Micha doesn’t cross to the other side of the room; he doesn’t dare risk seeing the same faces again over there.
When Micha gets back to Andrej’s, Kolesnik is there, sitting outside on the wall. He stands up as Micha cycles down the lane.
—I was worried. You didn’t come.
Micha doesn’t know what to say.
—Your friend said you were still here. I thought I’d wait.
—I’m fine. I didn’t feel like talking today.
—No.
Micha stands outside the door, the old man looks like he doesn’t want to go yet.
—Listen. I can’t really invite you in. It’s not my place, you know.
—No. I know. I was just thinking. Will you come tomorrow?
—Yes. If that’s okay.
—Yes.
—I just needed a break today.
—Yes. My wife, Elena, I asked her if she would talk to you. She didn’t collaborate. I thought it might be interesting for you to hear her story, too.
Micha is surprised.
—She doesn’t mind?
—No, no. She wants you to hear.
—Okay.
—I’ll tell her you will come tomorrow?
—Okay.
When Micha goes into the house, he finds Andrej’s mother in the kitchen. She has been at the window, watching him talking with Kolesnik, and she looks angry. She says something to Micha which he doesn’t understand, but her tone frightens him. She spits into the sink and leaves.
Micha sits at the table with Jozef and Elena Kolesnik. Three of them, around the microphone, tape humming quietly on the table. Kolesnik will translate for his wife. Elena watches her husband’s face as they speak, but he stares only straight ahead, hands flat on the table in front of him. He’s pretending he isn’t here.
—What do you think of what your husband did? While the Germans were here?
Elena replies first to her husband and then to Micha.
—She feels sad.
—Sad?
Elena nods, rubs her fingertips against the tabletop. She speaks again.
—One of her brothers did the same.
—He did?
—Yes. She says the Germans ordered it, and he did it.
—Did she think it was a good thing? Back then?
Kolesnik asks his wife, and she shrugs while she speaks. A short answer.
—She can’t remember.
—No?
Elena looks at her husband. Her lips move, but she doesn’t speak. Micha waits, but he doesn’t think she will answer. He finds another question.
—What happened to her brother?
—She had two brothers. One was killed by the Germans, and the other was executed after the Russians came back.
—By the Germans?
—Yes. He was killed with ten other men in her village. A German soldier was shot in the square. It was a punishment.
—Who shot the German soldier?
Micha watches Elena while she thinks.
—She doesn’t know. A partisan, maybe.
—But her brother wasn’t a partisan?
—No, but they shot him anyway. She says she wants you to know it was a cruel time.
Elena scratches at the tabletop with her long thumbnail. Her mouth is drawn tight, eyes wet. Micha stays quiet in case she says more. When she does speak, Micha sees Kolesnik nod, blink; the change in his eyes. It is the first time he has shown any response.
—By the end, she says she could only tell them apart by their songs.
—I don’t understand.
Elena spreads her hands flat, turns them palm up. Short fingers, fleshy pads, deep lines scored into her skin. She speaks. Stops. Her husband translates. She speaks again.
—At the end she saw no difference.
—After the Jews were dead, the Germans came and killed and burnt and stole from her family instead. The partisans, too. They came in from the marshes with their guns when they were hungry.
—Her father locked the doors, nailed them shut, but they came in anyway.
—She says she was afraid. All the time afraid. Women were raped, men were taken away. No one trusted anyone. Every week, every day it was another thing.
—She hid in the barn. Sometimes she lay in the corn. Also in the reeds by the stream.
—She remembers when her mother was crying and crying, and when the men stole their food. Their cow. Which was all they had left.
Elena stops now and rubs her face dry. Deep breaths into old lungs. Kolesnik glances over at her, then looks ahead again. When she speaks, he looks down at his fists.
—In her village, after the houses were burnt, people lived in holes in the ground.
—When they came and did these things, she didn’t know who it was. She just ran and hid.
—When she heard them singing, their language, then she knew. One day Germans, next day partisans. Later it was Russians, too.
Micha interrupts. He wants to know.
—Who was the worst?
Elena looks at her husband and he repeats the question for her, and then she looks at Micha, but doesn’t speak.
—I mean, the Communists, the Germans, the partisans, the Red Army? Who was the worst?
Elena has tears on her cheeks. Micha can see them in the lines around her mouth when she moves her face into the light. She won’t answer. Micha wonders if she is just being polite, even now, when he wants her to be honest. The Germans. The Germans were by far the worst.
He lets her sit for a while, and then he asks her.
—Is it enough to feel sad?
Kolesnik translates and Elena looks at Micha, angry now. She directs her answer to her husband.
—She doesn’t know what you mean.
Micha tries to find another question, but he can’t. Elena stands up and speaks, not to Micha, only to Kolesnik. She reties her headscarf, hands making tight, swift movements under her chin. Elena is crying. Her husband speaks for her.
—She says she can’t feel anything else.
Micha packs his bag, looking out onto the darkening street. Elena sits out in a chair on the porch, hands folded tight in her lap. Micha can see her through the window, but can’t see her expression.
—She’s remembering. It’s hard for her. She’ll come inside in a while.
Kolesnik stands watching Micha watching his wife.
—Elena said she is sad.
—Yes.
—Sad for what you and her brothers did.
—Yes.
Micha waits while Kolesnik pours a vodka for each of them to drink.
—We have no children. When I came back, when we married, she was too old. Elena thinks this is a punishment for those times.
—What do you feel?
—What?
—Do you feel sad?
—No.
—No?
Kolesnik looks up at Micha. His eyes are steady. Micha understands this is a challenge.
—Do you feel sorry?
—How can I apologize?
Micha knows it was the question he wanted. That the old man had the answer already.
—How can I apologize? Who can I apologize to? Who is there to forgive me?
Kolesnik looks at Micha. No one. No one left alive. Micha thinks it, but he doesn’t say it.
—I don’t feel sorry for myself.
Micha watches for weakness in the old man’s face, finds nothing. No tears.
—Do you think you have been punished?
—No.
—Not in prison?
—No.
—Without children?
—No.
Micha looks at Kolesnik. He can’t understand this man. His blunt words.
—Your wife cried when she talked to me.
—I cried in prison. I cried some nights after we had shot Jews. Others did, too. I was wrong to do it and I was wrong to cry.
Kolesnik’s voice comes in hoarse barks.
—Is Elena wrong to cr
y?
—Elena did nothing. She was a girl. She ran from everyone and she stayed alive.
His words are clear and hard.
—Your wife is being punished, though. She has no children.
—Elena thinks that is punishment. Not me. I think there is no punishment for what I did. Not enough sadness and no punishment.
In the morning, Micha leaves the tape recorder behind on the table in his room at Andrej’s place. He packs his camera in his bag and cycles to Kolesnik’s house. Elena Kolesnik stands when her husband brings Micha into the kitchen, and he takes his camera out, so she can see. She smiles and nods, speaking quietly to her husband as she tucks stray hairs away under her headscarf.
—Thank you, Herr Lehner. My wife is says it is very good of you.
—No problem.
Elena Kolesnik arranges two chairs by the stove, against the far kitchen wall, and Micha sets up the camera in front of them. Jozef Kolesnik helps him, holding the tripod, standing still while Micha focuses on the weave of his jacket. It is strange to work in silence, so Micha talks.
—It’s a good camera.
—Yes?
—A new lens, too. It’s a zoom, but very sharp. The pictures should turn out very clear.
Kolesnik looks through the viewfinder at the empty chairs, and Micha steps into the frame for him. So he has something to see. Kolesnik smiles, and Micha smiles into the lens. He doesn’t feel as though he is smiling at Kolesnik, exactly, but the old man laughs a little, pleased.
Elena Kolesnik sits upright next to her husband, and the old man holds her hands. Palm against palm, they wait while Micha opens the curtains wider, judges the light levels again.
—I might take three or four exposures. To be safe. If that’s okay?
Kolesnik nods, stiff-necked, looking straight into the lens. He stays still like that until Micha takes the photo. Then, at the last moment, he looks away. He looks at Elena, as if she were the only thing worth seeing. Elena looks ahead, at Micha, at the camera, into the lens, but Jozef looks away.
Just like Opa.
Micha takes two more photos. He doesn’t ask Kolesnik to look at him; he doesn’t say anything at all.
When he has finished, Elena stands up, steps behind the camera with Micha. She smiles at him, gestures for him to sit down next to her husband, signals that she wants to take a photo of the two of them now.
Micha looks over at Kolesnik, who is staring at his wife. She carries on talking, excited, urging Micha gently over to the chair.
—If you don’t mind, I’d rather not.
It feels rude, cruel, but Micha really does not want to have his photo taken with the old man. Kolesnik translates, and Elena stops. She is hurt, but not as much as he is. Still sitting, large hands lying motionless on his narrow knees.
Micha apologizes. He packs up his camera quickly and leaves.
Andrej and his friend stand in the kitchen doorway, both men looking angry and embarrassed. Micha stands by the sink, scrubbing his hands. The bicycle chain broke on the way back to the village, and his hands are grimy with oil and rust; brown-black under his nails. Still unsettled from taking the Kolesniks’ photo, Micha’s hands feel weak under the icy flow of water from the tap. He turns around from the sink when the two men step into the room.
—Andrej says you shouldn’t have brought the old man here.
Micha already knew this would be said.
—Please tell him that I didn’t invite him. He came here to find me. I am sorry.
Micha listens to the murmuring translation, looks down at his soapy-greasy hands.
—Andrej says that this man is a murderer.
—I know. Please tell him I know that.
Micha thinks, It’s over. Friendship. The visit.
—I will leave tomorrow. Please, can you say I will leave, and that I am very grateful for the time here? His hospitality, and his mother’s.
Micha sees Andrej nod, sees the relief. He doesn’t have to tell me to go.
Micha turns away. He is angry; tears smarting at his eyes. He turns the tap on again, scrubs at his fingers under the cold jet, but the oil just spreads under the soap.
—Do you remember him?
It is evening and Micha is back. Elena Kolesnik let him into the house and left him alone in the kitchen with her husband.
—This man?
Micha has put the photo on the table, so the old man won’t see that his hands are shaking. Raw from scrubbing, from gripping the handlebars against the chill evening wind. Kolesnik pulls the picture closer to him.
—This is here in Belarus?
—No, in Germany. 1938.
—I know this face.
Micha was ready for that. Preparing himself all day. All of these days.
—Who is he?
Micha doesn’t know how to answer. He wanted Kolesnik to know; he didn’t want him to know; he wanted Kolesnik to know without having to say the name. He says it.
—Askan Boell.
—Yes. He was Boell, and he was SS.
—Waffen-SS.
—Yes, Waffen-SS. I remember him.
It is like relief. What Micha feels is like relief.
—What do you remember?
—They were fighting here for weeks and then it all went very quickly. It was early morning and suddenly the Red Army soldiers were here. In the town, just by the church.
—1944.
—Yes. They held me there, with the others like me, and then they brought the Germans there, too. Not all of them, some were dead, some were gone already, but they brought the ones that were left. Like clearing the ghetto, the Nazi ghetto. They stood them there with us, and I remember Askan Boell was one of them.
—You saw him?
—Yes. The Russians pulled him out. They went down the line, and they pushed him down, made him kneel, you know. In the main square. They had guns, of course. A gun at his head, and they said his name, this Boell.
Alles vorbei. All over. Opa Askan Boell.
Micha doesn’t know what to say. He thinks, I should be recording this. The tape deck is wrapped in sweaters at the bottom of his pack by the door in Andrej’s house.
—Do you remember anything else?
—The Russians wanted to shoot us. Some of them wanted to shoot us on the spot. That’s why they stood us there so long, arguing. I remember that.
—He was my grandfather.
Kolesnik stops speaking. He looks at Micha, and Micha thinks for a moment that the old man looks angry. He hadn’t expected to say it like that, but that is how it came out. Micha shifts under Kolesnik’s gaze, sits up straighter in his chair.
—Why did they want to shoot my grandfather?
—They wanted to shoot us all.
Micha sits for a long time. For what feels like a very long time, and he tries to work out what it is that he feels. And he tries to work out if he can ask what he really needs to ask. Kolesnik sits opposite him, and Michael can hear him breathe, and he thinks he can feel it when Kolesnik looks at him and when he looks away.
—He was here. Summer, autumn 1943.
Kolesnik moves. Micha sees that out of the corner of his eye. He tries again.
—Did you see my Opa do anything?
Micha doesn’t look at Kolesnik when he says it, and he waits, but Kolesnik doesn’t answer, so he has to look at him.
The old man has his head in his hands.
Kolesnik has pushed the photo away, too. The light from the window shines on the gloss, and Michael can’t see his Opa, just the many tiny folds in the surface of his picture. The deep crease across his legs.
—Jozef?
—He killed people. I am sorry, Michael. He killed Jews and Belarusian people.
Micha is glad he can’t see his Opa, glad that Kolesnik looks away.
—You saw that?
Kolesnik rubs his eyes.
—I know that he did.
He knows.
Micha looks at Kolesnik, but the old man looks out
of the window. He knows. Micha can’t see into Kolesnik’s eyes, but he sees the crease in his forehead, and the shadow across his face.
—How do you know?
—1943. The ones who were here then. That’s what they were here for. All of them, all of us.
—But you said. Yesterday you said not everyone did. The man who shot himself.
—I remember him because he shot himself.
—What do you mean?
—I am sorry.
Micha watches as Kolesnik rests his face in his large hands. He listens to the voice which comes through the gaps in the old man’s fingers.
—There were so few who didn’t do it. I could tell you all the names and faces who didn’t do it because they were so few.
He knows this. Micha knows this is true.
—You understand?
He does, but he doesn’t say anything. Fists pressed hard into his eyes.
Micha goes past Kolesnik’s house with his bags on his way to the bus. Kolesnik is in the garden, standing under the tree, when he sees Micha at the gate.
—Michael!
Kolesnik is pleased to see him, hurries up the path with smiles. Micha thinks he will never get used to it; that Kolesnik likes him.
—Something to eat? You have time to stay?
—No, sorry. I think the bus will be there soon.
—I will walk with you then, yes?
—Yes. Thank you. That would be nice.
At the bus stop, Micha leaves Kolesnik with his bags while he buys apples for the journey. He doesn’t need apples, he doesn’t need anything for the journey, but he can’t stand the silence of waiting with the old man next to him.
Micha is glad to be leaving. He tries to be, but he is not sad to say goodbye to Kolesnik. And though Micha knows Kolesnik likes him, he thinks the old man is also not sorry to see him go.
Kolesnik doesn’t wait for the bus to leave. He nods at Micha through the window, presses his broad, dry palm to the glass, and goes. Micha sits and waits alone, willing the bus to move.
HOME, WINTER 1998
Mina keeps laughing and crying and saying she is so tired. More tired than she’s ever been. Micha lies down in the bed with her, although he can see that the nurse doesn’t like it. Mina laughs again when the nurse leaves the room, and Micha folds the white blanket back over her arm, looks into his daughter’s tiny face.
The Dark Room Page 24