Fires in the Dark

by Louise Doughty

  *

  At morning roll-call, it was announced that all prisoners would be collectively punished for the theft of the rabbit by the cancellation of all food for that day. As they fell out, Emil looked around for Čacko. He had given him the impression that he had had a man’s way with Marie, the previous day. He would ask for the opportunity for another go, chummily, man-to-man, then he and Marie could plan their escape. Night would be best, if she could find the courage.

  Čacko was nowhere to be seen. He went over to the staff hut. ‘Officer Čacko is sick,’ one the guards informed him shortly. The next sentence ruined his plan. ‘Go and join Work Detail B. They are leaving soon. Go.’ It was a disaster. He would be at the quarry until nightfall. There would be no way of speaking to Marie.

  ‘Go,’ said the guard, seeing his face. ‘Now! Go, go!’ He flapped his hands.

  Emil ran across to the gate where the detail was waiting, and gave his name to the guard in charge, hoping that there would be too many men, but he was told curtly to join the line. They would leave in ten minutes.

  As he fell in, a prisoner looked over his shoulder and said, ‘So, Wallach, godfather not on duty today, eh? Doing some work like the rest of us?’

  As they marched out of the gate, Emil told himself that at least that night, at roll-call, he would be able to find out whether his mother had talked her way out of the infirmary.

  *

  The guard in charge of Work Detail B was a friend of Čacko’s and put Emil to work chipping smaller pieces of stone into shale. It meant he could sit down at least, unlike the other men, although he got cold quickly. The stone shattered easily under the small hammer, scattering chalky powder over his coat and trousers. The guard lingered next to him, bored, chatting in Czech. ‘They are talking of keeping this site open through the winter now,’ he said idly to Emil, as he watched over the other men, ‘just because it’s been a bit better the last few days. I don’t think it’s a good idea myself, but then I’m not in charge …’ While the guard was speaking, he noticed that some of the powder from the shattered stone had landed on his uniform trouser leg. He batted at it ineffectually with his hand. ‘The weather’s going to be bad for weeks yet.’ He reached out and pulled Emil’s woollen hat from his head, then used it to rub the stone powder from his leg. When he had finished, he tossed the hat into Emil’s lap. ‘It’s not as if anything is being achieved, apart from keeping them busy.’

  Emil put down the hammer and replaced his hat, then resumed work. ‘And look at them …’ the guard shook his head. ‘Every one of them sick …’

  ‘What’s wrong with Čacko?’ Emil enquired casually.

  The guard gave an amused snort. ‘Nothing that a short break from the moonshine wouldn’t cure. Have you tasted that stuff?’ He shook his head. ‘He’s trying to tell them he’s got a fever but they’re not stupid. He’ll be back on duty tonight, you watch, clutching at his sore head. I’d steer well clear if I were you.’

  Emil sighed. The guard turned his face up to the sky, squeezing his eyes tight shut and frowning. ‘It’ll be a long day for them today.’ He meant, with the cancellation of lunch. Emil hoped that the use of them implied that maybe he would be getting a lunch break after all, perhaps even a bite of the guard’s rations.

  *

  At noon, the guard ordered them all to stop, reminded them no food was coming, then sat next to Emil and opened his pack. The men huddled down together, a short distance away, several glaring resentfully at Emil. Emil glared back. He was just as hungry as they were. A couple of the men had pulled their spoons from their pockets and were eating snow from the ground, letting it melt in their mouths before they swallowed, as they had all learnt to do if they wanted to avoid the cramps. Emil wondered if he dared do the same with the guard sitting next to him.

  The guard had unwrapped a piece of cloth which held a large chunk of bread and a fat slice of white cheese. He ate for a moment or two, then looked inside his rucksack. He frowned, pushing his hand around the contents. ‘I forgot my bottle. And no one will come out here with coffee either …’ he muttered to himself.

  He sucked at his teeth, then looked at Emil. ‘I tell you what,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Go back and get my chicory coffee. Go to the staff hut if there’s none at the kitchen and remind them that there’s an officer out here too, freezing his bollocks off. If you can make it there and back while it’s still warm I’ll give you a bite of my bread, maybe even a piece of cheese, eh?’

  Emil was on his feet and nodding before the guard had finished his sentence. He avoided the gazes of the other prisoners as he turned and trotted up the path, towards the farmer’s fence and the woods.

  Later, he tried to remember exactly what had happened when he reached the fence. He tried to imagine himself pausing and looking left and right; right to where the rutted path led up the hill, turning just before the top of the rise that led back to the camp; left to where it ran parallel to the fence and disappeared into the woods. He tried to recall staring into the woods, where a cold mist soaked the trees, making their trunks look soft, almost lilac-coloured, in the poor light. The lower two-thirds of the trees were almost bare, the sparse green pine branches only beginning high up above a man’s head. They seemed to aspire to something, those trees.

  The snow beneath the trees lay white, untrodden, in patches here and there. The foliage above was dense enough to provide a canopy in places. A thick brown carpet of dead pine needles lay directly beneath the branches. They gave beneath his feet with an encouraging motion. He jumped from tree to tree, avoiding the patches of snow so as to leave no tracks. He observed how, around the edges, there were puddles of ice where the snow had melted, then re-frozen. Twigs and pine needles were trapped in the ice. He moved swiftly but carefully, wanting to cover ground but also wanting to feel what he was doing, to know it intensely, to enjoy the sharp contrast between the dark brown earth and twigs and the white snow, the delicate crackle of the pliant ice beneath his feet.

  There was no pause at the fence. There was no moment in which he made his decision. He had reached the rutted path, and his feet had turned him left without hesitation: and now he was half-running, half-jumping through the forest, away from the camp. Even now, it wasn’t too late to turn, to run back and get the guard’s coffee, but even as he thought this fleetingly, his feet were moving over the ground and the freezing air was fresh in his lungs and he knew it was already far too late. He had escaped.

  PART 6

  1943

  CHAPTER 21

  He walked until the forest ended. He gave no thought to the direction of his walking, or to anything other than the need to place one foot in front of the other. He did not think of anything. He scarcely breathed. He knew that if he stopped to consider the possible consequences of his actions his legs would turn to water and he would collapse. So he concentrated on moving the legs, to and fro, one after the other in that strange scissor motion which he realised he had never before examined. Odd to think that there was still enough muscle somewhere beneath his pallid chicken-skin to move his bones and propel his body forward. He could almost hear the joints of his legs grating together. How long was it since he had walked anywhere of his own volition?

  My name is Yenko.

  He noticed the ground. The ground proved interesting; thin layers of ice, fresh and crackling, bright as glass; leaves and twigs and pine needles packed together; a sponginess beneath his step. He noticed the sky; a blue which looked as though it wanted to be more blue but was not yet convinced that winter would one day be over. The air was fresh and clear, the branches of the trees so sagging that small breezes sent snow showers floating down.

  The edge of the forest came as an unpleasant surprise. The open fields that led away and upwards were fallow, bare. He skirted the forest to the top of the rise and saw with relief that on the other side of the hill there was another wooded area. That would be the place to spend the night. He paused on the edge of the wood, then bent and scooped
up a small heap of fresh snow with his fingers, closing his mouth over it and letting it melt before he swallowed. It took a long time to quench a thirst that way. The light was beginning to fade.

  A squirrel was scrambling down a nearby tree, making its way towards the ground in spiralling fashion around the trunk. It saw him and froze, legs splayed, tail a furry question mark. They will probably find me and kill me, Yenko thought cheerfully, cocking his head to one side at the squirrel, as if to answer its query. They will come after me with guns and dogs – they are probably behind me in the woods right now, searching. There will be some brief panic and then it will all be over. I will die and I won’t have to worry about anything any more. I will die in the open, bravely, screaming my head off. I have chosen to die this way. I am not waiting to rot, not like my father. My mother always told me that my father was a gentle man and made it sound like a good thing. But he rotted. He let them do it to him. I’m making them do it. There’s a difference.

  He turned, then dropped low to run, crouching fashion, across the open fields. Beyond the shelter of the trees, an icy breeze was blowing. Would he dare to sleep once it got dark? He might never wake up.

  The second forest was more sparse. There was no foliage between the trees and nowhere to shelter. He would have to keep walking for as long as he could.

  Just before dark, he decided he must rest. He wasted the remainder of the daylight layering branches criss-cross fashion so that he could lie on them to sleep and be raised from the icy earth. He made another layer of branches and twigs to pull on top of him. When he crawled between the layers, the one beneath him collapsed, dropping him on to the spiky, frozen mud. He jumped to his feet and shook himself, laughing out loud at his folly, then looked around, as if there might be witnesses to hear his laugh and think him deranged. All at once, he was overcome by a wave of loneliness. He had never been alone before. He felt a sudden urge to sing, for the sake of hearing a human voice and convincing himself there were still humans in the world. He thought of how his Aunt Tekla had let him try her pipe once, when he was a very small boy, and how he had pretended to like it. They had nodded at each other, smiling and smiling. Then he had vomited in her lap. She had cuffed him, then rose to change her skirts. When she returned, she cradled him and stroked his forehead and sang him a song about a deer.

  The deer ran on and on and on

  The deer-with-an-arrow-through-his-heart.

  The deer ran on and on and on

  Little deer-with-an-arrow-through-his-heart.

  If he lay down to sleep, he would die.

  He squatted on the ground, his back up against the tree, a few of the branches pulled around him, then dosed his eyes and let his head fall to his chest.

  He was woken by the sound of something scurrying in the undergrowth nearby and jumped up, heart thumping, convinced that the noise had been the skittering of dogs’ feet amongst the branches. It was pitch black. His breathing echoed so loudly in his head that he could hear nothing else. Only when his heart steadied did he realise there were no dogs. Whatever small animal had scurried by was gone. The forest was silent. He thought, if they had dogs on my scent, they would have found me by now. They would have found me before nightfall. Something must have gone wrong for them. They are not going to catch me.

  It was too dark to keep walking – he would end up going in circles. He squatted down again and closed his eyes, but the thought of the dogs had rendered sleep impossible. He had stomach pains from eating nothing but snow and his toes were numb. He wrapped his arms around himself and tried to think about counting to one hundred in a mixture of Romani, German and Czech.

  Towards dawn, the cloud cover parted to reveal a weak moon. He stood, stiffly, the pain in his frozen joints making him gasp aloud. He began to limp through the forest, his feet crackling with agony. The euphoria of the previous day, the joy of walking, was gone. Each step sent flames shooting up his legs. His rib-cage was enclosed by bands of iron. It won’t be so bad once I’ve got going, he told himself. It won’t be so bad, if I can just keep going.

  *

  He kept going, pausing only to eat snow, throughout that day. The forest was so vast that he began to wonder if he had lost the ability to navigate and was wandering aimlessly. When he finally reached the edge of the wood, he approached cautiously. Perhaps he would gaze out over the open countryside to see the first wood he had traversed, across the rise, and Čacko and a squad of gendarmes striding out to greet him. But when he reached the edge of the wood, he saw that the landscape was reassuringly different from the one he had left.

  It was still light, but soon dusk would come. The frail blue of the sky had bled and faded: it was now a dying, almost-white. The even whiter shadow of the rising moon hung high. A cold wind blew. Before him were more open fields, wide, high flatlands, uninhabited. Farms or villages would be tucked away in the valleys, he reasoned. There couldn’t be much up here. He turned to the left and skirted the forest for a few metres, trying to judge the best place to leave cover. The ground descended sharply and he followed it until it dropped away to reveal a tiny, tinkling brook. He sat down and worked his way carefully down a steep incline to the bank. The brook was actually flowing, with icy meltwater. Grey patches of ice still floated on the surface, like frogs’ spawn. Icicles hung from the opposite bank, clear as crystal, the single beads of water at their tips shining like stars. He stared at them for a moment.

  He knelt and scooped water from the brook to quench his thirst. It tasted even colder than the snow he had been eating. He swallowed carefully and the small gulp shivered painfully down his throat.

  As he stood upright, he felt a wash of pain across the sole of his left foot and lifted it to see that his footwrap was worn through and the layers next to his skin soaked with icy water. If his footwraps were falling apart, they would have to be abandoned, which meant going barefoot. Going barefoot meant frostbite, which meant the end.

  It was time to find his gadjo.

  He tucked the worn ends of the footwrap inside the parts of cloth that were still holding, then clambered alongside the brook until he found a place where he could cross by leaping from one stone to the next. He could not risk getting wet when he might have to spend another night in the open.

  Now is the crucial time, he thought, the next few hours are the pivotal period when the small things that will help me live or die will happen. If I am lucky, find food or shelter or someone to help me or to steal from, I will live. If I am unlucky – find no one or nothing, meet a patrol – then I will die. The whole of the rest of my life will be decided in the next two hours.

  He thought of the Jew he had left in the woods near Kladno. The hours after he had left him must have been like that for him, if he had waited. He must have thought, if that boy comes back, I have a chance. If he doesn’t, I don’t. At what point would the biboldo have realised he wasn’t returning? Perhaps he never admitted it to himself because to admit that would have been to relinquish hope, to imagine the unimaginable – one’s own non-existence. That’s why people don’t run or fight more, Yenko thought. They are paralysed by disbelief.

  After leaving the brook, he skulked across the frozen fields, crouching low next to the hedges. The ground was rough and broken and he was bent double, so he made little headway. Every now and then, he risked standing to look across the fields. As he descended into the valley, the follow land gave way to neater, bordered terrain – there had to be a homestead somewhere near, somewhere in the shadow of these bleak hills. It felt so remote, but the fields were hedged and tended. Once, in the far distance, he thought he glimpsed a horse standing next to a single tree, but the light was fading and when he looked again, the horse had gone. With darkness, the temperature would drop. He was shivering; a deep, shuddering sort of shiver. Time was running out.

  It was heavy dusk by the time he saw it; a shack tucked into the corner of a field, no more than a poor hut, with a low fence that bounded it from the surrounding farmland – a s
mallholding perhaps, or hermit’s shack. It was too small to be a family home.

  Yenko squatted and observed the shack through a gap in the brown-twig fence. He was close enough to see that there was a pair of boots outside the door.

  The door opened and an old man emerged on to the step. He was small and round-shouldered, bareheaded but still wearing his winter coat. He picked the boots up and banged them together, then took them inside, closing the door behind him. A soft yellow glow appeared in the one small window. The old man had lit a paraffin lantern. Then a dark wing flapped behind the square panes. He was hanging a blackout curtain.

  Yenko pictured the scene inside the shack. The old man would be lighting a fire, warming some stew perhaps. Yenko felt himself tipping forward slightly as he squatted, as if his body was being pulled involuntarily towards the warmth and sustenance he imagined inside the hut. When had he last eaten? He felt sick and faint at the thought.

  He pressed the heels of his hands over his eyes and forced himself to think. If there had been anyone else in the shack then the old man would not be lighting the lantern and hanging the blackout curtain. He must be alone. He has to be. Yenko reached down and unwrapped the right-hand foot wrap, prising away the two layers of cardboard which were frozen stiff together, fumbling with his numb fingers for the small, rusted piece of metal that his mother had sharpened so laboriously.

  He re-wrapped his foot, stood. It was almost dark. Even if the old man looted out of his window he would not see him. He’s an old man, Yenko thought, starting to breathe deeply, letting his shoulders rise and fall to work the stiff muscles. He has lived his full quota of life already. My father never got the chance to do that, nor my sister – nor will I unless I am allowed to rest and feed and disguise myself so that I can travel openly. If he doesn’t struggle, I can make it quick.