashnikov across his chest. We’ve long since left the asphalt, no ditch for me to hide in along these roads, trees all over the place like they’re standing watch.

I see a building, a small house, through the mist and light snow. We stop a little way past it, at a tent. The flap is open. Inside, a stove, and next to it, in the gloom — it seems everything here is either in the gloom or in the mist — a huddled figure, holding a dish, puking into it.

Rolf! I cry. He stares at me through his glasses, tries to get up, retches. Na pamyat o Minske, I decipher the Cyrillic on the edge of the dish.

Some tourist you are, puking all over a Minsk souvenir! Is that for your mum, or your girlfriend? I give him a slap on the shoulder. I’m happy to see him.

Listen, Maruška’s outside! It’s like a regular reunion, isn’t it?

Rolf laughs like I’ve told some amazing joke. Then coughs and starts retching again. He’s a wreck. This isn’t the happy-go-lucky guy I knew in Terezín.

He pukes into the dish again. With shaky hands he sets it down on the flowery camping table, lays his arms on the table too, and puts his head on them. I think he’s sobbing.

I remember that time he wept in the bunkroom — so did I. Then I freeze. Where’s Lebo? Is he dead? I blurt. I have to know.

But Rolf just starts spewing again.

I decide to go and look for Maruška. Tough Maruška, the mummy, hm.

She’s still under the tarpaulin. I lift up a corner and see her with Tupanabi’s head on her lap, wiping his cheeks and face with a handkerchief, I wonder if it’s the same bloody rag from the museum in Minsk. The two bruisers with rifles don’t put them down for a second as they move boxes and plastic bags into the tent. Probably food and stuff. They pay no attention to me.

Maruška pulls the old man’s cadaverous hand from the blankets and, stroking his face, slips a syringe from her sleeve into her hand and inserts the needle into his arm. She pushes the plunger, pauses, looks at me, staring me in the eye. Sees my lips move, saying her name, quietly. I lower the tarpaulin. I look around. Alex is nowhere in sight.

I take two, three steps away from the tractor, to see if anything happens. And the next thing I know I’m in strips of mist, it gives me cover, till the wind breaks through the mist on my left and shows me what’s ahead.

I’ve never seen anything like it. Chimneys jut towards the sky out of the damp earth. The chimneys of cottages, everywhere, rising out of the mist. Chunks of walls, broken stairs. Grey chimney pots surround me like masts in a graveyard of ships. But it’s a village graveyard. I’m on a road paved with black stones that leads to the flattened gate of a lifeless farmstead.

Come, let me show you my little museum, Alex says. The sneak. He’s right behind my back.

He grabs the rope hanging around my neck. I’d forgotten all about it. And we walk, again, him in front, leading me uphill. It’s drizzling. I’m glad the jacket Alex gave me has a hood. Drops of icy rain fall on Alex’s close-shaved head.

This is Khatyn, he says. There were hundreds of villages like this, thousands, not like in your country! Could they wipe out the Slavs? They tried, right here. Three hundred thousand they killed. And nobody in the West knows. How come it got swept under the rug? How come nobody talks about it? Huh?

It was a long time ago, I say in a normal voice. The noose is pretty loose now. It isn’t choking me any more.

Bullshit! Alex yelps. It got swept under the rug because the Germans were in charge, but the ones who did the killing were Russians, Ukrainians, Lithuanians. They did it for money, and everybody keeps quiet about it, because nobody wants to piss Putin off. Get it?

I nod.

Slovak soldiers were stationed in Oktyabrsk, where too many people got slaughtered and burned to even count! About ten of them were my relatives.

Awful, I say.

All those spoiled bunk seekers coming halfway across Europe so Lebo can blow on their wounds and make it better! All those hippie cunts and naive bitches with their parents’ credit cards and fabulous passports. Everyone here’s a seeker, get it? And you can bet your arse they don’t have any credit.

It dawns on me that the paths here are made out of black stone for a reason. It’s a monument to the village. Or a memorial.

I’m proud to be Belarusian, Alex says. But I don’t want to just sit around eating draniki and watching TV. Or protest and throw stones. I want to preserve the nation’s memory. If we lose our past, we lose our future. We won’t exist, get it?

Yeah, Alex, I get it. I wish you didn’t exist. That’s what I think. I don’t say it.

We can’t live like that. Buried forever along with our dead like we were some kind of demons. Can you even see what I mean? Do you fucking understand? He tugs on the rope around my neck. That bothers me.

Hey, Alex! I need to tie my shoe, OK? I hunch over and look to see if there’s a stone I can grab. Nobody’s going to tell me what to do any more.

Your shoes are fine, Alex says calmly, just come on.

So I get up and we go. Guess he knows that trick.

He lets go of the rope and gives me a friendly slap on the back. He knew the whole time he was choking me.

Look. He gestures grandly into the mist. We’re gonna build a huge car park for buses over there. Kiosks! Like they have in Auschwitz. Resurface the road! You think the tourists would like it more if it was bumpy? We could put in a rainforest! They don’t have that at home! What do you think? Work, you cunt! You’re the expert!

Rainforests are nasty, I tell him truthfully. Hot, muggy. Terrible weather. The tourists’ll tell him to go fuck off. Summers here aren’t nice like they are in Terezín.

Only now do I notice that all the chimneys have signs on them: Navicki, Navicka, 50, 42, 14, 5, 3, 1, 1 … names and ages of the dead, aha.

This just isn’t going to do the trick, Alex says, waving his hand around the ruins. Some boring, old-style memorial. That won’t get the attention of the new Europeans. Look at the Poles and that Katyn of theirs! A step ahead, again! They’re shooting a movie about it! And what about our Khatyn? Nobody’s even heard of it.

All of a sudden Alex jumps up on a wall and shouts: Listen to me, you heroic Poles! The people who got murdered here in Khatyn weren’t officers who could defend themselves. No, sir!

He jumps down, grabs the rope, and starts talking normally again.

They forced the men to run around in a circle, till they got tired. Then they herded them into a barn and set fire to it. They used another barn for the women and children. Why didn’t the people resist? Because Slavs are stupid brutes? No, they just didn’t believe it. Right up to the last minute. Throwing kids in the fire. Why would someone do that? Nobody thought it would happen until it actually did. The killers had it all worked out.

We start walking back towards the tent.

I learnt something there in Terezín. Alex gives me a punch in the shoulder. Oral history! The most important thing is the story. Authenticity. That’s what Lebo said, right?

We both stop short.

Lebo, that’s right.

This is Belarus, my friend. No Kafka T-shirts are going to help us here.

We walk straight towards the building, bypassing the tent. The flap is down. I don’t know where Maruška and Rolf are. The only sign of the tractor is the furrows in the snow.

I want to tell Alex to untie me and let me just squat down somewhere and take a crap in peace. I’ll give him the Spider. But I want out. Right now.

But I don’t say a word. The building is a little wooden cabin with slits for windows. I know what this is. The outer walls are tree trunks, but there’s armour plating behind them an inch thick, and the base is made of concrete. Yep!

Alex pulls out a key and says proudly: The museum’s inside this bunker. Fooled you, huh?

What a moron. This isn’t a bunker, it’s a firing cabin. They were all over the bastions in Terezín — we’d crawled through them all by the time we were five. They must’ve been left here by the Germans.

The bunker is behind the wood, built with a separate frame, double walls, fortified. I know the setup well. The tunnels and false hatches, the guard posts, all of it.

In spite of my bleak situation, I’m looking forward to going inside. The forest is starting to make me sneeze.

Alex drops the rope and, cursing, unlocks the door. We stamp our feet on the ice in front, I swing my head and arm around and the piece of rope’s behind my back. I take it as a good sign.

The dim glow of light bulbs. There are candles here too. Alex lights one. We used to use candles in the bunkers when we were kids. They’re pretty smoky, though. It’ll make your head spin if you aren’t used to it.

First thing we’ll buy once we get some cash is a proper generator, Alex mutters.

Concrete steps to the basement. Passageway. Staff room, they call it. Bet he doesn’t know that. Bundles of wires on the walls, saws and cleavers, knives and other junk. A long table. Nasty chemical smell. A heap of rags. Dark spill on the ground. Canisters. We used candles, but the bunkers were empty. You don’t use candles if there are chemicals. Place is a mess. I bet all his experts are Russian. Generator, right. First thing he needs to put money into is some proper ventilation. I make a note to myself to let him know.

He lights candles here too. Manages to get a couple of bulbs turned on. The low ceiling is covered in cables.

He doesn’t even have a head torch. Wires draped all over him. He’s holding a dynamo or something.

An old lady in a scarf and long skirt is sitting right by the door. She’s not alive but it’s like any moment her eyelids are going to open behind her glasses. Her face twitches, lips move. I was in the cellar with my mum and little sister, they were stamping around upstairs, my little sister was going to scream so I put a piece of bread in her mouth, to keep her quiet. I was holding my hand on her mouth and she suffocated.

She stops talking and just starts groaning and wailing, on and on. Alex disconnects the wires, turns her off.

It reeks of chemicals, human bodies, death. Alex switches wires. An old man says they killed a hundred thousand in the ghetto and took the rest out to the woods. The soul eaters came and they herded people into them and started up the engine. The gas and the smell from the engine killed every one. Jürgen’s sick today, somebody says. We need a driver. An officer in a cap waves his hand, he picks me.

And you can bet your arse he wanted to be in our museum! Alex says proudly. His neighbours would’ve beaten him to death if they’d found out that he stepped on the gas in a soul eater. But he wanted to tell his story. So he signed an agreement with us and now he’ll tell it here. He died content, knowing that kids in school will be able to hear his story forever.

There’s an old lady behind a plastic curtain. A bouquet of waxed flowers next to her, some candles. She was seven, they nailed her dad to the gate, burned everyone else, and all she remembers is the galoshes, Alex says. He turns her on. Why did you have to wear those rubber boots, little brother? Your feet are going to burn too long. In the rubber. Then the lady tells how they burned her and stabbed her with bayonets. Alex brushes a tiny ball of dust off her skirt and draws the curtain back again. Next to us a man’s voice is saying how he was afraid they would find him in a pile of corpses, because snow doesn’t melt on the dead and it would only melt on him.

Alex flicks the visor on the man’s canvas cap and points to the pipe in his hand. The Ethnographic Institute helped us out with period artefacts, he says.

He pulls me by the arm to the next room — more of them, but they aren’t really people, and I want to tell him I can’t do this, but actually I don’t know, why not?

There are stuffed people in the recesses, where the guard posts used to be. I can hear them in the passageway too. Mummy, hide us, we cried. But our mother said, The rye is still low and the grass hasn’t grown yet, spring is late this year. Where should I hide you? Hide yourselves as best you can.

Stories softly whispered or told in cracking voices mix with sobs and moans. I stagger from one to the next, tripping over the tools littering the floor, vats reeking of chemicals and flesh. My head reels from the smell, or is it disgust at what they’re doing here? What was Alex thinking? You can’t do this to people.

But then I’m gnawed by doubt. Actually why shouldn’t he? He wants the eyes of the world to turn here, and this’ll do the trick.

There are six of them in this room, six old heads on six wrinkly necks, mechanically opening and closing their mouths, and always telling the same story — soldiers come into the village and kill, houses and people burn — repeating it over and over, and it will just go on like that, the soldiers will keep coming back, as long as Alex holds the wires that carry the electricity that runs the stories stuffed inside the people’s innards.

Hey, Madonna donated to Terezín, didn’t she? What if we had Marilyn Manson shoot a video here?

Bad idea, I say.

How come?

I don’t know.

You could be in charge of the whole thing and live like a king. But if you don’t have the stomach for it, well then, fuck off. Hand over the Spider. It’s in your stomach? OK, I’ll open you up. People are expendable.

I suddenly remember Aunt Fridrich. They would rob her of her death and put her on display. Uh-uh. I couldn’t bear it.

Look, Alex says, just think it over. I’ll give you time.

No, I say.

Trust me, you get used to it. It’s an eastern tradition. Lenin, Stalin, all the big chiefs. Did you know the Soviet Union was going to have a mausoleum of Communist saints in every district?

I nod. It’s a fact.

And you know Gottwald, your first Communist president? Guess who embalmed him? Luis!

Alex pushes open an iron door. The infirmary. Every bunker like this has one.

Luis lies in a bathtub on his back. Pants, jacket, miniature socks, slippers, all bunched up in a jumble on the floor. All that’s left of him is a tiny little body. His head is propped against a wooden support, gripped in a vice. His beak of a nose juts up towards the strong light bulb on the ceiling. There’s a stink from the tub, that chemical smell again. And Rolf is there. Sitting on the edge of the tub.

Yep, the Czech comrades wanted their man embalmed too, just like the Soviets. But put a Czech on display for eternity, like Lenin? Be serious! The KGB ordered Luis to pretend he messed up, so your president would rot. Luis! Are you kidding? He wouldn’t mess up. He taught taxidermy and embalming in Milovice — I told you. And he was a damn good teacher!

Alex nudges Luis’s clothes out of the way with his foot, then kneels down and snaps Luis’s hand into a clamp on the edge of the tub. He goes around and snaps the hand in on the other side. I don’t know which arm Maruška stuck with the injection.

We recorded the tapes with Luis ages ago, didn’t we? Alex turns to Rolf. He came as a stowaway on a ship from South America and, get this, he lands in Hamburg during a Nazi parade — an Indian chief with feathers on his head! He wanted to see the world. They put him in a camp, right here in Belarus. It was a cannibal camp. Luis made it through. And the Nazis heard about his expertise. Now we’ll do him. He was the first one to make the tapes. He built this museum, he knew he’d be an exhibit. A lot older than Lebo, huh?

Snap. He fastens Luis’s leg in a clamp, above the ankle.

The ancient, emaciated body is stretched pretty tight now. Still soaking in all the fluids. Snap, now the second leg’s in place too.

Alex puts on rubber gloves.

Oh, wait, he turns to me. I promised you those tsantsas, right?

He takes a box down from the shelf and opens it for me to see. Human heads, little ones, their pursed lips sewn shut with string, or is it coarse thread?

Naranjitos, they call them, says Alex. I guess because they’re like oranges.

He yanks the box away and puts it back on the shelf.

A tsantsa like this takes finesse. Crushing the skull so the face stays intact, pulling all the little bones out through the nose, now that’s what I call a masterpiece. Everyone was blown away when they found them in the camp. Yevgeni Khaldei took pictures for the Nuremberg Trials. As proof of Nazi perversion. Luis was supposed to be sentenced but the Biochemical Institute in Moscow requested him as an expert. Like the Yanks with Wernher von Braun. And from Moscow to Milovice, it was only a step.

Let’s open him up, Alex says, nodding to Rolf. Rolf gets up from the tub and just stands there, shaking his head, glasses glinting in the gloom. Alex wrenches something out of his hands, the dish I saw him with in the tent.

He wipes the mucus and vomit on Rolf’s shoulder and shoves the dish in his face.

You see? Na pamyat o Minske, he reads aloud. That’s Russian! Na pamyats pra Minsk, it should say, this is Belarus, damn it! And besides, it should be ‘Mensk’! He flings the dish to the floor. The pieces go flying.

Alex sighs, sits down on the tub.

The Russians are our big brothers. Too big, actually. They want to swallow everything up. Now they’re even muscling in on our tourist industry. It isn’t right.

I notice something in his hand, some kind of doctor’s saw.

What’s wrong with him? I say. Rolf is blubbering quietly.

Our idiot president even spoke Russian when he declared martial law!

What’s wrong with him?

He’s soft, not like you. He was supposed to do the publicity — photos, interviews — then send it out to the world. But he went over the edge. Couldn’t handle it.

Handle?

Journalists, you know, living in the magazine world, cranking out articles, and then this! A little museum in the woods. You can handle it, though, can’t you?

Handle what?

He caved in when it came to signing. When the old-timers signed the agreement with us to put them on display.

You said they asked to do it.

Most of them, yeah. Some.

Uh-huh.

We must become great in enduring the suffering of others, Alex says jokingly. He’s grinning like a schoolboy. That’s right, sometimes we just have to tolerate other people’s suffering. The Nazis really thought it through. Jean Améry, ever read him?

I shake my head. I never read anything except those stupid textbooks, which I forgot as soon as I read them, and the emails for the Comenium, which wouldn’t mean shit to him.

You should. Alex laughed. Seeing as you’re the expert.

Here I am getting schooled again. Hm. I slide my eyes around the room. Infirmary. There must be an operating room next door. There are some boxes stacked along the wall. Canisters, metal and plastic. Some instruments arranged on the shelves. A pair of large pliers attached to the wall above my head.

I turn as the saw in Alex’s hand starts to spin, a whirring sound slices into my ears, it must run on batteries.

Go ahead and take a look around, Alex shouts over the noise. You can help me later!

He turns his back to me and bends down towards Luis.

Keeping an eye on Alex, I reach out my arm and snatch the pliers. Slip them under my jacket. Rolf won’t give me away. He’s too out of it. He tugs on my sleeve, like a child, dragging me behind him. Pattering along like some scared little pet. He used to film people dancing under the ramparts. Now he’s in a bunker where they make people into mummies.

Rolf, I shout, the red grass, remember that? It’s no use. The basement is filled with the whirring sound of the saw.

We enter the little room next door and the pliers nearly fall out of my hand.

He’s sitting there, in a black suit, bent slightly forward, just like I knew him my whole life. All those evenings he spoke to the students of the Comenium, the ones he healed, he looked like this. He’s even sitting on a bunk bed made of slats. Alex is all about authenticity.

I think this is what he wanted.

For me to see Lebo like this.

So I would shit my pants. So I’d know who’s holding all the cards.

It almost worked. I almost said hello.

I realize I don’t hear the saw any more.

I look at Lebo. But I’m waiting for Alex.

So I’m not surprised when I hear his voice. Plus I’ve got the pliers under my jacket.

We’re the last ones who know the witnesses personally, he says. And when they die, the museum will be here, so their stories will live on forever. That’s what Lebo wanted, wasn’t it?

He’s between Rolf and me, feeling around for the light switch. Lebo looks even better in the light. Yeah, he looks good. But he’s dead.

You think it was easy getting the old man on a plane? Alex says. We took him from Terezín by ambulance. All bandaged up. To fool the cops, you see?

Uh-huh.

He wanted to leave Terezín and continue his work here. In the Devil’s Workshop. You have to believe me.

They kidnapped him and made him into a puppet. I’m waiting for Alex to turn his back. I don’t want to see his face when I strike.

So did you kill him here?

Here in our museum Lebo will be for everyone, Alex says, bending down to fiddle with the wires. Not just for some spoiled brats from the West, like in Terezín.

Did you kill him?

Kill? Just the opposite! From now on he shall live in eternity, as our conscience, our strength, our weapon, Alex declaims, tugging on the wires poking out from Lebo’s jacket. Do you know it? Song of Lenin. Did you even go to school?

There aren’t any other mummies in the room. Alex’s way of showing Lebo respect, I guess. But I don’t want to hear him. I don’t want to hear his voice coming out of a corpse.

He wouldn’t want you stuffing people, I say. He wouldn’t want you using all those atrocities as a reason to kill more people.

Not even old ones? Alex’s fingers are fiddling with the wires. He still has on the rubber gloves. They don’t even slow him down.

Suddenly it dawns on me that they must have sawed Lebo up in the hotel room where I stayed. Those stains everywhere. They killed him there.

Maruška, hm, I say to myself. I know you’re with Alex. But sorry, I have no choice.

So you don’t believe me that Lebo signed an agreement? Mr Hard-line says. His voice is totally calm. He’s testing the connections.

That he gave us all the cash? That he went to the bank with us completely voluntarily? None of that ‘Your money or your life’ stuff! Don’t you believe me?

Lebo moves. Tips his head — the current has kicked in. It’s Lebo and it’s not.

I was born on a bunk in the camp, it says. It’s his voice — that was how he used to begin his story, in the evening. A soldier pulled my mother out of a typhus pit, says the old man on the chair … a young drummer boy, son of the regiment. They got married and had a son. But my mother … was afraid of open space … I brought her bouquets … ahem, ahem, ahem … The chin of the puppet in the black hat starts to quiver, like the words are getting stuck. It goes silent. His face is yellow, from the light. Lebo’s head nods up and down, something’s jammed.

I can’t help also moving my head a little as I stare at him.

Alex tuts angrily. Tugs on the wires. Crawling around Lebo on all fours, idiot. He doesn’t have a clue that I’m boiling over inside.

So you really don’t think he wanted to be here? Alex says, still showing me his back.

I can sense the movement next to me. It’s Rolf. Shaking his head. Shaking his head: no.

Go fuck yourself, I tell Alex. Really loud. He turns around. Looks at me. Sees the pliers. I’m holding them over my head. I can see his eyes and the terror in them. Now he knows. I have to tolerate it. And I do: I swing my arm and he gets the pliers smack in the face. Teeth crack. He topples over, skull slamming against the concrete. And bang, with the second swing I take out the bulb. I don’t want to see Lebo like this. Humiliated, helpless. More defenceless than when he was a baby. Now he’s just a black lump in the black darkness.

The two of us move. Down the passageway, bits of glass crunch under our feet. We come to an intersection. Stuffed people on every side. In the recesses. Mummies in chairs along the walls. A light bulb or two flickering. But some of the candles have burned out. Never mind, I know my way by heart. Rolf sits down on the ground. Hands me a key. I take it and stick it in my pocket.

Get up, man! We’ve got to run for it!

He shakes his head. I tell him to get up, in both our languages. He shakes his head. I smack him in the face. Hard. And again. He doesn’t even blink. Maybe they’ve been beating him.

You want to stay here with the mummies? You’ll go right off your rocker! Come with me!

He shakes his head.

I put my ear to his lips.

It’s great here, he whispers.

Bullshit!

I’m staying with them. I like it. It’s the closest you can get.

To what?

To horror.

I feel sick. From breathing the air. And Alex might come to. I didn’t finish him off, didn’t have it in me. Thought I did, but I don’t. I’m not going to wait around.

So you’re not getting up?

Go fuck yourself, Rolf says to me.

You too, I tell him, marching off.

Arms stretched in front of me, I run straight into the soft belly of an old woman, dead eyes beneath her scarf, rocking back and forth in a creaky chair. The gloom and darkness don’t bother me, I know how these tunnels work. But Terezín’s were empty. I run, dropping the pliers. Trip over a tool on the ground, bump into the tub, liquid splashes out. I’m bumping into mannequins too, chopping bodies down as I run. Knocking over candles too, the puddles turn blue with flame, drops fly through the dark with a hiss, but now I’m sprinting up the steps. I couldn’t finish Alex off, but the fire isn’t my fault, is it? Yes, no, yes, no, I don’t know. At last I see the massive plate covering the door: the exit.

I run out. Slam the door shut behind me. Take a deep breath. And another. Drink in the air, relief. Suddenly the noose pulls tight around my neck, and I slip, fall on my back, I can’t feel a thing.

So the two of you worked it out? says a voice as I come out of my fog. My head is in Maruška’s lap. We’re in the tent.

Does it hurt? You had a rope around your neck. I just tugged it for fun. Sorry!

Ice, I say with some effort. My head feels like it has axes floating around inside it.

She drops two pills in my mouth. Hands me a glass. Takes one herself.

Alex was on my case pretty bad, what with you running away all the time. So I snagged you. Just for practice, though!

I sit up. Look around.

So you finally wised up and decided to give us those records of yours.

How do you know? Everything’s better after those pills. As usual. But my neck is going to be one giant bruise.

Alex would never have let you leave otherwise. From the museum. I would’ve been upset if he’d gutted you.

Upset? You mean it?

You swallowed it, didn’t you?

I nod.

So go shit it out.

She didn’t have to be so vulgar about it. If Alex was going to gut me, she’d have given me an injection. But nobody’s going to take out my guts. I lie on my back. It’s nice here. Stove glowing. Rain beating down on the tent.

At least with the rain it’ll take a while for the fire to make its way out of the basement and reach the wood of the cabin. At least I think there’s a fire. There were flammables all over the place. But maybe it went out. And Alex’ll be back any moment. We need to get out of here.

Maruška, I’m embarrassed! I can’t do that in front of you.

Oh, please! You’re like a little kid!

Why don’t we go for a walk so I can loosen up my bowels? Just for a couple minutes, OK?

I don’t know!

I’m frozen solid. You’re a nurse. You should understand.

I could give you something to make you vomit.

Come on, please!

OK, but if that doesn’t work, I’m giving you a laxative.

In the end she agrees to go for a walk. I set off, leading the way. Up the hill towards Khatyn, the dead village. That way we’ll have the hill between us and the museum, in case there’s smoke — she won’t see it. I don’t know what I’ll do if Alex turns up.

The first chimney rises up from the mist ahead of us. And Khatyn’s first demolished house. What’s left of it. We walk side by side. She’s got her satchel. Just like when we were walking in Minsk, Sun City.

Hey, I say to her, getting my courage up. What about your boys, your kids?

What about them?

Who are they with now? Their grandma?

No.

So where are they?

They stayed in the house. With the other kids. The older ones. They’ll figure it out, they’ll either run away or hide. Those people won’t hurt them.

You don’t sound too sure.

Nothing’s for sure. But it’s part of the plan, part of the teaching technique.

What plan?

The plan to survive.

Huh?

My boys are faced with situations. Like all of our children. Different situations, so they learn how to cope from early on.

I remember the crazy mob, the screaming, the stones, the sticks, the way the house shook from the explosions.

That’s pretty harsh.

They have to learn how to cope. Nobody knows what’ll happen.

That’s true. Who are the other kids you were talking about?

Our friends’ kids. Mark Kagan was the one who came up with the teaching technique. But the boys are probably safe by now. They’re probably with their dad.

Huh? I thought your husband was Alex.

He’s my brother.

I grabbed her hand and squeezed so hard she gave a little squeal. There was no way she could’ve known that a boulder had just been lifted from my heart. Depriving someone of their brother is awful, I admit. But if I had made orphans of Maruška’s boys, I don’t think I could ever have forgiven myself.

We keep walking uphill. Then along the black stones, past the other ruins. A bell tower or two. Made of stone, not wood. The bells don’t move an inch, even in the wind.

Normally you hear the death knell all the time here, Maruška says, pointing to the belfries.

Yeah?

In memoriam. The bells run on electricity, but we need it for the museum now. Some say it’ll bring us bad luck. What do you think?

It takes all I’ve got not to slip and fall on the rocks.

Our mum survived the Khatyn massacre. I’m sure Alex told you. She was seven. They nailed our grandfather to the barn. Burned everyone else alive in the cottage. She hid in the shed. They ran her through with bayonets and burned down the shed, but somehow she managed to crawl out and get away.

Her little brother, my uncle, that is, was wearing boots with soles cut from old tyres. People wore them in those days. My mum saw the executioners coming, so she told him to take them off. So he wouldn’t burn too long in the rubber. So he wouldn’t suffer any more than he had to. But my mum’s bad luck was that officially there were no survivors of Khatyn, especially not a little girl like her. That’s how it was written down, that’s what they reported. And all of a sudden she comes out of hiding and says, I was there, I saw it, and those men were speaking Ukrainian.

What men?

The killers. Which means it wasn’t only Germans, but Soviets too, you see? It was a disaster for her. There was only one story she told about it when she came back from the concentration camp in Siberia. The one about the galoshes. It freaked me out, you know. The horror of it.

So who’s your husband, then? I wanted to know everything about this girl.

Kagan.

I stop in my tracks. So she’s married to that harsh old man. I turn around, so she can’t see my face.

She touches my shoulder. It’s good that you’re with us. I’m glad.

I don’t see any smoke above the museum. We can go downhill now.

Want to know how we met?

Absolutely.

I was just a little girl, but I couldn’t get it out of my brain, Maruška says. The world is a place of horror, that’s all I kept thinking. Because of what happened. The killing. That’s what people are capable of. And it’s going to happen again. What do I do?

Uh-huh! I say. I knew that one.

Whenever anyone looked at me, the first thing I’d do is think to myself: Will they hide me or turn me in, when the time comes again? I’d walk in someplace and right away: Where would I hide? The attic? The wardrobe? And it just kept getting worse. I thought maybe I should just kill myself. I mean, the world’s so ugly and full of cruelty. People are evil.

I look at Maruška. Talking about what it was like for her. She didn’t look at all like a bunk seeker, though.

Alex brought me to Kagan. A million people died in the concentration camps in Belarus. But not Kagan. A lot of people like me went to see him. They still do.

He went through it all as a little boy. They killed all his people. He was in the ghetto when it burned. Dug himself out of a mass grave. Saw people eating people. And he was able to talk about it. We listened. And we laughed together. You can live with all the horror and in spite of it. He taught us that. He rid me of my obsession. You give everything to a person like that. If that’s what he wants.

Hm.

She stops in the middle of the slope. Giggles. She must’ve popped another pill. Yep, she digs around in her satchel and hands me one too. I swallow it down with a handful of snow.

Remember how we had to run for it from the Falvarek?

Yeah!

We both giggle a while.

This Devil’s Workshop’s going to mean work for a lot of people. Maintenance men, technicians. Security guards, guides, all of that. And tourists bring money. It’s only right that the descendants of the people who got murdered should get some cash out of it, don’t you think? Anyway, there’s nobody else around here. And when I get old, I can live in peace and be the dezhurnaya. In our museum.

She’s walking next to me like she’s used to it. Not being careful at all. She doesn’t realize I’ve got to get out of here. Alex is still in there. Rolf. The partisans will kill me.

For a second a flash of sunlight shines through the drizzle and mist. Her uniform’s covered in stains. But her hair is glowing. She keeps laughing. I’m laughing too. She’ll never run away with me. She’s got kids.

We come to the bottom of the hill. The forest starts here. Birches. I stop. There’s one more thing I want to know.

Did you give Lebo an injection too? When you guys brought him here?

Yeah. We got you into Minsk under the Czech-Belarusian agreement on transportation of prisoners. Greased a few palms, you know how it is. Look at those trees over there!

Were you with Lebo at the hotel?

No, I was with my boys. My brother took care of him.

So do you know what’s in the museum?

Are you crazy? I’ll see it on opening day. It’ll be great! There’ll be people coming from Minsk and all over the place. I’ll put on my ceremonial uniform. I can’t go in this. See? She stuck a slender finger through a hole in her coat and wiggled it around.

A beautiful woman like you could go dressed in a potato sack!

Cut it out! I don’t like that kind of talk!

But she isn’t angry. And she didn’t kill Lebo. If she had, she would’ve told me.

Look, you can go over there in those trees! I’ll turn around.

I go down to the trees, peel off a strip of bark. Anything happening? No. I have to do it. I’ll be gentle. I start back uphill towards her.

Hey, wait a sec, she says. She smells it too. The smoke. Carried here on a gust of wind. The thick smoke of a fire.

Stop! she shouts.

I speed up. I want to put the bark over her mouth so she can’t scream. Knock her down. Put her to sleep.

I ram into her full force, she sinks to her knees, head twisted back. Did she faint? Has she had enough? But then suddenly she’s like an animal, springing up from her knees, the needle bounces off the piece of bark I’m holding up. She comes at me again, I sidestep, grab her hand, we slip, she falls on top of me, jams the needle into her thigh. Not a sigh. Nothing. This is not what I wanted.

That’s what I keep telling myself, this is not what I wanted, Maruška, this is not what I wanted. I carry her down the hill in my arms to the dead village, lean her up against a wall, there’s still red in her cheeks, she’s breathing. I pick her back up and suddenly a burst of flame leaps from the roof of the cabin below us, green and orange fiery serpents creeping across the museum roof. The sound of cracking and muffled blows carries to us on the wind. The rafters caving in, or that chemical stuff blowing up.

I lay her on the bed in the tent. Maruška. You only got what you were going to give to me. So this is your sleep of the just. I take off her boots. Loosen the belt on her jacket. Cover her up. They’ve got all kinds of blankets and sleeping bags.

I fish around in her satchel. Swallow a blue one, put a handful in my pocket.

She’s also got scissors in there. I’ll just snip off a single strand, she won’t even notice. Not that I’m some kind of pervert! I just don’t know how to say goodbye.

I wrap a red strand of her hair around my fingers. Hold it up against the sky, as the flames swallow up the museum. The sky is red.

I just stay like that.

With her.

I don’t have much time, though.

Where will I go?

I fish around in my memory: it’s there, stored in the database, the address. I probably have the envelope too, somewhere. Or maybe not.

I wouldn’t work with Mr Mára, not a chance. But I’ve got money. From the game. It might be enough to make a fresh start, I fantasize.

It’s a nice fantasy.

I feed the stove. A lot. She needs warmth.

And then I hear it.

The tractor. Good thing it’s so noisy. I see Red Cap in the driver’s seat. And there are others. So I slip out under the canvas, vanish into the mist.




13


Through birches, bushes, sparse vegetation, over the nearly frozen snow. I don’t want to go back in the woods. I have a panic attack, out on the plain, but then I see a big black blot in the distance. Could be a marsh, a grove of trees, but it might also be a house, a place with walls where I can draw strength. Maybe at least some boulders, a hole in the ground. A ditch, a gully, a place to hide and watch the world go by.

The attack passes. I look down, focusing my eyes on the ground, and walk. An island of blackness lies in the twilight ahead like a prospect of hope.

I’m grateful to Alex for these clothes, that’s for sure. It’s like being in a protective cocoon. The thingamajig is frozen inside me.

Alex. Why did he tell me about the gutting? When somebody says they want to kill you, believe them: Lebo taught us that too. Where will I go? Everybody I knew is gone. I look down at the cold earth under my feet. It’s so much work just walking, I can’t even think of Maruška.

I make out the first cross through the flakes. It’s snowing. The wind is knocking me around. But I rejoice. And I’m also more on the lookout. People. I’ll get out of here somehow. This chilly land will let me go. Won’t eat me up, suck me in.

More crosses, in a row. I walk between them, lift my eyes, and, good, my head doesn’t spin.

The blot turns out to be a smallish hill covered in trees, bushes. I have to tramp through the crosses to reach the foot of the hill. Little crosses, big crosses, a massive pole, six feet tall, crossed with two smaller ones. Next to it a tiny cross of spruce branches with a faded pink ribbon fluttering. Surrounded with stuffed animals. A bear, a monkey, a couple more. Tattered, I guess from the wind and rain. They’re weighted down with stones. A few more tiny crosses.

I think I wailed. Out loud, which is just reckless. Another graveyard.

I push back the branches of the first trees. There are crosses everywhere here too. Also stones, some with inscriptions on them. In Cyrillic. And in my alphabet too. Names. A Jewish stone engraved with a star — I know that from back home.

I make my way slowly uphill through the crosses. There are also names carved on the trees. Some of the scars are grown over, others shine clearly against the bark. Not a human footprint anywhere, though. No signs of dog paws or goat hooves, nothing.

Even if I did dare to leave the hill of crosses and go back out there on the plain, the wind would’ve swept me away. Tiny, stinging hailstones whip across the landscape. I make my way through the crosses, they’re even thicker here than the trees, up to the top.

There’s a man standing there. I slip down into the snow, behind a rock.

Beard, quilted coat, knee-high boots. Looks like one of the guys from Arthur’s partisan outfit. But there’s no weapon in his hands. Or on his back. He’s holding a sack. Fishes some kind of shiny trinket or something out of it. Flings it into the snow among the crosses. Whistles to himself. Moves on. Towards me.

I slither away across a shallow grave. Slip behind a tree and slide down the ridge. Then I hear something. In the gorge, the ravine. A horse whinnying. I see a hefty woman in yellow overalls. Shielding her eyes with her hand, searching in the drizzle, looking up, towards me. The only thing I’m holding on to, unforgivably, is some slender tree roots. They give way and I go tumbling down, landing at her feet. So Ula and I meet again.

We compare stories about that night at the Falvarek. She remembers it well. The rat-filled courtyard. The city under martial law. So what’s the situation now? I ask. She says the president has probably crushed the opposition. But they’re still fighting in Minsk, and probably elsewhere too. That’s why they’re staying off the roads. But there hasn’t been a signal for days now. She says she’ll explain all that later.

She finds it funny that this time she’s the one helping me to my feet.

Yep, we’re both inostrantsi.

And colleagues besides.

This is Black Hill, Ula says. They built it to cover up the burial site. It’s actually a huge knoll.

I nod.

She’s glad to see me! Apart from that, she doesn’t see anything cheerful about our situation.

Ula’s in a grim mood. But I’m actually happy.

She isn’t fat. She’s big, hefty. Much taller than Maruška. Wrinkles on her face and forehead. I thought maybe she was just tired, but she’s a bit on the old side. Fair hair, darker than Sara’s. It actually looks nice with the yellow coveralls.

I’m glad I found her, that’s for sure.

We lie in a frayed tent on our bellies, heads poking out. A stretch of the plain shines white through the trees. I don’t look over there. For a while it doesn’t rain or snow, which is very rare, Ula explains. A tin pot of water heats up on the fire. There’s a stream nearby, she says. Nothing to eat.

Some guys with a fire about ten metres away are stuffing their faces with bacon. Bread. I recognize the bearded guy I ran into in the forest. Sitting there with his pal. The two of them look almost alike.

Fyodor and Yegor, Ula says. They broke the GPS, idiots!

She hates them. They belong to a group of partisans that the Ministry of Tourism assigned to her expedition.

Our trip was supposed to end in Khatyn, she says. That’s where we were supposed to bring the samples. But those bastards said they saw a fire and wouldn’t go any farther. So we stayed here.

The other attachés, as the Ministry called the partisans, had long since run away. Took what they could, destroyed the rest.

According to Ula, they’d been sabotaging her work ever since the political situation stabilized. Apparently the opposition was really taking a beating.

I tell her about myself. After trudging around on the plain, I’m in seventh heaven now, tucked cosily in a sleeping bag and safe inside a tent. I tell her about my foreign expertise, my trip to this country. And the fire at the museum. Not everything, just some of it.

The partisans weren’t lying, I say. Khatyn is gone now!

I don’t mention Alex and Maruška.

Yes, of course, Ula says. The Devil’s Workshop, that’s why I’m here too.

She shows me the samples. The ones that didn’t fall in the snow or get lost along the way. She had twice, no, three times as many!

She’s an egghead, a researcher and a field worker.

The best in her field!

That’s why they chose her out of everyone else in Berlin.

But now it’s over.

I turn around. Squint into the gloom of the tent to where she’s pointing. Crates, boxes. But not old-fashioned ones like Kagan had, all battered and made of wood. These are smart plastic things. Double-sealed lids. Blue, red, yellow — almost too much for my eyes to take.

Imported, huh?

Mm-hm.

All of her boxes and plastic bags, with bones and rags in various stages of decay, are stored at the back of the tent. Behind our backs, piled up in a wall. A wall against the wind.

And I can take as many blankets and sleeping bags as I want.

They’re left over from her colleagues and co-workers.

We bundle up and wait till the water’s ready for tea.

Talk back and forth in our languages.

I guess I fell asleep first.

I open my eyes, feel it, can’t see. Ula’s holding my hand. We’re warm. I hear a horse snorting. Didn’t get up to look, though. I’ll fix things in the morning, I promise myself. In the night I hear a scraping, probably the horse rubbing against a branch, clicking its hoof against a stone.

In the morning the two men are gone. Along with the horse. Ula sits outside the tent, a loaf of bread in her hand. They must have left it for her. She scrambles into the back of the tent, by the samples, crawls under a pile of blankets and stays there.

I go to check out the camp. We’re hidden from the wind by a gorge, a small, narrow ravine carved into the hillside.

I go on through the trees. There are crosses all over the place. And those stones with writing on them. I find the wagon right away. The horse was standing right here, to judge from the tracks. Maybe they both rode it. If I went down to the foot of the hill, I’d be able to see their tracks stretching away across the plain.

There are more boxes under the tarpaulin on the wooden wagon. I open the one closest to me, a red one, little by little, but there are no tsantsas, only skulls. One has a bullet hole in the forehead so big you could stick your finger through it. I give the skull a rap with my knuckles and put it back.

No supplies, no weapons, no clothing, nothing in the wagon but samples. We’ll leave it here, I say to myself. Screw the samples. Let ’em rot. We’re getting out of here. We’ll make it to some road or other. We’ll be together. That’s what I thought. But then the purga hit.

The next thing I know there are leaves and twigs flying at me, the trees shake and groan in the wind, the snow whips in off the plain, suddenly it gets hard to breathe, the air in my lungs begins to hurt, a six-foot branch tears loose and goes sailing over my head. I crawl back inside the tent.

There’s a storm, I say. Ula sits, leaning against the boxes.

It’s a purga, she says. We won’t get out of here now. I’ve got two buckets of water.

The ravine protected the tent. Still, I almost couldn’t poke my head out. The wind instantly glued my mouth shut, my eyelids together. I couldn’t even stand up outside. The wagon would’ve been blown to pieces. I imagined the broken crates, bones flying through the air, skulls smashing to bits on the rocks.

So, Ula. You’re the expert. How long will it last?

The last time a blizzard hit, she said, she was locked up for eight days. With a bunch of co-workers, food and drink, inside a cabin. They even had a guitar and board games. They were collecting samples in Siberia at the time. Soon it’ll start to snow, and once the blizzard’s over, then come the frosts. Unless somebody turns up, we don’t have much of a chance, Ula says.

At night, or whenever we think it’s night, we sleep. Squeezed together. We wake up. Eat some bread.

I have a dream about the Spider. It’s inside me. Melting. Poisoning me. All the data and contacts spill into my guts.

She’s sitting next to me with her eyes open.

She tells me about her work.

Her team was selected for reconnaissance of burial sites in one of the regions of Belarus that was severely affected by radiation.

When Chernobyl blew up, the fallout contaminated a third of Belarus, she said. Radiation genocide, they call it. They trudged around the graves all day in hot weather and pouring rain. The locals from the village were ready to spit on them. They all knew where the skeletons were, but it was taboo. They said, When you dig up an old grave, you break the ribs of the living.

The mayor of one of the villages said, Why are you digging there? Leave them alone. Us too. Their things went missing at night. They spent hours excavating an area only to have somebody come and fill it all back in. They suspected the village youths. One day Ula went shopping in town and had to convince the crowd that gathered around her that she was Dutch. Not German. Meanwhile the victims had obviously been shot by the NKVD.

How do you know?

From the bullets. And other details.

Did you know that to this day the cancer rate for children in contaminated areas is still twenty times higher than anywhere else in Europe? They have to import their food.

Ula, that’s awful!

Her co-workers dropped out one by one. Work injuries, diarrhoea from bad water. Depression. And then the problems started with the workers from the ministry. A lot of samples were going missing.

I tap her on the shoulder. Offer her two blues from my pocket. She swallows them and takes a drink of water.

In Oktyabrsk we found graves with hundreds of people in them. They were executed either naked or in summer dresses that had rotted completely. The bullets and cartridges came from every type of weapon imaginable. Apart from that there was nothing. No identification papers, no coins sewn into linings, no shoes stuffed with newspaper, no little girls’ hairslides, nothing at all, no evidence whatsoever.

What about teeth? I say. I remembered Kagan’s cellar. Or cave or whatever it was.

Teeth repaired and unrepaired, Ula says. She waves at me not to interrupt. I take a drink of water too.

We tested the skeletons using a modified carbon-dating method to try to determine when the massacre took place. Well, I wouldn’t attach too much weight to it, she says, then tells me anyway. If the grave’s full of civilians — Poles, say, or Russians — then there aren’t any differences. If they were Wehrmacht, though, or Jewish, then the differences are distinct. But don’t tell anyone about this. Genetics doesn’t have a very good reputation.

I won’t, I promise.

It was hell. I don’t know how many times I stood there, clueless, scraping around the edge of the pit, in the middle of the night in the rain, wondering. Was it Soviets killing Soviets, or Germans murdering Soviets and Jews, or Germans and Soviets killing other Soviets? Then on top of that, consider that here they were divided into Belarusians and Russians and Ukrainians and Ruthenians, and then of course there are also Poles and Balts, and, pardon me, but you are what?

Czech.

Uh-huh. I’m not familiar with them. Who’s in those graves? A key question. Here in the East they didn’t keep records like we did, nowhere near it. Even after all these years, the locals still won’t say a word.

I guess they have their reasons.

It’s a terrible mess! In any case, without a plan for the restoration of burial sites, Belarus will never get into the EU. Even if the dictatorship falls. What do they think? You can’t have pits of corpses lying around in Europe: don’t be silly! This all has to be cleaned up.

I don’t say a word. They cleaned up Terezín all right. The eggheads.

But, Ula, what does it matter in the end who’s in those graves?

It matters a lot! There’s money at stake here. Who’s going to pay for it? The restoration? The specialized teams? All over Europe they’ve got flags flying at memorial sites. In the East they’ve got ravens walking around pecking at skulls. Dreadful.

It was the devil’s workshop, all right!

Ula reaches over to the wall of boxes and hands me a canvas sack. I reach inside. Buttons. Medals. I feel the heft of a swastika belt buckle. Skull insignias! Lots of them.

Fyodor and Yegor and their cronies, Ula says in my ear. We caught the two of them walking around in the moonlight, tossing SS buttons in the pits. Why would they do that? They wanted Germany to pay for the restoration. But that isn’t right!

Ula burst out sobbing and burrowed back into the blankets. I stuck the sack back with the boxes. Took a drink, broke off a piece of bread. The blue pills kept me going. Outside the wind whistled and it was probably snowing too. Inside our tent we were warm. The ravine shielded us. Ula tells some awful stories, but so does everyone around here. I didn’t actually feel that bad.

Then her hand slid out from under the blankets. Her nails were black and broken. I guess from digging. She took my hand and pulled. I was happy to burrow into the blankets with her.

Tears were running down her face.

You know, I’m also one of the living whose ribs get broken by digging, she says.

What?

Yeah, I was a little girl when I found the pictures. My mum kept them behind the dresser. My dad was here during the war. He was a captain in the Wehrmacht. I’m less than fifty, so don’t go getting the wrong idea. But my dad was the youngest captain in the entire army. And what I saw in those pictures! Dead villagers. Next to my dad. And he was smiling. My mum said they had liberated a village from the Bolsheviks and found them there. Yeah, right. I almost went out of my mind.

What did he say?

He hung himself when I was still little. Never said a thing to me. When I went to school, I started reading all those memoirs, watching movies. Then I went to the archives. I thought I’d go out of my mind from the horror. It wasn’t even about my dad any more, just the whole thing.

That it happened?

Yeah. Once you realize just how much horror is possible, and the fact settles into your brain, you’re a different person from everyone else. It stays inside you. Like a wound that won’t heal. I used to wonder how my friends could go to school and play ping-pong and go on dates. We need to scream, we need to stop the evil. I was obsessed. Wherever I looked I saw evil. In everything. Soon I didn’t have any friends left.

I handed Ula a piece of bread. She left it for later.

There’s no way to understand the cruelty. Our minds aren’t equipped for it. But it dawned on me that I had to balance out the horror myself. At least a little. I could become a nun and pray. I could go to Calcutta and help lepers. But I became a researcher. It helped me. Anyway, that was all in the past. Now I’m here.

Ula throws the blankets off and sits up. She looks at me.

So then, are you more of a researcher or a curator? she asks.

I think back to the catacombs in Terezín and Alex’s museum.

A researcher, I say.

So you know about this place. They brought people from the city out here and killed them. Stalin wiped out twenty per cent of the Russian intelligentsia, compared with ninety per cent of the Belarusian. Everyone knows about the mass grave in Kurapaty. But Black Hill wasn’t discovered by Belarusian archaeologists until a few years ago. None of the researchers live here any more. The president had them disappeared, either that or they escaped. But I’m sure you know all that.

The truth was I didn’t have a clue. But I nodded. Whenever Ula spoke in that educated way, it reminded me of Maruška, and Sara too. But when I looked at Ula, I thought of Ula.

Kurapaty’s on the outskirts of Minsk, she says. And the president has decided to build a road through it. So a national site will be destroyed.

Sending in the bulldozers, huh?

Mm-hm. Ula nods. She rummages around in her boxes again. If the blizzard gets any stronger, it’s going to knock them down anyway. But I’d rather not think about that.

She pulls out a bottle. Vodka.

There could be fifty, a hundred, even two hundred thousand dead in this hill, Ula says broodingly. The same as in Kurapaty. Our team was supposed to explore here too. But the president’s people were lying when they promised to let us work. Now that the president has crushed the opposition, he could easily send in the bulldozers here as well. Except for a couple of crazies, nobody wants to know about it. It’s like it never happened.

I’ve never drunk vodka. I offer to open the bottle for her, but she shakes her head and pop! She’s holding the cap in her hand.

This was supposed to be for the celebration, she says, tapping the cap against the bottle. To celebrate the founding of the Devil’s Workshop museum. But there’s still time for that to happen. And you know why? Because the devil’s still active as hell here!

She laughs. Why not? We both have a good laugh. Outside the wind is whistling. It’s dark. We have to squeeze close just to see each other. But we’re laughing, coughing, we can’t stop, we fall exhausted into the covers, pass the bottle back and forth. Then we sleep.

Sometime later, Ula says if it freezes we’ll die here. She says it because it’s true.

Outside the purga rages.

We go on sleeping.

I poke my head out and there’s no more wind and rain, no more howling. And underneath a magnificent, radiant sun the machines are heading towards us over the frozen snow-white plain. The president’s bulldozers are as colourful as Ula’s boxes, yep, the same machines that crushed the walls in Terezín. We pick ourselves up and walk down to meet them. With Ula I can easily handle the plain.

It was only a dream. Her crying wakes me. The wind, coming through the gorge now, rattles the tent canvas. Ula’s crouched in the corner, I lie down beside her.

A day or two later we try to go out but only make it a couple steps. Even holding each other up, we can’t make any headway against the wind. We have to turn back. We’re also weak with hunger. I’ve only got a few blues left.

We snuggle up in the blankets. Squeezed together. Trying to keep each other warm. Maybe the reason we’re so cold is that we’re hungry. At night I get the feeling that Ula’s melting. Fading away. So I hold her tight.

We go on sleeping.

I wake up and something’s different. I shake my head. Uh-huh. It’s quiet outside. I stick my head out. Sun. Wriggle out of my sleeping bag, crawl outside.

Lots of trees are gone. Where there used to be the green of the treetops, now you can see the plain.

The sun is climbing higher. You can walk pretty well on the frozen snow.

Ula crouches at the entrance to the tent. Watching. The silence is magnificent.

We’ll definitely go. We’ll make it somewhere. Save ourselves. Yeah, it might work out.




AUTHOR’S ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS


Thanks

To Jaroslav Formánek and Anneke Hudalla, who sent me on my first reporting trip to Terezín. To Jan Horníček, the town mayor, and Vojtěch Blodig, historian of the Ghetto Museum, for their time and patience, with apologies for my failure to write about demons realistically. To Edgar de Bruin, who was part of this story from the beginning, for his enthusiasm and advice. To Dora Kaprálová, without whose encouragement and ideas I would probably never have written this book. To Adéla Kovácsová for the first and Zuzana Jürgens for the last careful and critical reading. To Tereza Říčanová for The Book of Goats. To Stephan Krull for inspiring conversations. To Míša Stoilová for orientation in the language of our friends. And to Sjarhej, Arina, and Maryjka, who showed me where the devil had his workshop.

Notes

The author of the poem ‘Kill the President,’ on page 90, is Slavomir Adamovich. The villagers’ testimonies, on pages 127 and 128, come from a collection documenting the Ostplan massacres, compiled by Ales Adamovich, Yanka Bryl, and Vladimir Kolesnik, Ya iz ognennoy derevni … (Minsk: Mastackaja litaratura, 1975); Czech translation, Václav Židlický, Moje ves lehla popelem … (Prague: Naše vojsko, 1981).

Jáchym Topol

Berlin, DAAD, 2009




TRANSLATOR’S AFTERWORD


The horrors of history are familiar ground for Jáchym Topol. His first novel, Sestra, translated into English as City Sister Silver in 2000, contained a full, grim chapter dedicated to Auschwitz, and numerous references to the butchering of indigenous people in the United States. In this novel, his fifth, Topol revisits the Holocaust — albeit by way of its present-day echoes — setting the first half of The Devil’s Workshop in Terezín, an eighteenth-century fortress town north of Prague that the Gestapo used as a prison and ghetto for Jews in the Second World War. But in the novel’s second half, which takes place mostly in Minsk, the capital of Belarus, and Khatyn, a village on its outskirts, he turns to a little-known chapter in the annals of atrocity.

Readers of this book are likely aware, more or less, of the basic facts of the genocide of European Jews in the Second World War. Yet the mass killings of non-Jewish Belarusians during the same period have only recently been dragged out of the shadows, thanks to US historian Timothy Snyder’s tour de force of 2010, Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin. So even though The Devil’s Workshop is a work of fiction, readers should know that on 22 March 1943, the 118th Schutzmannschaft auxiliary police battalion (made up largely of Ukrainian collaborators, deserters, and prisoners of war) and the Waffen-SS special battalion led by the notorious Oskar Dirlewanger murdered the inhabitants of Khatyn — 149 Belarusian children, women, and men — and this is a fact. As Snyder wrote in Bloodlands: ‘Dirlewanger’s preferred method was to herd the local population inside a barn, set the barn on fire, and then shoot with machine guns anyone who tried to escape.’ This is the method he used in Khatyn and it is described in Topol’s book by one of the story’s fictional characters.

Those who keep up on world news will know that Belarus is commonly described nowadays as Europe’s last dictatorship, another reality reflected in The Devil’s Workshop. One example of this is the scene in Minsk where the Belarusian President appears on TV and declares martial law. This does not depict an actual event, but the words Topol puts in the mouth of the President are based on the text of a controversial and disputed interview with Alexander Lukashenko from 1995.

This mixing, and blurring, of fact and fiction is one of Topol’s favoured techniques, though, as I learned when I was translating City Sister Silver, the more blood-chilling the anecdote, the more likely it is to be true. As I wrote in my preface to that book, unearthing the sources Topol drew on was a major part of my work on his first novel. With The Devil’s Workshop he took a different approach, including acknowledgements that cite, among other things, the source of the stories told by the macabre talking corpses in Alex’s museum: they are taken directly from the testimony of Belarusians who survived atrocities similar to the ones in Khatyn.

A more personal note on the interplay between fact and fiction: one of the events that happened in my own backyard while I was translating this novel was the birth of the Occupy movement. Hearing the participants and sympathetic observers comparing it to the Arab Spring, which in turn had been compared to the Velvet Revolution of November 1989, I couldn’t help seeing some kinship between the people occupying Zuccotti Park and, in Topol’s novel, the bunk seekers who ‘occupied’ Terezín, and the protesters with their tents on the square in Minsk. Before I ever met Topol, as a graduate student in 1990, I had read about him — not only because of his poetry but also because of his work as a human-rights activist. As a reporter for a samizdat newspaper, Topol was intimately involved in the downfall of communism in Czechoslovakia. This was on my mind in mid November 2011, when the New York Police Department violently dismantled the Occupy encampment in Zuccotti Park. There is always a continuity, of varying visibility, that sneaks from the past into literature, into the present, and back again, and I was acutely conscious of it while working on this translation.

Finally, a few words about the title: Topol’s original name for the book was Ďáblova dílna (‘The Devil’s Workshop’). Shortly before its publication in Czech, however, a German film was released called Die Fälscher (‘The Counterfeiters’), which in the Czech Republic was retitled Ďáblova dílna, so in order to avoid confusion Topol and his publisher decided to call this novel Chladnou zemí (‘Through a Cold Land’ — another phrase that appears in the book). A Czech friend of mine, pointing out the cold/hot dichotomy between the two titles, told me she preferred the newer one, since it better corresponded to the novel’s chilly mood and atmosphere. I agreed with her but still felt that ‘Through a Cold Land’ (or simply ‘A Cold Land’), if less of a cliché, was also less evocative, and seeing that most translators of the novel into other languages had opted for Topol’s original title, I decided to do the same.

Alex Zucker

Brooklyn, November 2012