The Forest of Souls

by Carla Banks

  ‘I want you to stay,’ Eva said.

  Marek’s face was sad. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘But we have to leave. You’ll be safe here.’

  And the next day, Eva went to the train station with them where hundreds of soldiers milled on the platform waiting for the trains that were taking them away from their families, their friends and their homes. Papa kissed her on the forehead and said, ‘Look after your mother, Eva.’ His eyes were wet as he turned away to board the train. Marek looked tall and handsome in his uniform. He hugged her. ‘Remember,’ he said.

  ‘I will. Take this–’ She gave him a photograph, one that he had taken after they had arrived in the city.

  He looked at it, then tucked it away in his pocket.

  She waited until the train pulled away. She tried to see them among the crowds of men packed into the carriages, but they were gone. And then she had to walk back through the narrow streets to the tiny apartment that seemed somehow empty now that Papa and Marek were no longer there.

  In the apartment below, there was an old woman and her son who had been an officer in the Red Army, but who had lost his leg. He had an artificial one that made him walk with a lurch and the false leg hit the ground with a metallic thump. He spent his days on the landings or in the doorways, watching people as they went past. He used to call out to Eva when he saw her on the stairs. ‘Hello, pretty one.’

  ‘Petr Dyakin. He’s a troublemaker, that one,’ Zoya warned.

  His eyes used to follow Eva as she went out to school, as she ran her errands for Mama and Aunt Zoya, as she hung the wet washing out in the courtyard at the back of the building. She didn’t like the way he looked at her, but she used to return his greeting politely: ‘Comrade.’

  One evening shortly before Christmas, Eva came home later than usual. The winter was closing in, the glass had dropped and dropped and the streets were shiny with ice. She was late because she had found some wood in the road that must have fallen from a cart. Collecting such things was illegal, but everyone did it. They needed to keep warm. She looked round quickly, but the street was empty and there was no sign of a patrol. She picked up as much as she could to take back to the apartment for the stove. It was cold, and Mama’s cough was getting worse.

  PA She turned into the dark entrance of the apartment block and started up the stairs. The air felt dank, and the stairwell smelled of mould. There were no lights, and she hurried, keen to get to the apartment.

  The voice came out of the shadows on the second landing. ‘Hello, pretty one.’

  Eva jumped, and dropped one of the pieces of wood. She knelt down quickly to pick it up. ‘Comrade,’ she murmured.

  ‘Now then.’ She could hear the thump of his artificial leg as he moved towards her. ‘What’s all this, pretty one?’

  She stood up slowly. In the half-light, she could see the glint of his teeth through his moustache. He had a bottle in his hand and she could smell the waft of spirits on his breath.

  ‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘I must go now.’

  He ignored her, and leaned down to pick up the wood she had dropped. He was standing so she couldn’t get past him. ‘What’s all this?’ he said again. ‘Taking wood, pretty one? You know what happens to people who steal.’

  Eva knew. They arrested people for less, and those people disappeared, unless they had enough money to buy their way home again. ‘I bought it,’ she said, trying to tuck the rest under her coat.

  He grinned at her. ‘Black market? Don’t worry. I won’t tell.’ He tapped the side of his nose. ‘Have a drink.’ He held up the bottle he was holding. It was half-full, and she could see the picture of the dancing bear on the label. ‘With a friend,’ he said.

  ‘No. I must get home.’

  ‘We’re friends, aren’t we?’ he said. ‘I promised not to tell about this. I never tell on my friends.’ His face looked hot and his eyes were bright.

  ‘Yes,’ she said again. ‘But Mama…’

  ‘Mama.’ His voice held a jeering note now. He stepped towards her, still holding the bottle. He was pushing her back towards the wall. He held the bottle up to her mouth. ‘Drink!’ he said.

  ‘No.’ Eva turned her face and pushed the bottle away. He tried to bring it up to her mouth again, and she struggled, catching his arm with her elbow. He lurched back, and she heard the smash of breaking glass as the bottle fell on to the concrete floor. Vodka fumes filled the landing.

  Eva froze, her eyes meeting his. She could see the fury there, and she turned and ran up the stairs to the apartment. She lay awake all night, waiting for the knock on the door.

  The next day, Petr Dyakin wasn’t to be seen, but the day after, he was back, standing in his doorway. He smiled as usual, but his smile was cold and speculative. ‘Hello, pretty one,’ he said.

  Eva dropped her eyes and hurried past without answering.

  18

  Faith watched helplessly as the paramedics wrapped a blanket around Grandpapa and strapped him carefully on to the stretcher. ‘It’s okay, Marek,’ the older one said. ‘We’ll get you sorted.’ She felt useless. She hadn’t known what to do. When she’d found him she’d thought he was dead, then she’d felt the pulse in his wrist, faint but steady, and had run to the phone to summon help. She’d tried to warm him, she’d put a blanket round his shoulders, rubbed his hands, talking to him all the time–nonsense about the garden, about what they were going to do, but what she was really saying was: Don’t go. Not yet. Not like this.

  When the paramedics arrived, her first feeling was relief as she watched them put a drip in his arm, administer oxygen. They were in time. He was going to be all right.

  But he wasn’t. The treatment would only give him a few hours, a few days, a few weeks. No more than that. All they were going to do was to prolong his death.

  ‘We’ll see to him now, love,’ one of the men said. ‘We’ll take care of him.’

  ‘I’m coming with you.’ He wasn’t going to leave this house alone.

  They manoeuvred the stretcher down the steps and into the ambulance. The door slammed shut, and it pulled away down the drive. She wondered if he would ever come back here. The night was fading into the pale morning light as she followed in the car. The roads were almost empty, but once or twice they met traffic and the blue lights flashed and the wail of the siren echoed in the air.

  The hospital was close to the university. When they arrived, she held Grandpapa’s hand–cold and unresponsive–as the paramedics wheeled the stretcher through the hospital door. They took him and left Faith to answer the questions of the admissions clerk: Age? Eighty-six. Date of birth? September 1918. Grandpapa had never celebrated his birthday. Religion? None. She answered the litany of questions shifting from foot to foot with impatience. She wanted to be with him. She was scared he would slip away while she was here filling out forms, that he would die on his own.

  Next of kin? Oh Christ. Katya. She had to let Katya know.

  Once the forms were complete, she was left sitting in the waiting room of the Accident and Emergency department. Her eyes felt hot and dry, and the harsh light seemed to bounce off the walls and burn into her head. The plastic covers on the benches stuck to her. It was five o’clock in the morning, and only a few people were scattered here and there around the large waiting space. A TV–the screen too small to be seen from where Faith was sitting–crackled some kind of news at her.

  She heard footsteps and voices. A group of people went past, not looking at the benches where the last few casualties of the night waited. They may have been medical staff coming off duty, or relatives at the end of a night’s vigil. She didn’t know and she didn’t care. A heavy clunk made her jump. It was the vending machine dispensing a canned drink.

  ‘Miss Lange?’ Faith turned round. One of the nurses was signalling to her.

  ‘You can come and sit with your granddad now. We’ve made him comfortable.’ She led Faith through a door to a room full of curtained cubicles. Grandpapa was lying on a trolley. He w
as wearing some kind of hospital gown, faded, incongruously patterned with flowers. The tubes from the drip ran from his arm, and he was attached to a heart monitor which beeped with reassuring regularity.

  ‘What’s happening to him?’ she said to the nurse.

  ‘The doctor needs to see him.’ She hesitated. ‘We don’t know for sure yet, but it looks like he may have had a stroke. How old is he?’

  ‘Eighty-six.’

  She nodded and checked the drip. ‘The doctor will be in soon.’

  ‘Grandpapa?’ Faith said. ‘It’s all right. You’re going to be okay.’

  He lay still, his eyes half open, his jaw sagging.

  ‘Grandpapa?’ she said again. She couldn’t keep her voice steady. ‘Can he hear me?’

  ‘Of course he can.’ The nurse’s voice was kind. ‘Talking to him is the best thing you can do just now. Is there anyone we can contact?’

  Faith shook her head, then remembered. ‘I haven’t managed to contact my mother,’ she said. The nurse took the details and left her. Faith sat on the hard plastic chair, but that made the trolley too high for her to see him properly, so she stood up and took his hand. It felt limp and lifeless. ‘Grandpapa?’ she said. ‘It’s me. It’s Faith.’

  There was no response.

  She looked down at him, at the grey face and dull, half-open eyes, his body, under the blanket looking oddly diminished. He seemed out of place in this high-tech environment, frail and damaged beyond repair among the shiny machines and crisp white sheets. What had happened last night? Something had woken him in the small hours of the morning, something that had taken him to his desk, to wherever he had stowed away those papers, made him take them out and read them. What was it that had sent him there, and what had he seen? Was it something in the cuttings that had triggered the fatal moment of stress?

  ‘Miss Lange?’ She looked up. A young man in a white coat was standing behind her. He looked as tired as she felt. ‘Your grandfather, Mr Lange…he’s had an interference with the blood supply to his brain.’

  ‘A stroke?’

  He nodded. ‘It’s a bit early to say how extensive the damage will be. It looks as if he may have had some minor episodes in the past…Have you noticed any changes in him recently?’

  ‘He’s been a bit forgetful,’ she said.

  He nodded again, as if that was what he had expected, and said that they were going to admit Grandpapa as soon as a bed became available.

  ‘And…?’

  His eyes drifted away from hers. ‘The degree of recovery from an episode as severe as this is hard to assess,’ he said. ‘It’s a matter of time. His system is in shock. We’ll be able to get a better idea in a couple of days.’

  ‘But…aren’t there drugs or something–to stop the damage?’

  ‘We’ve given him what we can,’ he said. ‘Your grandfather’s very frail. We don’t want to subject him to too much stress. We want to observe him for a while. You found him, didn’t you?’

  …in the dark of the morning hours and the silent house. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did he fall?’

  She shook her head. ‘He was at his desk. He’d just…’ she demonstrated ‘…sort of slumped down in his chair.’

  He nodded, frowning slightly.

  ‘Is there something wrong?’

  He shook his head. ‘No, I just thought he might have fallen. There are some bruises on his face…He might have knocked himself against the desk. It doesn’t matter.’ His pager went and he smiled a weary apology at Faith. ‘There should be a bed available soon and we’ll take him up to the ward.’ He hurried away.

  Jake had breakfast in his room. He’d bought himself some fruit from one of the pavement kiosks, and some spiced meat from the supermarket the day before. One experience of the hotel breakfast had been enough. He watched CNN while he ate, then spread his research notes over the desk in his room and began to chart the progress he’d made.

  He’d got the background he needed on Sophia Yevanova. Now he wanted some kind of access to the destroyed city, the city of her youth. His mission for the day was one of the museums, Minsk’s renowned Museum of the Great Patriotic War. It was the place, according to Adam, where he might best see the city that Sophia Yevanova had known, the city as she had last seen it before she fled her native country.

  Minsk seemed to be going out of its way to welcome him with sunlight and blue skies. He strolled through the centre, watching the street cleaners with their besoms, and the pavement stalls setting up for the day. The museum was housed in a concrete block opposite the Palace of the Republic in Oktiabrskaya–October Square. There was huge neon lettering protruding above its roof–something about the heroic deeds of the people living throughout the centuries, as far as Jake’s imperfect translation could tell. The entrance was a small door to one side of the building. It didn’t look welcoming. It opened on to a large vestibule with stairs at each side leading to a gallery, and a stairway down to his left. He hesitated, expecting an official in a large hat to arrive and eject him.

  There was a small booth to one side of the vestibule which he hadn’t noticed at first. He approached it and crouched slightly at a low glass window where a woman peered back at him. He held up one finger, and she said something that he couldn’t catch. He offered her a note; she took it and shoved some pieces of paper at him along with a ticket. The paper proved to be low-denomination notes–worth less than a penny–but he had his admission.

  Adam had told him to go to the downstairs galleries. ‘If you want to understand Minsk, if you want to understand modern Belarus, then that is what you must see,’ he had said. These were the rooms devoted to the occupation of Minsk–he knew better than to expect any disclosures about Stalinist atrocities here, but he would get enough material about the fascist occupation, probably more than he wanted.

  He went down the stairs and found himself in an ante-room, walking between glass-topped display cabinets, and framed maps and treaties on the wall. The light was dim and the colours were dark and faded. An unsmiling woman took his ticket. He pushed through the dusty curtain, and stepped into the past.

  Old photographs, rummaged from the backs of drawers, artefacts, meaningless in themselves–identity cards, buttons, fragments of clothing. The display cases were labelled, but Jake barely needed to read them to understand the contents: here are the remains of our people. There were photographs of weary soldiers and starving civilians, the ruined city–and the dead.

  And then the occupation: Jake looked at the pictures–soldiers in uniform with Nazi insignia, in cars, on motorbikes, on foot. A placard on a fence: Der Ruffe muß fterben damit wir leben. ‘The Russian must die that we might live.’ A woman wept over her dead son; two children, toddlers, crouched in the dirt. The face of one bore an expression of blank bewilderment at what its world had become, the other cried with the open-mouthed despair of a child who couldn’t understand why there was no one to comfort her. Soldiers lounged against a fence, workers taking a well-earned rest in front of a farmhouse where an old couple had been hanged from the roof beam. The woman’s feet dangled below her heavy skirts, neatly stockinged and shod.

  And there were the pictures of children’s bodies, laid out in rows–neat and meticulous, silent and dead. The order of insanity, for the fascists now were here.

  He felt a reluctance to move on. He had seen enough, and he knew there was more. The drapes that curtained off the rooms carried the dry smell of age. The photographs were faded, with none of the bright polish of restoration that could allow him to distance himself. He stepped through into the next gallery.

  And here, the rubble of old Minsk surrounded him, rubble through which people picked their way in rags. Men marched in uniform battalions, their officers smart and glittering with the gilt of victory. All around him, the bodies of the dead hung from lampposts, from trees, from high gates, anything that would serve as a makeshift gallows.

  A group of uniformed men marched three prisoners a young boy, a gir
l and a man–through the streets. There was a placard round the girl’s neck, crudely lettered in Cyrillic and in Latin script: Wir sind Partisanen und haben auf deutsche Soldaten geschossen. . ‘We are partisans and we have shot at German soldiers.’

  Men in uniform crowded round, interested spectators. Now they were at a building that looked faintly industrial. An officer in a peaked cap was placing a noose round the neck of the girl, his face calm and intent. The soldiers watched.

  And now she was hanging, her face distorted in agony, and now she was dead, and the officer was placing a noose on the boy whose mouth stretched in a mute plea and whose wrists strained against the bindings, and now the man who had watched the death of the others was noosed. His face was a mask of terror. And then they were dead, left hanging from the gateway.

  Jake stood for a while, trying to decipher the words on the card by this cabinet. The ‘episode’ had occurred on 26 October 1941, just three months after the fascist invasion.

  A sentry box stood empty at the far side of the room, except for a pair of soldier’s boots that symbolized the guard who would have stood there. To the right, there was a wire fence hung with photographs of people, like trophy heads–men, women, children. Behind the fence was a gallows. Beneath the gallows was a box of earth that contained fragments of bone.

  The gallows was…he took out his dictionary as he tried to transliterate and translate. It was the original taken from a camp–a death camp—that had been established at a village on the outskirts of Minsk. He didn’t know there had been one so far east. He read the inscription carefully. He wanted to know about the camp, its name and when it was established. The photographs hanging on the wire fence were just a few, a very few, of the people who had died there. He looked into their faces trying to commit them to memory.

  The camp had been established in May 1942 and torched by the fleeing Nazis in June 1944, as the Red Army advanced. It had been the third largest death camp in Europe, and of its victims, less than twenty had survived. But its name?