In the Shape of a Boar

by Lawrence Norfolk

  He would not join the liars, he told himself. In June, the skies above the town were again lit by the white glare of the arc lights. Those unfortunate enough to have left the ghetto before receiving their papers and residence permits were escorted from their homes and driven down to the station, from where the long freight trains departed for work camps in Transnistria. Sol had returned to their home once to find his father poring over his papers, checking and rechecking the tiny print. His mother had been slumped behind him.

  ‘We never handed in our inventory,’ said his father. His voice shook. ‘Look here, “All Jews are to declare their assets including real estate, stocks, jewellery, rugs, kitchen utensils, furniture, money, livestock and any other possessions.” It should have been, somewhere here, yes: “ . . . made in duplicate and presented to the officers of the Jewish Council at the Jewish Hospital.”’

  ‘We never noticed it, Solomon,’ said his mother. ‘Oh God, what are we going to do?’

  ‘It's what I told Petre,’ his father said. ‘Check your papers. Check your permit. Check it and double-check it.’

  Petre Walter had been arrested in an action three weeks before. Nothing had been heard of him since.

  ‘Ignore it,’ Sol answered his mother. ‘There is nothing to be done.’ Then seeing that this had brought her to the verge of tears he added, ‘If anyone had noticed, they would have come for us before now. No one is arrested for not declaring their assets. How would they know we have any assets, unless we declare them first?’

  No one is arrested for anything, he thought. Or anyone is arrested for anything: having no papers, having the wrong papers, having the right papers, breaking curfew, not breaking curfew. The resolution of these confusions came only at night, in vans filled with security police and under the magnesium glare which bleached the streets and blinded the men, women and sleepy-headed children who shuffled out clutching their suitcases and sacks. The arc lights clarified everything, sweeping over the city and descending where they pleased. What happened under those lights, what was rumoured to happen at the station, what he had first seen happen by the banks of the river almost a year before: these things were true. His father's belief was misplaced that the rules existed to be obeyed, that obedience might keep them safe, that their safety was ensurable, for these things were lies. He understood Jakob's words better and better. They were simple and the situation was simple. Then, in the September of the second year since the Germans’ arrival, both became more complicated.

  Jakob was late. It must be almost eight now. Sol glanced about him every few seconds. The avenue of poplars before him led uphill to the park proper. To his left, the ground fell away down the slope of the hill. He felt his panic rise again; he could not stay here much longer. He had known what to believe and what not to believe. Now he did not.

  Jakob had appeared unexpectedly four days before, falling into step beside him as Sol walked slowly across the square at the bottom of Franzensgasse.

  ‘We need to talk,’ he said by way of greeting. Startled, Sol had opened his mouth to speak and been cut off. ‘Not here. Turn left over there.’

  It was a warm evening and the streets were crowded with men and women hurrying home. A small crowd bunched around a checkpoint at the junction. As they approached, Sol reached in his pocket for his papers and waved them over the heads of two old women. One of the security police motioned him through with his truncheon. He looked around for Jakob but his friend seemed to have passed through ahead of him. He was waiting a few metres further up.

  ‘Come on,’ Jakob said. ‘There's less than an hour before curfew.’

  ‘What's happening? Where are we going?’ asked Sol. They crossed Herrengasse and entered Armenischegasse, where the street narrowed and the passers-by were fewer and all Jews. ‘My papers aren't authorised here,’ he said.

  Jakob snorted. ‘Authorised for what? Come on. It's not far now.’

  They turned into an alley and continued between the backs of two terraces of tall, narrow houses. Jakob strode ahead as though the route were familiar to him. The alley grew narrower, then ended in front of a high wall. Before they reached it Jakob pushed open a gate and entered the backyard to one of the dwellings. A short flight of metal steps brought them to a door, which opened at his approach. Sol hurried after, the door closed behind him and he found himself in darkness.

  A match scraped and flared. An oil-lamp's glow touched the low ceiling then spread over the rough brick walls of the basement. A doorway at the far end disclosed a second room, but it was lightless. A face Sol knew from somewhere replaced the glass hood and looked up.

  ‘I have to go,’ Jakob said behind him.

  Sol turned. ‘Wait, what did you want to tell me? Jakob?’ But Jakob was looking at the man who stood over the oil-lamp. The basement was cold, despite the mild weather.

  ‘Have you . . . ?’

  The man nodded. ‘All done.’

  ‘Pessach will explain,’ said Jakob. ‘We will see each other again soon enough.’ With that he slipped out of the door and was gone. Bewildered, Sol turned back to the man.

  ‘You don't remember me?’ He was shorter than Sol, in his late forties perhaps. ‘I'm not sure we ever actually met.’ He smiled. ‘Pessach Ehrlich. The theatre. I used to run the theatre.’ He held out his hand.

  ‘The theatre,’ Sol echoed, uncomprehending. ‘What theatre?’ Ehrlich made no reply. But then Sol heard footsteps tread carefully down a flight of wooden stairs in the darkened room behind the man. A vague movement coalesced into a human figure and Sol's bafflement gave way to understanding. Ruth stood in the doorway.

  She was thinner than he remembered. Her hair was cut differently. A thick slash of red lipstick covered her mouth. His first impulse was to go to her but something in her bearing held him back.

  ‘Ruth . . . ‘He managed after a long pause. He searched her face. ‘Where have you been?’

  Ruth shook her head and addressed Ehrlich. ‘Jakob has gone?’

  Ehrlich nodded. Sol looked at them impatiently. ‘what are you doing here, Ruth? What is going on?’

  Ruth held Ehrlich in her gaze for a second or two longer and Sol wondered what lay between the two of them. There was a time he might have felt jealousy. Now everything was too clear and all too late. Too late for Ruth and him, and for Jakob, the clearest-sighted of them all. Jakob's truth would not be denied, but it was cold and hard. There was a time he could have wrapped himself in warm lies, shut everything out except Ruth and himself.

  ‘Your residence papers were signed by Popovici,’ said Ruth.

  ‘Yes,’ Sol admitted. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘An action is planned for next Saturday,’ she said. ‘The quotas have been raised.’

  The words fell on him like cold water. She paused. He waited patiently, for there was no hurry. He knew now why he was here.

  ‘Your names are on the list,’ she said. ‘Your mother, your father and you.’

  Now it was Monday morning. Jakob was not going to come for him. He had been arrested, or imprisoned, or shot. He was being frog-marched across the courtyard of the Palace of Culture. He was in its cellars with his hands tied behind his back and a question tickling his ear. They were going to beat the truth out of him. Jakob was lost. Sol's uncertainty ballooned and he tumbled within it. He could not stay here a second longer. He breathed crisp cold air and waited under a cloudless blue sky. He listened to the faint din of the timber market behind the old warehouse. The noise from the thoroughfare on its far side was fainter; a truck passing, handcarts rattling perhaps. He tried to think what he could do. Cling to what is real, he told himself. Only what is real. Jakob's truth was harder even than he had suspected. He would not think what Jakob's absence might mean so he wavered, in some intermediate place between the preserve of the non-existent Fischl and the world of the no-longer-existent Gert Scholem. Give up, he thought. Nothing more could be done. There was nowhere left to be. Was that not ‘real'? Was that not ‘true'?
/>   ‘You're not allowed in the park.’

  He jumped at the sound. Two small boys were peering at him over the back of the fence.

  ‘It's not the park,’ Sol managed in reply. ‘The park is up there. Now go away.’

  ’You go away,’ said the other boy. Then he raised his voice. ‘Go on. You go away!’

  Sol fixed them with a stare. ‘You are being very rude. When I tell your parents about this they will be very angry with you both.’ He started to walk towards the avenue of poplar trees.

  ‘That's it! Go away!’ shouted the first boy to his retreating back. Then encouraged by this success they both yelled as loud as they could, ‘Go away! Go away! Go away!’

  Sol heard an adult voice shout from inside one of the cottages. He forced himself to walk a few more paces. Then he broke into a run.

  ‘But there's nothing wrong with our papers!’ his father had insisted. His mother had stared into a private middle distance and said nothing. She had seemed perfectly self-possessed, as if this was of interest but had nothing to do with her.

  ‘Ruth has found somewhere we can go. It's just for two nights. Saturday and Sunday,’ he pleaded. ‘It's safe, a factory, empty over the weekends. It's not even owned by a Jew! How can you sit here and wait for them?’

  ‘How do you know this list even exists?’ asked his father. Then there was a flash of his old argumentative self. ‘And who is this “Ruth” you set such store by?’ he sneered.

  ‘Ruth's a wonderful girl,’ murmured his mother.

  ‘Listen to me,’ Sol started again.

  Ruth had told him what he must do, then made him repeat back to her the address of the factory. She had put her hand to his cheek and he had noticed she was wearing scent of some kind. He had forgotten perfume.

  ‘Be there as close to curfew as you dare,’ she said. ‘It's safer. The factory is empty over the weekend.’ There were no choices now. There was nothing to decide. And yet his father prevaricated all that night and most of the next until Sol shouted at him. But even under this provocation, the older man merely waved his hand, warding off his son's words. Through it all, his mother said nothing.

  Saturday came.

  Sol renewed his campaign, going over the same points, saying> the same words until they wore ruts in the sentences they formed and sank to meaninglessness within them. His parents had stopped listening. As the curfew approached, his frustration mounted until he began to berate his father for his obstinacy and stupidity. The older man shook his head wearily. His mother gave no sign of having heard at all.

  ‘You deserve no better!’ he cried out finally, then fell silent at his own words.

  ‘Enough Sol. We're tired of all this.’ It was his mother who spoke. ‘Now off you go.’

  She smiled at him but her face was slack and the childish expression seemed to come from one who could no longer see the person who stood before her. This could not be her son; an impostor had taken his place. The person he had once been was long gone. His father looked up at him from his chair. There was a new note in his voice.

  ‘Just go, son.’

  Sol turned from them in a baffled rage, pulled open the door and ran down the stairs.

  The children's voices faded. Go away! Go away! He forced himself to stop running before he reached the thoroughfare. It was crowded at that hour. He drifted along with the men and women until the turning to Masarykgasse. Something was going on outside his apartment building. A cart was stationed outside its entrance. He moved nearer.

  Here were the same stairs he had thundered down two nights ago. The outer door was wedged open and men were shouting to one another inside. His father's chair stood on the pavement. Beside it was the dresser in which his mother's best china had once been arranged. They had never eaten off it that he could remember. Now the dresser stood on its side, empty, waiting to be loaded. Packing crates were being carried out of the building. The china would be in one of them. Other articles of their furniture were distributed between this cart and two others further down the street, each with its placid horse waiting calmly in the traces.

  The same operation was being repeated up and down the street: men struggling out of narrow doorways carrying tables, beds, chairs, clocks, building little islands of furniture. Other men were dismantling these to load the carts. All the men wore their armbands. Easier than digging rubble out of river-beds, thought Sol. Some of his own possessions lay among the articles tumbled carelessly into the packing cases: an ugly glass paperweight, some coloured pencils, a children's ‘Book of Legends’. He reached down, picked out the paperweight and put it in his pocket. One of the workers coming out of the doorway stared at him in terror. Sol smiled. It was far too late to put anything back.

  A little further down the street a black-uniformed officer was talking to a smartly-dressed young woman outside a single-storey house that Sol had barely noticed before. So Jews lived there too, he thought to himself, wondering if he had known them. A large cart stood outside, fully loaded. Two men were preparing to board up the door. He felt the paperweight in his pocket bump against his leg. He walked with his head down. His limbs felt loose somehow. The important thing now was not to think.

  ‘Don't think,’ he told himself under his breath, and almost giggled. ‘Don't think.’ He was going to laugh; he could feel it. ‘Don't think and don't laugh,’ he muttered. And don't stop and don't run and don't go and don't stay and don't come back and – what else?

  ‘You! What did you say? Come here!’

  Don't hope. That was what Jakob had meant. His mother and father had understood. He had not, until now. He turned to face the German officer. His useless papers were in the same pocket as his useless paperweight. He had the sensation that he had let go the last handhold of a torturous ascent. He was falling backwards into space and it felt easeful. For a moment he luxuriated in his abandonment.

  ‘Sol! There you are at last!’ the girl exclaimed, turning around. ‘That's him?’ asked the officer dubiously. He was a short red-faced man. His chest strained at the buttons of his tunic. The girl was Ruth.

  Ruth nodded and reached to spin Sol about the way he had come. ‘Mumbling to himself's the least of his bad habits,’ she explained, smiling. ‘Can't you even remember an address?’ she chided Sol. ‘Come on! We're late enough as it is.’

  The sound of hammering began behind them as she walked him back down the street.

  ‘What are you doing here, with a German officer?’ he asked when they were clear. ‘What are we late for?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Ruth.

  Her face was powdered and her lips rouged, as before. She wore mascara that appeared not quite black and which did not suit her. Sol looked up at roofs and windows as they wove a path through the men emptying the houses. The overseers had lit their cigarettes. The action was all but over.

  When they were halfway up the street Ruth hissed to him under her breath to pay attention. He glanced at her. There was something on her jacket, something trickling down one lapel. Spittle, he realised, and was strangely embarrassed, wondering how to tell her.

  ‘Your papers are no good.’ She spoke without looking at him when they reached the main street. ‘If they're inspected, you'll be arrested. Your parents were taken on Saturday.’

  He could still hear the hammering, but it was faint now. He said, ‘Jakob never came.’ It was a long thin smear of silver.

  ‘Turn off here.’

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Never mind.’

  They walked slowly down an unmetalled road whose name Sol could not recall or had never known. They passed single-storey cottages with vegetable gardens in front of them. The sun rose higher but took none of the chill from the air. Ruth's lapel was clean. She must have noticed and wiped it, he concluded, and was relieved.

  ‘Where can I stay?’ he wondered aloud. Perhaps the factory where he had spent the last two nights. There would be room there. But people worked there during the week. Somewhere else.
<
br />   Ruth stopped. ‘Stay? Sol, if you stay you will be shot, do you not understand that after all that has happened?’ She paused, then spoke more calmly, almost to herself. ‘But how could you know?’

  He shook his head. ‘Someone . . . ‘It was time to mention the spittle on her jacket, although it was gone. Tell her anyway. ‘Someone spat on your jacket.’ Her face moved oddly. She was about to cry, he realised. ‘It's gone now,’ he added.

  ‘Not you, Sol. Not you too. Please!’ She stopped and turned to him, placing her hands on his shoulders.

  ‘My father wouldn't come,’ he said. ‘We argued. He burned my poetry. A long time ago. It was nonsense anyway.’

  ‘Listen to me Sol, after the last house there's a track leading down to the left. Follow it as far as it goes. There's a cowshed. Look inside. There should be two packages, I don't know. Clothes, some food. Take them both. Don't stay there.’

  The wheels of a passing cart had left ridges and grooves in the soft mud. To the west, the mountains showed sharply against the clear sky, their lower slopes shaded with pines, the peaks of the highest capped with snow. The tracks would meet at infinity, thought Sol.

  ‘Come with me,’ he said.

  She shook her head.

  ‘Who is the other package for?

  ‘It was for Jakob,’ answered Ruth. ‘Now go.’

  ***

  Sol found himself, again, in the climbing dream. Slopes of rough grassland rose before him and his task was to reach their crests, which he did, only to be faced with the next, identical slope. The inclines grew steeper as they repeated themselves; this part was very slow. Then the first trees broke through the turf and he moved uphill through chestnuts and oaks, then thick-barked pines. He reached the heights where only beeches and firs would live and at last not even they. The ground hardened underfoot, becoming stone. The air was thin and cold up here, and turbulent behind the windbreak of the ridge. Snow to come.