The Dark Room (31 page)

Did Opa kill? Because he thought he had to? Or just because he could? Did he feel sick, or sorry? Did he hate? Did he cry? Did he think it was right?

—
Did they talk about it? Afterwards. Did you hear what they said?

—I wasn’t one of them. I mean, I was Belarusian.

—
You didn’t talk with them?

—I was only there if I was needed to translate.

—
So you didn’t hear what they said.

—No. I’m not sure they did discuss it.

—
Why do you say that?

—It was always quiet when we drove back. They drank a lot in the trucks and nobody said anything very much. I think the ones who stayed behind in the villages didn’t want to hear about it, and maybe the ones who went to the forests and did the shooting didn’t want to speak. I never wanted to speak.

Kolesnik’s cigarette has burnt down. He flicks the long ash into the ashtray, lights himself another.

—Even before I did it. The first killings, people talked about them, in the village, Belarusian people, but then they stopped. Everyone knew it was going on and no one spoke about it. I knew it was happening and I never said anything.

—
And after you did it?

—I got drunk. There was always lots to eat and drink in the evenings afterwards. Lots of music. You didn’t want to speak. Just drink and eat, hear the music, really loud.

•  •  •  

Today we just sat, Mina. It was the same yesterday, too.

Micha could find no courage to ask; Kolesnik stayed with him all day. Let the young man be silent in his kitchen, gave him vodka, bread, found him rags for his tears. They sat for hours, and the tape rolled on and on, and then it stopped, and Micha turned it over, started the recording again.

Micha cycles to Kolesnik’s village, but keeps going, on toward the town. He has the tape recorder with him, but he knows the day will be silent again, so he goes instead to the museum.

The girl by the door doesn’t recognize him at first, but after he smiles and says hello, she nods and points to the visitor’s book.

—
Yes. In the spring.

Micha doesn’t go to the uniforms or the killings this time. He stays on the other side of the room. Spends the morning with the photos of families, their houses, objects from their homes. A pair of gloves, a bolt of cloth, a small silver cup. Handwriting in a ledger, pencil-scribbled lists, personal notes in the margins of a book.

A man’s leather shoe, good and heavy. Heel worn down on the outside, molded by the wearer’s step. As he walked around the village, from town to town. And then later only around his home or perhaps just as far as his neighbor’s house; pacing out the narrow limits of the ghetto.

Micha doesn’t cross to the other side of the room; he doesn’t dare risk seeing the same faces again over there.

When Micha gets back to Andrej’s, Kolesnik is there, sitting outside on the wall. He stands up as Micha cycles down the lane.

—I was worried. You didn’t come.

Micha doesn’t know what to say.

—Your friend said you were still here. I thought I’d wait.

—
I’m fine. I didn’t feel like talking today.

—No.

Micha stands outside the door, the old man looks like he doesn’t want to go yet.

—
Listen. I can’t really invite you in. It’s not my place, you know.

—No. I know. I was just thinking. Will you come tomorrow?

—
Yes. If that’s okay.

—Yes.

—
I just needed a break today.

—Yes. My wife, Elena, I asked her if she would talk to you. She didn’t collaborate. I thought it might be interesting for you to hear her story, too.

Micha is surprised.

—
She doesn’t mind?

—No, no. She wants you to hear.

—
Okay.

—I’ll tell her you will come tomorrow?

—
Okay.

When Micha goes into the house, he finds Andrej’s mother in the kitchen. She has been at the window, watching him talking with Kolesnik, and she looks angry. She says something to Micha which he doesn’t understand, but her tone frightens him. She spits into the sink and leaves.

Micha sits at the table with Jozef and Elena Kolesnik. Three of them, around the microphone, tape humming quietly on the table. Kolesnik will translate for his wife. Elena watches her husband’s face as they speak, but he stares only straight ahead, hands flat on the table in front of him.
He’s pretending he isn’t here.

—
What do you think of what your husband did? While the Germans were here?

Elena replies first to her husband and then to Micha.

—She feels sad.

—
Sad?

Elena nods, rubs her fingertips against the tabletop. She speaks again.

—One of her brothers did the same.

—
He did?

—Yes. She says the Germans ordered it, and he did it.

—
Did she think it was a good thing? Back then?

Kolesnik asks his wife, and she shrugs while she speaks. A short answer.

—She can’t remember.

—
No?

Elena looks at her husband. Her lips move, but she doesn’t speak. Micha waits, but he doesn’t think she will answer. He finds another question.

—
What happened to her brother?

—She had two brothers. One was killed by the Germans, and the other was executed after the Russians came back.

—
By the Germans?

—Yes. He was killed with ten other men in her village. A German soldier was shot in the square. It was a punishment.

—
Who shot the German soldier?

Micha watches Elena while she thinks.

—She doesn’t know. A partisan, maybe.

—
But her brother wasn’t a partisan?

—No, but they shot him anyway. She says she wants you to know it was a cruel time.

Elena scratches at the tabletop with her long thumbnail. Her mouth is drawn tight, eyes wet. Micha stays quiet in case she says more. When she does speak, Micha sees Kolesnik nod, blink; the change in his eyes. It is the first time he has shown any response.

—By the end, she says she could only tell them apart by their songs.

—
I don’t understand.

Elena spreads her hands flat, turns them palm up. Short fingers, fleshy pads, deep lines scored into her skin. She speaks. Stops. Her husband translates. She speaks again.

—At the end she saw no difference.

—After the Jews were dead, the Germans came and killed and burnt and stole from her family instead. The partisans, too. They came in from the marshes with their guns when they were hungry.

—Her father locked the doors, nailed them shut, but they came in anyway.

—She says she was afraid. All the time afraid. Women were raped, men were taken away. No one trusted anyone. Every week, every day it was another thing.

—She hid in the barn. Sometimes she lay in the corn. Also in the reeds by the stream.

—She remembers when her mother was crying and crying, and when the men stole their food. Their cow. Which was all they had left.

Elena stops now and rubs her face dry. Deep breaths into old lungs. Kolesnik glances over at her, then looks ahead again. When she speaks, he looks down at his fists.

—In her village, after the houses were burnt, people lived in holes in the ground.

—When they came and did these things, she didn’t know who it was. She just ran and hid.

—When she heard them singing, their language, then she knew. One day Germans, next day partisans. Later it was Russians, too.

Micha interrupts. He wants to know.

—
Who was the worst?

Elena looks at her husband and he repeats the question for her, and then she looks at Micha, but doesn’t speak.

—
I mean, the Communists, the Germans, the partisans, the Red Army? Who was the worst?

Elena has tears on her cheeks. Micha can see them in the lines around her mouth when she moves her face into the light.
She won’t answer.
Micha wonders if she is just being polite, even now, when he wants her to be honest.
The Germans. The Germans were by far the worst.

He lets her sit for a while, and then he asks her.

—
Is it enough to feel sad?

Kolesnik translates and Elena looks at Micha, angry now. She directs her answer to her husband.

—She doesn’t know what you mean.

Micha tries to find another question, but he can’t. Elena stands up and speaks, not to Micha, only to Kolesnik. She reties her headscarf, hands making tight, swift movements under her chin. Elena is crying. Her husband speaks for her.

—She says she can’t feel anything else.

Micha packs his bag, looking out onto the darkening street. Elena sits out in a chair on the porch, hands folded tight in her lap. Micha can see her through the window, but can’t see her expression.

—She’s remembering. It’s hard for her. She’ll come inside in a while.

Kolesnik stands watching Micha watching his wife.

—
Elena said she is sad.

—Yes.

—
Sad for what you and her brothers did.

—Yes.

Micha waits while Kolesnik pours a vodka for each of them to drink.

—We have no children. When I came back, when we married, she was too old. Elena thinks this is a punishment for those times.

—
What do you feel?

—What?

—
Do you feel sad?

—No.

—
No?

Kolesnik looks up at Micha. His eyes are steady. Micha understands this is a challenge.

—
Do you feel sorry?

—How can I apologize?

Micha knows it was the question he wanted. That the old man had the answer already.

—How can I apologize? Who can I apologize to? Who is there to forgive me?

Kolesnik looks at Micha.
No one. No one left alive.
Micha thinks it, but he doesn’t say it.

—I don’t feel sorry for myself.

Micha watches for weakness in the old man’s face, finds nothing.
No tears.

—
Do you think you have been punished?

—No.

—
Not in prison?

—No.

—
Without children?

—No.

Micha looks at Kolesnik. He can’t understand this man. His blunt words.

—
Your wife cried when she talked to me.

—I cried in prison. I cried some nights after we had shot Jews. Others did, too. I was wrong to do it and I was wrong to cry.

Kolesnik’s voice comes in hoarse barks.

—
Is Elena wrong to cry?

—Elena did nothing. She was a girl. She ran from everyone and she stayed alive.

His words are clear and hard.

—
Your wife is being punished, though. She has no children.

—Elena thinks that is punishment. Not me. I think there is no punishment for what I did. Not enough sadness and no punishment.

In the morning, Micha leaves the tape recorder behind on the table in his room at Andrej’s place. He packs his camera in his bag and cycles to Kolesnik’s house. Elena Kolesnik stands when her husband brings Micha into the kitchen, and he takes his camera out, so she can see. She smiles and nods, speaking quietly to her husband as she tucks stray hairs away under her headscarf.

—Thank you, Herr Lehner. My wife is says it is very good of you.

—
No problem.

Elena Kolesnik arranges two chairs by the stove, against the far kitchen wall, and Micha sets up the camera in front of them. Jozef Kolesnik helps him, holding the tripod, standing still while Micha focuses on the weave of his jacket. It is strange to work in silence, so Micha talks.

—
It’s a good camera.

—Yes?

—
A new lens, too. It’s a zoom, but very sharp. The pictures should turn out very clear.

Kolesnik looks through the viewfinder at the empty chairs, and Micha steps into the frame for him. So he has something to see. Kolesnik smiles, and Micha smiles into the lens. He doesn’t feel as though he is smiling at Kolesnik, exactly, but the old man laughs a little, pleased.

Elena Kolesnik sits upright next to her husband, and the old man holds her hands. Palm against palm, they wait while Micha opens the curtains wider, judges the light levels again.

—
I might take three or four exposures. To be safe. If that’s okay?

Kolesnik nods, stiff-necked, looking straight into the lens. He stays still like that until Micha takes the photo. Then, at the last
moment, he looks away. He looks at Elena, as if she were the only thing worth seeing. Elena looks ahead, at Micha, at the camera, into the lens, but Jozef looks away.

Just like Opa.

Micha takes two more photos. He doesn’t ask Kolesnik to look at him; he doesn’t say anything at all.

When he has finished, Elena stands up, steps behind the camera with Micha. She smiles at him, gestures for him to sit down next to her husband, signals that she wants to take a photo of the two of them now.

Micha looks over at Kolesnik, who is staring at his wife. She carries on talking, excited, urging Micha gently over to the chair.

—
If you don’t mind, I’d rather not.

It feels rude, cruel, but Micha really does not want to have his photo taken with the old man. Kolesnik translates, and Elena stops. She is hurt, but not as much as he is. Still sitting, large hands lying motionless on his narrow knees.

Micha apologizes. He packs up his camera quickly and leaves.

Andrej and his friend stand in the kitchen doorway, both men looking angry and embarrassed. Micha stands by the sink, scrubbing his hands. The bicycle chain broke on the way back to the village, and his hands are grimy with oil and rust; brown-black under his nails. Still unsettled from taking the Kolesniks’ photo, Micha’s hands feel weak under the icy flow of water from the tap. He turns around from the sink when the two men step into the room.