The Singing Forest

by Judith McCormack

  At long odds, she does well, even for second place. She is jubilant, flinging up her arms the way she has seen other winners do. He gives her thirty dollars and pockets the rest. She protests, incensed, but knows that trying to pry more money out of him is useless.

  Only later does she think to ask: Why did he fall? The first horse?

  Malcolm shrugs. Could be anything — running injured, track conditions, bad luck. They’ll probably put him down.

  What?

  If he’s got more than one broken bone, or maybe a compound fracture. The others, too. Maybe not Ladyslipper, she seemed to be fine.

  She is aghast. She has been hugging her little victory pile to herself with secret elation, a fortune for an eight-year-old. But now it is tainted, it has death spattered all over it.

  I’m never coming here again, she says fiercely.

  ···

  Now. More documents, more affidavits, more papers.

  Mass operation 00447. Concerning the punishment of former kulaks, criminals, and other anti-Soviet elements. First category: particularly vicious, engaged in counter-revolutionary activities. To be executed. Second category: showing less active opposition, but nonetheless arch-exploiters with an innate tendency to destabilize the Soviet regime. To be sent to labour camps.

  These words, she thinks now. These violent, cartoonish words. People suffered, people died of these words.

  Affidavit

  I, Jacob Akselrod of the Republic of Belarus, make oath and say as follows:

  I was a shopkeeper in the shtetl of Zaslavl, a business I took over from my father. My small general store stocked a variety of goods, including calves’ jelly, wax for softening boots, kerosene, flax cloth, pocket knives, scissors, dishes. One night a week, I taught at the local synagogue, where we had seats on the eastern wall, and once a month, I travelled to Minsk to buy supplies for my store.

  I often did bookkeeping on the side for other merchants while my wife looked after the store. She was a good wife, neighbourly and modest in her clothes, and always busy, cleaning and baking, growing and pickling cucumbers and beets, washing and mending our clothes. We were unable to have children for a long time, a source of considerable sorrow, but eventually we had a small daughter and later a son. After so much time, they were very precious to us.

  Our house was on a small parcel of land near the Chernitsa River. One of my non-Jewish neighbours approached me to buy this land, as he wanted the river access. I refused, as my family had lived there for many years, and he was offering too little for me to buy a similar house.

  The following week, two NKVD officers came to my home and arrested me. I was charged with making Trotskyite remarks and illegally promoting the Jewish Labour Bund. I was taken to a building in Minsk where an NKVD officer ordered me to confess that I was an enemy of the revolution and that I must name others who were enemies.

  I refused to confess to any of the charges.

  He then beat me with a rubber truncheon on my head, testicles, and ribs. When I fell over, he kicked me in the stomach and in the kidneys.

  He told me to confess to my propaganda against the Soviet Union and against Stalin, and to name my confederates. Otherwise he said he would turn me into a piece of dung.

  He made me stand on top of a bench, my arms bound behind me, forcing me to keep my legs straight. Then he knocked the bench out from under me so that I fell on my face on the concrete floor. He called this the parachute.

  Several times he placed a loaded revolver in my mouth, and pretended to pull the trigger.

  He presented me with a kharakteristika from a witness, my neighbour, who said that I was guilty of anti-Soviet agitation. This was untrue.

  After this, he forced me to stand for five days and nights. If I fell over, he and another officer would take turns pouring snow water on me or beating me until I stood up again.

  Finally he said if I didn’t confess, they would arrest and rape our little daughter.

  After this, I told them that I would confess. A younger man was brought in to write down the confession. I have been shown a picture of a man called Stefan Drozd, attached to this my affidavit as Exhibit A, and although he is much older now, he is similar to this younger man.

  I signed a confession that I was guilty of propaganda and agitation against the Soviet Union. When they insisted that I name my fellow agitators, I gave them false names. When I signed the papers, however, they had changed these names to others, names that I didn’t know. I signed anyway because I was afraid for my daughter.

  My house was confiscated, and eventually sold to the neighbour who wanted it. I was sent to a labour camp in northern Russia, and my wife, my two young children were sent to a special settlement. The labour camp was little more than a marshland. In my barracks, the amount of space for each person was less than the size of a grave, it was so cold that it was barely above freezing, and food was provided at starvation levels. I was often beaten there, sometimes by the commandant when he was drunk.

  My son died of typhus within a few months in the special settlement, and my daughter died of the same illness a year later. My wife gave her scant rations to our sick children, and she died of starvation and cold shortly after my daughter.

  When the commandant of the labour camp discovered that I knew bookkeeping, he began using me to keep similar records there. He then increased my food ration a little. I believe this is the only reason I was able to survive, and also why I was eventually released.

  I make this affidavit in good faith and for no improper purpose.

  Sworn before me this twenty-third day of November, 2009, in the City of Minsk. Ivan Stasevich, a Notary Public in and for the Republic of Belarus.

  The identification is still weak, the brutality still harrowing. They still need a clearer connection to Drozd. All this paper, and it is not enough — to have a case, they need something tighter, something more. And she badly wants them to have a case, she has become attached to these people.

  Is it the Jewish thing? says Nate.

  Yes. No. Maybe.

  Don’t get too self-righteous, says Louis. There were quite a few Jews in the NKVD, especially in the beginning. Administrators, bureaucrats. Mostly purged by Stalin later — members of the intelligentsia. And in the end, simply because they were Jews.

  These people, though, the people who inhabit the affidavits — she is afraid that if they lose this case, it will be another blow to them, a repudiation of their suffering.

  Although perhaps we are too obsessed with remembering, she thinks. With fixing circumstances in time, with capturing moments — hours, days, months — and locking them up. Perhaps we should be obsessed with forgetting instead. Maybe there is some essential language of forgetting — some grammar of oblivion.

  Is it possible, she says to her aunt, that the value of remembering might expire at some point?

  No, says her aunt. For a person, maybe. For a people, no.

  ···

  What about the White Queen, the one who could remember the future? she says to Nate.

  I wouldn’t rely on that.

  ···

  This is it, she can see him coming down the street. Early evening, the rain has stopped, but the air is damp, alive, claret-coloured streaks in the sky. He looks tired, his face is creased like an old paper bag, his stubble is greying. A dusty shirt, sweat stains under his arms, a jacket slung over his shoulder. He is carrying something in his other hand, something giving off a hot, meaty smell — dinner, she assumes.

  When he is past her, she will leave the car, begin walking behind him. In a few steps she will catch up to him and start chatting in an offhand way, as if she were a neighbour making small talk. Then she will come out and say it, say it in some way or another:

  I think I might be your daughter.

  Do you remember having a daughter?


  How would you feel about having a daughter?

  Surprise.

  What? he says. Wearily, he hitches his jacket up higher over his shoulder.

  Who are you? What are you talking about?

  She repeats it, feeling sheepish.

  What daughter? I don’t have a daughter. Get away from me.

  A long time ago. You were married to my mother, Miriam.

  Is that a hesitation, a second, less than a second?

  You’re insane, he says.

  I’m Leah, the baby you had, she says more loudly.

  He glances quickly at her face, and then back.

  Get out of my way, I don’t know what you’re talking about.

  They are almost at his door, he has his key out.

  This will only take a minute. She slips in front of him, in front of the door.

  Get away from me.

  Are you sure? Are you sure you don’t remember my mother? A photographer. Are you sure you don’t recognize this hair, these eyes, this mouth?

  He glances swiftly at her again, and then away.

  What did you do to your hands? he says more pleasantly, nodding towards her bandages. He reaches around her to twist the key in the lock.

  Burns, she says. Painful, but getting better.

  A shame, he says. Now the door is open, but she is still in front of it.

  Suddenly he grabs her, shoves her to one side, and she loses her balance, falling heavily onto the hard-packed ground.

  Get away from me, you crazy bitch.

  He slams the door.

  ···

  So, says Nate. Was it him?

  Who knows? she says moodily.

  What about the others?

  What about them? she thinks. This attempt to fill an old void, to get her hands on some part of a father — a dry-skinned elbow, an ear — is rapidly falling apart. Instead of providing some rustle of insight, there is only more confusion. Instead of some element of certainty — even a ragged, partial certainty — there is only more doubt. And some chagrin. And a tiny jolt of fresh hurt.

  This is it. She is swearing off Andrew Jarvises. At least for now.

  ···

  These documents — this case — is giving rise to an old urge in her, an urge to lodge a complaint. To argue with an omnipotent being, to lay the damage at someone’s feet.

  At least one advantage of having a god, she says ruefully, is the possibility of a hearing of sorts.

  An odd view of religion, says Nate. What you really want is an umpire. Or a genie. Or possibly a scapegoat.

  Her aunt had an occasional God — only sometimes, she said, as if she mislaid him from time to time. No prayers — I don’t beg — but I make requests, give advice. Usually ignored, I have to say.

  This God was personal, though, not some ineffable, unknowable spirit. A god as fallible, as unreliable as a Greek deity.

  Believe me, I have my reasons.

  The war, the camps — obscene horrors, beyond comprehension. A collective Shema interrupted mid-sentence. The sound of stillness echoing for the length of a missing heartbeat, for the length of a missing breath.

  And a god revealed as careless, fickle — one who had shrunk in size, forfeiting his former claims.

  Where was he? Lazy? Lost? Taking a nap? says her aunt.

  The logical problem of evil, a classic problem in philosophy. Or an evidentiary problem — evil as proof, proof that any godhead is either incapable or indifferent.

  Whatever evil means. A host of evils, perhaps, jostling each other for territory, breathing out some terrible rot. Or different degrees of evil, a range of malevolence from the petty to the catastrophic.

  Where would Drozd fit on this scale?

  Evil, snorts Louis. We’re talking about law.

  Law, his primary faith, the synagogue a distant second. His sacred texts — the presumption of innocence, the burden of proof, the right to remain silent. Tools of the trade, but for him, something more compelling, more transcendent — things to be prized in themselves, that inspire allegiance. He is convinced of their virtues, and perhaps convinced that they confer those same virtues on him by extension. If they are lucid, meaningful, then so is he. In some way, these rights are part of him — elements of his own constitution.

  She understands this, she is so often captivated by doctrines herself — their gravity, their patina, even their pits and scars. If there is anything that deserves some sense of fidelity, some form of belief, it might be them.

  But they are not saving Louis from anything. He seems to be developing a tiny fracture at his core, something almost unnoticeable. Unnoticeable, except for the microscopic fissures that are beginning to spread out from it.

  ···

  How long will she be away?

  Two or three weeks, says Owen, depending on how it goes.

  She suspects that Malcolm has forgotten about keeping an eye on Rudy, that he forgot almost immediately, within seconds after she spoke to him. And he and Gus — neither of them is likely to remember the signs of a heart attack.

  Drafting Val is a mistake, she knows this, even as she does it, catching her one day in the hall. Val is delighted, far too delighted at this apparent thaw in her resistance, something that makes her all the more uneasy. Now they are co-conspirators, the two of them against the men, Val seems to suggest. Her delight is mixed with a hint of triumph, and Leah winces inwardly. But she is still worried about Rudy, picturing him clutching his chest, his body crumpling.

  I could move in, says Val hopefully, her small moon face avid.

  No, no, she says hastily. She wonders again why Val is so eager to win them over, to acquire Gus, this terse man. She understands why he is smitten — Val often has a cloud of damp warmth around her, as if she had just left her bed after a deep sleep. And she fusses over him, replacing the laces on his bowling shoes, washing his comb. But what does she want? Perhaps, like Gus, she feels her chances are running out. How old is she? In her fifties, her milky skin starting to break down into facets, her neck creased, her nails ridged and yellow from smoking.

  For the moment, though, she will keep an eye on Rudy.

  Your mother would have approved, says Val.

  What?

  She sees she has gone too far.

  The way you take care of them, she says lamely.

  You know nothing about my mother. Nothing.

  Even less than she knows.

  ···

  A little wild, her aunt had said. But she took you everywhere. Always wore those pearls, too, although she wasn’t a pearl kind of person. Seed pearls, she said. And she loved that camera of hers. Click, click, click.

  Seed pearls, she thinks now. She pictures her mother throwing them into the garden, where they would reproduce madly, a swath of pearl plants with silver flowers.

  She has a photograph, well-thumbed. Not beautiful, but close enough that people must have looked at her twice when they saw her, glimpsing something in her face they almost recognized, then shaking their heads when they realized their mistake.

  She liked the sauce. So much that she drove when she was drunk, even with her six-year-old child? Where were they going? What were they doing? Was she that careless? That impulsive?

  ···

  A winter of snowfalls, the year Leah turned ten. Snow piled up on streets and yards in mounds, the cumulous drifts softening and whitening the landscape. Masses of cold stuff floating down and attaching to branches, bushes, turning into pillowy layers on the ground. Clothing a dead vine winding around a telephone pole, as if the pole were wearing a feathery boa, guy wires rimmed in white. Caps of snow covered the arms, the backs of the chairs in the yard, choked the gutters, a dogwood — branches uplifted like a dancer in fifth position — holding up a white pile.

  As soon as the walks were shovelled
, down it came again, one thick blanket after another. It was a fluke, an imperative, a redrawing of the city. It was all people thought about, dreamed about, talked about. Snow, they thought suddenly, waking up in the middle of the night. Snow, they said absent-mindedly when they passed each other on the street. All the forms of it, the endlessness of it, wrestling with it as it progressed through different stages — the powdery snow turning into starchy mounds, then into the grey-streaked mountains left by the night plows. Picking their way over it unsteadily when it melted down and froze into snow rubble. They talked about the small avalanches sliding from roofs, or the layers of snowfalls that were building up silently — wet snow, floury snow, sleet, snow pockmarked by rain. Each layer solidifying on top of another, as if they were new geological formations.

  She spent hours outside, climbing snow dunes, burrowing in it, rolling in it, sometimes lying still in it, watching her breath curl upward in the steely air. She and the snow had become allies, complicit, lost in the white landscape they were shaping, hollowing out snow caves, making troughs, building snowmen that leered accidentally at passersby.

  She wondered whether the snow might get so high that it would bury them, the first-floor windows blocked by it pressing against the panes. They would have to swim through it, windmilling their arms to create a path, snow filling their boots, melting into slush. And if it became high enough, she thought, they would have to tunnel out the sidewalks, making snow columns to hold up snow ceilings, cutting holes in them to let in the cold light.

  One weekend, at her aunt’s house, she opened the door to find the world coated in ice — the steps, the wires, the trees, their branches dazzling in the sunlight. Glazed stalks poked out of the snow, ice needles hung from the porch roof, a bush had turned into a small ice fountain. The brilliance of it, the sheer beauty was overwhelming, almost frightening — the landscape both harder and more fragile, more likely to break. She slithered and slid her way into one of the caves she had made, and sat there in the dark, arms around her knees.