The White Hotel

by D. M. Thomas

  They found themselves in a group that was being prodded to form a queue. Kolya asked if they were going to the train now, and she pulled herself together and told him, Yes, probably; and in any case she would be right behind him, and not to be afraid. Their group started to move forward. Everyone had fallen silent. They marched for some time in silence, between rows of Germans. Up in front could be seen more soldiers with dogs on leads.

  Now they were in that long narrow corridor formed by two ranks of soldiers and dogs. The soldiers had their sleeves rolled up, and each of them brandished a rubber club or a big stick. Blows rained down, from both sides, on heads, backs, shoulders. Blood was running into her mouth but she hardly felt any of the blows, for she was trying somehow to protect Kolya’s head. She felt the savage blows that landed on him—including the crunch of a club to his groin—but hardly at all those that landed on her own body. His scream was only one strand in a universal scream, mixed with the happy shouts of the soldiers and the barking of dogs, but it was the one that stood out, even above her own. He stumbled; she gripped his arms and kept him from falling. They were trampling straight over fallen bodies that had been set upon by the dogs. “Schnell, schnell!” laughed the soldiers.

  They tumbled out into a space cordoned off by troops, a grassy square, scattered with articles of clothing. The Ukrainian police grabbed hold of people, hitting them and shouting: “Get your clothes off! Quickly! Schnell!” Kolya was doubled up with pain, and sobbing, but she started fumbling at his shirt collar. “Quickly, dear! Do as they say.” For she saw that anyone who hesitated was being kicked, or struck with a knuckleduster or club. She pulled off her dress and her slip, then took off her shoes and stockings in between helping her son, because his hands were shaking and he couldn’t deal with shirt buttons and shoe laces. A policeman started hitting her with his club, on her back and shoulders, and in her panic she couldn’t unhook her corset fast enough, and the policeman, growing more and more angry with the slow-witted, flabby-breasted old woman, ripped the corset from her body.

  There was a moment’s peace, now that they were undressed. One group of naked people was being herded off somewhere. Fumbling among discarded clothes for her handbag, Lisa took a handkerchief from it and gently wiped some of the blood and tears from Kolya’s face.

  She saw her identity card in her bag, and came to a quick decision. Among the white shapes of dazed, demented people she saw a German officer who looked as if he might be in charge. She walked determinedly up to him, thrust the identity card in his face and said in German that she and her son were there by mistake. They had come to see someone off, and become trapped in the crowd. “Look!” she said. “I’m a Ukrainian woman married to a German.” The officer, frowning, muttered that too many mistakes of this kind were being made. “Put on your clothes and go and sit on that hillock.” He pointed to where a handful of people were sitting. She rushed back and told Kolya to dress quickly and come with her.

  Everyone on the hillock was silent, crazed with fright. Lisa found she could not take her eyes off the scene which was being enacted in front of them. One group of people after another came staggering out of the corridor, screaming, bleeding, each of them to be seized by a policeman, beaten again and stripped of clothes. The scene was repeated over and over again. Some were laughing hysterically. Some became old in minutes. When Lisa’s gift or curse of second sight had failed her so miserably and her husband was snatched away in the dark, her hair had gone grey overnight—the old saying was true. But now she saw it happen in front of her eyes. In the next group but one after theirs she saw Sonia; and her raven hair turned grey in the time it took for her to be stripped and sent away to be shot. Lisa saw it happen again and again.

  There was a steep wall of sand, behind which the firing could be heard. They made the people form up into short lines and led them through the gap which had been hurriedly dug in the sandstone wall. The wall hid everything from view, but of course the people knew where they were. The right bank of the Dnieper is cut by deep ravines, and this particular ravine was enormous, majestic, deep and wide like a mountain gorge. If you stood on one side of it and shouted you would scarcely be heard on the other. The sides were steep, even overhanging in places; at the bottom ran a little stream of clear water. Round about were cemeteries, woods and garden plots. The local people knew the ravine as Babi Yar. Kolya and his friends had played in it often.

  She saw that, as the men and women were led through the gap, they all without exception clasped their hands over their genitals. Most of the children did so too. Some of the men and boys were in agony from blows there, but it was mostly an instinctive shame, of the kind that made Kolya not want her to see him undressed. He too, on stripping, had put his hands there, partly because of pain, but also out of natural modesty. It was the way Jesus had been buried. The women were trying to cover their breasts too, with their arms. It was terrible and strange to see them concerned for their modesty, while they were being taken away to be shot.

  Kolya still had his hands clasped between his thighs. He was hunched forward, and could not stop shivering. He could not stop, even though she hugged him and warmed him and tried to whisper comforting words. And he said nothing. Speech had been shocked out of him.

  She knew she herself must keep from breaking down altogether, even when Liuba Shchadenko staggered out of the corridor, clasping hold of her youngest, Nadia. The mouth of the three-year-old was open wide in a soundless howl. Liuba’s face was covered in blood, as were the faces of Olga and Pavel, who staggered out after her. There was no sign of old Mrs. Shchadenko. For an instant, just after she had pulled her dress over her head, Liuba seemed to look straight at her friend on the hillock, accusingly. But she could have seen nothing at that moment. When she had stripped, she started fussing with the buttons of Nadia’s frock, but too slowly. A policeman grabbed the child angrily, carried her like a sack of potatoes to the sandstone wall and flung her over.

  “Hail Mary full of grace…” “Ora pro nobis…” Lisa mumbled the prayers of her childhood as the tears pressed out between her eyelids.

  No one could have imagined the scene, because it was happening. In spite of the shouts, the screams and the patter of machine guns, Lisa heard nothing. As in a silent film, with the white cumulus drifting across the blue sky. She even started to believe that nothing terrible was happening beyond the wall of sand. For nothing could be worse than this, or as bad. She did not know where the people were being taken, but they were not being killed. She said as much to Kolya. “We’re just being frightened. You’ll see, we’ll go home and then Pavel and the others will turn up safe and sound.” She had always found it difficult to kill even a cockroach; and there was simply no reason to kill all these people. The Germans were lining the people up, firing over their heads at the ravine side, laughing at the joke, and telling them to get dressed in fresh clothes and go and sit in the train. It was mad, but not so mad as the alternative. She went on half believing it even after she heard a Ukrainian officer say the words: “We’ll shoot the Jews first and then let you out.”

  Those words were spoken to a young woman she had known slightly in the old days—Dina Pronicheva, an actress at the Kiev puppet theatre. Lisa recognized her as she staggered out of the corridor. Two old people, perhaps her parents, waved to Dina from another group, probably telling her to try to get away. Instead of taking off her clothes, Dina marched up to the Ukrainian officer who was standing in front of the hillock, and Lisa heard her demand to be let out. She showed him the contents of her bag. She certainly did not look Jewish—less so even than Lisa, with her rather long nose. Dina’s surname was Russian and she spoke Ukrainian. The commander was convinced, and spoke the words about letting her out later. Dina now sat a few places away, lower down the hillock. Like most there, she kept her head buried in her arms: from shock, grief, and perhaps also from fear lest someone recognize her and shout, “She’s a dirty Yid!” hoping to save his own skin.

  Lisa remembered
a prayer her nurse had taught her, to protect her from nightmares: “You who are Saviour…” There are things so far beyond belief that it ought to be possible to awake from them. But, although the prayer helped her a little, the nightmare continued. The world was a world of little children being hurled over a wall like sacks of grain being thrown on to a waggon; of white soft flesh being flailed as peasant women flailed drying clothes; the shiny black boot tapped by the black whip of the bored officer standing in front of the knoll. “You who are Saviour…”

  She felt helpless to help Kolya. There was nothing to do but to pray selfishly that all the others might be killed, with merciful speed, and those on the hillock allowed to go home. She prayed this selfish prayer continuously. But she did not once regret she had not accepted Liuba’s offer and stayed behind. Now she knew why she ought never to have had children. And yet the thought of Kolya, her son, being here with strangers, perhaps in that group of children from the orphanage, was a hundred times worse than the terror of death.

  She passed into a trance, in which everything that was being enacted before her happened slowly and without sound. Perhaps she had literally become deaf. It was quieter than the quietest night. And the clouds drifted across the sky with the same terrible, icy, inhuman slowness. Also there were changes of colour. The scene became tinted with mauve. She watched cumulus gather on the horizon; saw it break into three, and with continuous changes of shape and colour the clouds started their journey across the sky. They were not aware of what was happening. They thought it was an ordinary day. They would have been astonished. The tiny spider running up the blade of grass thought it was a simple, ordinary blade of grass in a field.

  The afternoon, that was no conceivable part of time, wore on, and it started to get dark.

  Suddenly an open car drew up and in it was a tall, well-built, smartly turned-out officer with a riding crop in his hand. At his side was a Russian prisoner.

  “Who are these?” the officer asked the policeman, through the interpreter: pointing to the hillock, where there were about fifty people sitting by this time.

  “They are our people, Ukrainians. They were seeing people off; they ought to be let out.”

  Lisa heard the officer shout: “Shoot the lot at once! If even one of them gets out of here and starts talking in the city, not a single Jew will turn up tomorrow.”

  She caught hold of Kolya’s hand and gripped it tight, while the interpreter translated the officer’s order, word for word. The boy started to pant for breath, and his hand shook violently but she tightened her grip. She whispered: “God will take care of us, darling—you’ll see.” A sudden sharp unpleasant smell told her he had lost control of his bowels. She hugged him tightly and kissed him; now the tears she had bottled up for most of the day rolled down her cheeks. He had neither cried nor spoken all the time they had been sitting on the knoll.

  “Come on then! Let’s go! Get yourselves up!” the policeman shouted. The people stood up as if they were drunk. They were quiet and well behaved, as if they were being told to go and have some supper. Maybe because it was already late the Germans did not bother to undress this group, but led them through the gap in their clothes.

  Lisa and Kolya were among the last. They went through the gap and came out into a sand quarry with sides practically overhanging. It was already half dark, and she could not see the quarry properly. One after the other, they were hurried on to the left, along a very narrow ledge.

  On their left was the side of the quarry, to the right a deep drop; the ledge had apparently been specially cut out for the purposes of the execution, and it was so narrow that as they went along it people instinctively leaned towards the wall of sandstone, so as not to fall in. Kolya sagged at the knees and would have fallen, but for his mother’s grip on his arm.

  They were halted, and turned to face the ravine. Lisa looked down and her head swam, she seemed so high up. Beneath her was a sea of bodies covered in blood. On the other side of the quarry she could just see the machine guns and a few soldiers. The German soldiers had lit a bonfire and it looked as though they were making coffee on it.

  She gripped Kolya’s hand and told him to close his eyes. He would not feel any pain and when they were in heaven she would be with him still. She saw his eyes close. She thought of telling him that his daddy and his real mummy were already there to meet him; but decided it was the wrong thing to do. A German finished his coffee and strolled to a machine gun. She started to whisper the Lord’s Prayer, and heard her son’s faint voice beside her saying it too. She did not see as much as feel the bodies falling from the ledge and the stream of bullets coming closer to them. Just before it reached them she pulled Kolya’s hand, crying “Jump,” and jumped with him off the ledge.

  It seemed to her that she fell for ages—it was probably a very deep drop. When she struck the bottom she lost consciousness. She was at home, at night, lying on her right side, half dreaming, and the cockroaches were rustling on the walls and underneath the bed. The rustle of the cockroaches filled her mind. Then she started to understand that the sound came from the mass of people moving slightly as they settled down and were pressed tighter by the movements of the ones who were still living.

  She had fallen into a bath of blood. She lay on her right side, and her right arm lay under her, at an unnatural angle. It did not hurt. She could not move or turn, because something else, presumably another body (perhaps Kolya), was trapping her right hand. She felt no pain anywhere. Apart from the rustling, there were other strange subterranean sounds, a dull chorus of groaning, choking and sobbing. She tried to call her son’s name, but no voice would come.

  When it got dark, she would find Kolya and they would crawl up out of the ravine, slip into the woods, and make their escape.

  Some soldiers came out on to the ledge and flashed their torches down on the bodies, firing bullets from their revolvers into any which appeared to be still living. But someone not far from Lisa went on groaning as loud as before.

  Then she heard people walking near her, actually on the bodies. They were Germans who had climbed down and were bending over and taking things from the dead and occasionally firing at those who showed signs of life.

  An SS man bent over an old woman lying on her side, having seen a glint of something bright. His hand brushed her breast when he reached for the crucifix to pull it free, and he must have sensed a flicker of life. Letting go the crucifix he stood up. He drew his leg back and sent his jackboot crashing into her left breast. She moved position from the force of the blow, but uttered no sound. Still not satisfied, he swung his boot again and sent it cracking into her pelvis. Again the only sound was the clean snap of the bone. Satisfied at last, he jerked the crucifix free. He went off, picking his way across the corpses.

  The woman, whose screams had not been able to force a way through her throat, went on screaming; and the screams turned to moans, and still no one heard her. In the stillness of the ravine a voice shouted from above: “Demidenko! Come on, start shovelling!”

  There was a clatter of spades and then heavy thuds as the earth and sand landed on the bodies, coming closer and closer to the old woman who still lived. Earth started to fall on her. The unbearable thing was to be buried alive. She cried with a terrible and powerful voice: “I’m alive. Shoot me, please!” It came out only as a choking whisper, but Demidenko heard it. He scraped some of the earth off her face. “Hey, Semashko!” he shouted. “This one’s still alive!” Semashko, moving lightly for a man of his bulk, came across. He looked down and recognized the old woman who had tried to bribe her way out. “Then give her a fuck!” he chuckled. Demidenko grinned, and started unbuckling his belt. Semashko rested his rifle, and yanked the old woman into a flatter position. Her head lolled to the left and looked straight into a boy’s open eyes. Then Demidenko yanked her legs apart.

  After a while Semashko jeered at him, and Demidenko grumbled that it was too cold, and the old woman was too ugly. He adjusted his clothing and picke
d up his rifle. With Semashko’s assistance he found the opening, and they joked together as he inserted the bayonet, carefully, almost delicately. The old woman was not making any sound though they could see she was still breathing. Still very gently, Demidenko imitated the thrusts of intercourse; and Semashko let out a guffaw, which echoed from the ravine walls, as the woman’s body jerked back and relaxed, jerked and relaxed. But after those spasms there was no sign of a reaction and she seemed to have stopped breathing. Semashko grumbled at their wasting time. Demidenko twisted the blade and thrust it in deep.

  During the night, the bodies settled. A hand would adjust, by a fraction, causing another’s head to turn slightly. Features imperceptibly altered. “The trembling of the sleeping night,” Pushkin called it; only he was referring to the settling of a house.

  The soul of man is a far country, which cannot be approached or explored. Most of the dead were poor and illiterate. But every single one of them had dreamed dreams, seen visions and had amazing experiences, even the babes in arms (perhaps especially the babes in arms). Though most of them had never lived outside the Podol slum, their lives and histories were as rich and complex as Lisa Erdman-Berenstein’s. If a Sigmund Freud had been listening and taking notes from the time of Adam, he would still not fully have explored even a single group, even a single person.

  And this was only the first day.

  A woman did scramble up the ravine side, after dark. It was Dina Pronicheva. And when she grasped hold of a bush to pull herself over, she did come face to face with a boy, clothed in vest and pants, who also had inched his way up. He scared Dina with his whisper: “Don’t be scared, lady! I’m alive too.”

  Lisa had once dreamt those words, when she was taking the thermal springs at Gastein with Aunt Magda. But it is not really surprising, for she had clairvoyant gifts and naturally a part of her went on living with these survivors: Dina, and the little boy who trembled and shivered all over. His name was Motya.