Fires in the Dark

by Louise Doughty

  He began to bend and stretch, trying to work his muscles. He was weak from hunger and lack of sleep but he was young and furious. The old man would be tired at the end of a long day’s work, and shocked by Yenko’s appearance. He would not have time to gather himself.

  He stepped carefully over the picket fence, lifting his legs extravagantly. Walking up a gadjo’s path, obsequious smile in place, was a habit familiar from his childhood. The obsequious smile stayed on his face as he neared the door and tightened his grip on the piece of metal, the sharpened tip just protruding from his fist. He knew he should be skirting round the hut first, to make sure there was no escape route out the back, no dog slumbering in a kennel, but he was worked up to do the thing now and could not afford delay. His breathing was already sharp and fast. Sweat had broken out on his brow. He felt overcome with a fierce recklessness.

  As he lifted a foot to kick in the door, he thought, what if the old man has already locked up for the night and I can’t break in? Then he kicked anyway. The door flew open with startling speed and crashed back against the wall. After the darkness of the fields, the interior of the shack was bright yellow and it took Yenko a second to adjust his gaze.

  The old man was sitting at a small square table in the middle of the room. He had removed his winter coat and was wearing a shawl over his jacket and trousers. He had a piece of rough cloth tucked into the shawl and was hunched over a bowl of pale-coloured soup, his spoon clasped awkwardly in a hand which was bent at an odd angle, as if he was a child who had only just learnt to hold a spoon. He raised his face and Yenko saw that soup was dripping from his beard.

  They both moved. The old man scrambled clumsily from the chair and turned towards the back of the shack. Yenko was upon him before he had moved a step from the table. They were both calling out, guttural cries that held a twin rage and inarticulacy. Yenko grabbed the old man’s shoulder and pushed him to the floor but he resisted. Yenko clambered on to his chest, kneeling on him to pin him down, and pressed the piece of metal to the base of his throat, just above where his collarless shirt protruded from his jacket.

  The skin resisted at first. It was tough and speckled, like animal hide, with a few sparse white hairs sprouting up from the chest. The piece of metal pushed deeper and deeper and it seemed the skin would never give – but then it did. The tension against the knife released. Pale flesh fell away on either side and the blood burst forth, pouring over Yenko’s hand. The old man gave a bubbling cry. His legs kicked and twitched, flipping over the chair on which he had been seated. Yenko realised he was shouting.

  Afterwards, he stood above the old man’s corpse, panting. He lifted his bloodied hands and looked at them. The rest of him was shaking from head to foot, but his hands were completely steady. He wiped them on his prison jacket, rubbing them up and down absentmindedly while he glanced around the shack. There was a small stove with a cast iron pan on top; another chair; a chest; bedding in an alcove. He righted the chair that the old man had kicked over and then went to the back corner of the shack, where the old man had tried to run.

  There was an alcove which held a long-handled shovel and a broom made of twigs, and another door, this one barred. He opened it and in the light from the doorway saw a small yard with a low coop in which two scrawny chickens stood gazing at him, jerking their heads in alarm.

  He returned to the shack and lifted the old man by his shoulders. His head flopped back and blood made an audible splatter on the floor. Yenko averted his gaze, and dragged the body outside, locking the door behind him as he re-entered.

  He must clean up, the front door was still ajar – he thought these things as he headed inexorably for the soup, sitting on the chair and grabbing the spoon with one swift movement. As he raised the first mouthful, his hand trembled so much that the soup spilled back down into the bowl. He threw the spoon aside and it clattered against the wall of the shack. He lifted the bowl to his mouth and tipped its contents down almost in one movement. The soup tasted of potato and cabbage, thickened with flour and milk. As he lowered the bowl, he thought he had never tasted anything so wonderful in his life.

  Something made him glance up, a sense more than a sound, the sense of a shadow perhaps, and the sense sent messages rushing to his head before his eyes had time to tell him anything.

  There is a huge crow standing in the doorway.

  He turned.

  It wasn’t a huge crow. It was a woman, a tiny old woman, wrapped in a long dark shawl that fell almost to the floor, her shoulders hunched, her in-turned feet clad in muddy boots with no laces, her face a mask of bewilderment – as if she was wondering whether she could have wandered into the wrong shack. Her eyes gazed at him, hugely round, with a grey, liquid stare.

  Yenko stared back at her. When he saw the grey eyes widen further, he knew she had seen the blood on the floor.

  He was out of the chair as she turned back towards the door, her small feet shuffling, a cry of fear and panic trapped somewhere in her throat. His hands found easy purchase in the weave of the shawl. As he flung her round he over-balanced – she was so light he misjudged the movement. He was still full of adrenaline after killing the old man. He and the woman fell together, her face near enough to his for him to feel the warmth of her breath and moistness from her cold little nose. He shoved her away and heard a dull crack as her head snapped back against a leg of the table. He was kicking out at her with his legs, thinking, her skull will be as thin as a blackbird’s. She will be easier to kill.

  Afterwards, he sat down at the table again, and licked up the last remainder of the soup, his tongue rasping against the rough texture of the bowl. Then he threw the bowl to the ground, where it bounced twice before spinning to a halt on the floor. He gave a great heaving sigh. He was sweating. He rushed to the front door of the shack, wheeled round the corner in the dark, and was violently sick. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand as he went back inside, shaking his head in dismay. He closed and locked the door behind him, and saw by the soft paraffin light that the old woman’s head had bled in a huge puddle beneath the kitchen table. He sat down on the other side of the table. He had two bodies to bury now, and blood everywhere meant that when the neighbours came to investigate there would be no chance they would think the old couple were out somewhere. He would never be able to clear up that much blood. By the time he had dragged her corpse out back to join her husband’s, it would be everywhere.

  He averted his gaze from the old woman’s corpse. He had the whole night to think of that.

  He went to the one small window and made sure that the blanket the old man had tacked up was firmly in place. He didn’t know how far the shack was from any tracks or roads and he couldn’t risk a patrol dropping by. Then he began to search.

  There was more soup on the stove. He lifted the lid of the old cast iron saucepan eagerly. Steam rose in a cloud, misting the large wooden crucifix that the old man had carved and nailed above the stove, as if to remind himself of the suffering of his Christ every time he went to sup. Yenko felt suddenly nauseous again. He lowered the lid quickly. He would try to eat in a minute.

  The old man had clean clothes hanging on the wall; a white collarless shirt, frayed at the cuffs but stiff and fresh; baggy brown trousers and braces. Yenko left them where they were for the time being. In the wooden chest beneath the window, he found some spare clothes belonging to the old lady and, wrapped carefully in tissue paper, two lace nightdresses the colour of weak tea. Underneath the clothes were some family photographs in silver frames. He turned them over and slid the catches back, letting the glass fall into his hands so that he could remove the photos, which he tossed aside without looking at them.

  On a crude wooden shelf next to the stove, there was a pot of flour and half a black loaf, a wicker basket with two wrinkled onions. Yenko looked around but there was nothing else, no cupboards or shelves. He bent over the dirt floor thinking, even this poor pair of gadje must have a cellar of some sort, somewhere where they k
eep things. He could find nothing. Then, as he stood upright – his head momentarily reeling – he glanced upwards and saw there was a square door in the rough-beamed ceiling. Of course.

  He looked around for a ladder but found none, so he placed a chair on top of the table, knelt up on it, then punched the trap door back with his fist and pulled himself up. Then he nearly fell out again leaning down for the lantern.

  At one end of the attic, a few pine cones were laid out, the last of the old couple’s winter fuel, and some wizened apples, which he dropped down on to the table below before realising it was stupid to bruise them. Next to the cones was a wicker basket with two loaves of black bread covered by a cloth and a clay vessel with a wooden lid. He lifted the lid and put a finger into the white, opaque wax inside; goose fat. The vessel was almost full and would be too heavy to drop down. Maybe he should lighten its load a little before he lowered it. He sat with it between his legs and broke a piece of black bread from one of the loaves. Fat, a whole jar of fat … The bread half-lowered, he stopped. If his stomach had rejected the soup, then what would it say to goose fat? It took every ounce of his remaining strength for him to dab the bread gently into the jar, allowing himself no more than a smear, before replacing the lid.

  At the other end of the attic, he found a wooden box with an iron clasp. In it were the old couple’s papers; identity papers with illegible scrawls of black ink on the rough yellow card, ration books, a small leather-bound diary with empty pages and a dried-up bottle of brown ink. At the very bottom of the box was a Bible with gilt lettering, and two prayer books.

  A wave of exhaustion flooded over him. He closed his eyes and let his shoulders sag, realising that he was thinking, for the first time since he had turned left into the woods near the quarry, that his escape might possibly be successful.

  He wanted to sleep so badly. He wanted nothing more than sleep. But with the thought of success, the fear began. It had not been so bad when he had been resolved to die. There had been nothing to lose. Now that he saw the possibility of survival, he was gripped by anxiety. Re-energised, he put everything he wanted to take at the edge of the hatch, then lowered himself down.

  *

  It took him nearly two hours, he estimated. He dragged the old woman out to the back yard by her feet and laid her next to her husband. He searched their clothes. The old man had nothing on him, but the old woman had a leather pouch in her pocket. As he pulled it out, it made a gorgeous clinking sound.

  He sat and ate the soup left on the stove, slowly this time, and anchored it with a little black bread. Then he went back outside and wrung the necks of the two pathetic chickens and brought them in. He found a sack for his bounty and divided the things up into two piles; things to be carried in the sack that could be abandoned if he had to run; and valuable things to be hidden inside his coat – the purse and the papers, the silver frames, a portion of the fat wrapped in a few pages torn from the empty diary. When he had scooped the fat out with his fingers, he pushed the fingers into his mouth and fastened his gums over them. His mouth watered deliciously, catching the scent of juices from the long-dead goose. The clay jug would be too heavy to carry. He would have to risk eating some of the fat before he left – and rub some on his feet and hands and lips, to insulate them from the cold.

  Eventually, he realised that he had been staring at the clay jug for some minutes without moving, and he knew that if he did not sleep, he would collapse where he was on the floor. He hauled himself up, found a small stack of wood by the front door and shoved it into the stove so it would stay alight while he slept.

  The old couple’s bed was in an alcove next to the stove, the sort of alcove where most people kept firewood. It was narrow but high, with a paper mattress and a bolster pillow. Just an hour or so, he thought as he climbed up, then I will have time to bury them and leave before dawn.

  The old people were too poor to have an eiderdown, but they had several thick blankets and, he discovered, a layer of stiched-together rabbit skins between. To sleep beneath fur … he thought, in the fraction of a second before he was swallowed by oblivion.

  *

  When he awoke, it was broad daylight. White light streamed through the thin blanket over the window. He was instantly awake, his heart thumping, then throwing himself out of bed, jumping down expecting the height of his upper bunk in his block at the camp and confused when his feet met the floor sooner than expected. He stumbled. His hand touched the floor. He looked around and saw the pool of blood, already black, beneath the kitchen table.

  He ripped the blanket from the window. What clearer sign that something was amiss than a blackout curtain still up in broad daylight?

  He peered anxiously across the empty fields but there was nothing but the bleak expanse of brown soil and white snow. A few crows wheeled in the sky. He guessed it was midday.

  What should he do? He could stay here, clean up properly and wait until nightfall to set out – but what if someone came by?

  How wonderful it would be to stay for a few days, to sleep and sleep underneath the rabbit skins, to cook the chickens and eat bread and goose fat.

  It was too risky. He had no idea whether the old couple might have visitors or not. He didn’t even know which day of the week it was.

  Suddenly, the idea came to him. It would save a great deal of time and simplify everything. It would throw everybody off the scent. He wouldn’t even need to bury the corpses.

  He began to search.

  *

  He waited until it was almost dark, by which time he had changed into the old man’s clean clothes and shoved the hated prison uniform and footwraps into the stove to smoke on the near-dead embers. He had packed the bags, eaten more bread and a little fat, and one of the wizened apples. He had dozed again.

  He had ransacked the shack; overturned the table, ripped and flung the blankets, broken apart the chest and smashed the small amount of crockery he found next to the stove. Most importantly, he had taken down the wooden crucifix, and thrown it into the fire, along with the Bible and prayer books from the box upstairs. He watched them burn, thinking, our God needs no books to live in our hearts, foolish gadje. We worship him with deeds, not words. We live honest lives and we only kill when we have to – not because we enjoy it, like you.

  As dusk was falling, he broke off a chair leg and scorched it in the dying embers of the stove. He had been unable to find any paint or whitewash, so this would have to do.

  He opened the door and peered across the fields, then stepped outside the cottage. On the front door he scraped in charcoal a Star of David. How many points did they have? Five? Seven? No, six of course, two triangles. He had to go back into the cottage to burn more of the chair leg, twice. He etched deeply on the door. He wanted to make sure it would not wash off if it rained.

  When he had finished, he pushed the chair leg into the stove.

  He put on the old man’s coat and tied the belt. He lifted the sack. It was heavy. He stroked the rabbit skins regretfully. He had tried to fold them into the sack but they were bulkier than they looked – walking around with a sack that bulged would look suspicious. He folded one of the blankets and tucked it into the belt.

  He left the door of the cottage swinging on its hinges.

  When the neighbours eventually came, when they saw the Star of David, and found the old couple’s bodies unburied out the back, they would not question why they had been stabbed and bludgeoned rather than shot. They would not wonder why the shack had been ransacked and everything stolen or broken. Nor would they run to inform the authorities in shock and panic. They would simply wonder why, in all these years, they had never guessed that the reclusive old couple were Jews.

  CHAPTER 22

  As he descended into the lowlands, he walked into a heavy mist and once he had been found by it, the mist would not relinquish him. Even when it lifted from the fields, at dawn the following day, it stayed inside his head, took up occupancy there and destroyed the links between thi
ngs. He saw pictures, as he walked westward, but how he got from picture to picture was mysterious. He covered ground quickly, but each step took an eternity. He could no longer remember when he slept, but never felt fully awake.

  He knew he must stay away from the roads, but as he descended into the valley, a road was what he found and it, too, clung to him. He turned back up and climbed a steep meadow, crossed a copse – where the mist was hiding amongst the trees – descended, and found the same road had twisted round the hill to lie in wait for him in the next valley. He found a track that led away from the road, attempting to escape from it like him. When he followed it, it turned itself into a path and petered out amongst open farmland. He was so bewildered by this that he stood like a fool, like a scarecrow, in the middle of an open field, for some minutes, turning and turning beneath the naked sky. Eventually, he gave up, returned to the road, and commenced a steady trudge along it. The pictures continued.

  *

  It was mid-morning. The sun was high. He was tramping along the road, chewing at a piece of the black bread, his feet flopping loosely from the ankles. Just as he thought, if a vehicle approaches, I will hear it in time to leap into a ditch, the roar of an engine was upon him. A car swept around the corner, blared its horn when the driver saw him, then shot past, the sound of its motor vanishing as swiftly as it had appeared. He stopped for a moment, swaying with surprise, then continued.

  *

  Later, he came to a fork in the road. There was no sign to indicate where he might be. He took the smaller, left-hand fork. The road led downwards. At the bottom of the hill, it turned sharply, and as he rounded the bend, he saw that a truck had tried to take the bend at too great a speed and turned on its side in a gully that ran alongside the bottom of the road. Yenko stopped. No one was around: the truck had been abandoned. From where he stood, he could see that the windscreen had shattered but not broken, the cracks in it radiating outwards from the centre, like a spider’s web. He scrambled down the edge of the gully and searched the cabin, finding nothing but a few dirty boot prints on the seat.