The Dark Room

by Rachel Seiffert

  He watches Oma. She is looking at the newspaper cuttings but not reading anymore. Her fingers wander over them, wrists shaking gently, as though her hands are too heavy to hold. She doesn’t see him watching. He holds his breath.

  —Oma, where did Opa serve in the war?

  —In the east, schatz.

  No hint of surprise at the question, no hesitation. Just geography. Micha decides to go on.

  —Where in the east?

  —He was fighting for three years, a little more. The Ukraine. Russia. Belarus. It was all the Soviet Union then.

  Oma smiles, sighs briefly, nods.

  —Yes. Belarus. White Russia. His last year. He was there at the end.

  She cuts a cake in half, and divides it between them.

  —Too much for me, you’ll have to help.

  Micha searches Oma’s expression, but she doesn’t seem worried at all. He allows himself one more question.

  —Do you know where in Belarus?

  Oma swallows her mouthful of cake. One hand held in midair, hanging loose on her brittle wrist.

  —In the south, I think. There is an atlas. Wait, I’ll get it. Hold on.

  She pushes Micha down in his seat as she passes, makes her way to the bookshelf. Oma peers at the index and then opens the atlas on the table, stares a long time at the map.

  —Wait, I’ll find it. All the borders are different now. All changed. Yes.

  Micha waits. The cake pulls all the moisture out of his mouth. He drinks scalding coffee to help himself swallow.

  —I got letters from him. Sometimes every week. The address was always at the top. There!

  She points and her finger shakes. She presses it down on the page to hold it steady. Micha sees the small town on the map. Scattered pink on green and gray. Oma pulls at his arm.

  —The one beginning with S, not far from the river. He wrote about the river, and the marshes, I remember that. Do you see it?

  —Yes.

  —That’s right. 1943. It must have been. After the Russians were moving west again.

  —Do you remember when?

  —Summer, autumn. He was there for a while then. And late in ’43 he was fighting near there again. They moved around, went to where the fighting was, of course. But a lot of his letters came from there in that last year.

  Micha looks away from the atlas, up at his Oma’s face. She is excited.

  —Yes. He sent his last leter there in May, and not long after that they captured him.

  She stares at the map a while longer, absorbed in thought, fingers pressed into her soft cheeks. Thinking about her husband. Micha drinks more coffee, gives her a little time before his next question. He promises himself it will be his last.

  —Do you still have Opa’s letters?

  —No, schatz, no. He burnt them all when he came back.

  Oma’s face gives nothing away. Micha makes himself sit quietly at the table while she puts the atlas back on the shelf, and then he excuses himself and goes to the bathroom. His hands shake like Oma’s, so he has to leave the door unlocked. He sits on the edge of the bath and wipes the sweat from his palms onto his trouser legs. He tries to imagine his Opa burning his letters. Where did Oma keep them? Was he angry when he found them? Did he stuff them in the stove? A fire in the garden? Did he read them again before he destroyed them?

  What did he write that he wanted to burn?

  Micha can’t ask Oma. He is too afraid.

  Mutti and Vati come for dinner on Friday. Micha hears them laughing on their way up the stairs. They kiss Mina at the door, tell jokes in the hallway while she takes their coats. They come into the kitchen, where he is cooking, peer into all the pots on the stove. They bring smiles and noise with them and Micha is glad they are here.

  —Luise will come when her shift finishes. She said we shouldn’t wait.

  Mutti has brought flowers and wine, and fruit salad.

  —We said we’d make dinner.

  Mina scolds her, searches the cupboards for a vase.

  —I know. I got bored this afternoon.

  —Bored? I am exhausted and my wife is bored. Something doesn’t make sense here.

  Vati has come straight from work. He sits down heavily at the table, pulls off his tie and sighs. Micha knows he is exaggerating for effect, but he does look tired. Mina stands behind Vati’s chair and kneads his shoulders.

  —You should stand up and walk around once an hour. Do neck exercises. Like this.

  She steps in front of him, demonstrates, rolling her head forward, then to one side. Vati copies her, then laughs at himself. Micha stands with Mutti by the stove.

  —It’s nice of you to visit Oma so regularly, Micha.

  —I like seeing her.

  —I know, I know.

  —This is preamble, yes? You’re leading up to something?

  —Yes, I’m leading up to something.

  Micha was teasing but Mutti blushes. He wonders if Oma told her about his questions. He wonders if Oma was worried by them. He stops teasing and stirs the sauce, which doesn’t need stirring. His palms are sweating again.

  —I think she was a bit confused, though.

  —Yes?

  —I think we should stick to a routine with her. Regular visiting times.

  —Oh, right.

  —She forgot about her doctor’s appointment on Thursday. When the nurse came, she got quite angry. Kept insisting it was Monday, because her grandson had been there the day before. She’s quite embarrassed about it now.

  —You didn’t tell me you went to see your Oma.

  Mina has been listening at the table; Vati, too. Micha turns around and finds them both staring at him.

  —There was nothing to tell.

  He turns back to the stove. Liar.

  —Oma is an old woman now.

  —I know, Mutti. I know that.

  —I think we forget sometimes.

  —I didn’t forget. I finished early on Wednesday, that’s all. I’m sorry.

  —It’s okay. It’s fine.

  Micha serves and Mutti carries the plates over to the table. He feels like he’s been discovered. He sees broken dishes, food on the floor and walls. Braces himself for the bomb. Opa, murder, family, me. Mutti is still talking.

  —It was quite nice, actually. I haven’t talked to her about Papa, about your Opa Askan. Not for years. And today we talked about him all morning.

  —Oh?

  —You talked about him, too, didn’t you?

  —A bit.

  —What did she say?

  Mina is asking Mutti, not Micha, and he is grateful. She is diverting Mutti. For him. He knows it. He takes a mouthful of wine.

  —We talked about when Bernd was little. Family times. Lovely times I had forgotten. In the Steinweg house; when we moved in, Opa painted pictures on our bedroom walls. Wonderful. An ocean for me, and a forest for Bernd. Next to our beds. I had forgotten that. Oma told me she found him crying in Bernd’s room when they moved.

  Micha sits down at the table, and when Mutti smiles at him, he smiles back.

  —I think she enjoyed remembering. She enjoyed talking to you, too, Michael. She said so.

  He pours the wine. He doesn’t want to say anything to prolong the conversation. He knows he is being rude, but he doesn’t want to think about his Opa and about the letters he burnt, not this evening. There is a silence, and then Mina changes the subject for him.

  There is some archive footage of Hitler which upsets Micha more than most images of those times.

  A Christmas party, probably early in the war. At Hitler’s mountain home, and everyone is there: Göring, Speer, Bormann, all their wives and children. The footage is black-and-white, shot inside, but speckled with dust that looks like snow. Adolf Hitler sits among the children, and they look around at the camera and smile. Four- and five- and six-year-olds, shy and uncertain, in lederhosen and dirndl skirts. But they also smile at him, at Hitler, and talk. It is silent, so Micha doesn’t know what the c
hildren say, but he can see that they aren’t afraid. They like him. One girl comes running into frame to tell him something, and he raises his eyebrows, open-faced and all ears while she speaks. Godfather and favorite uncle, with soft eyes and smiles. Who doesn’t look at the camera, only at the child.

  —Oh no.

  Mina shudders when Micha shows her.

  Hours later, when it is just getting light, she finds him in the kitchen.

  —I can bring some sleeping pills back from the clinic. Sabine will prescribe some for me, I’m sure.

  —It’s okay.

  She yawns and stretches, makes tea for Micha and massages his head, and he loves her for it. Because he knows she doesn’t understand why this film clip of Hitler gives him nightmares and the pictures of Belsen, Dachau, Auschwitz don’t. They make him cry; she has seen him cry. But they don’t have him awake, dry-mouthed, smoking at the kitchen table at dawn.

  It’s not right.

  If Micha could choose what hurts him, it wouldn’t be this.

  Micha knows Mina won’t be happy when he tells her his plans. They were going to go walking, camping. Go south to the sun.

  —I’ve booked vacation time, Michael. I’ve saved money.

  —Sorry. I am sorry. We will go away.

  —When?

  —Summer. Cancel your time off and we’ll take a long break in the summer. Go to Turkey.

  He says it because he knows that’s what she wants; Micha in Turkey, Micha with her family. Mina sees through him.

  —Yeah, yeah.

  Later, he finds her reading the guidebook.

  —Where are you going again? Minsk and then where?

  —Southeast. Not far from the Pripet.

  —And Opa Askan was there?

  —Yes, I think so. It looks that way.

  Micha sits down on the bed next to her. Mina carries on reading, flicking through the pages of photos.

  —Are you nervous?

  She doesn’t look at him. Micha shrugs. She doesn’t ask again.

  BELARUS, EASTER 1998

  Micha waits at the main station door. Mina said she’d take a half-day and come to see him off. He watches her wheel her bike through the traffic. It is late afternoon and the shadows are long. Mina finds the right line for Micha to stand in at the ticket office, waits with him for a while and then wanders off.

  He finds her staring up at the departures board in the main concourse.

  —I’ve got my tickets.

  —I’ve found your train. There.

  Pigeons flap high above them under the roof. The station smells of bread and coffee, but also of piss. They find the platform, and the train is already there, so Micha gets on. Mina watches him find a seat, gives him a wave through the window. He knows she wants to get it over with, can’t think of anything to say. He goes back to the door and tells her she should go.

  —Go swimming. Call one of your friends, have a sauna.

  She steps up into the train doorway and puts her arms around him. She kisses him.

  —Your favorite.

  Micha takes the bag of pretzels from her. Still warm, they smell amazing. He watches her go. Mina waves when she gets to the steps at the end of the platform, then she takes them two at a time.

  The Ostbahnhof in Berlin is crowded, but the compartment in the new train is empty. Micha reads the paper and then sleeps for quite a while, though it is still early. When he wakes up it is evening and they are at the edge of Germany. There is another man in the compartment with him now. Older, with thick square glasses and a thin face. Micha smiles at him, and he nods. Their passports are checked with their tickets and the train lumbers on, slowly picking up speed. They are in Poland but the landscape looks no different. Micha can’t believe he is doing this. Has no idea what will do when he gets there. He eats one of Mina’s pretzels and goes to sleep again.

  Minsk is sticky. A hot Easter, the taxi driver says. Very unusual. Micha speaks English with him at first, tries a little German, and then goes back to English again. He tells him he is going south, but the driver doesn’t answer. A few streets later, the driver points out a good restaurant. They don’t talk again.

  In the hotel everything is quiet. A young woman sits at a wide desk in the narrow lobby. She wears heavy makeup, greasy in the heat. The room she gives Micha is large and bare. A bed and a TV; and a dripping shower in the bathroom down the hall. He opens the window after the young woman has gone and lies down on the bed and closes his eyes. There is no air in the room. The sheets smell faintly of smoke. TV noise leaks through the walls. Music and squealing tires, then low buzzing voices.

  When Micha wakes up it is dark and cool. He turns on the TV and then has a shower. He lies on the bed and lets himself dry off, watching the evening news, which he doesn’t understand. Germany in the headlines. Pictures of Frankfurt, the chancellor waving at the press pack. He turns off the TV and gets dressed.

  Micha is hungry. He goes out and looks for the restaurant the driver recommended, but when he gets there he doesn’t go in. He tells himself that he is looking for a bar, but when he finds one, he doesn’t go in there, either. He feels conspicuous. He goes back to the hotel, orders pancakes from room service, and eats them watching a soccer match. Later he orders some beer, and much later he manages to sleep again.

  Micha spends a long day in Minsk. He tells himself he is sightseeing, but he knows he is just delaying. He is tired, disoriented. The city is all wide, bleak avenues under a thick, gray sky. He finds the river and follows its path, keeping off the roads and in the parks as much as possible. He sees onion domes above the treetops and knows he has come east.

  For lunch Micha finds a crowded restaurant and orders by pointing at the food on the next table. Dumplings stuffed with mushrooms. Real Belarusian food eaten by a real German tourist. The waitress approves. In the main square he takes photos. Apart from that, he keeps his camera in his bag. Still feeling too conspicuous. At a kiosk, Micha buys an English-language guide to the city. The middle pages form a map of Minsk and the surrounding area. This map is scattered with red dots, which he looks up in the index. Sites of Nazi atrocities; ghettos cleared, villages razed, populations executed. Micha stops walking, stands a moment in shock in the road. He remembers why he is here.

  Two towns now where Opa was. Eight villages. The German stronghold north of the marshes where his final year of fighting came to an end.

  Micha arrives in the main town at dusk, after two trains and a bus from Minsk. The sun is setting and he needs a place to stay. The town is small; no bus station, just a stop. He sits down at the edge of the road and eats the last of Mina’s pretzels. It is stale, but he is hungry. It is cool here, the air smells heavy and damp. Micha pulls an extra sweater from his pack before he starts his search for a room.

  He is on the main road: asphalt, and wide enough for two cars to pass. The edges are paved in concrete slabs, and the smaller roads leading off it are also of cement. Off those roads are dirt paths: beaten earth, hard as the concrete where dry, but with muddy dips where the rain has gathered. The streetlamps on the main road light up as he reaches the edge of the town. Micha thinks there are no hotels. This place is too small for that.

  He turns around and makes his way back toward the bus stop and beyond, although he doesn’t remember seeing a hotel on the way into the town, either. The street is quiet; no one to ask. The windows of the houses are lit yellow and white, and a truck passes on its way through the town, headlights throwing Micha’s shadow far ahead of him on the pavement. A generator thumps on a side street; a mechanic working late. He has a bare bulb clipped to the open hood of the car he is working on, leans deep into the engine.

  Micha knocks gently on the fender of the car. The mechanic smiles in greeting, speaks no German or English, and waits patiently as Micha works his way through the phonetics of his phrase book. The mechanic smiles again; he mimes sleep: eyes closed and head cocked against an open, oily palm. When Micha nods, the mechanic claps his hands togeth
er and lifts his pack.

  The room is small and Micha likes it. A cot bed; wood-paneled walls painted pale green; a window with dusty muslin curtains; a chair and a small table; a huge wardrobe. It is at the back of the house, facing out onto an overgrown garden and the dark evening sky. The mechanic is pleased when Micha nods. He writes down a figure on a scrap of paper, and Micha pays for three nights.

  In the kitchen, the mechanic sits Micha down with a glass of vodka and slips out the door. In two minutes he is back with an old woman and a heavy book. She is carrying a steel pot and a loaf of bread. While the woman gathers plates and slices bread, the mechanic leafs through the book to a map of Europe. He pushes it across the table and points at Micha, then the map, and then Micha again. Micha points at Germany, and the mechanic nods vigorously, exchanges words with the old woman at the stove. Micha watches them both, but they keep smiling. Micha realizes he was expecting a negative reaction. The old woman puts soup and bread on the table in front of him. She pats Micha’s shoulder and pushes the glass of vodka closer to his plate.

  The mechanic lays his palm flat on his chest.

  —Andrej.

  —Michael. Micha.

  Micha holds his hand out across his plate of soup and Andrej takes it. They both smile, half-rise from their seats. Andrej introduces the old woman as his mother, or perhaps grandmother, Micha doesn’t quite understand. He holds out his hand, but she waves it away, smiling, points instead at his soup. Micha eats and they watch, talking with each other. Micha knows they are talking about him, but it doesn’t make him uncomfortable, and he enjoys the soft whispering noise of their words. Andrej holds up his hand, five fingers, and slips out again. The old woman smiles at Micha across the table, speaks to him in Belarusian, Russian, he doesn’t know. He smiles back and eats the bread she cut for him.

  Andrej comes back with another young man. He wears greasy overalls, too, crescents of black under his broad fingernails. He speaks some German, translates for Andrej and his mother/grandmother.