The men looked at each other and some started shifting their feet uncomfortably.
Jokūbas the Elder lowered his pistol. ‘Damn all of you. Damn you!’
Andriejus’s thinking went like this: they should look where Simonas Petras had stood while shooting. The shooting had taken place in three stages: first at the men, then at the women and finally at the elderly and the children, who were brought on carts. The Russian prisoners who had been herded from the village hadn’t made a particularly good job of covering the grave, so the layer of earth was thin. The bodies lay in the pit in four layers. Even Simonas Petras could not remember precisely whether, while shooting, he had stood in one place or had moved around.
‘Even if you moved, it wouldn’t have been more than a few metres,’ decided Andriejus. ‘Just from the pit to the vodka.’
It was decided that they would search for the medallion in a three-metre area.
‘But I seem to remember he ran around along the edge like a madman,’ said Matas.
‘I’ve never witnessed a more idiotic business,’ said Jokūbas the Elder, sitting by the edge of the pit. ‘That’s exactly how Lithuanians are different from the Jews. The Jews would never bother with this kind of nonsense.’
One Russian prisoner, probably the one in charge, came up to him and suggested cautiously, ‘This is a desecration of remains. It isn’t good to move the dead.’
There was a hush. Jokūbas the Elder turned his pistol in his hand. The Russian, understanding that he had behaved unwisely, retreated slowly to the pit.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said quietly. ‘I’m sorry.’
Jokūbas the Elder aimed the pistol at him. The Russian closed his eyes.
‘Bang!’ shouted Jokūbas the Elder and started laughing. The other men laughed, too. Only the Russian didn’t laugh.
The Russians began to dig up the dead, first by the edge of the pit, where the gunmen had stood.
Taking the occasional swig from a bottle, Jokūbas the Elder spoke. ‘Do you know the story of the man who set out on a journey? Let me tell it to you. He called together his servants and gave them some money. He gave one servant five talents; another, two; the third, one. Each according to his abilities. And then he left. Time passed, then the master returned and asked for his money. The first servant said, “Here, master, you gave me five talents, and I used them to make five more.” The servant who was given two talents had also doubled his money, but the one who had received a single talent said, “Master, I know that you’re a very clever man – you reap where you did not scatter, you gather where you did not sow. Worried, I hid my talent in the ground. Here, take what is yours.” The master praised the first two servants and rewarded them, letting them keep all of the money, then scolded the third, “You layabout, you should have invested my money, then I would have got it back with interest on my return. Take away his single talent and give it to the one who has ten.”’
‘So we’re like that third servant?’ Jonas asked, raising his head.
‘What do you think?’ replied Jokūbas the Elder.
‘Instead of investing money we bury it,’ said Jonas, gesturing with his foot towards the corpses just unearthed by the Russian prisoners.
The prisoners dug reluctantly. It looked like they did not believe that it made sense to look for some trinket or ring. They simply thought that they, too, could be shot.
‘I’m not finished yet,’ said Jokūbas the Elder. ‘The story ends like this. The master said, “For to the one who has, more will be given, and he will have an abundance, but from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away.”’
‘My brother,’ responded Pilypas, sitting at the edge of the pit, ‘a few years ago he took out a bank loan. Then everything was taken away from him and given to the bank because he couldn’t make the interest payments.’
‘Such are Jesus’s words,’ said Jokūbas the Elder.
‘Jesus was not a banker, for God’s sake,’ said Andriejus.
‘No, no,’ said Matas. ‘When he was talking about the one who has not … He was talking about love. The one who does not love is the poor man, from whom everything will be taken away. That’s what I think.’
Jokūbas the Elder nodded his head. ‘That’s written in black and white in the Jews’ business manual. The more I think about it the more it becomes clear – that’s all a lot more practical than what the priests tell us.’
The prisoners stopped digging. They had dragged several corpses to the side, and a dip appeared at the side of the pit. They were standing in it.
‘What is it?’ asked Andriejus.
One of the Russians gestured at a freshly dug-up body. The man, soiled with earth and dusted with lime, moved several times and tried to get up. Andriejus raised his rifle, let out a shot but missed. He shot again. The frightened prisoners squatted down in the pit. The body was still.
‘Do you want to stay here with the Jews?’ Jokūbas the Elder shouted angrily, raising his weapon. ‘Faster, faster, you parasites.’
The prisoners resumed digging.
‘That’s blasphemy,’ said Jonas to Jokūbas the Elder. ‘It’s not right to talk like that about the Scriptures.’
‘Why?’ asked Jokūbas the Elder.
‘Well, you know … it’s holy.’
‘With all due respect, holiness is not the point here,’ Jokūbas the Elder snapped back.
‘Look, the master leaves you some money, and what do you do? You keep it safe, of course, so that it won’t get lost. The Jew, on the other hand, invests it right away – he lends it out and receives interest.’
‘And what’s wrong with that?’ asked Andriejus.
‘Come on, it’ll get dark. We won’t be able to find our way back,’ whined Simonas, who was called Petras. He was picking up the empty vodka bottles as though his valuables might have ended up at the bottom of one of them.
‘There’s nothing wrong with it. Nothing. But you can’t disagree that interest is a Jewish invention. Making money by lending it out. You help someone but not for free.’
‘Well –’ Andriejus started, but Jokūbas the Elder cut him off.
‘Let’s take the famous parable with the multiplication of the fish and the bread … Only a blind man would fail to see that that’s the same principle of interest. If you have two coins, lend them out so that you get two more in interest. Then lend out four and get eight back. This way you can multiply the fish you have so you can feed a crowd. Not for free, of course. Nothing in this world is for free.’
‘So, what did Jesus get for feeding the crowd?’ Pilypas, drunk, interjected. ‘What did he get?’
‘Nobody fed anyone. It’s just a description of a very old Jewish business rule: the bigger the crowd, the better the interest.’
Simonas, whom everyone called Petras, hiccupped, waved his hands in front of him and said, ‘I don’t give a damn, do you hear! You can be a disbeliever, you can mock and defame Our Redeemer, Our Lord, but I believe in God the Almighty Father, creator of Heaven and earth, in His only son Jesus Christ, who died on the cross, descended to hell and … all that … that He died for me and for you, as sad and wrong as that is! So that he could pay for our sins, damn all of you – our terrible, terrible sins! What? You want to shoot me? Then shoot me. I don’t give a damn.’
‘You’ll shoot yourself,’ replied Jokūbas the Elder indifferently. ‘The time will come.’ Then, with a bottle in his hand, he gestured at the prisoners toiling in the pit. ‘By the way, they’re still looking for your relic, in case you’ve forgotten.’
Simonas Petras looked them all over with drunken eyes, then croaked, ‘I hate you. I hate all of you! You’re animals, slaughterers, animals!’
The prisoners laboured, sweated, but found nothing. It was getting dark and they had to drive back home.
Jokūbas the Elder ordered the policeman to lead the prisoners back to the town. Then, after thinking for a moment, he waved to the one in charge, the one who had spoken about desecrat
ing graves, to come over to him.
‘Come here, come and get your reward,’ and handed him a bottle.
The Russian, although exhausted, tried to look alert and approached, reached out his hand to take the bottle, and just at that very moment a shot rang out. The prisoner collapsed at Jokūbas the Elder’s feet and lay there motionless.
‘Throw him in the ditch,’ waved Jokūbas the Elder, and the prisoners silently followed the order. They grabbed the dead man by the hands and feet and threw him in, then covered him with a few buckets of earth.
‘Who else thinks he deserves a reward?’ asked Jokūbas the Elder. The prisoners were silent. One of the men of the brigade sniggered.
The prisoners disappeared down the road, becoming shadows; it became hard to distinguish their dark figures from the blackening bushes lining the road.
Simonas, whom they all called Petras, walked swaying to the pit and stood by the edge; the sound of pissing was heard, then, after a pause, he lost his balance and his body fell into the pit, his loud curses echoing from within.
Andriejus and Jonas helped him climb out, but Simonas Petras fell back in on to his back. Then the men grabbed him by the feet. As they pulled, one of his boots came off and the long-searched-for medallion fell out. The ring was in the boot as well. When they shoved it in front of Simonas Petras he was too speechless to thank them or rejoice. He kissed it and wept.
The rumble of a motorcycle could be heard from the direction of the town. The motorcycle and sidecar approached quickly and stopped not far from the truck that was to take the brigade back to Kaunas. The motorcyclist approached and asked for Vincentas, then said that according to the Sturmbannführer’s orders he was to pick up a package.
The men climbed into the truck. Simonas Petras could not crawl in on his own, so they threw him in like a sack and left him lying there. The truck rolled along the uneven road behind the motorcycle, its light disappearing into the darkness so that it seemed like a little boat was leading a big ship into the enormous darkness of the sea.
The SS personnel had settled at the edge of the city. When Vincentas approached the house, a shirtless soldier emerged. On the right side of his hairless chest he had a tattoo of a spread-winged eagle, and on his wrist, as was typical of an SS man, his blood type was etched into his skin.
‘What do you want?’ he asked.
‘I’m supposed to pick up a package to take to the city.’
‘Ah yes.’ He smiled, then turned towards the house and shouted, ‘Reinhardt, bring the package.’
Another man, also out of uniform but wearing a shirt, emerged. Large sweat stains darkened his armpits. He silently handed over a bag. The bag was not heavy and was tied with string using a fancy knot that Vincentas did not recognize.
‘What is it?’ asked Vincentas.
‘A container for thoughts,’ said the soldier with the eagle tattoo. The two Germans glanced at each other, laughed and went back into the house. Through the window he could hear a gramophone playing; he could smell meat cooking and alcohol. Vincentas remained standing there for a while with the bag in his hands – the soldiers inside were listening to a recording of Carmen.
Walking back to the vehicle where the brigade waited for him, Vincentas thought about Aleksandras.
‘What’s in that damned bag?’ asked Jokūbas the Elder when the truck began to roll again.
‘A package. For the SS Sturmbannfuhrer.’
‘Show me.’
Vincentas indicated the rope, tied in an unfamiliar double knot.
‘Do you know how to retie a knot like this?’ he asked Jokūbas the Elder.
‘I don’t give a damn,’ he said and spat over the side. ‘Untie it.’
‘Untie it yourself,’ said Vincentas and immediately saw the muzzle of a pistol appear under his nose.
‘I’ve been wanting to shove a bullet into your vermin-like face for a long time,’ said Jokūbas the Elder, now furious. ‘You’re not just a Bolshevik whore but a Nazi whore, too. What – do you like being fucked in all your holes?’
But Vincentas did not untie the bag. He sat there staring into the darkness swirling around the lorry; he even imagined he could see shadows running after them. They scurried from one side of the road to the other, rolling and tumbling, and if you listened carefully you could hear their moans blending with the sound of the lorry’s engine. Now I’m imagining things, he thought, and even smiled. Why it was good he wasn’t sure. The alcohol he had drunk was taking effect.
Jokūbas the Elder shoved him hard, grabbed the bag and with two hands quickly untied it. He pulled a lighter from his pocket, lit it and shone it into the bag. He stared, unmoving, then an expression of disgust distorted his dimly lit, unshaven face.
‘Sooner or later I’ll finish you off, you pervert.’
He threw the bag at Vincentas’s feet. Tadas, who was sitting next to him, also wanted to take a look, but Vincentas quickly took the bag and retied the string. ‘You shouldn’t look,’ he told him. ‘Better if you don’t.’
ODYSSEUS AND CHRIST
Aleksandras’s ghost already hovered between them, but since Judita had discovered that he was still alive matters deteriorated. According to Judita, his ghost would haunt them and not give them any peace.
‘I thought ghosts come here from the next world. If you know that Aleksandras is alive, how can he be a ghost?’ Vincentas said with irony. Judita ignored him.
‘I’m talking about a different kind of ghost. Hamlet saw his father’s ghost. I used to think that was just a writer’s fancy, but now I understand – the ghost is guilt. When you feel guilty you’re visited by a ghost, the ghost of your guilt. Hamlet felt guilty for his father’s death, that’s why he was haunted by a ghost.’
‘That’s nonsense,’ said Vincentas. But it was not such a stupid idea, at least not in the way he would have liked it to be. On three occasions now he had seen pits full of dead people. How many ghosts should be visiting him every night? Thousands. Does he feel guilty for their deaths? He can’t answer that question. Simply can’t – or doesn’t want to. He’s not yet sure how to word the charge he would bring against himself. That he does not feel pity for people who died like animals before his eyes? Strange, but the truth is, he does not feel pity. He doesn’t understand if he feels anything at all. He knows one thing, though: ever since Aleksandras reappeared his relationship with Judita has gone downhill. Increasingly she turns her back to him or spends time with his mother instead.
Previously, she would sit in the workshop and watch him plane boards for coffins or crosses, smoking and telling stories about her trips to Paris or when she worked as a translator. He enjoyed listening to her low, gentle voice; just hearing her made him desire her, and the work went faster, and everything was smooth and effortless.
Now he sat for a long time at the workbench, doing nothing, staring at the rough surface of an unplaned board and seeing that it was full of knots; he sat there not wanting to move because movement would be painful.
Once again Judita was going to see his mother. He returned home exhausted, oppressed, still feeling deeply unsettled by the strange package he had delivered to the SS officer. The package was not heavy; he had known that it contained something unpleasant, something … wrong. He had not been able to stand it any longer and, once alone, had taken a look. And then immediately regretted it. Why had the German wanted Vincentas alone to deliver the package to him? Why?
He kissed Judita on the cheek, but she was getting ready to leave.
‘You’re going out?’ asked Vincentas. ‘At this time?’
‘Your mother and I are going to make some lingonberry jam,’ she said and left, as though Vincentas were a ghost. A dark shadow on a distant road.
He sat in the dark for a while, then put on a record. At first he listened to some guitar music, after which he began to hunt through a pile of records until he found the one he needed. A moment later the sounds of the overture to Carmen began to flow from the throat of t
he gramophone. He pulled out a cigarette.
‘Cigarettes replace everything in the end, even sex,’ he said to himself. Then he had a thought. He started walking up and down, put out the half-smoked cigarette, pulled out his box of photographs from under the bed, quickly selected a few, grabbed half a loaf of bread and left the house. Once on the street he looked around – no one was around, not even a patrol. Walking swiftly, Vincentas headed towards Vilijampolė, towards the ghetto.
He looked terrible, emaciated, much older; one of the lenses of his glasses was cracked, his face broken out in strange spots or pimples.
‘Do you have anything to eat?’ he asked Vincentas. Aleksandras did not seem at all surprised to see him. He did not ask what Vincentas wanted, why the soldier who had led him in stayed outside; the first thing he asked was whether Vincentas had anything to eat. When he saw the bread he was disappointed.
Darkness and Company Page 18