The Singing Forest

by Judith McCormack

  He lifts the truncheon again, and the electric light — always unreliable at night — goes out, leaving the room in darkness. A darkness so complete, so deep, it might be a solid thing.

  Night blindness. He can see nothing. He listens for the man’s breathing, the rustle of his clothes, for any sounds of what he might be doing. All he can hear is his own panting. Perhaps the man is standing up, stealing noiselessly around behind him, poised to leap on him, to knock him down. Maybe he is gathering his strength to strangle him.

  He is suddenly in a cold sweat, lashing out frantically with the truncheon.

  Then the light is on again, and the man is still on the ground. Lying there, his mouth stretched open in a grimace. He looks more closely and realizes the man is laughing, a silent, mad laugh.

  ···

  The next night: the man is still there, still unconfessed, but standing up.

  I told him I would cut off his manhood with a saw, Sidorenko says, grinning, on his way out the door.

  Several hours later, though, the man is drooping again, falls over once more.

  One, two, three buckets of snowmelt. More screams, but he is still on the floor.

  An old storage cupboard in the corner of the basement. Mops, brooms, pails, some small tools for minor repairs, a few screwdrivers, a hammer, some nails. A small handsaw.

  Look, he yells in the man’s ear.

  The man opens his eyes dully, sees him waving the handsaw around.

  See what will happen to you? To your manhood? Look at this edge, these teeth. They will tear your skin, your organ, your veins. You will bleed to death, no longer a man.

  The man rolls over, tries to heave himself up on his hands and knees, and then vomits, a thin yellow stream. He collapses again. He makes another attempt, but slips on the water-soaked floor before he even reaches his knees.

  He rolls on his back again. I confess, he says thickly. Then louder: I confess. Then he is shrieking, I confess, I confess, I confess, over and over, his eyes staring, an unusual light in them. The string of words becomes incoherent, he is raving now, twisting and jerking from side to side on the floor. He screams until he is hoarse, until his voice is nothing more than a croak. Then he is suddenly limp.

  Drozd has to wrap his hand around the pen, write his name for him on the paper.

  ···

  He feels cockier, confident now. This is the beginning, he says to himself. And Sidorenko does clap him on the back, surprised. Still, he takes credit for the confession himself, nothing in the report even showing the involvement of anyone else but Bazhanov. Drozd makes sure the others know, though, telling the chauffeur about it within earshot of an officer, telling a guard who he knows will pass it along. His standing has risen slightly with the officers as a result of his snippets of information, and this increases it a few millimetres more. When he puts tea down on their desks, one or two nod at him.

  If it takes a while, he thinks, it will be worth it. In the meantime, he knows how to wait.

  ···

  The dawn air is rinsed, the light slowly turning from pink to yellow, the black mustard growing beside the hedgerows swaying a little in the breeze. He tramps through the fields, past the small forest — still dim, only a few fingers of pale sun slanting into it. The river is cold — at eleven years old he has become something of a swimmer, but there is no need here, the water is only up to his waist. He climbs, dripping, onto a flat rock in the middle of the river, and sits down, his makeshift fishing stick in hand. An early plover trills its two-note call as he threads a worm onto his hook, a bent nail. He throws out the hook, hoping for a pike or a perch, and settles down to wait, scanning the river for any signs of fish.

  As he waits, the water rolls and eddies around him in whorls. He is tired, he is always tired, and after a while he dozes off, still clutching his stick.

  A few minutes later, he wakes suddenly, unnaturally alert. Something has changed.

  The dawn mist is rising and a silver-brown bear is on the riverbank, head erect, ears upright, testing the air. Emaciated, fur matted along one side, it must have wandered down from one of the forests to the north, looking for food.

  It stands on all fours for a moment, narrowing its small black eyes, and then dips its muzzle into the water.

  A tug on his stick, and he grabs for it. The bear looks up at the sound, lays its ears back on its head, and snarls noiselessly. Then it lopes off into the forest.

  Another tug on the stick, and he wrestles it out of the water, hauls it up — a perch is on the hook. It thrashes about, a shining muscle on the flat rock. He tries to pull it off the nail, but the twisting fish is hard to hold. Eventually, he works it off, but he tears some skin on his palm.

  It hurts, he is bleeding, but there is no point in going home, it will hurt in the barn, it will bleed in the potato field as well. He will try for one or two more fish — one or two more before the sun will be up so high that the fish will go into hiding, clustering in the dark green shallows of the river.

  The next day, his hand is red and throbbing. He knows better than to complain, and goes about his chores, favouring it as much as possible. But the following day his arm is swollen as well, and the day after that he is feverish, lying on the straw-stuffed mattress. He drifts in and out of sleep, a half-sleep, filled with bleary dreams so strange he is not even sure they are dreams. He sees a bear’s head, grinning wickedly, its muzzle thickening and shortening. Then it turns into an enormous perch, head flattening, ears disappearing. The fish begins bleeding from its eyes, and starts to hit him with its energetic tail. Stop, he says, but his mouth is filled with blood.

  Stop. Stop.

  His grandmother is shaking him.

  Drink it, she says.

  He picks the mug up clumsily and takes a swallow, burning his tongue on the hot liquid. Then he falls back into his delirium.

  When he wakes up a few hours later, he hears them talking.

  Will he die? says his father.

  Perhaps, says his grandmother. She seems indifferent.

  His father swears. Useless rat.

  I’ve put a poultice on his hand. There is nothing else to do.

  He drifts off again.

  Will he die? says the bear head, now more human than bearlike. Will he die? says the perch. He and the perch are deep in the river now, his breath a spray of bubbles floating up to the surface, the gushing of the water around him a sensation in his ears rather than a sound. He can feel the current circling his body, picking him up, swirling him around, carrying him along. The light above him is fractured by the green water, small, bright spears appearing and disappearing in the dimness. He dislodges some fine sand, the grit drifting through a shaft of sun in the water. Then he sighs and goes to sleep.

  When he wakes up again, he is in the cemetery behind the chapel, the trefoil crosses on the graves streaked with moss. He is sitting on the ground, shivering, as it starts to rain. At first there is only a light pattering, a few seconds later the water comes sluicing down. He sees his arms, his legs, begin to soften at the edges, he sees them start to dissolve into the dirt.

  He wakes up again — cooler this time, his arm less swollen.

  Will he die?

  Not yet, says his grandmother. Not yet.

  ···

  A transport, says Sidorenko, handing him a key ring. Go and bring them from the cells. Take two of the guards.

  Drozd walks down the corridor, opening doors, rousing the men inside them, shaking their limp bodies. They stand up unsteadily, their faces bruised and unshaven, hobbling on battered feet as the guards line them up in the hall.

  What about the man in the interrogation room?

  Get him too.

  When he opens the door, he sees that the wooden bench that serves as a bed is empty. The man is hanging, hanging from a pipe in the ceiling, the noose a strip of cloth to
rn from his pants.

  He recoils, jerking backwards. The guard looks on from the corridor, his mouth open, as the bundle twirls lazily back and forth on the noose. First one way, then the other way, one way and the other. A slow twist of death.

  ···

  You will drive, says the serzhant, as if he is conferring a favour. The chauffeur must have gone home for the day, home to his wife, her placid manner, his dinner — she can make anything out of nothing, he says reverently.

  Are they taking the prisoners to a transfer point, a place where a truck will be waiting? Or perhaps they are putting them on a train. There is a rushed, furtive air to this operation that puzzles him. And why are they taking the dead man, only a sack of cold flesh now, cut down and loaded in with the other prisoners?

  But the chauffeur is still here, they are taking two vans. They load up the prisoners, along with some of the officers and guards.

  The night is clear, the sky studded with white beads. He is following the other van, he can see its red brake lights bumping up and down on the rough road. They are driving out of the city — insects are blundering into the stream of the headlights, and a small owl swoops past.

  Here, says the serzhant, and he pulls up in a clearing in the trees.

  An odd place for a transfer.

  There are several men already there, standing with shovels, shielding their eyes against the headlights. They have dug two rectangular trenches in the clearing, piled the soil to one side.

  You will be doing more digging, say the officers, as they line up the prisoners in rows at the edge of the trenches. Stand there while we get the shovels.

  He watches the faces of the prisoners, still benumbed with sleep, squinting in the light. Some are bewildered, others are bleak, some scornful, some despairing. As the officers line up opposite them, he sees dawning comprehension.

  Run, they yell. Run.

  The men begin to scatter, but the officers are already shooting, their revolvers cracking, the sudden noise echoing around the forest.

  Now the faces of the prisoners are agonized, astonished as they stagger backwards, most of them falling into the trenches as they die. Some are wounded, writhing on the ground, calling out the names of their children, their wives, their gods. One is trying to crawl away on his elbows, dragging his leg, part of his jaw blown away. The officers reload their guns, and begin to pick their way around the clearing, looking for anyone still alive, kicking at the bodies. Any movement, and they shoot the man in the head.

  Watch this, says Sidorenko. A crawling man is still moving, slowly, painfully, fiercely. When he gets to the edge of the clearing, the officer shoots him.

  Any bodies lying outside the trenches are hoisted up by their arms and legs and thrown in, along with the body of the prisoner who hanged himself. Then the serzhant gestures towards the men with shovels, and they begin filling up the trenches.

  They are almost finished when the sandy surface of one of the pits begins heaving. A man with a shovel jumps back and calls out.

  Take this, says Sidorenko, handing Drozd the gun.

  Heavier, warmer than he thought. He walks over and empties it into the dirt. The heaving stops.

  No resurrections here, says Sidorenko, and Drozd laughs.

  ···

  We may however mention a circumstance very little known in common life, that there are certain kinds of glass that may be dissolved in water. All glass is, chemically, a silicate of some alkaline or metallic oxide; and according to the nature of this oxide, so does the quality of the glass differ. If potash or soda be the substance combined with the silicic acid or silica, without any third ingredient, a glass is produced which, though presenting the usual vitreous aspect, is easily dissolved.

  ···

  If anyone is not really human, Leah says, it’s you.

  You know nothing, he says. You have no idea. No idea of the necessity, the urgency.

  Clearly she is too slow-witted, she is not capable of understanding this. Not capable of realizing that there is even something fine about these shootings — this ability to create death out of life, to obliterate a human being, to erase a spark of existence in a second, half a second.

  All with a Nagant revolver. The sleek power of it, the explosive force. He has never felt more substantial, more satiated, more complete. In this haze of death, he has never felt more alive.

  Eleven

  We do not want to take too many Jews,

  but in the circumstances, we do not want to say so.

  Departmental memo to Prime Minister Mackenzie King, 1938

  Good, says Louis. But one seven-year-old witness isn’t enough.

  She calls him from time to time to report, hoping for something beyond their present chilly truce. Let there be peace, even a shaky peace, she thinks, and he does seem to be thawing slightly. But now that she knows about this unexpected blind spot in his character, she worries she might stumble onto something else, put her finger on some other sensitive point lying under his skin. She is determined not to show this, though, she tries to carry on in the same way as before. He will pick it up in a second if she seems to be humouring him or tiptoeing around him, and even the slightest indication that he needs tactful handling would be fatal.

  I know we need more, she says. We’re working on it.

  Strictly speaking, the investigator is working on it; she is hampered by the lack of language, the local connections, how utterly foreign she is. But she can see that he is working hard. The shadows around his eyes are heavier, and his face is tense, cagey, hair a little unruly, in need of a cut. He has spoken to the people who talked to the archaeologist, at least the ones who are still alive and not senile. He has spoken to the people they have suggested, and the ones they have suggested in turn. In the area near Kurapaty, he has resorted to stopping old people on the street — his head whips around when he sees anyone white-haired, anyone stooped over. Did you hear anything? Did you see anything? Do you know anyone who did? He follows up one name after another, attempting to run rumours down to their roots. What do you remember?

  We knew about it, says one man in his eighties. Most of us. How could we not? The crack and boom of the guns in the night, the vans, the dogs. It was something unspoken, that lay beneath the surface. We kept it there, kept it silently so that it would be in the shadows, less dangerous.

  But were you there? Did you see anything?

  No. But we knew about it.

  Hearsay. Even hearsay multiplied a hundred times is still hearsay.

  We must face these facts, says the investigator. Most of the witnesses were shot on the spot. The rest were NKVD, not likely to come forward. But I will find you a witness. I promise this. I will find you someone.

  And he does.

  ···

  Rafael Benyaminov. His face is crimped with tiny lines and pleats, but his eyes are keen, discerning.

  Arthritis, he says, the joints on his hands and wrists knobby and swollen.

  Treskovshchina, Minsk voblast. A home for the elderly. His room is small and stuffy, shared with another man. Faded photographs on every surface — a woman with a lovely pale face in a black, high-necked dress, two boys and a girl in woollen stockings, a picture of men and women standing in front of a house in the snow — the likenesses marking them as brothers, sisters, children. An old radio, a pink tin ashtray, a package of baked milk biscuits beside the bed.

  The investigator has brought him cigarettes, and he takes out two, puts the rest behind the radio.

  There is a sitting room we can use, says the KDB officer stiffly. I have arranged for it.

  The room is on the main floor of the building, the walls blue, armchairs with a pattern of ferns. It smells of laundry soap and leeks, and on the wall is a picture, a still life of plums spilling out of a bowl. A set of playing cards, a box of dominoes, a pair of reading glasses are scattered ar
ound, a half-done puzzle on an end table.

  Nearly all women here, says the investigator. A country of old women.

  Polina positions the microphones, the recorder, her dark hair pulled into a knot, her movements fluid and quick. Her dress is sleeveless, her arms angular, white, a vaccination mark on one. She glances at the KDB officer, wrinkles her nose, and salutes with mock formality. He nods tightly, but the back of his neck begins to redden, and she laughs.

  These two. Leah has spent so much time with them now, with the investigator, that they seem oddly close, oddly familiar, even though she really knows so little about them. What she knows, though, she knows intimately — the noise Polina makes in her throat when she is exasperated, her irreverence. The way she conveys to the officer that she does not believe in him — or at least who he thinks he is — but does not necessarily hold it against him. The way the officer cracks his knuckles, his fastidiousness. The state of the investigator’s stubble in relation to how much he had to drink the night before, his persistent air of reproof.

  But she knows, too, how deceptive these things can be — the irreverent Polina has a subtle centre of gravity, the young officer has his hard side, the investigator nurses his hoard of aspirations.

  Time to begin, he says now. Polina puts on her headset, and as always becomes brisk, efficient, starting her singsong introduction.

  The man — a retired music teacher, he says — launches into his story immediately, the words running away from him.

  My parents were well off, my grandfather had been a merchant and my father was the director of a wine co-operative. We lived in the High Market area of Minsk and they were active in society, my mother in the Jewish Ladies Club and distributing food to the poor, my father in the State Jewish Library, in a burial society, in our synagogue where he sang in the choir. My mother would have dinner parties where we would listen to concert broadcasts or readings by poets — Izzy Kharik, Avrom Sutzkever.