The Nature of Blood

by Caryl Phillips

  Margot died on a cold grey morning in a country that was not her own. After she left her parents, and her sister Eva, she spent eighteen months in hiding at the top of a house in a tiny room which held only a single bed, a chair and a tall wardrobe. She was not allowed to leave the room, she was not allowed to use the bathroom, she was not allowed to have any contact with her former life. Her Mama and Papa had explained to her that, depending on how things developed, the hiding parents might let her live openly among them. Alternatively, for her own safety, they might choose to lock her up. They chose to lock her up. On the day of their separation, Eva sat on Margot's bed and stared idly through the window as her sister packed her suitcase. As the day faded, Margot told Eva about some of the things she had discussed with her new friends. The most important news was that Peter had heard of Uncle Stephan, and apparently their uncle was a real hero. And then the man arrived, pocketed the money and took the seventeen-year-old Margot away, and from the moment she stepped out of her parents' four-storey house she was no longer a child. A nice couple, they climbed the stairs, and brought her food, and permitted her to whisper her Jewish prayers, but otherwise she was to be quiet at all times. (They told a frightened Margot about the searches. Many had been discovered. And there were terrible rumours about their fate.) Above her bed they hung a crucifix, which she ignored. They encouraged Margot to practise how to hold her nose so that she might sneeze quietly. Quiet, like a cat. Eventually Margot discovered an imaginary friend named Siggi, who never spoke. And from behind closed doors, Margot listened to her country change, while inside she, too, was changing. To experience loneliness at any age is painful, but so young, and without the warm memories to offset the bewildering isolation and the worried speculation. It marks a person. She could feel this. A year passed and she grew accustomed to watching the early daylight at the edge of the curtains, and then witnessing the sun lighting up the floral pattern of the wallpaper. She thought all the while of Mama and Papa, and she tried to forgive them for turning her over to these people. In particular, Margot thought of her little sister Eva, and how once, when they were younger and playing together, she had kicked her. Margot thought endlessly of her cruelty and she hoped that her dear sister might have forgiven her. Apparently, there was no way of communicating with Eva. Her hiding father told her that things were very bad, and then one night, when his wife was out, he came to visit her. He looked at her, and touched her, but Margot dare not scream, for to scream would be to betray her hiding place. (Right now you're a very pretty girl, but as you get older your racial character will show.) And then he kissed her, and he tried to open her lips with his big mouth, and Margot felt the weight of his heavy hands upon her. How hard this man concentrated as he pushed, the beads of sweat popping on to his brow, individual, evenly spaced. Margot began to count. Siggi said nothing. And then he peeled himself clear of her body and left. Inside she bled, and her mind tumbled down a flight of stairs and struck its head. During the night, the rain fell like applause and Margot remembered that Papa used to say that a storm was nothing more than God moving around his furniture. In the morning she awoke to discover her nightgown gathered up about her waist, and her face bathed in the thin spokes of light that filtered around the edge of the curtains. As she lay curled in shame, she realized that her swollen tongue was now too large for her dry mouth. She made a decision. Margot swung her legs off the side of the bed and felt the damp chill of the linoleum. She would cut her hair short, her thick fluent hair that Peter liked to touch. Cut it off. When, a week later, the man visited her again, she slid to the floor so she would not fall, and then she screamed. Both she and her hiding parents were escorted down the three flights of stairs and emptied out into the street. The light dazzled her and she raised an arm to protect her eyes. The hiding parents went one way and Margot another, towards a train, her hands lacing and unlacing as she walked. One year later, in a country to the east that was not her own, she died on a cold grey morning, naked among naked strangers. She paid dearly for the sin of being born. (Did you think of me that morning as I stumbled naked and shivering towards my death? Did you think of me?)

  The process of gassing takes place in the following manner. The helpless victims are brought into a reception hall where they are instructed to undress. Most keep their underwear about them, but they are quickly encouraged to remove these last vestiges of modesty. In order to maintain the illusion that they are going to shower, a group of men dressed in white coats issue each person with a small bar of soap and a towel. The victims are then ushered into the gas chamber in such ludicrous numbers that the illusion is immediately shattered. In the gas chamber there is no room for the victims to turn around, let alone raise their arms up above their heads. In order to introduce yet more people into this limited space, shots are often fired to encourage those near the door to push towards the back. Those in the far corners are sometimes crushed to death before the procedure even begins. Once everybody is inside, the heavy doors are slammed shut, and sealed and bolted from the outside. There is no escape. After a short interval, which allows the room temperature to rise to a desired level, men wearing gas masks and bearing canisters of the required preparation clamber up on to the roof of the building. They open trap doors, then shake the contents of the cans (which are marked Zyklon B – for use against vermin) – a product of a Hamburg-based company – into the traps and then quickly retire. This product is a cyanide mixture which is known to turn, at a predetermined temperature, into a noxious and highly effective poisonous gas. After only three minutes, every single inhabitant in the chamber is dead, and nobody has been known to survive the ordeal. The chamber is then opened and aired by men who, for obvious reasons, must still wear gas masks. After five minutes it is deemed safe, and new men appear – prisoners – who cart the bodies on flat trucks to the furnace rooms where the burning takes place. The hearths of the furnaces are charged with coke. Once the cremation chamber has been brought to a good red heat (approximately 800° C), the corpses are introduced. They burn rapidly. As soon as the remains of the corpses have fallen through the grid to the ash-collection channel below, they can be pulled forwards by means of a scraper, towards the ash-removal door. Here, they should be left for another twenty minutes to disintegrate fully before being scraped out and into a container. In the meantime, further corpses can be introduced into the chambers. All bones will have disintegrated, but some small particles may remain. The ash is white and is easily scattered.

  Once Gerry returned to England, he wrote her many imaginary letters. Dear Eva, I think I ought to explain . . . But he never sent any of them, preferring instead to believe that the strange girl would soon forget him. However, his conscience troubled him. If, when he asked her, she had said yes, then he was convinced that he would have made whatever arrangements were necessary. He would have told her everything, and then taken a chance and brought her back to England. They might have had to wait a couple of years before they could actually get married, but he'd have done it. That's what everyone wanted after the war. A new beginning. A chance to put things behind them. To begin again. But when he got back and saw Noreen and the kiddie, he began to write the letters in his mind. I mean, Noreen wasn't a glamour piece or anything, but he had made a commitment. Dear Eva, I think I ought to explain . . . It was silly, really. For one thing, how could he have afforded it? It was bloody hard work to get a job again. Nobody gave a bugger that you'd served king and country. So bleeding what, mate? You were over there with your foreign crumpet, while we were stuck here getting bombed on. Triumphant England didn't live up to his expectations. Things were bad for everyone. And so eventually he stopped writing imaginary letters. And, soon after, he saw Iris, who was dancing unconsciously to the static crackle of a wireless as she rearranged cups on her tray. She was a waitress in the tea shop that Gerry stopped in on his way home from the factory. It was the sign above the door, which boasted 'A good selection of cakes and pastries', that first caught his attention. Gerry liked the fam
iliar tinkle of the doorbell, then the pleasing rush of warmly scented air as he edged his way in and found his usual seat in the corner by the tall glass window. From this position, he could gaze out at the tide of people who washed by in both directions, but inevitably he was shaken from his day-dreaming by the elderly woman with her notepad and her hair that was tied back in a frighteningly severe bun. She took his order and, soon after, his tea would arrive at the table with a clatter. And then one day he saw the girl dancing as she rearranged cups on her tray, a new girl with eyebrows plucked into dark arches. Gerry looked at his watch and realized that they would be closing up in ten minutes, so he deliberately waited until she came to his table to take away his cup. 'You're new here, aren't you?' She smiled, and Gerry could now see just how young she was. Sixteen at most. But she refused to reply. And so it went on, day after day, week after week, with Gerry being unable to torment a conversation out of her reluctant person. His sole knowledge of this girl's background was her name, Iris, which he discovered only by overhearing the elderly woman shouting at her when the girl appeared to be slacking. Eventually, Gerry accepted that his infatuation with the girl was leading him nowhere, but it had served the function of removing Eva from the front of his mind. He no longer peered anxiously down the hallway in case a foreign-looking letter lay by the door, nor did he worry about whether he should say something to Noreen about the Jewish girl. Gerry's conscience no longer troubled him. Although he had given up hope of winning her over, Gerry still sat in the tea shop, in the corner by the tall glass window, and stared at his Iris. He particularly enjoyed watching her when she raised her arms to tie back her hair. It occurred to him that young girls needed protecting. But Iris would be fine. She knew how to look after herself.

  I have made a friend. Bella. Bella with the dark complexion. Her eyes fenced by crow's feet that mark her out as one who has toiled in a southern sun. (My skin as white as paper.) They have given Bella an easy job, packing down the top of the pits. I share my bowl of soup with her. Carry me, Bella, and I will carry you. Bella tells me there are rumours that we will not win. She speaks as though everything is a confession. I tell Bella, no. No. You must see your parents again. You are only seventeen. We lie together in the hut. I look at my Bella. Her brown eyes clouded by cataracts. I am twenty. Bella, I want to live to love. To believe in something. To believe in somebody. Because of Bella, I hope with reckless vigour. Men do not know the landscape of women. Your hair is growing back. I am a virgin. Tell me, have you had a boyfriend? A kiss? Yes? In the folding places of your body? I need a piece of bread. We need a piece of bread. But somebody must remain alive to tell all of this, Bella. It is senseless to die now. I need to see Margot again. And then, one morning I look across at my Bella with her sleep-shaped hair, and I know that soon I will be on my own again. Life continues to drain from her. Too weak, now, to steal warmth from my body. I press close to her, as though my life might pass into her body like a fever. But she continues to leak. Seepage. The most undignified of all diseases. Flooding the cracks in the wood, dripping into the faces of the women below. Speckling them. It is winter now. Our second winter. And bitterly cold. The roll-call. I am going to be late for roll-call. Dear Bella. Bella with fine straws stuck through the holes that pierce her ears, keeping them in readiness for the earrings that she still hopes for. Dear Bella, it is easy to be selected. Swollen legs? A forgotten head kerchief? A soiled uniform? Step forwards. Goodbye. A scratch on a leg? Puffed with malnutrition? Step forwards. Goodbye. A flick of a riding crop to the right. Goodbye. The other women, they cry now, please, Eva. Eva, please. Bella is gone. My Bella is gone. She is no more. Eva, she is no more. Colour your hair with this charcoal. Twenty and I am going grey! Look strong. Get up. Fresh air. Fresh air. The other women. Their feet wrapped in straw that is held in place with cloth and string. Dirty spoons attached to their waists by cords. I ask them, are you still women? Look at my swollen feet. The other women drag me away from my Bella. I am screaming. Look! In my Bella's crabbed hands there are still signs of life. I cannot leave her like this. A cage of bone. As I stand in the courtyard, I know that I will have to find Mama again. The wind continues to collaborate. It makes us shiver in front of these poorly educated people. I will have to find Mama again. Meanwhile, dear Bella. Bella with the dark complexion. Dry my face with your breath. Your refusal of this world has not gone unnoticed. Death will want me too. Death is hungry. Always hungry.

  And so you shadow her every move, attend to her every whim, like the black Uncle Tom that you are. Fighting the white man's war for him/Wide-receiver in the Venetian army/The republic's grinning Satchmo hoisting his sword like a trumpet/You tuck your black skin away beneath their epauletted uniform, appropriate their words (Rude am I in speech), their manners, worry your nappy woollen head with anxiety about learning their ways, yet you conveniently forget your own family, and thrust your wife and son to the back of your noble mind. O strong man, O strong arm, O valiant soldier, O weak man. You are lost, a sad black man, first in a long line of so-called achievers who are too weak to yoke their past with their present; too naive to insist on both; too foolish to realize that to supplant one with the other can only lead to catastrophe. Go ahead, peer on her alabaster skin. Go ahead, revel in the delights of her wanton bed, but to whom will you turn when she, too, is lost and a real storm breaks about your handkerchiefed head? My friend, the Yoruba have a saying: the river that does not know its own source will dry up. You will do well to remember this.

  We rise with the sun. I turn from Giacobbe to Moses, then back to Giacobbe. My brothers, do not let them see you weeping like this. Today, we must leave this cell and begin our final journey, but let us do so with dignity. There will be no tears and no pleading. We will maintain our fast and continue to refuse to drink water. We are going home. I look again at my companions, but they continue to weep copiously. I redouble my efforts. The journey to the north by water, and then back here to St Mark's on foot, is designed to humiliate us. But they are not our masters. We must obey only God. Let them take away our sons and baptize them. Let them pour scorn on our women. If we have done right by God, they will capture only the outside of our people, but not their souls. Do not weep. Please, do not weep. (In Portobuffole, I was respected. My family never cheated anybody. We lived modestly and we celebrated our holidays in peace. We respected your traditions, we made charitable contributions towards your institutions. Yet now you people pluck my beard, you stone my children, you defraud me, you mock my clothes and my religion. I tell you, I have never heard of this boy, Sebastian New. I have never seen such a boy. I know not what you are talking about. My wife is suffering, my family is drowning in tears. Why? Who is this Sebastian New? What are you talking about?) My brothers, let them burn our bodies. If this gives them pleasure, then let them burn us. But our souls do not belong to them. Have you lost faith? (To whom will Sara and my children turn? You have destroyed our small community.) Do not search for God in this moment of grief. You will move too quickly to find his true depth. Trust him. Today, as we leave this cell and feel the ground beneath our unsteady feet, we must walk with confidence towards our fate. These Venetians may be uncoupling us from this life on earth, but we are journeying towards a greater place. (Who is this Sebastian New?) To these men's ears, my words are stale. Giacobbe and Moses continue to weep. The sunlight begins to pour into our cell, the light raking down the wall, then pooling on the stone floor. I am thirsty, but I will not drink water. We must refuse to drink water.

  My friend, an African river bears no resemblance to a Venetian canal. Only the strongest spirit can hold both together. Only the most powerful heart can endure the pulse of two such disparate life-forces. After a protracted struggle, most men will eventually relinquish one in favour of the other. But you run like Jim Crow and leap into their creamy arms. Did you truly ever think of your wife's soft kiss? Or your son's eyes? Brother, you are weak A figment of a Venetian imagination. While you still have time, jump from her bed and fly away h
ome. Peel your rusty body from hers and go home. No good can come from your foreign adventure. A wooden ladle lightly dipped will soon scoop you up and dump you down and into the gutter. Brother, jump from her bed and fly away home.

  Eva slipped and fell into the snow. She scrambled quickly to her feet, but could feel the warm trickle of Hood where her left leg had hit against something hard – probably a rock. She knew that later it would hurt, but later did not matter. She ran on. Behind her, the soldiers' voices grew louder and more animated, but it was the barking of the dogs that frightened her, for she felt sure that at any moment they would be allowed off the leash. It was foolish of her to imagine that in her condition she might outrun grown, healthy men. Dogs would find her easy sport. If only she might be scooped up by some large celestial hand and gently deposited across water and into some other world. The soldiers would gather in a breathless huddle and call off the search. They would knock their tightly packed cigarettes out of their boxes, light up and agree that she was more trouble than she was worth. That she would not last the night. That the wolves would get her. But Eva ran on, furiously weaving her way through the trees, diving beneath branches and stumbling over exposed roots, until she saw the small house in the clearing.