The Singing Forest

by Judith McCormack

  Physical measures of persuasion are very effective, says the directive.

  You will get used to it, says Sidorenko in a low voice. Sometimes it takes a while, but you will get used to it. None of them are innocent. None of them. If they are arrested, they are guilty. Otherwise, it would be a disaster — the officer made a mistake, a mistake he cannot afford to make.

  He mimes a quick slashing motion across the front of his neck, so fast it is almost unnoticeable.

  And the shame, the weakness of not getting a confession, he adds.

  Confessions. Everything revolves around them, the core of the work. They are powerful, adaptable — they work backwards to justify the arrests, the interrogations, they work forwards to justify the sentences. Usually there is no other evidence against the prisoners, unless it is the confession of a previous suspect naming them. But this lack of other evidence does not suggest innocence.

  Not at all, says Sidorenko. This is proof of the cunning of these traitors, these saboteurs. How well they cover their tracks.

  The young man is impressed with this airtight way of thinking, the simplicity of it — every angle connected. It makes sense to him, a clean, hard sense. He is less convinced by the idea that this is part of something loftier — the fight against the turncoats, the spies, the treasonists, to protect the revolution. This is not how he thinks, the idea of lending himself to something like this, but he adopts it as part of the currency of the place. And the idea that if there is a fight, it must be ferocious, absolute — that the rot must be cut out — this, this is persuasive.

  Drozd, says the captain, a few months later. He is standing by a cabinet in his office. At ease, he says. New duties for you.

  His tone implies this is an honour, an elevation of some kind, although there is no more money, no other title. And his eyes are as dead-cold as ever.

  A shortage of officers.

  Now he will be working more with the prisoners, writing down their confessions, their denunciations of friends and families. He will be going in and out of the interrogation rooms now, something new. He will assist the officers, taking down statements, reading them back before they sign. The men are more literate here than the militsiya, but his help will speed things up.

  This is how I am trusted, he thinks.

  One step closer to being an officer. His withered sense of pride inflates.

  ···

  The man is naked, propped up on a chair, his body blotched with bruises, one arm twisted at an awkward angle. His face is swollen, an eye almost closed.

  Another one ready to confess, says Sidorenko. He is tired, sweaty, rubbing his shoulder, running his hand through his greasy hair.

  Take this down, put it in the usual language. He says he engaged in anti-Soviet agitation, sabotage, and terrorist activities. He says Dzmitry Kuzmich was also involved, that he did these things as well.

  Drozd writes it down laboriously on the pad he has been given, couching it in the formal terms of other confessions.

  Sign it, says Sidorenko, propping the man up further, putting the pen in the man’s hand and curling his fingers around it. The man, barely conscious, scrawls something.

  Take him back to the cells, and then clean up in here. The night cleaners can wash the floor, but wipe the rest of it down, straighten it up.

  The blood on the truncheon. Half-mugs of cold tea. Lengths of rope.

  Take the coat and the boots, bring them upstairs, but leave him the shirt, the pants.

  He goes out, still rubbing his shoulder.

  Get up, says Drozd to the prisoner.

  The man makes an attempt to do it, and then collapses back in the chair.

  Get up, he says more loudly.

  The man is clearly feigning weakness. The clerk feels a surge of anger — he is being hindered in his new duties.

  The man makes a small gesture with his unbroken arm, a gesture of helplessness, hopelessness. He makes another effort, but falls off the chair, barely able to put out a hand to catch his fall. Then he lies motionless on the floor of the cell, half on his side, half on his back, his eyes closed.

  Get up, Drozd yells.

  He erupts in rage, grabs the truncheon, and bangs it against the wall.

  The man begins to shiver uncontrollably, and then stops.

  Drozd half pulls the man up, looping his arm around his neck. The slack body hangs against his own as he drags him towards the cells. The touch of the man’s naked arm against his neck, his sour breath, the smell of urine, is repulsive.

  The man tries to say something, almost inaudible.

  What? says Drozd. Perhaps he has more to confess.

  The man whispers again.

  What? says Drozd more loudly.

  The man makes a small hissing sound. Drozd puts his ear closer to the man’s mouth.

  Lies.

  ···

  Take the coat, the boots.

  Plisetsky has disappeared. Overnight, he is gone, his chair empty, his desk bare, no other traces of him. As if he had never existed, never sat there, rolling peppermints around in his mouth, complaining about the prisoners. A blank space, a hole in the air.

  The captain, his coarse face more impassive than usual.

  A coat has been found, he says meaningfully. A coat with a name in it, one of the prisoners. The family saw it for sale in the market.

  The officers look uneasy.

  The person responsible has been punished, he says deliberately.

  He gives nothing away, although he manages to convey knowledge and denial in the same breath.

  I have received orders, he says pointedly. I have been ordered to ensure this does not happen again. No coats, no boots, no jackets, no clothing. No selling of possessions. It undermines our reputation, the honour of the force.

  Silence.

  Is this understood?

  ···

  Piles of clothes, linen shirts, shoes, leather belts, wool jerseys, gloves. Wallets, rings, eyeglasses, watches, most of them turned into rubles. What are they to do with them, after all? Give them to the families of traitors, enemies of the people? What have they done to earn these things?

  We deserve it, they say to each other. This is hard work, hard on the body, hard on the mind. Dirty work, we are fighting a war, we are on the front lines. Not like some fat-gutted bureaucrat, setting the price of wheat. We are the NKVD, the highest and first sons of the revolution. Away from our homes, eating rotten food, sleeping in cramped quarters. What we have to do. We need the money, for drink, for whores, for comfort. We deserve it.

  At least we can still use their rubles — if not their wallets, at least the contents of their wallets.

  Money has no name on it.

  ···

  One evening, Drozd finds Plisetsky’s badge, slipped behind a drawer in his desk. He pockets it quickly. Wherever the man is, he has no need of this.

  ···

  What happened to the tailor? says Leah.

  What tailor? says Drozd.

  The one who gave you the soup.

  Him? He was slime. Less than slime.

  He was another human being. He was kind to you.

  Human beings are worth nothing, a Jew even less. Pigs. And why does it matter to you so much? Who are you to judge me?

  ···

  The doctrine of rescue. The owner and captain of a boat invited a number of friends on a cruise. One fell overboard into the freezing water, another jumped in to rescue him. Both died, but the owner was held not to be responsible. There is no general duty to rescue in common law, says Justice Jessop. One can smoke a cigarette on the beach while a neighbour drowns, and without a word of warning watch a child or blind person walk into certain danger.

  Nine

  If God lived on earth, people would break his windows.

  Jewish proverb
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  Minsk, a city dragging its history behind it like a sack of boulders. A place full of surprises, remade after the war by dreaming Russians. Avenues, they said when they woke up, their heads groggy. Colonnades. Obelisks. Monuments.

  Now a place ancient and young, timeworn and eager. A city and its own younger brother, living together in close quarters. The bright air is strikingly clear, and in the distance, there are waves of undulating apartments in pale green or ochre stucco. A river meanders along, its surface scattered with dots of light. But behind all this, loitering in alleys, slipping around doorways, there are other things, hidden things: lucent warmth, grittiness, spiky courage — things liable to erupt in startling ways.

  The investigator picks her up at the airport, a man in his forties, the skin shadowed around his eyes, his mouth finely curved, uneven.

  Todar Pavlovich, he says, eyeing her disapprovingly.

  He is a disapproving man — of her, the airport, his car, the city itself. Especially the city.

  Rubble after the war.

  He says this as if it was the city’s fault, and he has not yet forgiven it — still holding on to a grudge about the disappearance of this building, that corner. But these changes, these missing pieces must have vanished before he was born — perhaps these are borrowed grudges, inherited from his parents as a child. Of course, a child can hold a grudge — even a second-hand one — as keenly as an adult. Something that can be orienting, steadying — almost sustaining.

  The architecture — first Stalin, then Khrushchev, says the investigator moodily.

  They pass an Orthodox church, white with blue cupolas dotted in gold, then a park of balsam and fir trees. A bronze statue, a man, stands with his coat thrown over his shoulders, a cane in one hand, poised mid-motion on blocks of granite, his eyes blank.

  Yanka Kupala, says the investigator, in answer to her question. A poet. Died falling down stairs. Or maybe he killed himself after naming names. Or maybe he was murdered.

  Too many choices. Reality should be less optional, less fickle, she thinks. Something solid, fixed to the spot, as faithful and unblinking as an owl.

  The NKVD, they went after the writers, poets, artists, he says. Executed twenty-two of them in one night alone. A disaster for a small country.

  Does she know any Belarusian artists? Soutine, born in a shtetl near Minsk, a man who painted the rabbi, and was beaten up by his son, an Orthodox butcher. But he moved to France early on. Chagall, of course, his father a herring-seller. A painter of acrobats vaulting from swings, of willowy couples sailing through the sky.

  The investigator takes her to a bar, shelves of dimly lit bottles behind the counter. In a few minutes, plates of sausages and potato pancakes appear, the barman wiping his hands on his apron.

  I cannot guarantee anything about these witnesses, says the investigator. He eats slowly and primly. I know the problem is identifying the man. But it is getting harder and harder to find witnesses who are still alive — they are dying like insects.

  Flies? she says.

  Flies are insects, he says severely.

  What are you expecting them to say?

  He runs through what they have said to him so far, adding in his own caustic remarks.

  Any other prospects? she says. The researchers suspect that he was involved in executions, they want to track down every lead possible.

  Maybe you should hear these ones first, before you send me on a wild bird chase, he says.

  She resists the temptation to say goose.

  After two glasses of vodka, he becomes expansive, begins talking about himself. He has a soft, guttural accent, turning his English into a line of low, rumbling words. When he talks about his plans, his ambitions, his usual disapproval recedes.

  Chicago or New York, he says. I could work for a large law firm, I have seen the kind of work they do, who they hire.

  His face lights up a little as he talks; this new side of him is so nakedly hopeful she has to try hard not to laugh. Perhaps working with him will be more agreeable than she thought.

  He has done some work for a lawyer in Boston, investigating importers, exporters. It will lead to more, he thinks. The man was impressed with his thoroughness, his clarity. A man with influence and — the investigator rubs his thumb and first two fingers together.

  Wealthy? she says.

  Jewish.

  She hesitates for a minute, while he goes on talking.

  I’m Jewish, she says, interrupting him.

  A second of revulsion, then his face reassembles and smooths out.

  The pitfalls of a name that gives so little away.

  A stealth Jew, says Nate.

  You should have told me, said a new boyfriend over and over. Someone who had drifted off shortly afterwards. You should have told me.

  She never seems to get used to this, it always surprises her. Who did they think she was before? Who do they think she is now?

  Sometimes people look at her reproachfully, as if she had been working undercover, and had unfairly caught them out. You don’t look Jewish, they say, then wish they could stuff this inane sentence back into their mouths.

  Ashkenazi hair, says her aunt.

  You know what I mean, the person says silently, as if they shared some heavy-nosed, olive-skinned understanding.

  The investigator is fully composed now, but more distant than before. Or perhaps she is more wary of him. They will both brush this aside, act as if this moment never happened.

  Tomorrow, the first interview, he says, the witness has moved to a place outside Babruysk. The interpreter and the KDB officer will meet us there. Do you want to rest now, prepare for tomorrow?

  A KDB officer will be at the interviews, Owen had said before she left. A diplomatic requirement for permission. We have to do this through governmental channels. They were fine when we were after Nazi war criminals — if anything, they were helpful. It might be a different story this time.

  Yes. It might. The Belarusian KDB — the inheritor, the keeper of the NKVD legacy.

  Her hotel room is small, old-fashioned, the wallpaper striped in brown and cream. An uncomfortable-looking chair is drawn up to a desk — three gold foil-wrapped chocolates, an orange, an overripe plum arranged in a row on it. A narrow wardrobe on the other side, a samovar of hot water in the corner. The bedspread is tired-looking, but clean, and the room smells like crumbs.

  She sits down at the desk, tries to concentrate on her questions, to read the short profiles the investigator has given her. But she is too restless, her thoughts flitting around, and her burns are nagging at her — healing, but itchy. She wants to get out, to see this place, Minsk, to hear it, to be in it.

  The night is warm, spring drifting into summer — people hurrying home under the street lights, carrying parcels, bags, umbrellas. She watches their faces as she walks, looking at them as long as she dares — their expressions tired, distracted. A tight-lipped man, a woman smiling at something to herself.

  As she passes the street lights, her shadow changes, shrinking on the sidewalk, then stretches out again. The street signs with their Cyrillic lettering are impenetrable to her. She has a brief glimpse of what it might be like to be illiterate, an existence without written words, surrounded by graphic silence.

  She wanders into a grocery store. The smell of curdled milk, shelves of dark bread, a small meat counter — chicken breasts with pimpled skin, pig trotters. Rows of white and green cheeses, honeycomb, jars of pickles — peppers, tomatoes, onions. Packages of dates, figs, apricots tied with hemp. A tank of fish in the corner — hake? carp? — the water dirty, the fish grey and whiskered, primeval-looking. Another display case has varieties of pickled cabbage salads, green, purple, scattered with carrot shreds or small chunks of pork. An entire wall of vodkas.

  None of this makes her hungry or thirsty at the moment — the oily panc
akes are sitting heavily in her stomach. But she is tempted to buy something, if only to become involved in this purposeful scene for a moment, to be purposeful herself. To be someone other than an observer. Some vodka, perhaps, something to keep in her room. She studies the rows of bottles, but the language defeats her again, and she picks one at random.

  A line, but not a long one. Two women are talking in front of her, they look like a mother and a daughter. The younger one is lively, laughing, the older one saying little. Behind her, a man and a woman seem to be bickering quietly, but the rest of the line waits patiently. When she reaches the cashier, she pulls out her money, looks up inquiringly.

  But the women is shaking her head, flicks the bill with her finger.

  Wrong language. Wrong currency.

  ···

  Yes, says the investigator the next day, his disapproval slipping again for a moment. We are the kings of vodka — Russian vodka is nothing. Nothing. We have vodka with pepper and honey, vodka with cowberries, birch leaves, bison grass. Vodka filtered through black flint or platinum. Every kind you can imagine.

  ···

  The countryside, grey and damp, the sky iron-coloured. A thin mist over the fields, blurring the spears of mauve-and-pink wildflowers in the ditches. In the distance a peat fire, the smoke smudging the horizon. A stream follows the side of the road for a while, a gleaming snake, and they pass fields of young flax, rapeseed flowers, separated by stone fences. A rowdy flock of swallows goes by, the birds diving and rolling in the air.

  Past Babruysk to an old farmhouse, a sour cherry tree blooming in front, piles of worn tires, bleached sacks. The door is answered by an elderly woman, a small birthmark on one of her cheeks, flossy white hair.

  Sardechna zaprashayem, she says. Welcome. She offers them bread, salt, honey, tea.

  An older man sitting in the corner nods to them, his face framed by bristling white brows, one sharp eye. The other is a puckered scar, a few age spots on his skin. On his lap, an old cat kneads the blanket over his knees.