The Last Girl (29 page)

I put some water to boil on the small hob in the corner of the studio and made a coffee. It was Sunday and the church bells were ringing. By the window a new painting stood on Rita's easel, just finished. Madonna and child. Jewish Madonna, with her tumbling dark hair and her soulful almond eyes. Olive-skinned Madonna. Madonna of my childhood. In her arms her little Jewish daughter.

An explosion shook the air from the direction of the airport. It was followed by two more. I jumped up, spilling the black coffee on the wooden floorboards. Rita sat up suddenly in bed. The windows continued to rattle to the rumbling noise of the aircraft.

‘It's not a drill,' I said.

‘
Partizanai?
'

‘Not with planes.'

‘The Germans.'

The city was in chaos when later I ventured out. Soviet lorries clogged the streets. Horse-drawn carts wound between them piled high with the hastily packed possessions of Jewish families. People ran backward and forward, panic tightening the skin on their faces. Late into the night the city packed its bags. The air reverberated to the sound of the explosions and the roar of aircraft engines.

It took the Germans just two days to reach Vilnius after invading on the morning of 22 June 1941. The streets were full again. This time the Lithuanian population of the city came out to cheer and salute the liberating army. Pretty young girls ran out into the street pushing flowers into the buttonholes of the uniforms of the young German soldiers. In the bars they celebrated the retreat of the communists.

I was surprised to bump into Fisk. He looked agitated and tired. He was shuffling in the shadows. When he saw me he tried to smile but it came out as a grimace.

‘Hello, still here?' I said, taking a little spiteful pleasure in his fear. ‘I would have thought you would have got out with your Russian friends.'

‘Shh!' He put a finger to his lips and glanced around nervously.

‘What's the matter, Fisk, worried somebody might inform on you?' I asked maliciously.

‘I tried to escape. The lorry I was travelling on was stopped by a roadblock. The Lithuanian partisans weren't letting people get away. I made a break for the forests and joined up with a small group of Jewish partisans. But there was a lot of fighting going on. We had to get out of there.'

‘So you're back here.'

‘Just for a couple of days while I sort out transport. Wait for the Lithuanians to calm down.'

 *

The last time that I saw Fisk he was still flitting around the city, keeping to the shadows. He was not wearing the yellow star that the Germans had enforced on the Jewish population. With a poetic justice that the world generally seems to lack, it was Ira who told me of his fate. Within days of the arrival of the German army there were rumours of the disappearance of Jews. Young Lithuanian thugs boasted in bars that they were being paid ten roubles a day to hunt them out for the Nazis. The Jewish population that had not managed to flee ahead of the Wehrmacht laid low.

I met Ira standing on the cracked paving stones of Wielka. He was looking leaner still and was unshaven. His yellow star was pinned to his chest and despite his smile he looked agitated. ‘I'm looking for some work,' he explained, shrugging his sagging shoulders. ‘Ei! And did you hear about your friend Fisk, Comrade Fisk?'

I shook my head. ‘He wasn't really a friend.'

‘Don't worry, I don't feel bad about you, Steponas. Anyway the fucker got his deserts.'

‘What happened?'

‘Some Lithuanian thugs picked him off the street. They recognised him from the time he was hanging out in the bars with the Russian officers. You know where they took him?'

‘Where?'

He grinned. His clean smile was broken by missing teeth. ‘To the same place they took me!' He laughed. ‘Beat the miserable little creep to a pulp that even his own mama wouldn't be able to identify.'

The Nazi swastika hung from the building recently vacated by the fleeing Soviet army. The dark cells continued to be put to good use.

‘Many have taken refuge in the forest,' Ira continued. ‘I talk to Rachael about this, but every time I mention the forests she shivers and refuses. Not the forest, she says, just not the forest. And in truth the forest is not a good place for baby. What to do? We keep our heads low and hope that it will pass. It will pass. It has to. There are good times and bad times, it has always been so, the good times give way to bad and then the bad give way to good. Just to keep the head down and weather the storm. After all, they can't kill us all!' His grin was curiously chilling.

‘No,' I agreed. ‘They can't kill everybody.'

Before the month had ended Einsatzkommando 9, the special action squad, had moved into Vilnius on the heel of the German tanks, and conducted their first Aktion. Five thousand Jewish men were rounded up from the poorer quarter of the city centre, not far from where Jerzy and I were lodging. Jerzy, who had ventured out into the warm sun, came back ranting.

‘Why are they not fighting?' he yelled, slamming the table top with his weak fist.

‘With what are they going to fight?' I asked. ‘The Polish army was steam-rollered, the Russians have retreated, but a group of unarmed Jewish men are going to take on the Wehrmacht?'

‘Still!'

Jerzy paced about the untidy room wringing his hands. I sat at the table working on a play, a project Marcin Lunski had suggested about the rout of the German crusaders at Zalgiris – Grunwald – by the intractable Samogitian forces.

The Germans claimed the Jews had been taken to labour camps but within days other rumours began to circulate in the city. There were stories of survivors of a massacre. A young man who had crawled naked from the mountain of corpses in the forest glade just outside the city. Tales whispered in the candlelight. Nightmares perhaps. Perhaps only rumours and nightmares.

In early September more Jewish families were dragged from their homes. With pitiful bundles they were loaded onto trucks and driven away down the avenue of maples, tremulous with autumn's first breath. From imprisonment in Lukiszki they were taken somewhere else. This time the talk of deaths was more open, reprisal for the killing of Germans, the Nazis reported. And the name Polar began to haunt the lips of young and old. The beautiful thick woods six kilometres beyond the city.

The thinking behind the removal of the poor families from their cramped apartments soon became clear. Two ghettos were established. Around each of the small areas wooden fences were erected to cut them off from the general population of the city. The two ghettos were divided by German Street – Niemiecka. The entrances of the houses facing out were blocked off. There was only one entrance to each of the ghettos. These gates were placed on- opposite sides of the ghetto so that it was impossible for the residents of one ghetto to communicate casually with the residents of the other. Though only metres apart they could have been separated by kilometres. At the large wooden gates of the ghetto signs were erected reading, ‘Attention! Jewish area. Danger of infection. Non-Jews Keep Out!'

As the narrow streets resounded to the work of the Ger­ mans, officials with wads of lists worked door to door. Finding ourselves within the limits of the planned ghetto area Jerzy and I were politely informed we would have to move.

‘You are not to worry,' the plump, red-faced Nazi official assured us. ‘It is an inconvenience, I know, but heavens, better than living here like rats, heh?' He laughed nervously, flicking through his papers. ‘You will be ,allocated with property vacated by the Jews outside the ghetto area. You will I am sure be pleased.' He was sweating in his uniform which seemed slightly too tight and he looked weary. He clicked his heels smartly when he left, throwing us a respectful salute. Jerzy, however, did not move.

I gathered some boxes and rented a small pony and cart from a friend of Rita's. When I returned with them to our apartment in Rudnicka, Jerzy had disappeared. I swore angrily and began to gather our meagre possessions. I was most concerned to prevent our books and papers from being damaged. As I was carefully packing Jerzy's old typewriter into a small wooden box the door burst open. Jankowski stood in the open doorway ashen faced.

‘Alexei! Where the fuck has Jerzy got to?'

‘Come and see,' Jankowski said, almost inaudibly.

I followed him out into the dark stairwell. Boxes and packages of belongings were piled deep on the landing and up the stairs; residents coming and going following Nazi orders. Jankowski kept two paces ahead and would not turn when I called. The pony I had hired stood patiently tethered to the old maple. In the low afternoon light I noticed a commotion down the street, sliced by a sharp shaft of heavy afternoon sunlight.

‘What's going on?' I asked Jankowski, hurrying to catch up. He stared ahead, pacing quickly down the uneven cobbles.

On the edge of the crowd Rita was stood in a cold slab of shadow. Her face was white and she covered her mouth with her two delicate painter's hands. Lunski stood beside her.

‘Rita? What is going on?' I asked, fear knocking heavily from within my chest. She shook her head and Jankowski took my arm and thrust me through the crowd.

The onlookers circled an old tree. An oak. Its leaves had begun to fall and lay golden on the grey cobbles. The tree was gnarled and twisted with age. From its stubby trunk it threw out one particularly impressive limb. The branch reached out across the street, dappling the cobbles in the summer, providing shade for the tired walker. From the sturdy limb Jerzy's emaciated body hung. The body swung in small, slow circles. His hollow eyes gazed down vacantly at the earth. His feet dangled. His poet's fingers curled like claws.

‘Two young German soldiers stopped a mother in the street. An argument started. Jerzy wanted to step forward and intervene then. He was boiling. I held him back. You will cause more trouble than good, I told him. I managed to cool him. And then one of the soldiers grabbed the young mother by her hair and dragged her to the ground.' Marcin Lunski demonstrated, grabbing the air in his fist, twisting and pulling it down. He wiped his eyes. ‘As she fell, the baby dropped from her grasp. It was swaddled and bounced on the pavement. Rolled. The young girl let out a scream that stopped my heart. She leapt forward to grab it, but the soldier yanked her back by the hair while the other soldier kicked the bundled baby out of reach of her fingertips.' He paused again. ‘They laughed.'

‘They laughed?'

‘At that moment Jerzy let out such a shriek! Like an animal. Like something non-human. It sent a shiver down my spine. He lunged forward and I was not able to stop him. Before I knew what was happening he was on the soldiers like a wild animal. A tiger. He ripped at their flesh and bit into one of the soldier's necks. They were terrified.'

Lunski paused. I did not turn from the window where I was stood. Outside darkness had fallen. The night was crisp, dear. From the street came the sound of cartwheels scraping on the cobbles, the breath of the horses, occasionally a phrase; low, nervous Yiddish. They made their way quietly to the ghettos.

‘More soldiers appeared instantly. They pulled him off kicking and screaming. When they had secured him they took the young woman and stood her against the wall. Right there in the street, beside the doorway. Look, they said, she is not worth fighting for. She is Jewish. She is vermin. They have diseases. Like rats they must be exterminated. A soldier raised his rifle and shot her. She crumpled against the wall. One shot.'

‘And the baby?

‘It was dead already. The kick had killed it. They lobbed it over a wall. The soldiers.'

‘And then they hung him.'

‘I couldn't watch. I buried my face in my hands. A soldier came by and hit me in the ribs with the butt of his gun. Watch, he said. Watch and learn what happens to those who try to defend Jewish scum. I uncovered my eyes, but I did not watch.'

Fear settled on the city like a freezing fog. There was no nook or crevice into which it did not reach its icy fingers. It settled and it did not shift. We lived in the knowledge that it was scraping its broken fingernails against the panes of our windows. Sucking the warmth from our hearths. Bleeding the strength from our limbs.

I moved into the new apartment Jerzy and I had been allocated, but without him I felt lost. I sat alone in the room, a blanket wrapped tight around me, the door locked and bolted. Lunski had suggested I stay with him but I could not. There I would talk and we would drink, we would drink and laugh and then I would turn and Jerzy would not be there. I unpacked his books and poems and placed them neatly on the desk. Alongside them I set his typewriter. Closing my eyes I pressed the keys, listening to its clack as if it was his voice whispering to me, late into the night. When sleep ambushed me I dreamt of him swinging, hollow-eyed, the wind catching the curls of his hair. A pounding on the door woke me. Rita called to me through the keyhole. I did not get up and after a while she left.

Ghetto number one was designated for craftsmen. Ghetto number two was for everyone else. Those with work permits were required to move into Ghetto number one, whilst the elderly, the sick, and orphaned children moved to Ghetto number two. They began the long walk between the two ghettos late in the day on I5 September. Of three thousand sick and elderly, only six hundred walked through the wooden gates. The rest were lost in the night. In the fog that had descended upon the city.

I returned to the hospital, numbing my pain with work. I avoided Lunski and Jankowski and saw little of Rita, who immersed herself in her painting in her small studio. I hid the play I had been working on with Lunski beneath the rug in the flat I had moved into. One night I woke with a start. The fog buffeted the window in the darkness. Scrambling out of bed I gathered the sheets from beneath the rug. One by one I burned them in the flame of a candle.