Darkness and Company

by Sigitas Parulskis

  The doctor looked at him curiously, seemingly surprised by this new ironic tone in Vincentas’s voice.

  The two men slowly moved ahead, now surrounded by a flock of sheep.

  ‘We’re like wolves in sheep’s clothing,’ said the doctor.

  They approached a cluster of buildings that stood at some distance from the road. The doctor went up to one of them and whistled gently then began to wave at Vincentas to move away. The letters were big and the sign could be made out from some way away: ‘Gendarmerie Française’.

  Without looking around the doctor quickly ran back to Vincentas. ‘If they look out of the window our journey will end right here,’ he said.

  Then they heard the sharp creak of a door. There was nothing left for them to do but pretend to be shepherds and go to tend to one of the sheep that had strayed from the rest of the flock. The gendarme said nothing, the door creaked again and thudded softly as he closed it.

  ‘So that’s what that saying means – one lost sheep can be more important than the whole flock,’ said the doctor, sighing with relief when the danger had passed.

  Now on the French side, they had to wait quite some time for a train. By evening, chilled to the bone but still good-humoured, they finally reached Reutlingen.

  The doctor’s friends were very nice people. The husband was a teacher and the wife a translator working for the local administration, so they received regular salaries and lived in an apartment furnished with real furniture – a sofa, armchairs, sideboard and dining-table – not the kind found in the camps. Everything was real, and it almost felt like life before the war. Almost like life.

  The woman, Sofija, was tall and thin, her uniform suited her very well, and she clearly knew it: as she passed the tall, almost-ceiling-height mirror she always stopped and critically, but not without satisfaction, looked herself over from head to toe, then, after the guests had eaten their macaroni with stewed preserved meat and were enjoying American cigarettes, she again stood before the mirror, trying on a hat.

  When their hosts went into the kitchen, the doctor leaned towards Vincentas and whispered, ‘If she glues herself to that damned mirror one more time I’ll stand right there next to her and try on that hat, too.’

  Vincentas merely smiled. He was not at all bothered by a woman wanting to be a woman, by a human being wanting to be a human being no matter what was happening around them.

  The next day she walked with them as far as her workplace, showing them the town along the way. Then she suggested they go to a concert – one of the Bach concertos was going to be performed in a nearby Lutheran church. She and her husband would join them in the evening.

  As soon as he saw the musicians Vincentas felt sick. He was overcome by a heavy mood, or maybe the disturbing feeling that he might know one of the musicians. Aleksandras – every man with a musical instrument reminded him of Aleksandras. He mumbled an apology to the doctor and went outside. At first he thought of waiting until the concert had ended but then decided to go for a walk around the town.

  In his meanderings he noticed an enormous building that from the outside looked like a warehouse, which it may have been before the war, or maybe it had been a factory. Now all he could see was an empty space, but a great many paintings had been hung on the walls. Part of the roof had been glassed, so there was plenty of natural light in the space. He asked a man in uniform what it all meant.

  ‘It’s a collection of paintings that was discovered recently, sir. The National Socialists wanted to send them all to South America, but they didn’t manage it in time. While it’s being decided what to do with the paintings the soldiers can enjoy them … as well as other people,’ he added after a pause. Other people – that is, people without a place, refugees.

  There weren’t many people viewing the exhibition, so Vincentas could look at the paintings without interruption. French, Italian, Dutch painters, then he caught himself looking around for something, something frightening and familiar. The Artist’s shadow. Here was a young woman with a severed head on a platter. Girolamo Romanino’s Salome with the Head of John the Baptist, Bernardo Strozzi of Genoa’s Salome with John the Baptist’s Severed Head, her plump arms are so soft, her cheeks blushing, her young breasts are compressed but trying to escape, with her plump, gentle hands she gingerly holds a strand of hair from the hideous, severed head as if to make sure that the head is really dead and will no longer cry out or open its eyes when its hair is pulled. He stood there looking for a few minutes, as though waiting, as though knowing that something had to happen here. And the girl’s hand moved ever so slightly, her cheeks became redder, and with a barely visible movement she pulled at the hair and the head opened its eyes and looked straight at Vincentas. He closed his eyes. When he opened them again the head was no longer looking at him. He was just tired. It was too stimulating, for the past month he had been battling death. It was just exhaustion. Then he started to imagine that he saw Judita, yes, the longer he looked at that unfamiliar Italian artist’s painting the more clearly he saw that this was some kind of trick; the painting could not have been executed in the seventeenth century, as it said on the card; he went up to the uniformed man and asked when had this painting been painted, three hundred years ago, the man replied, but it seemed to him that he detected something like a smile on the man’s face, Vincentas looked around, all the visitors walking along the walls were also smiling, they were not looking at the paintings, they were looking at him, and he finally understood that it was a trap, that Judita was hiding somewhere, she was laughing with the rest of them, she wanted to hurt him, make fun of him, he was overcome by the fear that he would be wrapped in a canvas and set on fire and would explode, lighting a path for the millions of souls that were circling above Europe, and, scared almost to death, he ran from the building and kept going for a long time until, exhausted, he reached the railway station.

  THE EMPTY GRAVE

  Vincentas could not remember how he ended up on a train returning to the camp. Why had the doctor left him? No, it was he who had left the church, leaving the doctor there. He did not want to listen to music. Aleksandras, a ghost. Then he had walked the city streets, stumbled into an industrial area, a warehouse, some paintings, yes, he had looked at paintings. The last thing – he could still see it before his eyes – a woman holding a large silver platter with a man’s severed head on it. The exhibition. He had walked around the exhibition, then came to on the train. Had he and the doctor agreed to meet on the train? Either way, in front of him sat not the doctor but an unfamiliar middle-aged man with a hat pulled down over his eyes. He ignored the other passengers – the soldiers, the refugees – but he could not stop looking at this man.

  ‘Now, that little church that we passed is the Church of St Denis. St Denis’, the stranger told him, ‘was the first bishop of Paris. He was beheaded on the Hill of Martyrs, where Montmartre is now, which, in fact, means “Hill of Martyrs”. After he died his body stood up, picked up his head and walked away. That’s right, carrying his head, his body walked for several kilometres, to a village outside Paris, and there it lay down and rested – indicating that here was where he wanted to be buried. The paradox is that the Roman Dionysius was not at all holy. If they had wanted to disgrace and punish him, it’s certainly not his head that should have been cut off.’

  The man lifted his hat slightly, and Vincentas had a chance to get a better look at his face. There was only person it could be, the only person Vincentas never wanted to see again, but it was him, Jokūbas the Elder. He was considerably changed: he was dressed like a farmer, a prominent scar on his cheek ran into his dark, thick beard; his hair was also quite long, almost to his shoulders and covering his ears.

  ‘Why are you telling me this?’ asked Vincentas. ‘What are you doing here? Are you following me?’

  ‘People like stories, people are happy to listen to stories, it’s just that history never listens to man. But you’re attracted to severed heads, no?’ And Jokūbas the Elde
r winked at him. ‘I saw you by the paintings. That’s what I thought – the Photographer, only he could stand there for an hour staring at a severed head. Let’s go and have a smoke.’

  The two men went out into the corridor of the carriage.

  ‘The Russian has come back to Lithuania,’ said Jokūbas the Elder, lighting a cigarette for himself and giving one to Vincentas. ‘It wasn’t supposed to happen that way. They betrayed us. They tempted us and then betrayed us, dumped us like a pregnant girl, the bastards – and everything was going so well, so neatly; we had almost wiped that garbage off the face of the earth. Our goal was noble. We wanted to free the world of Jewish communism, and now look where we are – now I have to hide like a cornered wolf, run from my homeland. I can’t even be myself.’

  Jokūbas the Elder opened the carriage doors. He stuck his head outside. The train was slowing down – evidently they were approaching a station. It almost stopped, hesitated, then slowly picked up speed again.

  ‘This war revealed an interesting thing about the Lithuanian, a nasty aspect of his character: if you’re doing well a Lithuanian will be your friend, but as soon as you’re in any kind of trouble he’ll turn away from you just like that. Better a communist or a fascist – you always know that you’re looking at an enemy, and that enemy tells you straight that he wants to kill you. The Lithuanian wants to stab you in the back. Don’t be lukewarm, or, as it is said, “I will spit you out”. It’s those lukewarm ones – they’re the worst.’

  Vincentas struggled to swallow. Jokūbas the Elder was probably referring to him, too. After all, he was neither hot nor cold. He was lukewarm; he was an observer.

  ‘It’s cold,’ said Vincentas to Jokūbas the Elder. ‘Let’s go inside.’

  Jokūbas the Elder said nothing but grabbed him by the shoulder and tried to throw him out through the open carriage door. Vincentas barely had time to grab the handle. They struggled for a few moments, Jokūbas the Elder started smashing his hand, the thought flashed through his mind that if he let go now it would all be over very quickly – he’d break his neck, and that would be that. The train once again slowed down, and, with the last of his strength, Vincentas pulled the hand that was holding him towards him, grabbed Jokūbas the Elder by the hair and then let go of the handle.

  They rolled down the embankment together. For a while Vincentas lay there, stunned from the impact of hitting the ground, then he tried to move his arms and legs – he didn’t feel any pain. He lifted his head – Jokūbas the Elder was nowhere in sight. He couldn’t have sunk into the earth. He was somewhere here, somewhere there – in the dusk, in the shadows, in the dark.

  Vincentas stood up and started walking in the direction the train was going. Soon he heard steps behind him – he was chasing Vincentas. He stopped and turned – Jokūbas the Elder was holding a knife. Vincentas tried to run, but he didn’t have any strength. He turned around again – in the twilight it looked as though it was not Jokūbas the Elder following him but an unfamiliar man dressed like a bishop and holding a severed head in his hands. The head looked familiar – yes, it was the same head that he had taken to the Artist. He quickened his step, but the man following did not fall back at all – on the contrary, he was getting closer and closer. Vincentas ran through a wide, open meadow, someone flashed white before him and waved a small hand at him, a little boy in bloodied underclothes, a little boy in a meadow lit by the rising sun, lost between three pine trees, a little boy whose name Vincentas did not know and would never know, but when he got closer, the child began to recede, and, finally, when Vincentas was just a few steps away, he saw a small flock of sheep run off to one side, leaving a solitary lamb standing there, letting out its mournful cry.

  Where the meadow ended Vincentas noticed a lone, crumbling building – it could have been a house or a stable, in the dusk he couldn’t tell, but he ran towards it. The building had no roof, only bare walls. There was hardly any furniture apart from a few broken chairs; the owners or someone else must have removed everything. Vincentas quickly ran through the rooms – there was nothing there that he could use as a weapon. He realized that he had set his own trap and there was no way back. He heard someone coming up the front steps. Heavy, thumping steps, it was Pushkin’s Commander rising from the grave, it was the rabbi carrying his severed head, coming to get him, no, it was Jokūbas the Elder, and he would not leave him there alive, he heard the steps on the other side of the wall, he would soon enter the room he was hiding in, and there was nowhere to hide within the room. With all his strength he pushed against the crumbling brick wall, and it shifted, then he pushed again and again, and the wall fell down, and a cry was heard on the other side. A cloud of dust rose, and when it had cleared he could see a man’s leg sticking out from under the rubble and one arm thrown wide.

  ‘Help, help me,’ came a voice from under the pile of bricks, but Vincentas no longer had the strength to do anything, he sat down next to the pile and heavily, painfully drew some air into his lungs, like he had been holding his breath under water and had now suddenly come up to the surface and, for the first time in a long time, could breathe in real fresh air, air that was like light.

  Jokūbas the Elder continued wheezing for a while, then slowly quietened, fell silent, and Vincentas took a closer look: no, there was no way he could get out from under the bricks.

  Having caught his breath, Vincentas quickly placed a few more bricks on what was already a significant pile pressing down on Jokūbas the Elder, and then he withdrew.

  The following day he went out for a walk. He was not at all surprised that his legs took him back to the building where he had buried Jokūbas the Elder. He circled the building several times, looking for any signs that might mean he should be cautious. Nothing suspicious. A building at the edge of a meadow by a narrow road.

  He stepped inside and approached the pile of bricks carefully, as if worried that he might awaken the man lying beneath it, and then what confusion, what amazement overcame him when he saw that in the middle of the pile where Jokūbas the Elder had been buried there was now a gaping pit. The grave was empty. He began frantically moving bricks to the side but found nothing apart from a long cigarette butt. He left the building and sat down at the edge of the ruins – it looked like he’d gone. He’d disappeared, he’d left, he isn’t here, and that’s all there is to it.

  He wasn’t sure how long he sat like that among the ruins before two men in shining garments appeared. They kept coming closer. Vincentas knew he should do something, maybe simply get up and walk, but he did nothing. His body wouldn’t obey. His thoughts, feelings, memories, everything that made up his personality suddenly disappeared, and all that remained was emptiness, an empty hole – dark, indiscernible, droning, pulling him deeper and deeper. And the men in shining garments were coming closer and closer.

  That was how two British soldiers who had been passing by found him, sitting there. They asked him something, but he did not understand English.

  ‘He was dead; he was buried here,’ said Vincentas, pointing at the pile of bricks.

  ‘He’s saying that his friend died,’ one of the soldiers explained to the other.

  ‘Tell him the grave is empty, that he should not look for the living among the dead.’

  AFTERWORD

  by Tomas Vaiseta

  The following fact is more important than the remainder of the text – and, in fact, more important than all the discussions that have taken place around this issue in Lithuania: between 1941 and 1944, under the occupying Nazi regime, roughly 196,000 of the Jews living in Lithuania – that is, 95 per cent of the Lithuanian Jewish population – were annihilated.

  Although the Holocaust was conceived, initiated and organized by the Nazis, several thousand local inhabitants, mostly ethnic Lithuanians, were involved in implementing the mass killings. Lithuania was especially awash with blood in the summer and autumn of 1941, when, during a period of less than six months, 80 per cent of Lithuania’s Jews were killed.
In villages and small towns, homes became vacant in the blink of an eye – over a month, a week, a day. It would have been impossible not to see the tragedy that was taking place. They were led along main streets, held in temporary ghettos and then – in a manner different from how the Holocaust unfolded in Western Europe, where Jews were transported to concentration camps in Germany and Poland to be exterminated – they were executed close to their birthplaces, sometimes right in front of other local inhabitants. People living in larger cities such as Vilnius and Kaunas had a different experience; here the Jews were driven into long-term ghettos, and the massacres took place at some remove, so that urban non-Jews experienced the Holocaust not as the sudden, incomprehensible disappearance of specific faces but as a slow, strangely steady death-process that other residents could avoid witnessing directly.

  It is impossible to know how these two experiences of the Holocaust are related, but it is significant that, in recent years, the question of memory and the Jewish Catastrophe in Lithuania has primarily been raised by authors originally from small towns. Born in the village of Obeliai, Sigitas Parulskis has described how, on a visit to the Imperial War Museum in London, he came across a diagram indicating the locations across Europe where Jews were exterminated during the Second World War and how he found the statistics for his own town – ‘1,160 Jews were killed there by the Nazis and local collaborators’ – leading him to the realization that he had avoided and been afraid of acknowledging those facts his whole life.