‘Oh, how lovely a confused, frightened, shocked human face looks,’ said the satisfied German. ‘You must be wondering what on earth is going on here? Let me admire the shock and awe in your twisted face!’ He sunk into an armchair, picked up a glass of cognac from a side-table, took a sip and continued to study Vincentas. ‘Do you know that living with a Jewish woman these days is at the very least foolish? How old are you? Not even thirty?’
Vincentas nodded. What difference does it make how old you are if you’re good for nothing – which was exactly how he felt at that moment.
‘These days it’s foolish to live at all,’ he muttered from his parched throat.
The German laughed. There was no sign of Judita. Maybe she isn’t here? Maybe Tadas has already killed her?
The German went to the gramophone and raised the volume, waved to some invisible person and then turned to Vincentas. ‘This seat is the most important object. Set up your camera so that you can take some good photographs.’ And he sank into the large sofa that had been draped with red fabric. ‘I like good photographs, I like images – images containing contrast. The old and the young, old and young faces, the contrast between withered and plump bodies. That is what we will be trying to achieve this evening – contrasts. Will you have enough light?’
Vincentas nodded uncertainly.
‘A woman’s head is beautiful, pure and glowing while John the Baptist’s is old, bloody, ghastly. A live head and a dead head. Breasts and a dead head. A woman – the embodiment of fertility, the beginning of life, the elemental, nature and unconscious instinct; and a man’s head – the symbol of rationality, the mind, power, a dead symbol, a symbol of defeat – in her hands. And your woman is so perfectly suited to our subject. Her body is full but not fat, a very attractive moderation. I can’t fault you. Excellent taste.’
He spoke in a strange, excited way, as though in some kind of ecstasy. Then Judita appeared.
It was the first time Vincentas had seen her this way. She was dancing. Vincentas did not know that she was a talented dancer. In fact, it seemed he did not know much about her at all. He was increasingly convinced of that – that we know the people who are closest to us least. The people we live with sink into us like a smell, and with time we stop noticing that smell, we begin to confuse it with our own. Then, when something happens, an accident, an unexpected event or some other unpleasant thing, we suddenly realize that we don’t really know anything about those with whom we share a bed.
Judita was wrapped in a multitude of scarves, she was fluttering around the room throwing them off one by one. The Artist sat down in the armchair smiling, then opened his dressing-gown – he was only half aroused. He turned to Vincentas.
‘Do you even have enough intelligence to appreciate this? It’s the Dance of the Seven Veils! Strauss’s Salome! Who better to play the part of Salome than a Jewess? Such a wonderful concept – I am a genius!’ The German pulled out a small bag containing white powder from his dressing-gown pocket, poured a little on to the surface of the side-table, inhaled first into one nostril then the other; with a look of satisfaction he rolled his head back and settled into the armchair.
Judita was still dancing. She spun around the room as though she were chasing somebody, as though she were being chased herself, she turned and turned, and Vincentas started as if he were under a spell, unable to tear his eyes away, and fear and anxiety flowed into his loins, horror and despair, this can’t be it, he thought, this can’t be the hour of our deaths, if not the hour then the day, the evening, the night, the German won’t let them leave here alive, the German will destroy them. For what? Regret pierced Vincentas’s chest. For what? He had done nothing wrong.
Finally Judita was almost completely naked, a single transparent silk screen remained. She stopped dancing and stood frozen in the middle of the room. In the candlelight she looked so beautiful, so lonely. And sad. Perhaps that was her role. Vincentas was utterly confused. What’s happening here? He understood only that she and the SS Sturmbannführer had rehearsed and that this show was clearly not for him. The Artist waved his hand. Judita followed his orders as though drugged. She approached him, kneeled down and stretched her hand towards the Artist’s penis, but he shook his head. Judita was kneeling before him, looking into his eyes. The German grew more aroused. Then Judita shifted over to the table and snorted some of the cocaine. The German turned slightly towards Vincentas and gestured. He understood that he should now take a shot. He raised the camera and then lowered it again. Despair constrained his movements. Judita stood up and walked over to a small table in the corner of the room, gave it a little pull, and the table began to roll across the floor. It was on castors. On the table was some kind of object covered with a shroud.
She pushed the table towards the Artist, then, with a graceful movement, she pulled away the shroud and screamed – a muffled, hoarse, terrified scream. She had not known what was under the shroud. Or perhaps she knew and this was part of the performance, the game. The Artist sighed with satisfaction. Or perhaps he laughed. He was having fun. It was the head of a rabbi. Of the same rabbi that the SS officer had picked out by the synagogue in that provincial town. The same head that Vincentas had brought him yesterday in a bag.
‘Kiss it,’ ordered the SS officer.
Judita stood there looking at the bearded head, its dishevelled hair stuck to the forehead. The thick beard was matted with blood, the dead eyes half open, condemning.
‘Well then …’
Judita leaned towards the head. The SS officer stood up, opened his dressing-gown, approached her from behind and raised the silk scarf.
‘Spread your legs, you Jewish bitch!’
She followed his command obediently.
‘Now, photograph!’ the German shouted.
And he fucked Judita right there in front of him. Vincentas struggled to concentrate, to see the photograph. He simply didn’t want that photograph – something prevented him from seeing it. Fear, jealousy and despair paralysed his hands and his mind, and he was sure nothing would come out of it.
The Artist shoved Judita to the side, grabbed the rabbi’s head, threw it on to the armchair, then bent Judita’s head towards it and entered her again from behind, moaning in blissful satisfaction.
‘Yes, yes, yes!’ he shouted, then, without looking at Vincentas, shouted again, ‘Shoot! Shoot, you son of a bitch! And you kiss the head, you Jewish whore. Kiss it, kiss it, kiss it!’
Judita let out a moan, and it flashed through Vincentas’s head that he wasn’t sure if she was moaning from pleasure or shame. Perhaps there is no difference in the end. Maybe those moans coming from lovers’ beds are the cries of both bliss and shame. He felt a strange fog flood his brain.
‘Now I would like to remind you of the most important thing. There is only one principle that unconditionally applies to a member of the SS – we must be honest, polite and faithful with people who share our blood but with no one else. We have come to lands inhabited by different nations, but we must never forget that whether these other nations live well or reek of famine should not matter to us in the slightest. It can only concern us to the extent that they can be of use to us as slaves, nothing more. Our concerns, our duty, shall be for our nation and our blood alone – our nation and our blood, our nation and our blood!’
When he began to climax, when he was grunting like a pig, Vincentas could not stand it any longer. He fell on him him, drew the leather strap of his camera around his neck and began to strangle him from behind. The German was stunned by such impudence, and for a few seconds did not even resist. He was still inside Judita; Vincentas thought that she was still moving with the Artist rhythmically, automatically, and he pulled the strap even tighter. The German moved backwards, and they both fell to the floor. Although the German fell on to Vincentas, he did not release his grip on the strap around the man’s neck. It was even easier that way – he was waving his arms but could not reach Vincentas. He was not heavy or well-built, but
he was very energetic, and he kicked and squirmed. Then Judita joined in. She lay on top of him and pressed the weakening German’s hands to the ground.
They sat on the floor next to the corpse, listening to the opera.
‘I can’t stand Strauss. I never liked him,’ Judita finally said. ‘Now I despise him.’
‘We’re finished,’ said Vincentas. ‘Now we’re truly finished.’
‘No one knows we’re here.’ Then she suddenly remembered. ‘Except …’
‘Tadas.’
‘His name is Tadas? He drove me here.’
‘He’s a member of the security brigade. He brought me here, too. I thought Tadas had abducted you.’
Judita sat down on the floor.
‘It would be good to have a smoke.’
He began to search in his pockets. He had left his cigarettes at home.
Judita was pondering something intensely. She went into the other room and quickly returned, now dressed. She stopped by the side-table, where there was still some cocaine left. Then she rummaged in the German’s dressing-gown pocket and pulled out a little bag.
‘Come here, now we really need some.’
The cocaine began to work, and his head cleared. Vincentas was sure of only one thing – they had to get away. Anywhere they could and immediately. They needed to get his mother, some food and run.
‘You know what, we should find some rope,’ said Judita.
‘Rope?’
‘Yes, and a good length of it. Even some twine would do, but thin rope would be best.’
Vincentas wanted to turn off the gramophone but decided against it – he let it play, just lowered the volume. The rabbi’s head lay bloody on the armchair, the beard sticking upwards. Next to it, on the floor, sprawled the dead German. His abdomen shone in the candlelight, Vincentas bent down – the sweat of a death-agony orgasm. There’s your little death, there’s your poetry of severed heads, there’s your Bible for the illiterate, Vincentas wanted to scream, and maybe even screamed, just somewhere very far from here, from very deep down.
Judita came back from wherever she had been. She held a length of clothes-line in her hands.
‘Don’t stand there like a statue. Help me.’
Judita swiftly tied a complicated knot, he raised the Artist’s head and she slipped the noose over it. Then, just as swiftly, she tied two smaller loops and slid them over the Artist’s feet.
‘Now we just need to tighten the ropes – help me.’
‘What does it all mean?’ asked Vincentas. He didn’t understand what she was doing, but it was obvious that she was not doing it for the first time.
‘I’ll explain later.’
‘To hell with later! Have you done that with him before? Did you know each other? That dance and everything – what’s going on here, Judita? Tell me.’
‘Later.’
‘You liked it – I could see it!’
‘What did you see? What? An animal demeaning a woman, debasing her nation? What did you see?’
‘I saw you writhing and moaning with pleasure, that’s what I saw! And now all of this – what is this? Did the two of you meet and do this before? Answer me! Answer!’
‘No, no, no!’ Her face changed, went grey, looked at once tired and enraged. ‘It’s Aleksandras!’
‘What about Aleksandras?’
‘He no longer desired me, he was always telling me how he no longer wanted me … that he was old, unhappy, that I didn’t love him. Oh! Then, on one occasion, after he came back from Berlin, he showed me something …’
‘Jesus Christ, what else don’t I know about the two of you? Aleksandras?’
‘Hurry up, someone could find us here. Let’s lift him on to the sofa.’
They managed to roll the corpse on to the sofa. Judita decided that it would be best if they laid him face down. Then, thinking further, she put the rabbi’s head on the side-table, where it had earlier sat under the shroud. There was no longer any need for a shroud.
‘We might get away with it,’ said Judita. ‘Might …’
The scene in the room began to swim before Vincentas’s eyes: in the fading candlelight, on a red-draped sofa, lay the dead Artist, almost prone and strangely twisted, with the rope around his neck and his feet. It looked as though by pushing against the rope with slightly bent legs, he was trying to raise his lifeless head from the sofa’s armrest. Before the sofa stood the small table on wheels, and on its silver tray the severed, bearded, bloody rabbi’s head with its half-open eyes. A little further away, next to the camera, a tired, half-naked Judita.
‘Now we need to pull him by the feet,’ said Judita.
‘I don’t understand.’
‘You pull him by the ankles, I’ll hold his head.’
‘Is it necessary?’
‘When the heart stops pumping blood and he no longer gets oxygen, the blood collects under the skin and it turns a pinkish purple. It’s called post-mortem bruising.’
‘OK, OK, I’ll pull him by the feet.’
It seemed to Vincentas that his own hands had become pinkish purple and were starting to bruise. That’s what he’ll look like when the Gestapo find him and hang him.
‘We might be lucky, and the point at which the rope is tight will look like strangulation marks.’
He pulled the Artist by the feet a few times as Judita held his arched-back head. They were in the German’s apartment, once more strangling their dead host; around them the candlelight slowly faded, the severed head loomed on the silver platter. He wanted to get out of there as fast as possible.
‘Now let’s pray that that awful guy isn’t outside the door.’
Judita looked around. ‘Take his weapon.’
‘If his weapon disappears it really will look suspicious.’
‘All right, don’t take it then.’ Judita carefully examined the dead man. ‘But we’ll need some come.’
‘Come?’
‘Semen. If they find him strangled like this, by his own hand, and there’s no semen, it will look suspicious.’
Confused, Vincentas looked at Judita. She was unrecognizable.
‘All of his come ran down my thighs,’ she explained. It pained Vincentas to hear her say that. He felt a distinct pang of jealousy in his breast. He suddenly understood what Judita wanted of him.
‘No, I can’t do that … I won’t be able to.’
‘You have to, my darling, my beloved. I’ll help you.’
Vincentas understood the seriousness of the situation perfectly well, but that didn’t help him. He could not become aroused. It had come full circle, it was just like at the start of the war, his masculine instincts had abandoned him, a cracking sound kept echoing in his head, there was the dead rabbi’s head on the platter, the strangled officer on the sofa, Judita is trying to help him, should I undress, she asks, at first Vincentas doesn’t understand what she’s saying, he stares at her full round breasts, but all he can think about is that bastard from the ghetto security forces bragging about aiming for women’s nipples so as to damage the breast as little as possible, so that the skin remained intact so that it could be used, pretty handbags made from it, and then Judita began stroking him with her hands, he sees all of it, and it seems to him that this is just an extension of the performance, that Judita will suddenly break out in laughter and will say that it’s all a big joke, and the Artist will get up and will begin theorizing about little deaths and great orgasms.
When it was all over he went to the Artist’s study and found what he was looking for – a stack of photographs – his own photographs. Some of them had been pinned to the wall, but most just lay on the table. Just in case, he looked through the drawers – masses of documents. He thought there might be some mention of him, but if any documents disappeared it would be even worse. There was also a weapon in one of the drawers. He could only take it under one set of circumstances – if he and Judita decided to shoot themselves.
‘Why do you need all of that?’ asked Judit
a when she saw the papers and the photographs.
‘It’s evidence.’
‘What evidence?’
‘It proves that I had business with him.’
Vincentas passed her the photographs of the elderly people sitting in the back of the truck.
‘These are your photographs?’
‘I’m a photographer. There are photographs and film here, so I could be a suspect.’
‘There won’t be any investigation. Plenty of intellectuals have choked themselves that way.’
Darkness and Company Page 21