by D. M. Thomas
Motya was shot by the Germans while shouting a warning to the lady, whom he now looked upon and loved as his mother, because she was kind to him. Dina survived to be the only witness, the sole authority for what Lisa saw and felt. Yet it had happened thirty thousand times; always in the same way and always differently. Nor can the living ever speak for the dead.
The thirty thousand became a quarter of a million. A quarter of a million white hotels in Babi Yar. (Each of them had a Vogel, a Madame Cottin, a priest, a prostitute, a honeymoon couple, a soldier poet, a baker, a chef, a gypsy band.) The bottom layers became compressed into a solid mass. When the Germans wished to bury their massacres the bulldozers did not find it easy to separate the bodies: which were now grey-blue in colour. The bottom layers had to be dynamited, and sometimes axes had to be used. These lower strata were, with few exceptions, naked; but further up they were in their underwear, and higher still they were fully dressed: like the different formations of rocks. The Jews were at the bottom, then came Ukrainians, gypsies, Russians, etc.
A great building site of manifold tasks was created. Diggers dug the earth; dredgers hooked the bodies out; prospectors (Goldsucher) collected valuables. It was strange and touching that almost all the victims, including the naked, had managed to secrete something of sentimental value to take with them into the ravine. There were even tradesmen’s tools. Many of the valuables had to be extricated from the bodies. The fillings Lisa had had done soon after her return from Milan were mixed with fillings from elsewhere—including some from the mouths of Freud’s four aged sisters—and turned into a consignment of gold bars.
The cloakroom attendants pulled off any clothing of good quality; the builders constructed giant pyres; the stokers set the fire going by igniting the people’s hair; the crushers sifted the ashes for any gold that had escaped the prospectors; and the gardeners took the ashes in wheelbarrows to spread over the garden plots near the ravine.
It was a frightful task. The guards could only endure the stench by swigging vodka all day long. The Russian prisoners were given no food (but woe betide them if they weakened); and now and again one of them, driven crazy by the delicious aroma of roast flesh, would be caught thrusting his hand into the flames to pull out a piece of meat; and for such barbarism would himself add to the tempting aroma, cooked alive like a lobster. In the end, the prisoners knew, they too would feed the flames, when the last corpse had been burnt; those who lived that long. The guards knew that they knew: it was a subject of banter between the two groups. One day an extermination van arrived, full of women. When the gas was turned on, the usual banging and shouting started; but it was not long before silence fell and the doors could be opened. More than a hundred naked girls were pulled out. The drunken guards hooted with laughter. “Go on! Have a go at them! Give their cunts a christening!” They almost choked on their vodka bottles: the joke being that the girls were waitresses from the Kiev night clubs, and therefore probably not vestal virgins. Even one or two of the prisoners cracked their bony faces into grins, as they piled the girls—the dead and the still living—on to the pyre.
When the war was over, the effort to annihilate the dead went on, in other hands. After a while Dina Pronicheva stopped admitting she had escaped from Babi Yar. Engineers constructed a dam across the mouth of the ravine, and pumped water and mud in from neighbouring quarries, creating a green, stagnant and putrid lake. The dam burst; a huge area of Kiev was buried in mud. Frozen in their last postures, as at Pompeii, people were still being dug out two years later.
No one, however, saw fit to placate the ravine with a memorial. It was filled in with concrete, and above it were built a main road, a television centre, and a high-rise block of flats. The corpses had been buried, burned, drowned, and reburied under concrete and steel.
But all this had nothing to do with the guest, the soul, the lovesick bride, the daughter of Jerusalem.
6
The
Camp
After the chaos and overcrowding of the nightmarish journey, they spilled out on to the small, dusty platform in the middle of nowhere. They struggled over a little bridge; then it was good to breathe the sweet air, and to be ushered through without bullying or formalities. Outside, there was a line of buses waiting.
The young lieutenant in charge of Lisa’s bus had a diffident stammer which relaxed the atmosphere as he read out the roll. He smiled shyly when the passengers’ chuckles told him he had got one of the difficult names wrong. He had particular trouble with Lisa’s. Under a film of sweat—the day was very hot—a white scar ran up his cheek and across his forehead, and a sleeve rested uselessly in his uniform pocket.
As the bus moved off in a cloud of dust, he swung himself into the empty seat in front of Lisa. “Sorry about that!” He smiled. “Don’t worry!” She smiled back. “It’s Polish, I take it?” he inquired; and she confirmed it was so. Actually, she was embarrassed by her error. Having decided not to use her Jewish name, Berenstein, nor her German name, Erdman—because of all the harassment she had been through when asked to produce her documents—she had wished to give her maiden name, Morozova. But for some strange reason she had given her mother’s maiden name instead: Konopnicka. It was too late now to do anything about it. The young lieutenant was asking her how the train journey had been. “Terrible! Terrible!” said Lisa.
He nodded sympathetically, and added that at least they would be able to rest at the camp. It wasn’t a palace, but it was fairly comfortable. Then later they would be sent on further. Lisa said he would never know how much it meant, to hear a friendly voice. She looked out at the monotonous desert, under the burning sky, and missed his next question, about what she did in her previous life. He had to repeat it. He was pleased to hear she was a singer. Though he didn’t know much about music, he enjoyed it, and one of his tasks was to arrange concerts at the camp. Perhaps she would be willing to take part? Lisa said she would be glad to, if her voice should be thought good enough.
“I’m Richard Lyons,” he said, offering her his left hand over the back of the seat. Awkwardly she shook it with her own wrong hand. The name stirred a memory; and astonishingly it turned out she had known his uncle. She had met him while on holiday in the Austrian Alps. “He thought you were dead,” she said; and Lieutenant Lyons said, with a wry grin, “Not quite!” and patted his empty sleeve. Of course he knew the hotel where she had stayed, for he had skied there often.
“It’s a beautiful place,” he said.
“Yes, but so is this,” she replied, glancing out again at the sand dunes. “It’s a beautiful world.”
She took the opportunity to ask him how one should set about trying to trace relatives. He took a notebook and a pencil from his breast pocket and, using his left hand adroitly, both to grip the notebook and to write in it, wrote the name Berenstein. He promised to make some inquiries. “You can be sure your relatives will be scanning the new lists too,” he said. She thanked him for his kindness and he said it was nothing, he was happy to help.
He excused himself to move back through the bus, and exchange friendly words with some of the other passengers. Kolya, tired out, was asleep, his head lolling on her shoulder. She changed her position to make him more comfortable. Her breast was very tender. Soon, anyway, she had to wake him, because the bus drew to a halt. Despite their weariness the passengers exclaimed with pleasure, seeing an oasis—green grass, palm trees, sparkling water. And the building itself looked more like a hotel than a transit camp. Lisa and her son had a room all to themselves. It smelled sweetly of wood. The beams were of cedar and the rafters of fir.
Kolya was soon out exploring with Pavel Shchadenko, but Lisa was so tired that she flopped into bed straightaway. She was awakened, in the half-light of dusk, by a timid knock on the door. She thought it was Kolya, not quite sure if this was their room. Naked as she was, not having unpacked, she went to open the door. It was the lieutenant. He apologized, flushing to see her naked, for disturbing her rest; he ought to have
realized she would have gone to bed early. His stammer was embarrassing. He simply wanted to tell her he could not find a Victor Berenstein on the lists; there was, however, a Vera Berenstein. Was that any help? It was marvellous, she said: “Thank you.” He blushed again, and said he would keep trying to find her husband’s name. And he thought she might like to know there was someone else with her unusual surname—a woman called Marya Konopnicka. “But that’s my mother!” she exclaimed in delight. He was glad, and promised to make more inquiries.
The days flashed by. She was forever glancing round the tables at mealtimes and seeing a face she thought she recognized. Once, she even thought she caught sight of Sigmund Freud: an old man with a heavily bandaged jaw, eating—or attempting to eat—alone. She was too much in awe of him to go up and speak. Besides, it might not be he; for the old man was said to have come from England. Yet could she mistake that noble expression? When she saw him painfully take a few puffs of a cigar, through a mouth that was no more than a tiny hole, she was almost certain. She had an impish urge to write him a postcard (with a picture of the transit camp, the only one available) saying: “Frau Anna G. presents her compliments and would you do her the honour of taking a glass of milk with her?” It might make him smile, remembering the chef at the white hotel. As she toyed with the postcard, wondering whether to buy it, she suddenly realized that the old, drying-out, kindly priest in her journal had been Freud; and she wondered how she could have failed to see it at the time. It was so obvious. Then she went hot and cold, because he himself, so profoundly wise, must have been aware of it, and probably thought she was laughing at him. It would hardly be tactful, therefore, to send him a postcard which would recall it to his mind.
She passed him one day, when he was being wheeled to the medical unit. His head was drooping, and he did not see her. He looked dreadfully ill and unhappy. If she made herself known to him, she would have to cast even more serious doubts on the accuracy of his diagnosis, and that might add to his gloom. It was best to keep away, and just pray that the doctors could help him. They certainly seemed to know what they were doing. The young, overworked doctor who had seen her had been efficient but gentle. Even so, she had flinched from his examination of the painful parts. “What do you think is wrong?” he asked, as she drew back from his touch. “Anagnorisis,” she sighed. The drugs he had prescribed had eased the pain.
She felt well enough to start going to language classes—in the very next classroom to Kolya’s! She wanted to learn Hebrew properly. All she knew was a quotation Madame Kedrova had taught her, the Hebrew for “Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it.” She had always found languages easy, and her instructors were pleased with her progress.
Yet it seemed you did not have to be Jewish to be here; for her mother was on the lists.
On the second evening—she thought it was the second—the young lieutenant came up to her table and asked her, shyly, for a dance. Since there were plenty of musicians among the immigrants, including some members of the Kiev orchestra, they had quickly formed a dance band. There was a happy communal spirit at mealtimes; married couples did not stick selfishly together but made sure the many widows and widowers were brought into the fun. Lisa did not think she could manage to dance, because of her painful hip; but she did not want to offend the shy young officer who had been so kind. They got through the waltz somehow: he with one arm and she, more or less, with one leg! They laughed about it. She went out for a stroll with him in the cool evening. By the oasis, he showed her a beautiful bed of lilies of the valley. He did not mind that she was bleeding.
What was really amazing—what everyone agreed was a miracle—was the “illegal immigrant” who turned up a few weeks after the first train from Kiev. She limped through the vineyard, and the grape-pickers stopped their work and stared at her, amazed. Liuba Shchadenko was in her room that morning, together with her children and mother-in-law; and she heard a scraping noise at the door. She opened it and saw a little black cat at her feet, mewing up at her pathetically. It was their cat Vaska—skeletally thin, and its paws a red pulp; but unmistakably Vaska. And soon it was curled up purring in Nadia’s arms, and lapping milk from a saucer. Somehow, by that amazing instinct cats possess, it had crawled through streets, deserts, and over mountains, to find them again. Soon it had flesh on its bones, was scampering around the camp, and became everyone’s pet and mascot.
The black cat took its proper place in the uproarious celebration of the vine harvest. It was a bountiful crop, and the grapes were tender. For the first time, Lisa tried out her voice: only quietly, and in the chorus of a drinking song. Her voice was husky and unsure of itself, but she was not displeased; and a few people even turned their heads, as if they wondered who was singing the pleasant descant.
Everywhere you went—there was Vaska! It even interrupted the camp film show one evening. Lisa usually went to these shows because, although the films were often uninteresting—badly made documentaries—they helped her with learning the language. On the evening of Vaska’s appearance she and Liuba were watching a documentary about the settlement at Emmaus. They were showing the prison hospital, which claimed a lot of success in curing hardened prisoners. Among the patients seen and interviewed was a man whom Lisa thought she recognized, a pleasant-looking man in glasses. Armed guards flanked him as he was led between buildings. He was seen playing with children in the recreation hall, and even there the armed guards watched him closely. The commentator spoke his name, Kürten, as though the audience would know it well; and Lisa did think she had heard the name, and possibly seen his photograph in the newspapers, but she couldn’t place him. She was on the point of whispering to Liuba, when the screen was suddenly full of Vaska…Vaska in silhouette! The audience woke up, and roared with laughter. Somehow the cat had got into the projection room; and now she was peacefully cleaning her face on the screen! The audience clapped for more—it was much more entertaining than the film!
And one morning there were four black and white kittens, mewling and wet, tugging at Vaska’s tits. Liuba said it was a miracle, as she had had her neutered…. But the kittens were unmistakably real, and of course Vaska became more of a heroine than ever. All the children in the camp lined up to come and fuss over the newest immigrants, and tried to bribe Nadia into letting them have one of them to keep.
But the greatest miracle of all was—as Liuba said, laughing—where was the father?
Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away. For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone, the flowers appear on the earth, the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land. O my dove, that art in the clefts of the rock, in the secret places of the stairs, let me see thy countenance, let me hear thy voice, for sweet is thy voice, and thy countenance is comely.
The quotation came in a letter from a totally unexpected source. She was in the fields when a man came round with mail, and when she saw the familiar, forgotten handwriting she had to leave the long line of gleaners and rush to the only secret place available to her, the latrines. So many emotions of the dead past swept over her that she really did need to go. During her years in Kiev she had seen Alexei’s name often in newspapers, and seen his picture, standing to attention in rows of uniformed men. Then she had read of his arrest and his sensational confessions. It rejoiced her heart that he had not been shot but allowed to partake in the diaspora.
He wrote that he had been imprisoned for a short while at Emmaus, and was now a changed man. Now he was at a settlement in the mountains of Bether. Conditions were tough, but they were working to create a better life. When he had seen Lisa’s name on the lists, he had known at once that he still loved her, and he wished her to come and share his life with him.
Liuba, because she did not want her friend to go, pressed upon her the advantages of going to Alexei. He had not, of course, mentioned marriage, but the laws of the new land discouraged formal ties.
But Lisa wrote b
ack that it was too late. She still loved him, too. But if she went to live with him they would always be haunted by the figure of a child. They both had too much on their consciences.
One day she was thrilled to hear Vera Berenstein’s silver voice over the wireless. Unusually for Vera, she was singing a religious song, a setting of the Twenty-third Psalm. Her voice seemed more lovely than ever. Then, thanks to her friendship with Richard Lyons, Lisa was able to hear the silvery voice over a crackly telephone. Vera confirmed that her husband was not over here—just yet. She was excited, full of questions about her son. Lisa was, in fact, preparing him to meet his real mother: mentioning her name often, as if casually; reminiscing about her.
This was hard for her; much harder than the gentle work she had started to do in the fields. She shed tears privately over it. It was hard because she felt she was Kolya’s mother, and he felt she was his mother; and yet she had to prepare the way for him to return to the woman who had given him birth. It would be much less hard to let Victor go, if and when he arrived. She was inwardly glad he was not yet here; and felt remorseful about it. Much though she loved him, her soul did not see him as her true and eternal husband. As if in penance for her guilt, she tried to help people as much as possible.
She tried to help the old man she believed to be Freud. Richard let her browse through the records of people who had moved on to settlements. The problem was that she could not remember the married name of Freud’s daughter. But when she found the name Sophie Halberstadt, with a small son called Heinz, she thought these must be the right persons, and she wrote a brief letter to Frau Halberstadt. As though in reward for her good deed, she stumbled on the record card of her old friend in Petersburg, Ludmila Kedrova. And when she returned to her room, by one of those strange coincidences she found a letter waiting for her on her bed. It was from Ludmila, saying she had read Lisa’s name on the lists, and was overjoyed that she was safe. She, Ludmila, was not well enough yet to travel far, but hoped to see her soon. They were treating her breast with radium; which was painful and made her sick. This was strange, because Lisa thought she remembered that her breast had been removed, in an effort to save her life. She worried about this, hoping it didn’t mean that her other breast was infected.