The Forest of Souls

by Carla Banks

  He found it in the confusing script, and began the task of transliteration. He was getting quicker. …

  M…a…I…y…

  He’d hoped for some revelation, some recognition, but it meant nothing to him.

  Just another Belarusian village.

  Maly Trostenets.

  The Firebirds

  This is the story of how war came to the city.

  The attack came without warning. There had been the chaos of the invasion days before as the Nazi troops poured over the border. There was nowhere for the Red Army to stand. They fought and fell back, fought and fell back. Brest fell, Lvov fell, Baranoviche was overrun as the fascist army advanced. The planes came out of an empty sky on a clear June morning. In the streets, people were running, mothers looking for their children, children screaming in terror as they fled to find some kind of shelter, any kind of shelter.

  Eva, huddled in the basement with Mama and Zoya, listened to the heavy engines in the sky, the thump, thump like giant footsteps marching across the city towards them. And the ground shook and the air ignited. Wave after wave of planes flew over unopposed.

  Minsk was burning, and the flames made the air dance as the smoke blackened the summer sky. Wave followed wave, and for hour after hour the planes pounded the city to rubble.

  For Eva and her mother, life became animal, hiding in dark places, in the cavities and crevasses that the predator couldn’t find. There was no food, no water, no light. And there was no escape. They were too late. For endless days and nights, they hid in the basement, slipping out in the rare breaks in the bombardment to try and find food and water. The Red Army fought and died in the streets of Minsk. Eva knew that, somewhere out there, Papa and Marek were fighting, and maybe they were dying too.

  Ten days after the invasion had begun, the fascists entered Minsk. Their planes flew ahead of them. The tanks pushed the rubble aside and the battalions followed. They swept through the city and took everything of value they could find. They killed the hens that were laying and slaughtered the pigs that were to provide the food for autumn. Behind them, the countryside was plundered, the farmers left destitute or dead. The soldiers marched, singing and laughing, their feet lifting and stepping, lifting and stepping as they moved through the forest of rubble that their bombs and their guns had left behind. The Red Army had been beaten back, and the people of Minsk were left to face the occupying forces undefended.

  The invasion became a war of annihilation. Following in the tracks of the army came the Secret Field Police, the Schutzmannschaft, whose notoriety ran ahead of them as swathes of the dead trailed in their wake.

  Eva picked her way around the fallen buildings, watching as the other survivors crept out of the basements and cellars, or the caves in the rubble where they had been hiding, their faces dazed, trying to make sense of the changed world that surrounded them. The smell of burning hung in the air, and the stench of death. For a moment Eva was a child again, edging cautiously along a new path among the trees, hunger gnawing at her,…as her feet pressed into the ground, she could smell the damp earth and the leaf mould. And she could smell something else, faint on the breeze that stirred the branches and made the shadows dance on the forest floor…

  But for those who were alive, hiding was no longer possible. The city had to be restored, work had to be done. They needed water, they needed food, they needed warmth and they needed shelter before the winter came again. Eva watched and waited day after day for news of Marek or of Papa, but none came.

  The nightmare began–deportation to slave labour camps, looting, rape, murder and starvation. The partisans fled to the forests and began their long resistance. In response, the occupying forces proclaimed their intentions: Die Jugendlichkeit der Täter schützt in keinem Falle selbst vor Vollstreckung des Todesurteils. ‘The youth of the perpetrators will not protect them from the penalty of death.’

  And they carried out their proclamation.

  The fascists had many methods of execution, but in Minsk, public hanging was the preferred way, as it made the most potent of examples, and provided a salutary lesson. If the fascists would hang a teenage girl, then they would hang anybody.

  The hangings were brutal. The victims were hanged separately, so those who died last would know what was to come. They were not hooded or blindfolded. The gallows were crude. The victims were given no drop, and the noose was made of thin twine in a simple slip knot. Death was slow.

  The first public hanging took place in October. Three people, Kiril Trous, a veteran from the last war, Masha Bruskina, a seventeen-year-old girl, and Volodia Shcherbatsevich, a sixteen-year-old boy were hanged in front of the gates of a local factory. The Nazis slung a crude sign around the girl’s neck: ‘We are partisans and we have shot at German soldiers.’ They hanged them one at a time.

  Afterwards, the silence of terror fell on the city. Eva learned which streets to use to avoid the marching killers, learned to avert her eyes from the trees and lampposts where the dead were left. She listened for news of the fighting that was moving closer and closer to Moscow.

  One day, as she came back to the apartment block, a woman in an old black coat pushed brusquely past her. Eva stumbled, and the woman grabbed her arm to steady her, then she strode off without a backward glance. Eva watched her go.

  As the woman’s hand had touched hers, she had slipped something between Eva’s fingers, a piece of paper. Eva kept her hand tightly closed and shoved it deep into her coat pocket. As she went through the entrance, she saw Petr Dyakin watching her. The men and boys had been taken by the Nazis, but Dyakin remained–maybe his leg made him useless for work. He looked thinner and shabbier, but he still gave Eva that speculative smile, still greeted her with, ‘Hello, pretty one.’ Today he said, ‘What are you up to now, pretty one?’ His eyes glittered.

  Eva responded with a wordless murmur and hurried past. She was aware of his eyes on her as she went up the stairs. She stopped in the doorway of her own apartment, calling a greeting to Mama, and took the paper out of her pocket. It was folded small, but her heart began to beat faster as she recognized the handwriting. Marek!

  The note was brief. I am well. I have had news of you. Keep brave. I don’t know what has happened to Papa. We are fighting back. The resistance. Marek was with the partisans, and he wasn’t far away. The surge of gladness she felt retreated at the thought of the danger he was in.

  That night, she was suddenly awake in the darkness. She listened for what had woken her–but everything was silent. Then the wind rattled the window, and a deep fear began inside her.

  Somewhere far away, there was the soft movement of a chicken foot on the ground, the sound of something testing the wind as it raised its head in gleeful realization.

  19

  It was well into the morning before Faith left the hospital. She felt oddly detached from the day around her. While she had waited by Grandpapa’s bed, she had wanted nothing more than to sleep. In the close, oppressive atmosphere of the hospital, her eyes had kept closing, and she had drifted in and out of the twilight world of semi-sleep, where he was saying to her: That is enough, little one.

  I need to know, she said, then she jerked back into the small admissions ward in the Accident and Emergency department, and Grandpapa lay on the bed, his breathing stertorous, his eyes half-closed and empty.

  She stayed until they moved him to the intensive care ward.

  ‘We’ll take care of him,’ the charge nurse told her. ‘You get some rest.’ They’d contacted Katya. She was on her way.

  ‘You’ll call me if…?’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he reassured her.

  The house was cold and silent, as she had left it. Moving slowly, she went upstairs to his room. She packed a bag with toilet things, clean pyjamas, the book that lay on his bedside table. It felt wrong to be hunting through his private things, looking for what he might need. She opened the wardrobe, looking for some clean clothes.

  His clothes. What had happened
to…The metal hangers chimed as they swung together. There was nothing there apart from his tweed jacket, a waistcoat, a shirt and couple of pairs of trousers. He used to have suits, shirts, jackets…She could picture him on his way out of the house, wearing the black suit that meant he was going to a meeting, or the jacket and trousers that meant a site visit, carrying the battered attaché case he never would replace.

  And the heavy knitted sweaters he’d favoured in his retirement…She began pulling open drawers. They were empty apart from some socks, some underwear, a shapeless old jersey that he’d had for years and used for gardening.

  Now she remembered the missing silver from the night before. What else would she find gone if she searched the house? Burglars. He’d talked about burglars and she’d dismissed it as confusion and bad dreams. But what kind of burglar stole old clothes? What kind of burglar broke in to steal the silver and left no trace?

  She couldn’t think about it now. Tomorrow. She’d start dealing with it tomorrow. There was something she needed to do now, and she had been putting it off. She went down the stairs to the study, hesitating at the door, reluctant to cross that threshold, afraid she would see him slumped and helpless in his chair, his eyes staring sightlessly ahead. The desk was still open, the cuttings lying face up stained with water from the tumbler that she had dropped. The shattered glass still lay on the floor.

  She sat down slowly, trying to feel some awareness of what had happened just a few hours before, but the room felt dead around her. She started to look at the cuttings, knowing what she was going to see:

  WAR CRIME SUSPECT DIES AGED EIGHTY-FIVE.

  ROW OVER ‘NAZI’ ARREST.

  AUSTRALIA’S SHAME

  EXTRADITION CASE FAILS

  THE LAST VICTIMS: VIGILANTE JUSTICE AND WAR CRIMES.

  Why had he kept these? Why were these stories so important to him, and why had he come down in the night to read them? He had been afraid, she remembered that. He had told her someone was watching.

  Belarus. Jake had been convinced that Grandpapa came from Belarus, or had been in Belarus during the war. Maybe he was right. These men had been platoon commanders in some kind of police force whose brutality had startled even the German occupiers. They must have been figures of terror to the population. Had Grandpapa seen them, known of them, seen what they had done? Had he made his escape with men like this in pursuit? After all these years, had the stories that now lay in front of her brought it back, turned them into the creatures of nightmare that hunted him in his dreams?

  Had he woken in the night to the sound of marching feet, and gone downstairs to make sure, again, that they were dead or far away, and he was safe? Because they were far away. They had lived lives of prosperity and even renown. And her grandfather? He had had prosperity too, but he lived his adult life in the shadows of his wartime memories, and now they had come back to destroy him.

  Her broken night was catching up with her. There were things she needed to do, urgent things, but her mind fuzzed into incoherence. She was too tired to drive. She’d just rest for a few minutes, get her second wind. She went into the front room and sat in Grandpapa’s big armchair. The familiar smell of tweed and pipe tobacco enveloped her. She let her head fall back and her eyes close. Then she was drifting in a dark place, and she could hear his voice saying, The light! You must go…

  And the light was flickering through the trees, dark and then light, dark and then light; and then she was asleep.

  * * *

  Jake had two more days in Minsk, and before he left, he wanted to see the Kurapaty Forest. He found out there was a bus that would take him to the memorial. His enquiry at the Belintourist office provoked no surprise, no curiosity. He had half expected a secretiveness about this aspect of the country’s past, but a memorial had been erected to the victims some years ago.

  In the end, though, he decided to take a taxi. He wanted to hear the views of local people on the history of the massacres, and he was willing to bet that Belarusian taxi drivers–like the breed the world over–would have opinions, and would express them.

  He got a taxi at the hotel. The young man who was to drive him appeared friendly, but also seemed happy enough with silence. Jake tried his halting Russian, and after a couple of attempts, managed to get the young man talking. His name was Karel. He told Jake he made a fair living–by local standards–working as a driver. Most of his customers were foreign visitors.

  ‘You get many?’ Jake was surprised.

  They were mostly businessmen, Karel explained. There was still trade between Russia and Belarus, there were still some western businesses operating in the country.

  They were away from the built-up area now, driving along a two-lane highway through stretches of forest, until Karel pulled the car over and drew to a halt. ‘This way,’ he said, as he held the door open for Jake.

  Jake followed him down a steep path. The trees around him were pine and birch. The forest opened into a grove, and Karel halted. Jake came to stand beside him. It was silent apart from the sound of birdsong. In front of him stood a cross, a Russian Orthodox cross. He looked at the engraving, trying to decipher what it said. In memory of the victims of…he couldn’t understand the next bit–the killings? The cruelties? But the dates were there: 1937-1941. The breeze blew, wafting the scent of pine through the air, and the shadows danced on the forest floor. He could see through the trees where the ground had sunk, could see the shadows of pits that were overgrown with scrub and brambles. And in the shadows he could see the crosses vanishing among the trees, the crosses of Kurapaty.

  Sophia Yevanova had crept through trees like these. A young boy had escaped the killing fields to touch her hand before he was dragged away to his death. Jake shivered, and looked at Karel, who was leaning against a tree, lighting a cigarette. A thin drizzle began to fall. ‘My grandfather,’ Karel was looking up at the trees as he spoke, ‘he came here after the war. He said that it was all dug up and abandoned, left to the tall grasses that are the first to come back. And the toadstools. Red toadstools, and pink mushrooms on long stalks. The people said it was from the blood.’ He gave a shrug, implying that Jake could believe that story or not, as he chose.

  ‘Are there people still alive,’ he said, ‘who remember?’

  Karel made the same shrugging movement. ‘Maybe a few,’ he said. ‘Who knows?’

  ‘Can I get to Zialony Luh?’ He hadn’t been able to find the village on the map, but maybe, just maybe there would be people there who remembered the Yevanov family.

  Karel shook his head. ‘It was demolished,’ he said. ‘More than twenty years ago.’

  Jake got out his camera and took photographs, feeling like a tourist, like an atrocity groupie, the kind of person who would enjoy the vicarious grief of places such as this. He wondered if the Belarusians of the time had had that same sense of inevitability that he sensed in Karel, a belief derived from knowledge that the world was an unstable place, and the powerless would provide endless fodder for the massacres of the powerful under whatever ideology they proclaimed, whatever flag they happened to fly.

  As the fascists began their deadly game, the people of Belarus had reeled under the repression that was killing thousands upon thousands of their countrymen. The clouds of the invasion darkened in the skies unnoticed. How could the people have foreseen the storm that was coming?

  You must understand that, for some of us, the fascists came as liberators, at first.

  Faith surfaced from a dream of needing to be somewhere urgently but being endlessly prevented or distracted. Her head was twisted at an awkward angle, her arms and legs were stiff and aching. For a moment, she thought she was at home and reached out for her bedside light. Her hand brushed against an unfamiliar shape and she sat up, confused. She was in a chair. She had fallen asleep in Grandpapa’s chair. The rug she’d wrapped around herself had slipped off, but the room felt warm. She sat up, rubbing her eyes. The gas fire was lit.

  Grandpapa must have come back
and…The events of the night before flooded into her mind. She needed to take his stuff to the hospital. She needed to phone…The thoughts swirled round in confusion, then she became aware of someone moving around, close by. Someone had lit the gas fire. There was someone else in the house.

  Doreen? She stood up slowly. ‘Doreen?’ she said. Whoever it was, was in the study. She crossed the hallway and pushed the study door open, her greeting freezing in her throat before the words came out.

  A woman was sitting at the desk, sorting through a pile of papers. She must have been there a while, because there were stacks of papers on the adjacent tables, boxes on the floor, and the drawers and cupboards were all standing open and empty. The woman turned round: it was Katya.

  ‘Faith,’ Katya said. She stood up and came across. The two women embraced awkwardly. ‘How are you? You look exhausted. I thought I’d better let you sleep.’ Despite the disorder around her, she looked her usual immaculate self, model-thin, her dark hair pulled back from her face, her make-up impeccable, her grey suit a masterpiece of understated elegance.

  ‘What time is it?’ Faith said slowly.

  ‘It’s just after five. I phoned the hospital.’ Katya’s voice was quick and brittle, as though talking would stave off something else, something she was trying to avoid…

  ‘How is he?’ Her mother’s manner unnerved her.

  ‘They said there was no change.’

  Faith breathed again. Silence fell as the two women looked at each other. ‘What are you doing?’ Faith said.

  ‘I’m going through Marek’s papers. There’s cupboards full of stuff that hasn’t been touched for decades by the looks of things. This room is filthy. Does it ever get cleaned?’

  ‘Why are you going through his papers?’ The empty cupboards, the boxes suddenly exposed to the light looked naked.