Good People

by Nir Baram

  ‘You want to bet you don’t dare come close to me?’ Thomas muttered, trying to control the tremor that had seized his body.

  Lying on the wagon, the woman’s body looked like meat hanging in a butcher shop. The wagon rolled away, the body rocked left and right, bumping against the sides. The policemen stood in a huddle with their friends against the wall of a green-steepled church.

  The SS officer and Thomas exchanged names almost as an afterthought. The officer reminded Thomas he wasn’t connected to the incident and told him that the Polish policemen had heard that in eastern Poland, under Soviet rule, the Jews were cruelly persecuting the Poles, and so it was no wonder they were angry. Thomas said he didn’t intend to lodge a complaint. They parted without a word, and the officer disappeared into the square.

  A voice burst from a loudspeaker, shouting to the Jews that soon they would be taken to the railway station in wagons, and any Jew who dared to approached the city of Lublin again would be shot.

  The sky brightened. Locks were removed from the shutters of shops, lights were turned on in the display windows, a waitress in a white apron served a pot of tea to two young men. One of them lit a cigarette, his friend waved the smoke away and they both laughed. A woman queued outside the pharmacy. The rain fell harder and washed the sweat from his face. His trouser cuffs were muddied. He missed the train.

  BREST

  APRIL 1941

  A joint flyover above Brest was an excellent idea. People, especially children, love planes.

  The peace parade of the armies pleased her so much that sometimes she looked at the pencil sketches she had made for a full hour—soon she would draw the big maps—enjoying their beauty, unable to take her eyes off them.

  The armies would take positions on the plain outside the city according to the precedent of the Russian-Austrian parade in front of the two emperors before the battle of Austerlitz. The armies would be arrayed in similar order: the cavalry at the fore, behind it the artillery, and finally the infantry.

  The cavalry would, of course, be replaced by tanks, and other adaptations to the spirit of the age would be required, but in general the ceremonial aspect that was absent from the 1939 parade would be a central value in 1941. The soldiers would wear splendid dress uniforms, including their insignia and medals. She always saw something of Kolya in all the boy soldiers standing in the square. Sometimes she saw him erect and elegant, and next to him the shrivelled, mud-stained soldiers from the camp, with thin fuzz on their cheeks. Even though their bodies were tense, they were laughing, slicing the air with their swords. The fear of death had abandoned them.

  Maxim, the only one with whom she discussed her plan, was dismissive. In his opinion there would be no parade. War was going to break out as soon as the earth dried, probably in May, and anyone with eyes in his head who observed the movements of the German army would understand that. Soviet intelligence agencies all over the world, from Switzerland to Japan, were flooding the Kremlin with evidence of the Germans’ intentions: in the past month Merkulov’s men in the NKGB* had collected dozens of signs of the aggressive deployment of German forces. There was even gossip that German operational plans had reached the Red Army. The whole story of the parade was just one of their stupid tricks that we were falling for in the vain hope of preventing war.

  Maxim’s boldness in writing like this in his letters which, were they to be discovered, though he had taken severe precautions, would undoubtedly lead to his liquidation, was further evidence of his urgent efforts—by turns begging, demanding and petulant—to get her out of Brest. ‘All the smart people in your district send their wives and children to the east, and you’ve fallen in love with some parade. I implore you, dear, listen to my plea!’

  As he became more desperate, states of mind that he hadn’t dared reveal slipped into his letters:

  I understand: your heart tells you that it’s better to die for the sake of the thin boy or to die with him than to live. Do you think I don’t grasp the horrors you’ve gone through? I encouraged you and guided you as best I could to get out of the black labyrinth that opened up in your soul—we all wander in a labyrinth like that, every human being, and certainly every NKVD man, but your case is truly dreadful. Even on that night, when I stood in your room and laid out my plan for your survival, I told you: your new self won’t be a better person. She will have to do horrible things. Those are the conditions of the deal.

  Then you clung to the story that you had actually helped your parents’ group, that because of you they received more lenient punishments. I encouraged you and gave you evidence that it was really true. But I always feared it was the first straw you grasped to stop from drowning. A person might feel he is capable of struggling against the will to live, but we aren’t able to fathom the different tricks our cunning souls can play on us. We’re survival machines, we have to recognise that.

  You’re too smart, Sasha, I told you that on the day we met in our fourth year of school. I’ve been horrified to observe the guilt that’s draining you of life. I hoped that—before the moment when the veil of your denial was torn away, the moment you understood, with blood-curdling clarity, the meaning of your actions—maybe one of the twins would come back, maybe we’d have children, maybe you’d love me again, maybe your soul would find some other reason to cling to life. I swear to you on my honour: the only reason I pressed you about having children was you, not me.

  My dear, remember that I told you, on our vacation in Sochi, that Stepan Kristoforovich had urged us to have children? In fact, the other subject we discussed was your twins. We each made supreme efforts to help them. Though I’m contemptuous of that liar’s crimes, and appalled by the filth that people of his kind cast upon our organisation, his endeavours on your behalf were admirable. He desired you feverishly. I saw it in his eyes. That hypocrite told me that he’d managed, with some difficulty, to have Kolya drafted into the army too. In retrospect we realised that they’d split up the twins the day they arrested them in Leningrad. Everything went easier with Vlada: he was made of choice material, and a small forgery of his documents was enough to draft him. The thin boy, in contrast, was supposed to be locked away in an institution for delinquent youth. His second piece of news was that Vlada had died in Finland.

  And because you showed no signs of recovering from the horrible thing that traitor did to you—I won’t mention his name here—I fed his body to the dogs with my own hands! We decided to work out how to tell you the news when we returned from holiday—only about the thin kid, of course. But when we got back from Sochi, Stepan Kristoforovich was already in trouble. He knew his story was over, and so he acted to send you far away from the city and to have you meet Kolya. He didn’t consult me.

  My dear, I’m going back to that night when I came to your house after they were all arrested. A few days went by before I decided to do it. I’ll admit it: I was afraid! I knew how much fury had been aroused in the organisation against your parents and the Leningrad Group. Did I kindle the will to live in you that night? Or should I, as someone who loves you, have let you die in your childhood bed? The schoolgirl’s bed on which I touched your body so tentatively, choking with desire, and kissed your skin. Do you remember us in your room? One eye on the door, every noise outside making us rush to straighten our clothes and hair. ‘Maxim,’ you’d laugh. ‘Father will lock you up in the freezer at the Institute!’

  Maybe I should have waited until you decided by yourself to survive. But I didn’t do that, and I risked my neck for us—not for you, for both of us. And now we’re still alive, and I’m desperate. Think about your parents. One day they’ll be released and return to Leningrad. A lot of people are coming back now. Nadya came back. And what present will they receive when they return? Three graves? As for us: what evidence can I produce that we can have a life together? I swear, we’ll have gorgeous children.

  The picture that came to her mind when she finished reading was very distant: little Sasha wallowing in deep snow whil
e her father swore to her once again that summer was locked in the cellar, and this time it wouldn’t get out. Children believe their parents. She didn’t want there to be a child who believed her or her husband. And she didn’t understand why Maxim insisted on ignoring the facts: hadn’t Nikita Mikhailovich issued an explicit order to deal severely with those who run off to the east? Moreover he had entrusted the planning of the parade to her. So by virtue of exactly what leniency was she supposed to return to Leningrad?

  Maxim, you’re labouring under an illusion. Love is a noble source of dreams, but in days like these one must avoid both. I forbid you to do the slightest thing to transfer me from here. I won’t leave Brest without Kolya. And as for the past—there’s no stain on your actions. You showed courage. Your observations are only partially correct. Guilt is not my main motivation. My only request is for your letters to be more practical. I’m concentrated on the mission that was thrust upon me, and memories weaken me. If we grow old, we can share our memories then.

  At the end of her letter she added a few lines and then decided to rub them out:

  I got an anonymous letter from Leningrad with a poem by Nadyezhda P., in which she extols the imaginary figure of a certain Morozova, the twin of Pavlik Morozov: this Morozova informed on her father, a bespectacled literary critic who incited students against the Party, and her mother, an amiable housewife who didn’t understand anything about literature but saw everything and kept silent.

  Even now she hasn’t stopped pursuing me, and even dares to mortify Mother, as if the catastrophe she brought down on us weren’t enough. She roams around all over the place, celebrates, gets drunk, boasts and writes while everybody is dead or in prison. Do you want to defend your wife, Maxim? Do you want to show that you’re the man you claim to be? I want that woman dead. Dead! Do you understand? I want that whore dead!

  Every time she received a letter from Maxim she hoped he had guessed what she wanted, understood everything and had done what he was supposed to do. The details didn’t interest her. She just wanted to hear that the woman had returned to the dead. But whenever she was tempted to look over one of his letters, she was sorry she hadn’t burned it. Instead of the report she hoped to find, he only warned her about the war.

  Sometimes she woke up terrified. Had something happened while she was asleep? She would hurry to the window and look for movement in the German camp—the silhouettes of planes, tank tracks, a flash of gunfire—and struggle against the urge to put on her coat and rush to the fortress. Barefoot at the window, while the searing cold on her feet ascended her body, she would stare out into the darkness. Only after scraps of dawn were visible would her trembling cease. She would leave her little apartment, sit in the office, still pursued by the visions of the night, and immerse herself in the drawings again.

  She stopped wandering in the streets. Brest had become repulsive to her. Every time she went out she encountered signs of the city’s agitation. Sacks of flour became scarce in the stores, along with soap and matches, and the financial department reported that the locals had begun to get rid of their rubles. Red Army soldiers complained that tailors, watchmakers and shoemakers gave slow service. ‘Future corpses don’t need watches,’ said one merchant who had been arrested and interrogated. He was shot.

  There were rumours every day that the war had already begun, that Germany had invaded the British Isles, that in the Great War the Germans had punished Belgian children by cutting off their hands. Residents reported seeing tall German spies in summer suits. A shoemaker wrote to the city committee that he had sat behind a German spy in the railroad workers’ clubhouse. The man had jumped onto a train going to Moscow. It was said that the women of Brest danced with handsome, silent men who wore white gloves, that German agents had poisoned the water in the wells. In the evening, in 1 May Park, there were dance parties, and after a while she realised that it was worth going there sometimes, because the place was swarming with drunken officers who possessed interesting information. One officer whom she danced with told her that his job was to observe European sheep, and that he reported directly to Golikov.

  ‘Don’t talk to me in code,’ she laughed and pinched his arms.

  ‘I really do observe sheep,’ he panted. ‘Don’t stop pinching, please. It’s very simple: if Hitler decides to attack, he’ll have to manufacture millions of woollen coats for his soldiers. The price of mutton will plummet, and the price of wool will rise. But there’s no sign of that.’

  Satisfied, she leaned her head on his shoulder: Maxim certainly didn’t know about the sheep.

  Nikita Mikhailovich listened to her arguments patiently. As far as he could tell, he said, the city was calm. Wherever there were people, there were bound to be rumours. A surprise attack was not a reasonable prediction. He revealed a great secret to her: intelligence people believed that the deployment of the German army at the border was in preparation for Hitler’s demand that we transfer part of the Ukraine and the Caucasus to Germany. He would also ask to use the Soviet navy against England. If the government refused, Germany might declare war. In any event, there would be time to prepare. Sasha answered that she trusted his opinion, but this was not connected to the fact that they had to silence the warmongers.

  ‘Every time we meet you encourage me to make arrests,’ he joked, and his face showed he was happy. ‘It’s lucky you’re dealing with the parade now. Otherwise nobody would be left in the city.’

  She dictated an article to the editor of the newspaper Zaria, making fun of those who spread rumours, who preferred to deal with fears of war between the Soviet Union and her ally Germany than work on behalf of a better society. On the same page they published an interview with a sixteen-year-old girl, who presented her plans for the future under the heading: ‘I Will Be an Engineer’. In her last year of school, Sasha had responded to her father’s request and was interviewed by a Leningrad newspaper. The headline was: ‘I Will Be a Physicist, and in the Evening I Will Write Poetry’.

  …

  After she sent the new map of the city to Thomas Heiselberg, they exchanged several telegrams. It was decided that at their next meeting each side would present its general program. In his letters the German representative raised fanciful, megalomaniacal ideas: he wanted the parade to look like the World’s Fair. He suggested gigantic pavilions should be set up in Brest, and he described the House of the Twentieth Century, which would be ‘the throbbing heart of the entire event’. He waxed poetical over a tram that would carry the crowd from pavilion to pavilion, and over a lighting system that would bathe Brest in a huge glow all night long. Sasha believed that, once he realised that his ideas could not be implemented anywhere except in his dreams, he would accept her plan.

  Her parade would be a multi-stage event:

  1. A military review that would be held in the early morning on a broad field outside the city.

  2. A parade that would march through the central streets of Brest.

  3. Towards evening a symbolic war game would be held in the fortress. The residents of the city would look at the sky, lit by shells and flares, and the entire event would conclude in an atmosphere of splendour and mystery.

  Of course, a historical thread was woven into her plan: in the morning, a homage to the great covenant between Russia, Germany and Austria against Napoleon, and in the evening a gesture towards the peace that both countries had declared in the fortress, ending Russia’s part in the Great War. There would be an intervening tribute to the previous parade, which symbolised the treaty and the new spheres of interest of the two states. Wasn’t that perfect?

  The last letter she had received from the German disturbed her. First, he announced the postponement of the next meeting until the end of April, a delay that jeopardised the entire parade. The appropriate time to hold the event was between June and September, and given how much preparation was required, it was possible they would miss these dates, in which case the parade should be postponed to 1942, world change permitting. And
there was another strange thing: the reserved tone that had prevailed at his earlier meeting had been replaced by his determination to influence the parade: ‘Imagination, Mademoiselle Weissberg, is a rare commodity among diplomats. With all due modesty, it seems to me that I’m the man who should lead the imagination department of the parade.’

  As the date of the meeting drew closer, her faith in her plan deepened, and yet she had made no progress at all in dealing with the German representative. In her work she had frequently encountered people with flexible personalities that they could not control. This wasn’t a tactic aimed at the interrogator but rather a sign of their torment. It made the interrogator’s work complicated, because they hadn’t yet decided whether or not they were guilty. Some believed they could be everything, that every talent or trait they found in somebody else could become theirs. Others, and she felt this might include Thomas Heiselberg, struggled to become the person they wanted to be, but kept one eye fixed on the abyss they always believed was about to swallow them up.

  These were dangerous people, because they were like a tiger that pounced on a plant with the same determination as it pounced on prey. Even the slightest gesture could be taken as a threat. They might respond in the most extreme way, as if a sword rested on their neck.

  Thomas Heiselberg was in fine control over the cords of his flexible soul. To someone like him, she’d say: You are a magician. When you wave your wand one face disappears and another pops up. Or she might reach for an insult: You act with malice and behave as if there were no such thing as conscience. In either case he wouldn’t be bothered at all. As he saw it, you’d acknowledged his power.

  BREST

  MAY 1941

  A fine spring day, Thomas said to himself, but you have to admit that people die on days like this, too. In the morning they wandered the streets and decided on the parade route, the placement of the platforms for the dignitaries and the areas intended for the crowd. They visited 1 May Park and the stadium, and they met pleasant athletes at a training session, preparing with the municipal band for a performance in June. Their decisions were made quickly, but they were both of the opinion that they were excellent decisions, and not even a shadow of doubt passed over them.