‘Everybody wants to be a boss,’ the driver once again stated gloomily.
‘What’s your name?’ asked Vincentas.
‘Michael the Archangel,’ the driver shot back. Then, a bit more quietly, ‘Mykolas.’
The Jews sat down on the truck floor; those who could not climb in were assisted by their own.
The co-op truck drove ahead of them, thick dust rising from under its wheels. The road was almost invisible; Mykolas the driver slowed down a bit, fell behind and then stopped completely.
‘Damned engine,’ he said, slapped the wheel angrily, then got out and opened the bonnet.
Vincentas paused for a moment, opened the door and got out, then stepped back up on the running-board, pulled his camera from under his jacket and aimed at the Jews sitting in the truck bed. The sick, elderly men sat there looking straight ahead with unseeing expressions. They neither talked nor asked anything, didn’t even complain. Judita had once said she found it strange that there were no people in his photographs. Now there were people – people who would soon no longer be. Vincentas photographed these people who would soon meet their maker, whom he would never see again. Indeed he had often photographed people he never saw again, but this was different. He would soon witness these people’s deaths, and they would remain only in his photographs. He pressed the shutter-button mechanically, advanced the film, pressed again and felt as though he were looking through a crack into an alien world, a world that was incomprehensible and unreachable to him, as if he were peeking through a keyhole at a world that would soon disappear for all time and he could do nothing about it. What unsettled him was that he felt something intensely – maybe it was fear, but something else, too – something terrifying and incomprehensible that shook the darkest depths of his soul.
‘Let’s go,’ the driver shouted irritably, and Vincentas jumped back into the cabin.
When they arrived at the pit the Jews became agitated, praying loudly and shouting unintelligible words. The pit was already lined by the old men who had been brought by the co-op truck. The driver opened the side of the truck, and a few Russian prisoners climbed up and began to throw the sickly old men into the pit. Two of them would pick up an old man like a bag of rubbish and throw him into the pit where other unfortunates lay moaning.
Jokūbas the Elder stood by the pit holding a sub-machine-gun.
‘Now we’ll splatter the guts out of these pieces of shit.’ He fired along the length of the pit. Laughter could be heard; the moaning in the pit died down. Vincentas got back into the truck and tried not to look in that direction. The Germans filmed and photographed Jokūbas the Elder, who neither threatened them nor objected.
The old men were driven in two trucks. After four trips they had all been ferried, and each time, as the trucks drove away from the pit, Vincentas and the driver could hear the shots.
After all the old or infirm had been taken, the younger men were driven out of the granary. They stood in rows of four with their hands behind their backs. They were not put in the trucks, which were ordered to follow the procession. Vincentas did not understand why the empty trucks were needed. To catch anyone who tried to escape? Even though the men were supervised from all sides by local policemen and some German soldiers, Tadas climbed into the back of the lorry with a sub-machine-gun. Two rows of guards also stood around the execution site: one contained Lithuanian policemen, the other German gendarmes with submachine-guns. The Jews had to undress and kneel down in the pit with their heads lowered. A dozen or so men from the battalion stopped by the edge of the pit, as well as several Germans with automatic weapons. Suddenly three of the condemned got up and took off down the pit, jumped over the edge and tried to escape towards the river, but a burst of gunfire was heard and all three collapsed.
Jokūbas the Elder had ordered that the boxes of vodka and beer be left not next to the pit but by the mound of excavated earth. Now someone took the initiative to bring one box closer. It may have been Baltramiejus. At first everything went smoothly, in an orderly fashion. A row lies down, is shot, the Russian prisoners sprinkle on some lime and few shovels of earth, then another row, and again, and again. And then everything went wrong.
One tall, broad-shouldered man did not want to undress; there was a tussle, Baltramiejus began to wave his pistol in the man’s face, a German commandant ran up and there was a struggle. Baltramiejus stumbled over a box of vodka and fell into the pit, then a Jew jumped in after him and began to strangle him, then grabbed his gun and shot at the German military commandant, who was standing by the edge of the pit, but missed. Then the commandant jumped into the pit and immediately got hit over the head with the pistol. The man tried to shoot again, but the weapon jammed. Jokūbas the Elder then also jumped into the pit, and plunged a knife into the Jew’s back, and the man fell dead. The first to be pulled from the ditch was the military commandant, who only had a scratch on his forehead and a sore head. Baltramiejus was pulled from the pit barely breathing.
The Jew had crushed his neck. At first the lieutenant ordered that Baltramiejus be taken to hospital because there was no doctor there, but Baltramiejus died shortly after being lifted into the truck. Several men from the unit carried him away from the pit, and he lay there until the executions were finished.
During a pause in the shooting Jokūbas the Elder came over to Vincentas.
‘You and the driver aren’t doing anything, so here’s a job for you – gather up the Jews’ rags and go to the town. Trade it all for some bootleg booze; the vodka is finished, and there’s still a lot of work to do. Now it’s time for the prettier part of it.’
As the truck full of clothes began to roll towards the town they met a column of women who were being marched to the execution site. There were fewer guards, but the empty co-op truck was still following behind them.
The driver knew what to do. He drove into the yard of the police station, stopped and looked at Vincentas.
‘Dump all of those rags out the back. I’ll be back in a minute.’
Vincentas opened the side of the truck, and without rushing began to throw the clothing out. It was mostly jackets and trousers, some shoes. To touch the clothes as little as possible he pushed them off with his foot. Not long before the old men and the sick had been thrown from the lorry. Now all that was left of them was a pile of clothes. Vincentas wanted to photograph that pile, but the driver came out of the police station with two enormous bottles of bootleg vodka, followed by a policeman who also carried bottles containing a few litres apiece.
‘I don’t have any more, honest to God,’ swore the policeman. Then he saw the pile of clothes and began to shout. ‘Are you all stupid, or what? Bloody hell, what did I say? The clothes go in the barn, in the barn.’
Vincentas and the driver, who swore the whole time, threw the clothes back into the lorry and followed the policeman, who trotted along in front of them to a barn a short distance away.
They drove back in silence.
By the time they reached the execution site the column of women had arrived. When they saw the bloodied men in the pit they began to shriek and pull their hair. A couple of men who had not yet been covered over stirred slightly. One even tried to get up, and then Tadas, Jokūbas the Younger and Pilypas jumped into the pit and smashed their skulls. Brain matter splattered everywhere, eyeballs flew out of sockets, the men were swimming in blood. They were all thoroughly drunk, rushing to finish and shooting inaccurately, urging the Russian prisoners to sprinkle the corpses with lime and without even letting them finish began to drive the women into the pit and to shoot them still standing. The earth in the pit rose and heaved as though an earthquake were taking place.
A woman with a child in her arms stopped at the edge of the pit, looked around helplessly, stood her three-year-old boy on the ground and pushed him, so that he would move away from the pit. What could she have hoped for? But she still hoped for something, maybe a miracle. The child tottered towards Jokūbas the Elder, who was holding a le
ather whip in his hand. At first he wanted to strike the boy with the whip but then changed his mind – he kicked the boy, and the child cried out in pain and flew several metres. Jokūbas the Elder continued kicking the boy towards the pit; the child whined hoarsely as he rolled along the ground like a ball until he fell into the pit next to his dead mother.
Vincentas stood next to a bucket of water. It looked like it was filled with blood. Jokūbas the Elder had bloodied his hands while stabbing the man who had strangled Baltramiejus. Blood and brains had splashed on to the men who had walked along the edge of the pit and shot at the backs and skulls of those lying there. And blood had sprayed on to the men using shovels to finish off those who tried to jump out of the pit. They had all washed in the bucket, and the water became thick with blood. Where was the priest who could say that he who worships the beast and its image and receives a mark on his forehead or on his hand, he, too, will drink the wine of God’s anger, poured undiluted into the cup of His wrath, and will be tormented in fire and brimstone; where is that do-gooder priest who forgives everything, that priest so full of grace?
Vincentas took a half-finished bottle of bootleg spirits and threw some back. The strong drink scalded his throat, and for a while he could not catch his breath. He grabbed his chest and unsuccessfully tried to take a few breaths. By the time he finally succeeded his eyes were full of tears, his face very red.
‘What – not feeling too well?’ said Andriejus, clapping him on the shoulder.
Vincentas pointed silently at the bottle of alcohol.
‘So the first time you need to take a deep breath, and breathe out as you drink, then it won’t go down your lungs,’ Andriejus advised.
The execution site was now still. The Russian prisoners finished burying the dead. The last to be shot had been children; it looked like they were burying broken, bloody dolls.
The local police and Germans drove away; only the men of their brigade were left standing by the bus drinking what was left of the alcohol.
‘What a fucking mess. That Jewish bastard. Those bastard communists. They’re all bastards,’ said Jokūbas the Elder.
‘Baltramiejus was … How old was he?’ asked Pilypas.
No one knew.
‘He was young,’ Matas finally said. ‘He didn’t deserve to die like that.’
‘Right. You saw how everyone was looking at me? As though it was my fault that that Jewish shit crushed his throat!’
‘It’s no one’s fault.’
‘Let’s go,’ called the lieutenant from inside the bus, and they all climbed in. Vincentas was the last, and he closed the door behind him.
Baltramiejus’s body lay in the back of the truck, wrapped in a dirty sheet that had covered the barrels of lime.
‘This nation lacks rigour,’ Vincentas heard behind him. He turned – a huge rat with Juozapas’s head sat on Baltramiejus’s shrouded body, smiling at Vincentas and baring its long, sharp teeth.
THE MOTHER AND THE SISTER
It was still light as they drove back, but fog was rising along the river and dusk slowly gathering over the city.
The lieutenant turned back to look at the brigade and asked, ‘Who will tell his mother?’
‘Andriejus’, said Jokūbas the Elder from the front seat without turning around, then added, ‘and the Photographer.’
Vincentas was not at all surprised. He gets all the lousy jobs. He has to carry this cross. Even if it is heavy, even if he can barely lift it, he still has to. If that cross were light it would still mean absolutely nothing. Absolutely nothing – not Christ, not prayers, not Easter morning. Absolutely nothing.
Four of them carried in Baltramiejus’s now-cool body. Matas and Pilypas quickly jumped back into the bus, and it drove off. Vincentas remained with Andriejus. He looked flustered, and Vincentas didn’t feel much better.
Baltramiejus’s mother sat on a bench by the wall, silently pressing together her pale lips. Only the sister cried.
‘It’s your fault that he died – yours!’ she shouted, clutching the dirty cloth that someone had taken from a Jewish home to cover the barrels of lime. Once she had calmed down, the mother asked them to help prepare Baltramiejus’s body for laying out.
‘I would ask my neighbour, she always knew how to deal with the dead, but she isn’t there any more. They took her away on the night of 14 June. Her husband was a teacher, she sold flowers – who could have been bothered by a teacher and a flower-seller? They were arrested and deported by the Soviets, like they had never existed, then some nasty strangers moved into the apartment … Where is he now? The teacher was good to him, used to take him fishing after his father died. My son liked to fish. He would bring back a fish and say, you cut off the heads, Mother, and would go out again. He would say he had something urgent to do … He didn’t like blood. He was afraid of blood. My boy …’
Vincentas and Andriejus stood there in silence.
Baltramiejus’s mother also fell silent, then went to fetch water and clothes.
The dead man lay on a table, his arms resting by his sides, barefoot; next to the table stood his army boots; the buttons on his uniform shone in the dusk like fake coins. There was talk that there were about five thousand Lithuanian army uniforms in warehouses but that the Germans wouldn’t let them be used, so the soldiers of the battalion were dressed in a rather haphazard fashion.
She washed her son’s body slowly with a white handkerchief, wiping each area several times as if she wanted to fix it in her memory, as if, by saying goodbye, she could still get something from the cold, lifeless body. Vincentas and Andriejus helped her. Baltramiejus was so light, so emaciated, that one person could have easily managed the task, but Vincentas did everything with Andriejus, lifting the cold body gingerly, seemingly afraid that it might suddenly shatter. When some bare part of his own body touched Baltramiejus’s own naked one, its icy coldness scalded him. Vincentas thought to himself that a dead person is like ice. It’s cold and frozen and then eventually melts – that body, that piece of ice, and then nothing is left of it, the earth takes everything back except the bones, it dissolves the body like ice and sucks out all of its fluids. A chill passed through him.
‘What is it?’ Andriejus looked at him in surprise. ‘It’s your first time?’
Vincentas said nothing. Sometimes it’s hard to explain what you feel. And you don’t need to explain. Everyone has their own worries.
‘He had this suit made for his wedding.’ The mother took a suit made of black English wool from a hanger and lay it next to her son’s body, which they had laid out on the table. The table top was slightly too short, so it looked like Baltramiejus was trying on an item of clothing he had grown out of. ‘Boys, you dress him. I’ll be right back,’ said the mother, and she rushed out of the room. Andriejus went to the door and opened it slightly and the sound of sobbing reached them from somewhere deep in the house.
‘Let her weep,’ Andriejus said, nodding, then winked at Vincentas. ‘Here, I’ve got some powder.’
Vincentas did not feel the effect of the cocaine at first. He was too tired to feel strong sensations. Nevertheless a strange calm soon came over him, even joy. The day’s fatigue and bad mood evaporated.
Baltramiejus lay on the table in his nice black suit, wearing worn but brightly polished shoes, his face whiter than his shirt collar, which, as hard as they tried to pull it higher, still could not cover his horribly bruised neck.
‘Why did the sister say that we were responsible for his death?’ Vincentas asked Andriejus.
‘She doesn’t know what she’s talking about,’ he replied calmly.
‘Maybe there’s something wrong with her head,’ Vincentas said, almost chuckling. It seemed funny to him. ‘Maybe she suggested that to her brother … Remember the bone? What kind of idiot would think that he could defend himself from the Devil with a bone?’
Andriejus looked at Vincentas with a strange expression, smiling and frowning at the same time, and Vincentas said n
othing more.
Then Andriejus went out to smoke and Vincentas went into Baltramiejus’s room. His mood had improved markedly, and he wanted to do something. A neatly made bed, a bookshelf – adventure novels, detective stories, fairy tales. A few toy soldiers stood on the bottom shelf. Vincentas bent down – the soldiers wore French uniforms from Napoleon’s time. Next to them stood a large book published in 1930 commemorating five hundred years since the death of Vytautas the Great. The nation’s grand and glorious past. Grand dukes, knights, honour, bravery and sacrifice. Crowds of patriots, the giant of patriotism crushing the masses with his loathsome ideas, thirsty for victims. Strange to commemorate a day of death, a day of sadness. Someday Baltramiejus’s death will probably be remembered by someone. Cannon will fire, honour-brigade soldiers will salute. Albums of photographs might even be published, full of people in folk costumes carrying flags, chanting and singing and praying at Baltramiejus’s grave. But he won’t care; Baltramiejus will simply never be again. He was now no different from those rags that Vincentas had pushed off the truck with his foot.
Darkness and Company Page 13