Authors: Nir Baram
Good People (49 page)
Thomas was roused. He crossed the street and stormed the cluster of policemen, pushed them aside and shouted that he was a personal friend of Globocnik.
They pushed him. A club struck his arm. The pain made him laugh. A sharp smell of vomit filled his nose. The asphalt was blotted with black stains. Rain began to fall.
One of the policemen waved his baton at Thomas's face.
âHit me, you Polish dog,' shouted Thomas, âand by this evening you're a dead man!'
People approached them from the direction of the Europa Hotel, headquarters of the Propaganda Ministry. One of them, in an SS uniform, gripped his arms.
âTake your hands off me,' Thomas shouted.
âCalm down, calm down right away. Stop going wild!'
Thomas pulled his identification out of his pocket and almost stuck it on the officer's face. âAsk Sturmbannführer August Frenzel from Globocnik's office about me!'
âWhat department are you in?
âI'm not in any department. I'm dealing with matters that someone like you might hear about in another ten years.'
The officer pretended that his words didn't impress him, and examined the identification paper.
âGive the document back, you rogue!' Thomas shouted.
Two policemen gripped Rosa Heiler's mother and shoved her towards the crowd of Jews sitting in the square. A little boy approached her, and his father ran after him.
âI'm the one who devised this plan for removing the Jews,' Thomas
shouted. His face was burning. Restraining his body demanded a supreme effort. âThe order was to treat the evacuees with respect! I demand that all of those animals be put on trial!'
âClearly,' said the officer, and his tone of voice softened. âYou retain the right to submit a report.'
âYou're a disgrace to your uniform!' Thomas spat in his face.
The officer leaned forwards. His burst of rage stood in opposition to the strange delay in his movements. It was clear he was waiting for his friends to hold on to him.
One of the policemen grabbed the woman's body by the hair and pulled it towards a wagon. Her head dangled back. The rain was rinsing the blood from her neck, revealing a gash.
The officer's companions restrained him. He twisted as though trying to extricate himself.
âYou want to bet you don't dare come close to me?' Thomas muttered, trying to control the tremor that had seized his body.
Lying on the wagon, the woman's body looked like meat hanging in a butcher shop. The wagon rolled away, the body rocked left and right, bumping against the sides. The policemen stood in a huddle with their friends against the wall of a green-steepled church.
The SS officer and Thomas exchanged names almost as an afterthought. The officer reminded Thomas he wasn't connected to the incident and told him that the Polish policemen had heard that in eastern Poland, under Soviet rule, the Jews were cruelly persecuting the Poles, and so it was no wonder they were angry. Thomas said he didn't intend to lodge a complaint. They parted without a word, and the officer disappeared into the square.
A voice burst from a loudspeaker, shouting to the Jews that soon they would be taken to the railway station in wagons, and any Jew who dared to approached the city of Lublin again would be shot.
The sky brightened. Locks were removed from the shutters of shops, lights were turned on in the display windows, a waitress in a white apron served a pot of tea to two young men. One of them lit a cigarette, his friend waved the smoke away and they both laughed.
A woman queued outside the pharmacy. The rain fell harder and washed the sweat from his face. His trouser cuffs were muddied. He missed the train.
BREST
APRIL 1941
A joint flyover above Brest was an excellent idea. People, especially children, love planes.
The peace parade of the armies pleased her so much that sometimes she looked at the pencil sketches she had made for a full hourâsoon she would draw the big mapsâenjoying their beauty, unable to take her eyes off them.
The armies would take positions on the plain outside the city according to the precedent of the Russian-Austrian parade in front of the two emperors before the battle of Austerlitz. The armies would be arrayed in similar order: the cavalry at the fore, behind it the artillery, and finally the infantry.
The cavalry would, of course, be replaced by tanks, and other adaptations to the spirit of the age would be required, but in general the ceremonial aspect that was absent from the 1939 parade would be a central value in 1941. The soldiers would wear splendid dress uniforms, including their insignia and medals. She always saw
something of Kolya in all the boy soldiers standing in the square. Sometimes she saw him erect and elegant, and next to him the shrivelled, mud-stained soldiers from the camp, with thin fuzz on their cheeks. Even though their bodies were tense, they were laughing, slicing the air with their swords. The fear of death had abandoned them.
Maxim, the only one with whom she discussed her plan, was dismissive. In his opinion there would be no parade. War was going to break out as soon as the earth dried, probably in May, and anyone with eyes in his head who observed the movements of the German army would understand that. Soviet intelligence agencies all over the world, from Switzerland to Japan, were flooding the Kremlin with evidence of the Germans' intentions: in the past month Merkulov's men in the NKGB
*
had collected dozens of signs of the aggressive deployment of German forces. There was even gossip that German operational plans had reached the Red Army. The whole story of the parade was just one of their stupid tricks that we were falling for in the vain hope of preventing war.
Maxim's boldness in writing like this in his letters which, were they to be discovered, though he had taken severe precautions, would undoubtedly lead to his liquidation, was further evidence of his urgent effortsâby turns begging, demanding and petulantâto get her out of Brest. âAll the smart people in your district send their wives and children to the east, and you've fallen in love with some parade. I implore you, dear, listen to my plea!'
As he became more desperate, states of mind that he hadn't dared reveal slipped into his letters:
I understand: your heart tells you that it's better to die for the sake of the thin boy or to die with him than to live. Do you think I don't grasp the horrors you've gone through? I encouraged you and guided you as best I could to get out of the black labyrinth that opened up in your soulâwe all
wander in a labyrinth like that, every human being, and certainly every NKVD man, but your case is truly dreadful. Even on that night, when I stood in your room and laid out my plan for your survival, I told you: your new self won't be a better person. She will have to do horrible things. Those are the conditions of the deal.
Then you clung to the story that you had actually helped your parents' group, that because of you they received more lenient punishments. I encouraged you and gave you evidence that it was really true. But I always feared it was the first straw you grasped to stop from drowning. A person might feel he is capable of struggling against the will to live, but we aren't able to fathom the different tricks our cunning souls can play on us. We're survival machines, we have to recognise that.
You're too smart, Sasha, I told you that on the day we met in our fourth year of school. I've been horrified to observe the guilt that's draining you of life. I hoped thatâbefore the moment when the veil of your denial was torn away, the moment you understood, with blood-curdling clarity, the meaning of your actionsâmaybe one of the twins would come back, maybe we'd have children, maybe you'd love me again, maybe your soul would find some other reason to cling to life. I swear to you on my honour: the only reason I pressed you about having children was you, not me.
My dear, remember that I told you, on our vacation in Sochi, that Stepan Kristoforovich had urged us to have children? In fact, the other subject we discussed was your twins. We each made supreme efforts to help them. Though I'm contemptuous of that liar's crimes, and appalled by the filth that people of his kind cast upon our organisation, his endeavours on your behalf were admirable. He desired you feverishly. I saw it in his eyes.
That hypocrite told me that he'd managed, with some difficulty, to have Kolya drafted into the army too. In retrospect we realised that they'd split up the twins the day they arrested them in Leningrad. Everything went easier with Vlada: he was made of choice material, and a small forgery of his documents was enough to draft him. The thin boy, in contrast, was supposed to be locked away in an institution for delinquent youth. His second piece of news was that Vlada had died in Finland.
And because you showed no signs of recovering from the horrible thing that traitor did to youâI won't mention his name hereâI fed his body to the dogs with my own hands! We decided to work out how to tell you the news when we returned from holidayâonly about the thin kid, of course. But when we got back from Sochi, Stepan Kristoforovich was already in trouble. He knew his story was over, and so he acted to send you far away from the city and to have you meet Kolya. He didn't consult me.
My dear, I'm going back to that night when I came to your house after they were all arrested. A few days went by before I decided to do it. I'll admit it: I was afraid! I knew how much fury had been aroused in the organisation against your parents and the Leningrad Group. Did I kindle the will to live in you that night? Or should I, as someone who loves you, have let you die in your childhood bed? The schoolgirl's bed on which I touched your body so tentatively, choking with desire, and kissed your skin. Do you remember us in your room? One eye on the door, every noise outside making us rush to straighten our clothes and hair. âMaxim,' you'd laugh. âFather will lock you up in the freezer at the Institute!'
Maybe I should have waited until you decided by yourself to survive. But I didn't do that, and I risked my neck for usânot for you, for both of us. And now we're
still alive, and I'm desperate. Think about your parents. One day they'll be released and return to Leningrad. A lot of people are coming back now. Nadya came back. And what present will they receive when they return? Three graves? As for us: what evidence can I produce that we can have a life together? I swear, we'll have gorgeous children.
The picture that came to her mind when she finished reading was very distant: little Sasha wallowing in deep snow while her father swore to her once again that summer was locked in the cellar, and this time it wouldn't get out. Children believe their parents. She didn't want there to be a child who believed her or her husband. And she didn't understand why Maxim insisted on ignoring the facts: hadn't Nikita Mikhailovich issued an explicit order to deal severely with those who run off to the east? Moreover he had entrusted the planning of the parade to her. So by virtue of exactly what leniency was she supposed to return to Leningrad?
Maxim, you're labouring under an illusion. Love is a noble source of dreams, but in days like these one must avoid both. I forbid you to do the slightest thing to transfer me from here. I won't leave Brest without Kolya. And as for the pastâthere's no stain on your actions. You showed courage. Your observations are only partially correct. Guilt is not my main motivation. My only request is for your letters to be more practical. I'm concentrated on the mission that was thrust upon me, and memories weaken me. If we grow old, we can share our memories then.
At the end of her letter she added a few lines and then decided to rub them out:
I got an anonymous letter from Leningrad with a poem by Nadyezhda P., in which she extols the imaginary figure of a
certain Morozova, the twin of Pavlik Morozov: this Morozova informed on her father, a bespectacled literary critic who incited students against the Party, and her mother, an amiable housewife who didn't understand anything about literature but saw everything and kept silent.
Even now she hasn't stopped pursuing me, and even dares to mortify Mother, as if the catastrophe she brought down on us weren't enough. She roams around all over the place, celebrates, gets drunk, boasts and writes while everybody is dead or in prison. Do you want to defend your wife, Maxim? Do you want to show that you're the man you claim to be? I want that woman dead. Dead! Do you understand? I want that whore dead!
Every time she received a letter from Maxim she hoped he had guessed what she wanted, understood everything and had done what he was supposed to do. The details didn't interest her. She just wanted to hear that the woman had returned to the dead. But whenever she was tempted to look over one of his letters, she was sorry she hadn't burned it. Instead of the report she hoped to find, he only warned her about the war.
Sometimes she woke up terrified. Had something happened while she was asleep? She would hurry to the window and look for movement in the German campâthe silhouettes of planes, tank tracks, a flash of gunfireâand struggle against the urge to put on her coat and rush to the fortress. Barefoot at the window, while the searing cold on her feet ascended her body, she would stare out into the darkness. Only after scraps of dawn were visible would her trembling cease. She would leave her little apartment, sit in the office, still pursued by the visions of the night, and immerse herself in the drawings again.
She stopped wandering in the streets. Brest had become repulsive to her. Every time she went out she encountered signs of the city's agitation. Sacks of flour became scarce in the stores, along with soap
and matches, and the financial department reported that the locals had begun to get rid of their rubles. Red Army soldiers complained that tailors, watchmakers and shoemakers gave slow service. âFuture corpses don't need watches,' said one merchant who had been arrested and interrogated. He was shot.
