The infection sets in soon after, silent, lethal. First a fever, then shivering in fits and starts, her face the colour of old chalk. Later, she begins to babble, strings of incoherent words. Then she is quiet again, too quiet. At the moment of death, her hands uncurl slowly on the bed.
The child is a small bag of bones, first squalling, then mute with hunger. His grandmother dips pieces of cloth in goat milk so that he can suck on them, his eyes already dark and wide. Kindness? Affection? No, this feeding is a reluctant loan, a stake in future labour. If she had a choice, she would rather have the mother alive — someone who could work — than the child.
An endless struggle, this farm — an existence shaped by scanty crops, fields bordered by sedge, carnation grass, gooseberries. Breaking up the ground with the iron plow, seeding potato eyes, digging up the tubers, a relentless chain of work repeated over and over. If it rains, the barley is covered with mildew and the potatoes rot in the ground. If there is no rain, the rutabagas are infested with maggots, the larvae leaving small tunnels.
But these fields are also places of sparse beauty, where wild caraway grows in the thickets, feathery stems with caps of white flowers. Places where silver-blue mist gathers on rivers at dawn, wreathing trees, blurring rocks and banks. Where a black-eared hare lops across the fields at twilight. Where a lone stork wheels in the sky, white plumage, neck outstretched, wings the span of a man’s height.
If only this were enough to sustain a child.
Idiot, says his father, who rides him mercilessly. Dirt. Less than dirt.
And for all the boy knows, he is right — the rot, the mildew is his fault, not the fault of the rain, or the spores drifting in from other farms. In the evening, he lies on his pallet and watches the fire in the stove, too tired to think even a child’s thoughts. Every once in a while his father, maudlin, pulls him onto his lap and sings about soldiers leaving, lovers dying, his breath heavy with drink. A moment of false comfort, an arm around him, he leans against the man’s body, closing his eyes. But a few minutes later, the man cuffs him off, roaring at him through drunken tears.
Now, with the pig still on the makeshift table, his grandmother comes out with a mug of tea. She wants the man to be sober enough that the farmer will not walk off with the best cuts, leaving them with the tougher pieces. She will be doing the brining, the curing, although she will get the little rat to help as much as he can. This meat will be a change from their usual fare, sorrel soup, dried fish, potatoes, always potatoes — green and sprouted towards the end of winter, too long in the root cellar. Or the pickings from under the trees, roots, the mushrooms, sometimes the bracken she collects to pound in a mortar, to stretch the rye flour.
She sits down on a log, smiles at the boy, crooking her finger, holding out a piece of bread with a smear of honey. A bee’s nest — she found one in a tree trunk a few weeks ago, and has been using the straw-coloured liquid since then. The sweetest thing he has ever tasted, the sweetest thing he has ever known at all. It makes him feel dizzy, as if his head might burst, and he is astonished that such a thing exists, even in small amounts, even for a moment.
He looks longingly at the bread, although he is afraid, his fear, always present, is shouting at him. But he knows there is no way out of this. If he ignores her, it will be worse, and he is so desperate for affection, for food that it is impossible not to hope that this time — this one time — her smile, the bread will be harmless. He sidles over to her, trying to make himself as small as possible. When he gets close, hoping, dreading, the smile disappears, and she leans over casually and slaps him on the side of his head, hard enough to make him stagger. Then she breaks the bread in two, gives him half, and eats the rest.
···
His father is scything the barley, the blade gleaming in the sun. The boy — older now — is following behind him, shovelling the cut seed heads into the cart. When the field is done, they will take the grain into the small barn, and beat it with a flail, separating out the chaff. Meanwhile, the day is hot, his mouth dry from the dusty stalks. He is thirsty, a thirst that nags at him, that fills his mouth and throat with longing. Every few minutes, when he has shovelled up the grain, he leads the horse and cart ahead to catch up to where his father is working.
The brindled dog is loping around, older now too, muzzle greying, no longer fast. He is watching, waiting to see whether a vole or a field mouse will be flushed out by the scythe. Each time the cart stops, he lies down under it, panting in the heat. The boy envies him this small patch of shade, this escape from the sun.
They are moving along the side of the field, the side closest to the road. A man with a horse and buggy is driving by, a dark cap pushed back on his head, his face leathery, his beard trimmed. He is in his shirt sleeves, a black vest, and behind him is a load of goods — salt, soap, thread, eyeglasses. This man, he has seen him before, showing his grandmother a tablecloth — a slow, mild talker. A man who had nodded to him, a hint of a gentle smile around his lips.
Jews, says his father, almost spitting. Filth. Animals. Pigs.
The man is too far away to hear him, but looks resolutely ahead in any event, as if he is concentrating on a spindly tree far off in the distance. Every few minutes, the boy glances over, watching him until the man has dwindled to a speck.
In the meantime, the field, still hot and dusty. Each time he leads the horse forward, the dog scrambles to his feet and dodges out the side of the wagon, then returns to the shade when the wagon stops again. He does this again and again — down and panting when the cart is stopped, up and dodging out when it moves. Over and over, too, the hacking of the scythe, forking the cuttings, the thirst, his dry tongue.
His father straightens up, stretches his back, and watches the boy lead the horse forward again. The dog darts out from under the wagon, but this time he is a few seconds too slow, a little too late. The back wheel catches his leg. He yelps, a piercing yelp, and then begins limping and whimpering, his leg at an awkward angle. The man’s face twists in anger, and he starts back towards the boy, scythe in hand. The boy takes one look and is already running, but the man throws the scythe after him, and then grabs the whip from the wagon. He catches up to the boy, grabbing his shirt, shaking him, pulling him down. Then he begins lashing him across his bare legs, his arms, his head. When he stops for breath, the boy wriggles free, leaps up, and runs again, runs towards the forest, a forest where an eight-year-old can hide. Hollows, dips, brush, undergrowth. His father goes after him, but gives up after a few yards.
The boy keeps running. He runs until he can no longer hear his father cursing, until he can no longer hear the dog yelping. He runs until he is running past tree trunks, darting around brambles, until his lungs are aching. He runs until he trips over a hummock, and falls, rolling on the ground, on the dead leaves. For a moment, he lies there, listening intently.
The forest is dim, marshy, cool. Dark moss everywhere, carpeting the ground, clothing the rocks, the tree trunks, muffling the sound. The silence seems to wrap itself around the boy. A thin wind rustles through the alders and subsides. Above him, a woodpecker tocks. If only he could stay here, lie where he is, sleep in these shadowy depths, at least for now.
But his father might still be after him, might crash in here at any moment.
The woodpecker tocks again. He eyes the tree above him, a black alder, patches of pale lichen on its trunk. Safer to be higher. He gets to his feet and begins climbing up, lodging himself in the joint of a large limb. Then he waits.
···
Night. The forest sighs around him. A shrew squeaks and scuttles through the bracken. Bats flutter noiselessly, circling above him in the dark sky. A nightjar picks a moth out of the air. He is cold, hungry, the welts from the whip are smarting. By now, his father will be passed out, drunk, his mouth working, his hands twitching from time to time. A curt man in daylight, he is a sleep talker, sometimes even a sleep shouter, his nightmar
es vicious.
The boy is shivering, he clambers down the tree, back through the forest, then into the field again. The moon has risen, a pale slab, the stubble in the fields ghostly in its light. He is closer to the neighbours’ house than his own, he will go there, perhaps they will have food hanging in their shed that he can steal — meat drying or milk curdling. He walks quickly between the rows, looking around every few minutes as if his father might suddenly appear, rising up in the midst of the bleached stalks.
This house is larger than his, wooden shingles instead of thatch, even a small bathhouse. They are still up, smoke is drifting out of the chimney, he can see the firelight through the small window, he can hear voices — a woman, the low voice of a man. A child wails for a few seconds and then stops, soothed by something.
He hesitates, hanging in the moment. He is fearful he will be caught, but he is hollow with hunger, and he is less afraid of this than going home. A spasm in his stomach urges him on, and he edges over to the shed, lifts the latch on the door, and slips into the musty dark. Another step, and he falls over a rake with a clatter, a bang. He tries to pull himself up, but now the door is open, and a man is there, his form outlined in the uncertain moonlight. In a second, he has the boy in his grip.
The Drozd boy, he says to the woman, bringing the struggling child in, sitting him on a bench beside the wood stove.
Stay there, she says, and you can have something to eat.
She takes a kettle of soup from the oven and spoons out a bowl — turnip, potatoes, a few small pieces of meat, floating in a greasy broth. Then she cuts off chunks of brown bread and puts them in front of him. He eats quickly, one arm around the bowl.
After he eats, the woman wipes his welts with water, then his face, his hands.
What in God’s name are we going to do with you? mutters the man to himself.
Nothing tonight, says the woman. Into bed with you.
She puts him down with the two-year-old, a little warm body. The smaller child curls up reflexively against him, as blindly as a puppy. An unfamiliar sensation, this closeness, the rise and fall of another child’s chest. The boy, exhausted, sinks into a leaden sleep.
He wakes suddenly in the middle of the night, hope knifing through him, so unfamiliar, so alien he barely knows what it is. Perhaps they will keep him, these people. Perhaps they need another pair of hands. Perhaps his father will let him go, a useless mouth to feed, he says often enough. In the faint glow from the wood stove, banked down with ashes, he spins a new life for himself, a life of warm blankets, of meat soup, of a woman saying into bed with you. Then he is asleep again, as abruptly as he woke up.
···
The day is windy, although the morning sun is still mild. The man has one arm around him, the other holding the reins. The boy has protested, he can hold on to the mane, but the man grips him tightly — to keep him from falling? To keep him from escaping? The clip-clopping of the horse’s hooves on the packed dirt road echoes the words in the boy’s head, the words he wants to say to the man.
I can seed, I can rake, I can dig, I can slop.
But the words are stuck in his throat.
Perhaps the man knows these things anyway, perhaps he knows how much help the boy could be. He must know.
I can fence, I can pick, I can hoe, I can muck.
His house. The man pulls up in front, slides down off the horse, taking the boy with him, still holding him tightly.
See how he is holding me, thinks the boy. As if I am already his.
I can catch, I can fetch, I can net, I can chop.
His father is there now, his arms crossed grimly, his grandmother beside him.
Good morning, says the man stiffly.
Good morning, says his father.
We have something of yours, says the man. He pushes the boy forward.
The boy stands very still, waiting for him, willing him to say more. But the man says nothing.
His father grabs the boy, jerks him back beside him, and begins cursing him. The man shakes his head, says something under his breath, but swings himself back up on the horse and rides off.
The boy is stupefied, his mind folding in on itself. Then the fear descends on him again.
His grandmother, triumphant, grabs him from his father, clouts him hard, once, twice.
A red kite soars above them, sending out its whistling, singing cry.
···
No, his grandmother says. That is not how it was. That is not how it was at all.
Three
Sleep faster, we need the pillows.
Jewish proverb
Lies, half-truths, stories painted on air. Deceit is an art, an accident, a condition. And the basis for these deportations, these applications to revoke citizenship, a citizenship obtained by fraud. The deportations used for refugees, originally people in flight. Torn from their homes, families, their occupations — in some cases, their sanity. Beset by tyranny, poverty, conflict — broken bodies, broken minds.
Who can blame them for changing a past, a present? Leah thinks. Their lives have suddenly become so unstable that the facts they knew — fixed, settled facts — have already been shaken loose. And who can blame them for wanting to protect themselves, their children, to find a haven? Or merely to pry open the gates of possibility. Urgent lies, offhand lies, fuelled by fear or need, they neglect to mention the existence of a relative, a deed, a political party. Or they magnify hardships or misfortunes that are grim enough as they are. People who have taken an elastic approach to their histories, desperate to improve their futures.
Difficult cases. Is there anything more final than extinguishing someone’s citizenship? Depriving them of their right to be where they are, to exist where they are. Interrupting a highly specific life, filled with accumulated circumstances, incidents, experiences.
This case, though, this is a different kind of lie. About a different kind of life.
She is surrounded by paper sent over by Owen, affidavits, reports, dispatches, records, wading her way through them. This is what she has discovered so far: these innocuous-looking documents are unsafe, full of risks, hidden brutalities.
Affidavit
I, Samuel Rybak, of the City of Minsk in the Republic of Belarus make oath and say as follows:
In 1938, I was a sub-editor at a Yiddish newspaper published in Minsk. I lived in the Nemiga quarter with my wife, Malke, our baby son, and our two daughters.
At that time, there were nearly 70,000 Jews in Minsk, almost a third of the city’s population. As a result, the newspaper had a wide circulation.
One evening in April, I was working late in the office overseeing a print run. My wife had given me a flask of borscht for dinner, and I was sitting down to eat it when three officers from Naródnyy Komissariát Vnútrennikh Del (NKVD), the Russian security police, burst into the room. They seized me, threw the borscht all over me, and began kicking me in my head, my stomach, my groin, my kidneys.
As they did this, they shouted “Where is the money?” over and over. I told them where we kept a few rubles in the office for daily expenses, but this small amount only enraged them further. They searched the editorial office, throwing papers off the shelves, pulling out drawers, breaking windows, and shoving things through them.
Then they arrested me for propaganda and agitation against the Central Executive Committee of the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic, and took me to the NKVD building for Minsk voblast where they ordered me to confess my crimes against the state. When I refused, they began hammering my head against the floor, and then beating me on the ribs and spine with a truncheon.
Over the next two weeks, two of the officers continued to order me to confess, and to name other people who had also been involved in propaganda and anti-Soviet agitation. When I refused, they took turns beating me on the face, on my body and testicles. They also forc
ed me to squat for hours, which they referred to as swinging the kerosene.
Sometimes they beat me on the bones of my feet with a wooden club. Then they made me stand in the middle of the room and turn around and around until I passed out. After that, they poured cold water on me until I woke up, and then forced me to start turning again.
At other times, they shouted “Pray, Jew, pray” and hit me until I recited a Shema in Hebrew. Every so often, they forced me to sing Yiddish songs. Once, they ordered me to do a Jewish dance and I tried to perform a rikudl while they beat the calves of my legs.
My legs and feet swelled up, and I had sores on the soles of my feet. My body was covered in clotted bruises and lacerations, three of my teeth were knocked out, and my arm was broken, the bone sticking through the skin.
Often the officers brought in a clerk to help them, to cover for them for stretches of time when they would rest or have meals. He would ensure that I was still squatting, pour water on me if I passed out, or spin me around on my painful feet.
After fifteen days of this treatment, I confessed to being involved in propaganda and agitation, and named two other men, one who had already been arrested, and the other who was dead.
The clerk wrote up a confession for me to sign, and I was sent to a penal colony in Krasnoyarsk for six years, where I worked in a quarry, loading rock. The only food was a thin soup, provided twice a day, and four pieces of bread. I almost died several times from starvation and the extreme cold at night. I am five feet ten inches and I weighed ninety-four pounds when I was released.
While I was at Krasnoyarsk, I met another man from Minsk, from the same voblast. He told me that he had been tortured by two officers with the help of a clerk as well, and that he had heard them call the clerk “Drozd.”
I have now been shown a picture of Stefan Drozd, attached as Exhibit A to this my affidavit, and although he is much older-looking, I believe he may well have been the clerk in question.
The Singing Forest Page 5