The Singing Forest

by Judith McCormack

  My older brother was a talented cellist and when he was twenty, he became a cello teacher. He was well-known and had many students for his lessons. He was the eldest son and I was the youngest — there were three sisters after him, so there were eight years between us, but he was always kind to me. He would pay me a kopeck or two to copy out sheets of music for his students, take me for walks in the botanical gardens near Chelyuskintsev Park on the Sabbath, buy me ices. He taught me the cello as well, although I did not have his talent.

  In 1938, when I was twelve, three NKVD officers came to our house, and arrested my brother, my father, and me. They confiscated our prayer books, our tallisim, back copies of Der Veker, Oktyabr, sheet music. They claimed that we were using music lessons to spread anti-revolution sentiment and to procure money and support for the Jewish Labour Bund. This was nonsense — my father tried to stay away from politics, and my brother and I were only interested in music.

  They took us to the NKVD headquarters in Minsk and locked us in a cell. It was very crowded and some of the people were ill, or had open wounds — the smell was foul. My mother came to see us the same day, crying, and told us she had called everyone she knew, everyone who might have any influence. The ones who were Jewish were willing to help, but there was little they could do. Even the rabbi said that he had no influence with the NKVD. The ones who were not Jewish, she said, were suddenly aloof, uninterested.

  She brought her brother, my uncle, who was an advocate — they had bribed the officers to let them see us.

  My uncle told us that he argued with the NKVD captain for our release, but the man had rejected his pleas, and then threatened to arrest him as well. He had also spoken to a Party official he knew, but was told that his hands were tied, he could not intervene.

  Could not or would not? said my father bitterly.

  Does it matter? said my uncle.

  But we will keep trying, said my mother, her face working. We will devote every minute, every ounce of strength, every kopeck we have to getting you out.

  I remember the way she said that — every minute, every ounce of strength, every kopeck. Then she began to cry again, and kissed us through the bars.

  After a day, a guard removed me from the cell. At least they are releasing you from this hell, my father said, looking relieved. Locking up a child.

  Instead, the guard took me to an interrogation room, where an officer beat me on and off for three days, demanding that I confess to certain crimes. He ordered me to say that the sheet music was coded with Bundist messages, he insisted that I name my father and brother as co-conspirators.

  You are a musician? he said. I will make sure you never play anything again.

  When I still refused to confess, he broke the fingers in my hand.

  He holds up a wrinkled hand now to show his middle and ring fingers are crooked.

  I was very frightened and in great pain. After a few days, I confessed to being a Trotskyite, something that was not true. The officer brought in another man to write this down, to have me sign it. But I refused to implicate my father and brother. In the end, though, they charged them with associating with Trotskyites — in this case, myself. I was horrified at how I had been tricked, and tried to withdraw my confession, but they ignored me.

  His voice wavers at this point, and he hastily swallows some tea.

  They put me back in the cell, and one evening they told us we had been found guilty by a troika, a panel of three officials that made these decisions. We did not have the chance to address the troika, to use an advocate, or to defend ourselves in any way. Then they loaded all the prisoners in the cells into vans, and drove us to a forest clearing on the edge of Minsk. There were two shallow ditches there, and they told us we would be digging them deeper as part of our sentences for forced labour. They lined us up on the edges of the ditches, telling us they were waiting for more shovels. Then suddenly they opened fire on us, bullets flying past.

  The KDB officer tries to interrupt him, but the man rattles on.

  A second, less than a second before the shooting, I had bent over to slap an insect off my leg, and the bullets only grazed my shoulder. I fell into the ditch, however, because another man fell against me, and I was pushed into it. He ended up on top of me, twitching for a second or two, coughing, and then becoming still. Blood from his head was running onto mine, but I was rigid with fright. From where I was, I could hear the officers walking around, shooting anyone who was alive. They missed me because I was covered by the dead man on top of me, and because I lay completely still.

  Then dirt began coming down around me, they were filling in the ditch. I thought I would end up dying anyway, suffocating from the weight of the man’s body, from the dirt. But his body fell in a way that created a small space around my nose and mouth, and I was able to breathe for a short period of time.

  The dirt muffled the sounds after that, but I felt the ground rumble when the vans started up again, and then drove off. With my one good hand, I clawed my way out from under the dead man, out of the earth, and into the open air. I made my way slowly to my uncle’s house, where my aunt washed my wounds and put salve and bandages on them. I could not bear to see my mother, to tell her my father and brother were dead. And to tell her it was my fault. After a few days, they said it was no longer safe to keep me there, and they sent me to a cousin’s house in Brest — they would tell my mother after I was gone.

  In Brest, I changed my name and over the next two years, as my beard began to come in, I let it grow to cover as much of my face as possible. I was fourteen when the Germans invaded, and I ran away from my cousin’s house and joined a partisan camp. I spent the years from 1941 to 1944 as a partisan, trying to destroy German supply and fuel depots and attacking communication lines. In the end, I am not sure how much damage we were able to do, but we did what we could.

  After the war, I became a cello teacher myself, in honour of my brother and father. I used my crooked fingers to hold the bow, my good hand for the fingering.

  He stops abruptly, he seems to have run down, out of words.

  She places the photograph in front of him. Was this man the one who beat you?

  No, he says.

  Was he the one who wrote down your confession?

  He looks at the investigator, who moves his head almost imperceptibly.

  Go ahead, he adds, when he sees the others looking. It is safe to talk.

  Yes, he was the one. He was much younger then, but I remember.

  Younger, she thinks, but older than his victim. If twelve is old enough to suffer, is sixteen old enough to be accountable?

  Was he one of the NKVD men who shot at you? she says.

  He glances at the investigator again.

  Yes, go ahead, says the investigator.

  He was there, he says. He was there.

  The KDB officer begins barking questions. He was not an officer, was he?

  I don’t know.

  Was he wearing a uniform?

  I don’t think so.

  What time of day was this?

  In the evening. I don’t know what time.

  Isn’t it true, the KDB officer says more loudly, isn’t it true that the people who tortured you, who shot at you were German troops, not NKVD?

  No, he says. That is not true.

  Are you sure that you remember properly?

  The man flares up. You think I do not remember who arrested us? Who tortured me? Who killed my brother and my father? You think I do not remember? I would have to have a poor memory to forget those things.

  ···

  When do I get the money? he says, as she and the investigator settle him back in his own room. He begins rubbing liniment on his swollen hands.

  What money?

  I will handle this, says the investigator quickly. I told him that if he would be testifying in court, there w
ould be money for the travel fare, the travel expenses. To come and speak at the trial. I will explain to him how it works — please go on ahead.

  ···

  Five o’clock in the morning. The telephone in the hotel room, an old dial set. Who would be calling her here? Nate? Louis? Not at this hour.

  Val, her voice tinny.

  Gus? What?

  You mean Rudy.

  No.

  We don’t know how long he was lying there, she says. He’s in the cardiac ward now. They’re going to do a bypass, but — Her voice trails off.

  This is what she says.

  This is what Leah hears: he’s alive.

  ···

  The air is heavy with the mingled breath and perspiration of so many people, so close together. The flight will be longer than usual — turbulence, says the pilot — they will have to fly farther north to avoid it.

  She is beset with superstitions, omens. If she avoids drinking on the plane, Gus will survive. If she rejects the meal, he will recover. If she keeps her hands in her lap, he will be cured. And every object, every item has turned into a charm or amulet. Her paper cup has taken on mystical properties, the wooden stir stick a talisman. How quickly she has reverted to this, as if one inexplicable event has triggered an entirely different world, an ancient one with its own capricious rules.

  Now this, she says to Nate, this is where a god might be useful again. A divine being to implore, to beseech. To hear my case.

  For example. The appellant is a good man, a gentle man, a man who overcame his natural caution, his reticence to raise a child who was not his own. A man who read the books to her suggested by teachers, hesitating over some of the words, making his way through a list every year. A man who took her to swimming lessons — unable to swim himself — sitting fully clothed on a folding chair at the side of the pool while the other parents were in the water. Who listened seriously to her school tales of small indignities, tiny triumphs. A man with a quiet, obstinate heart, the same organ that has been starved of blood by a clot — now a lump of damaged muscle.

  Why should he — of all people — have been chosen for illness, even death? Of all people.

  Chance, says her aunt. Random chance. Haven’t you been listening? Think of all the different kinds of luck. Blind luck. Fisherman’s luck. Hard luck. Jewish luck.

  Jewish luck?

  Also known as bad luck. What — I have to explain?

  Malcolm singing tunelessly under his breath. I’ve got the left hind leg of a rabbit. Things are going my way. All I have to do is reach out and grab it. Things are going my way.

  But luck is not an answer; luck is part of the question itself. Or a way of saying: there is no answer, no answer that makes sense, that has meaning.

  The thought barred from her brain: it was supposed to be Rudy.

  Not that she would ever wish such a thing on Rudy. Never. Never. But this? This is an ambush.

  Ask Rabbi Yitzchok, her aunt said once, when the little girl pleaded for another piece of strudel.

  Who?

  Levi Yitzchok of Berditchev. The lawyer for the Jews — he interceded for us with God. Dead now, but that wouldn’t stop him. Better give him a try, because you’re not getting another piece from me.

  Rabbi. A request now.

  If you look to your left, says the pilot, you’ll see quite a remarkable view of Greenland. Usually the cloud cover is too thick, but we have an unusually clear day. You can see the fjords over there, and the icebergs floating down them.

  He sounds a little elated, even a little awed, and the passengers look up curiously. Then they begin standing up, filing over to the aisle on the left side of the airplane. The aisle is quickly crowded, but something about the pilot’s voice has made them subdued, unexpectedly polite and careful with each other, murmuring apologies or requests in low voices. They peer over heads, between shoulders, past the rows of seats on the left side, ducking and craning. No one tells them to return to their seats, or that the seat belt light has come on, or that they need to balance out the load, as if the crew, too, was suspended in this moment.

  She can see the fjords carved into the snowfields from where she is standing, the mountainous icebergs, the Arctic water — shifting colours of white, green, turquoise, grey. The brilliant light, the eerie beauty of it are quietly exhilarating, they reach into her and touch something buried. For a moment, she forgets everything else, she feels a brief stab of gladness.

  The passengers are hushed, transfixed by the sight. Then they seem to shake themselves, and begin moving back to their seats, slowly, silently, their faces bemused.

  ···

  He is pale under his tan, a tube in his heavy nose. Too burly to be a natural patient, he seems out of place, as if he might have wandered into the hospital by mistake, as if he might have been nabbed by a particularly efficient orderly and hooked to an IV, electrodes slapped on his chest. This whole thing must be some misunderstanding.

  She glances at the band on his wrist. No.

  His eyes are closed, the lids swollen, but when he hears her voice, they open for a few seconds and then close again. His hand moves on the sheet, a half-gesture of greeting.

  The drugs make him sleepy, says the nurse.

  She wants to take that hand, to have something reviving, something life-giving flow from her hand to his. Something that will say to this shirker, this loafer of a heart muscle: wake up, get moving, make an effort. But she has nothing like that to give him, she has only a wild longing for his survival. And to hold his hand while he is so weakened seems to be taking advantage of him, an attack on his barricades of reserve. So she sits as closely as she can, her arm almost touching, and watches the monitor transmitting its jagged lines of information. Perhaps if she watches it long enough, these lines will begin to make sense, will become a language she can understand.

  Your mother went home to change her clothes, says the nursing assistant.

  My mother?

  A sliver of hope leaps in her chest.

  No, no, no. She must be talking about Val. Val.

  But she is astonished to find that such a hope, such an absurd, strangled hope is still even imaginable, has been hibernating in her all this time.

  How could this be possible? Is this what happens to the hope of a six-year-old, shocked beyond understanding, beyond any form of belief? Something deeply buried, desiccated after so many years, but still there. Or perhaps hope is always irrational — perhaps this is one of the things that makes it hope, makes it different from saner, more logical kinds of thought.

  Time for the procedure, says the nurse.

  A technician wheels in a white monitor on an extension arm, a curved keyboard, heavy cords looping around. The patient’s chest is bared, a few grey and white hairs exposed. His skin, his flesh looks particularly defenceless, surrounded by the hard edges of the equipment. The technician attaches more sensors and places a dollop of gel — this will be cold — on his chest. Gus flinches, and then closes his eyes again. Then the technician picks up a wand and begins drawing circles in the gel.

  Sound waves to the heart, he says, while he watches the monitor. When the waves bounce back, they form an image.

  Sound waves. If only she had known this was how to assess his condition. Then she might have done it herself, making a clear sound, a bell-like sound near his chest perhaps, listening carefully for the echoes. And if she had been able to translate the results, Rudy could have drawn the image with his inks, a pinkish cross-section of the thoracic cavity. Something that might have revealed a weakness, a flaw, that might have sparked an alert.

  The technician watching the screen looks thoughtful, then serious.

  What is it? she says.

  His doctor will discuss the results with you.

  Don’t leave, she says to Gus.

  I might not get another cha
nce, he says.

  ···

  The physical world seems to be rising up against her, the corner of a desk catching her on the hip, a cabinet door reaching over to hit her forehead, a lower drawer stretching out to trip her.

  How is he? says Louis.

  Not good, she says shortly. Have you spoken to Owen?

  Yes, and we think we have enough evidence now, enough to go ahead — with the last two witnesses, particularly the music teacher, and then the more circumstantial evidence, the records. The War Crimes Section has a couple of researchers who are doing more digging into the documents as well.

  The music teacher. She feels a faint twinge, a sense of unease. He seemed credible enough, although she is not sure how to evaluate the credibility of someone remembering events from so long ago. What condition can these memories be in, when so many later memories have been layered on top of them? Although he must be right, if any memories would stay clear and fixed, surely it would be these — torture, the execution of his father and brother, his own strange almost-death. Buried in the arms of warm corpses, a stiflingly close view of mortality. A twelve-year-old surrounded by bodies, bodies with a last expression frozen on a face, a shout still fixed on a set of lips.

  No one would forget that, no one could forget that. But the details might have become distorted over the years, perhaps even now they slide in and out of focus. Particularly a detail about the presence, the face of a particular person.

  Memory can be embedded in the body. She has read this somewhere, that memory can permeate cells, become physical. The example: phantom pain. But what does this really mean? Do people become the physical embodiment of all their past experiences? Do memories twist and shape muscles, organs, blood vessels? Or perhaps they strengthen those things, nourish them. A moment of joy fused into lung tissue, an exquisite painting fixed on the surface of a cornea.

  Good find, this evidence, says Louis. You may have a future here yet.

  Maybe you could be more specific, she thinks.

  ···

  Still thinking about your witness? says Nate, tracing lines on the back of her neck.