Hansen's Children

by Ognjen Spahic

  I was stopped by a powerful blow and great pain. I fell forward into the mud with a splash and waited for the last pangs of consciousness to come; a blessed warmth that would take me away to the hereafter or wherever it is we go. I lay for several more minutes thinking of Robert, then I tried to move my arms and legs.

  My ribs hurt. My sight was muddied by pieces of grit that scratched my eyelids from within. I shook myself, trying to get off the Romanian earth, and immediately above my head I recognised the rusty bars of the leprosarium fence hidden in the bushes. So that was the ‘weapon’ that stopped me!

  The black bruise did not come up until the next day. I let Robert put on compresses soaked in some useless herbal infusion. ‘Did you see his face?’ he asked.

  ‘Whose face?’

  ‘Of the shit who fired,’ he said.

  ‘How could I have recognised him at such a distance?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Robert shrugged, ‘just asking,’ and he continued leafing through the Bible. Its pages were now all back together again.

  Early that evening the rain turned to sticky snow. Robert had been plagued by a bad cough for several days and was bringing up blood. He had also lost his hearing in his right ear, so when I spoke he turned the left side of his head towards me. And yet another change: instead of the Romanian national anthem, which the factory had blared out at the end of the afternoon shift for years, on 22nd December there came only silence.

  CHAPTER NINE

  This was not the snow that turns fields and graveyards, meadows and houses into a gentle, picturesque winter landscape; snow that brings a stillness as visible as fog. No, not that snow. Perhaps this impression should be put down to my poor eyesight and my ever worsening mood; but the fact is that as I was shovelling away the piles of white from the stack of firewood next to the chapel, I found creatures in it the size of a child’s finger. The snow was full of maggots like rotten meat. Dead snow, I thought; that carpet of dirty white was in fact a huge corpse which would soon exude streams of foulness. Thousands and thousands of maggots were eating away at the ice crystals, and if I listened closely I would probably be able to hear the noise of a million tiny mandibles, and in the silent nights their noise would break like a wave all along the mountain cliffs and reverberate across the whole country. The maggots were eating the fabric of time, I thought.

  I threw down the spade and laid the pieces of wet firewood in a bucket. Robert was standing at the window watching the factory yard where an assembly of workers began every morning. During one of these rallies the police went over to the people and were met with thunderous applause. Some of the workers grabbed the policemen’s rifles and held an impromptu marksmanship competition, shooting at the face of the dictator, and I realised his time had come. The police grabbed fogged-up bottles of vodka, and all order collapsed. We watched as workers in their overalls loaded office furniture onto sledges pulled by horribly emaciated horses. Instead of thick smoke, the factory’s chimney now timidly emitted curls of grey from the almost extinguished machines and ovens. In the office building vandals threw everything out of the windows that was not of use. Piles of account books fell together with the snowflakes and in mid-air turned into flocks of fluttering papers. A tall flame awaited them. Hands were turned towards its warmth. First they settled old accounts with the account books, and then: ‘Via Bucureşti!’

  The next morning the usual assembly was marked by colourful neo-revolutionary slogans. Two beat-up buses and a number of lorries were waiting to pick up the mass of workers with their flags and banners; after which they would set off for the centre of events. Groups of farmers came across the meadows, and the workers waited for them politely because they were bringing fuel for the revolution: large quantities of home-made brandy to prepare empty stomachs and empty heads for the great cause.

  The motors coughed into life. The procession set off to win freedom. Robert and I stood in the bushes near the fence waiting for the masses to pass the curve closest to the leprosarium. They looked pretty miserable. I now realised how two or three decrepit old vehicles could carry such a seemingly impressive load. I had never seen so many emaciated people all together. In one of the buses the protesters smashed most of the windows and stuck out long poles with flags and banners. Whenever a wheel hit a pothole, everyone inside hopped and bobbed in unison. The last lorry which lagged behind the others and belched black smoke was for the women. They shrieked a lively folksong and our eardrums quivered painfully as they passed.

  Lonely tractors crawled across the surrounding meadows and fields, loaded with new groups of malcontents. The snow began to fall more heavily. The flakes were finer and came in thicker swirls. All things that moved on the plain slowly disappeared under a mantle of white as if a huge cataract was descending veil-like from the sky and dimming the world. It was obvious that something important was going to happen there, on the city streets. I felt an urge to walk off into that white: to jump the fence, pull my hood over my head and set off on a roadless journey, embracing the vastness of the landscape. It would be a long walk. I would meet animals, trees and hillocks. In the end I would have to meet people too; their horrified eyes, their hands ready to throw stones, their mouths pursed to swear. I caressed the ice-clad fence and pressed my cold palm against my tired eyelids.

  Robert suggested we go back to the room. He waved his hand in front of his nose, driving away swarms of snowflakes. He picked up several frozen pieces of firewood, coughed to clear his throat and spat out a red spot into the snow. His face was a yellowish hue. The wrinkles stood out more than usual, and the skin on his forehead had contracted into six folds. I instinctively felt my own forehead and counted four, and for the first time I thought how our convincing slow, compelling disease had rendered us oblivious to the signs of time slowly wrapping us in the cobweb of age. I took one more look at Robert before he went in through the dark frame of the door: his stumbling gait and his back bent under such a small load. Striding out into the ever thicker snow, I felt something important had to happen which we would both remember as we counted our last days.

  The wet wood hissed in the fire like a cornered rat and I fed it a handful of dried elm bark. Heating the high-walled room was not easy and we needed to go easy on the wood. If the workers did not come the next day, I would try to get some coal from the factory’s boiler-room. Probably only small fragments were left, as all the good stuff was carried away that afternoon in big sacks. To keep himself warm, Robert collected the blankets from the now uninhabited rooms. I declined when he offered me one because I did not know which had been Kasiewicz’s. Anyway, Robert needed the blankets much more than I did. His cough kept me awake until the early hours. The night before, I had also been unable to get to sleep because of the clattering of a helicopter that circled low over the factory and the nearby villages. Beams of light scribbled on the snow as it searched roads and fields. As it was flying along above the highway, tracer bullets were fired at it, and the giant insect returned the fire. They were too far away for me to hear the gunfire properly. With a bit of fantasy I could imagine the whole world being occupied by insects the size of helicopters. Airborne guards patrolled the skies above a subjugated humanity and punished any attempt at revolution. Children looked up into the black-spotted skies with fear. Mothers cried, knowing that their offspring would become either prey or slaves. I knew that even in a world like that I would be where I was now. I would dream the same dreams and speak the same words. I would remain a leper.

  I was woken by the cold. It pinched my ears and nose. I had fallen asleep without the blankets over me, and now I felt icicles wedged in my joints. I thought of red-hot coals, the petrified warmth of prehistoric plants, and went to the window to see what was happening at the factory. Snow was still clinging to large depressions in Ceauşescu’s face, looking just like giant dollops of guano. A fire was burning brightly in the sheltered part of the yard and several people in green army uniforms were sitting round it. They were unarmed. One of th
em, draped in a long overcoat, walked to the corner every five minutes to look out over the plain. I went back to bed, wrapped myself in the blankets and tried to go to sleep.

  When I was woken from my half-sleep by gunfire I thought to myself that I had never been woken in the leprosarium by a normal noise like the crowing of a rooster or the banging of a window in the wind. It was always Robert’s loud cough, the barking of dogs or the bellowing of the other residents; or at best a nightmare or the ringing of the rocket, neither of which can exactly be described as normal. I sprang to the window again. Twenty or so policemen had surrounded the factory: concealing themselves behind piles of rubbish, they trained their rifles. No one was left by the fire any more. One of the men lay in the snow. If I had approached, I would probably have seen a red river of blood flowing from beneath the body like a mountain stream. I would see it babble through a small canyon and sink into the snow. Three green uniforms and one arm with a pistol stuck out of a window on the second floor. The man was saving his bullets, so he responded to the loud bursts of fire from the ground with just one or two shots. A policeman under cover of the storage shed pointed to show the others the location of a small side entrance. They showered the building with several intensive salvoes and charged at the dark opening in the wall.

  After ten minutes of explosions and shouting, a man in green uniform jumped from the platform above the storage shed. He had run around the edge of the roof, probably looking for stairs down. I assume he heard the stamp of boots on the metal rungs and instinctively made the futile further step of climbing up to the large water tank. He was still a step ahead of his pursuers, when a rifle protruded from an open door, then behind it another, and then yet another even longer one. The man slowly put down his gun, went up to the edge of the roof and spread his arms, turning the heavy green overcoat into a large cape with shiny black lining. The cape fluttered as the man fell through the air. He jumped without thinking twice, as if he were convinced he would fly and make it to heaven. The policemen ran up to the edge. I did not see if the fallen body moved or not, but one of them aimed and fired a shot which put an end to any movements there might have been. Then the policemen went back inside the building and no more shots were fired until they brought out two more soldiers at gunpoint; also apparent Ceauşescu loyalists. The policemen forced them to take off their uniforms and ordered them to run away across the fields. They let them get a little distance, just enough for them to think their captors would not shoot and that the forest was closer than it looked. A policeman took off his cap and aimed. The naked bodies collapsed into the snow. The man who had fired walked up to them and slowly drew his pistol from the leather holster at his side. Two bullets for two heads: certain death, and chubby worms rushed to feed on the lukewarm blood.

  Three more corpses were then dragged out of the building. The blue-uniformed men leaned their rifles up against the wall and laid the dead under Ceauşescu’s face. Their hands now greedily took the bottle of vodka, and their mouths drank deeply, taking the edge off the horror and allowing the killers to feel alright again. Quite alright. They waited by the fire and then, with the help of the driver who came up and shook hands with them all, they threw the bodies in through the rear door of his van. A quarrel broke out. The driver checked the tyres and shook his head: he could not drive through the snow with a load like that. He could only take four corpses. His yellow glove seized the bare foot that was sticking out and pulled. A policeman threw down his rifle, rolled up his sleeves and dumped the naked man back in with the other corpses. He slammed the rear door and brushed his hands clean. The driver reached for the door handle again but was met by the butt of a Kalashnikov and several blows from a truncheon.

  Robert’s cough woke him up and he found himself lying on his side. He rubbed his eyes and tried to see what the time was. I told him to stay in bed until I had lit the stove and he pointed to something below his bed, where half-dried lumps of blood and yellowish mucous covered the bottom of the metal basin. He cleared his throat again and added a large lump of the same colour to the slurry. I said I would go and make some tea, but Robert just shook his head and took the Bible down from the shelf above his bed. He pressed it against his sweaty chest as if trying to exorcise the demon dwelling there.

  Outside the factory the van tried to start. The policemen pushed, closing their eyes and mouths to avoid the thick mud being kicked up by the wheels. When the tyres finally encountered firm ground and the vehicle spat out several clouds of smoke, one of the blue-uniformed men fired his gun into the air to let off steam. Their car beside the factory road bore a Romanian flag with a hole where the red star used to be. History would probably call people like this ‘dogs of the revolution’, I thought, and gaped at Robert, who was about to spit out another piece of his lungs. He asked if Martin had come. The faded four-wheel-drive with the four corpses disappeared behind the birches. I decided not to tell Robert what I had seen that morning, as it would only upset him further.

  I had difficulty imagining which side Martin would take. I could see him equally well among the demonstrators, who went with the flow for the sake of their own future and took no big risks, and the faithful old guard of the toppled dictator, who defended the empire to the last bullet.

  A kind of anarchy reigned in the country. Columns of black smoke rose from the direction of the E79 highway like leeches sucking the sky, like Towers of Babel turned upside down. Christmas was coming and I hoped it would be sunny. I thought all these things as I carried a wooden tray with a jug of hot tea and two greasy glasses up to the room. As I walked past the doors on the way to ours I listened to see if there was any noise or coherent speech. For several days now the leprosarium had been much too quiet, I thought, and kicked open one of the wobbly wooden doors. The window in the room was open and my face struck a wall of cold and several snowflakes. I knew I would not find anyone. I knew there was no one else in the room next door, nor in the one next to it, nor in the whole building. They had left that windless night, accompanied by muffled barking. Robert had asked me what was happening, and I had answered that it was just the dogs. But the rusks were gone from the kitchen the next day. Snow had covered their tracks during the night so it was impossible to tell which way they had gone, yet still I wandered around the fence searching for a sign. Robert came out, walking in my footsteps. I thought he wanted to say something, to comment on the exodus, but he only tugged at my elbow and said, ‘We need to get some more wood, the cold is unbearable.’ That day his cough turned into a beastly rumble.

  The first workers arrived at noon. They cleaned up the factory yard and burned all the refuse from the revolution. A little later only the upper half of Ceauşescu’s face was leering down from the wall and after a break for lunch and vodka the rest was whitewashed. The landscape seemed very different now. After you have looked at a large black head on the horizon for years and years, it becomes an inseparable part of your everyday picture of the world, especially if it grins stupidly at that world from the same spot every day.

  Robert fell asleep, allowing me some peace and quiet. I watched the gathering crowd of people confused by the abrupt changes. They stopped near the white wall pockmarked by gunfire as if wondering whose head would be painted there next. It would have been an ideal spot for a stylised crucifixion topped by a rainbow, I thought, but I was unable to think of so many pretty colours all at once.

  Later that day an expensive black limousine drove up. The new post-revolutionary director, accompanied by two police officers, inspected the entire building and called the workers together in the storage shed. Half an hour later everyone came out wildly gesticulating. I assume they were euphorically discussing the most striking parts of a speech that had convinced them that a better future had arrived; that it was not somewhere far away but here and now. The factory’s rubbish dump was supplemented with large pieces of broken glass, a product of the euphoria of the first hours of the new era. The loudspeakers reverberated to Deşteaptă-te, Române,
‘Romania Awake’, and the workers in their blue overalls gave the V-for-victory sign in response as they entered the factory. The tower of bricks soon began to spout smoke, the director waved to the workers from the roof, and Robert coughed as if he were being choked by precisely that same smoke.

  I sat on my bed, trying to deceive my hunger by chewing soft little pieces of elm bark from the bottom of the cup. There was no flame in the stove, only a heap of cold ash. I scooped up a handful of it and let it trickle between my fingers. Thousands of tiny grey particles, snow made by the hand of a little god, covered the floorboards, raining down on Robert’s sleeping head, the Bible and the tips of my shoes.

  Ash is an ominous substance, I thought, blowing gently to try and get it off Robert. I knelt down on the floor, pursed my lips and blew hard, trying to drive the heap away. But whenever I blew the dust under the bed, finely shredded pieces of Europe emerged from that forgotten darkness. The remains of the map flew up like frightened butterflies. Pieces of Brittany, Lisbon, Moscow, the wilds of central Spain, several Croatian islands; white-capped mountains, expanses of green and lakes I did not recognise. The factory loudspeakers still blared ‘Romania Awake’, but I was unable to find that extolled piece of earth. I gathered the remaining paper, adding two or three of Robert’s statistical yearbooks and an old Medical Gazette, and lit the stove. It burned with the green flame of printer’s ink and gradually gave off a hint of heat. After warming my ribs, I wrapped myself up tightly in a blanket to try and keep that pleasant gooseflesh for as long as possible.