The Forest of Souls

by Carla Banks

  ‘What’s to tell? He was one of these city types, a high flier. He had a heart attack–out of the blue, my mother said, but it turned out after that he’d been having chest pains for months. Only wimps get ill, so he ignored them.’

  Jake had been in Tanzania. The Rwanda story had just broken, and he’d known that if he could cross the border and get some eye-witness reports back to the UK, he would make his name as a political writer. His mother’s message had reached him just before he was due to make the crossing, after which he would be incommunicado. He’d made the decision and gone.

  He’d spent the next few weeks seeing things he hoped never to see again. He could still remember it–the country that was so beautiful; the obscenity of the killings; the smell of death that pervaded the air around them; the danger, and the long nights when no one could sleep. They used to sit up until dawn with cigarettes and beer, chatting, joking, passing the time, trying to shut out the reality of what had happened around them, of what they had witnessed. And all the time, at the back of his mind, he’d had the image of his father, dying.

  ‘But he was okay?’

  ‘He was fine. He still is, except it made him decide that his life had been wasted. He got religion, and he’s spent the last ten years trying to decide which god to invest in. He’s looking for the best return on his belief.’

  She laughed. ‘Oh, come on.’

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘It’s true. Once an investment banker, always an investment banker.’

  ‘I can’t see my grandfather getting religious.’ Her glass was almost empty. He topped it up. ‘How was your trip?’

  She’d neatly sidestepped the topic of her grandfather again. He didn’t mind; there was plenty of time. He leaned against the back of the settee–it was old, but it was deep and comfortable–and thought about what to say. He wanted to keep away from Minsk for the moment, he had it marked down as dangerous territory, so he told her about the journey instead. He talked about the flight, about the flight attendants and the pilot’s accent. ‘He kept coming on the public address system. He was speaking English, and he was probably telling us something crucial, but I couldn’t understand a word.’ He told her about the slightly unnerving moment on the way back when they had to make an unscheduled landing in Posnam because the fuel they had taken on in Minsk was too sub-standard for the flight.

  ‘What about Belarus? How much of it did you see?’

  ‘I stayed in Minsk. The trains seem to be good, but it’s a big country–I didn’t have time to travel any further.’

  ‘You could have flown.’

  He shook his head. ‘Not unless I had to. Belavia is one of the worst airlines in the world. It’s a real Sellotape and glue-stick operation. Rumour is that they censor out all the news about the crashes. I was terrified I might have to take an internal flight. Intrepid journalist, see?’ The room was starting to warm up. ‘You don’t want to hear my travel stories.’

  ‘I do. I like hearing about places I’ve never been.’ But it was more than that. She was asking questions. Since they last talked, she’d developed an interest in Belarus.

  He watched her reactions as he told her about the hotel, about the army of formidable women who sat in cubbyholes on each floor, smoking and talking, and presumably cleaning the guests’ rooms once in a while. ‘Every time I opened my door, this head came popping out to check up on me. I didn’t know if I ought to start getting paranoid and check my room for microphones, or if they were just keen on their work. Whatever that was.’

  ‘Tell me what the people were like,’ she said.

  ‘They were okay,’ he said. ‘They didn’t smile much, but they were friendly. Except for the police. It’s a beautiful country in a strange way. It’s very flat–all marshes and forests.’

  ‘My grandfather grew up in the forest, a pine and birch forest. He said that the birch trees were like candles in the shadows.’

  ‘That was what the Belarusian forest was like,’ he said. Candles in the shadows and death pits in the deep glades.

  She was quiet for a minute as she thought about this, then she said, ‘I think he must have come from the Belarusian side of the border. I’ve been looking up the treaty and checking the maps. They gave the east part of Belarus to Poland around the time he was born, and then the Soviets took it back. Troubled times.’ She looked at the wine in her glass, distracted again.

  ‘What is it?’ he said.

  ‘Nothing.’ The light caught on the facets of the crystal, reflecting on to her face.

  ‘If you want to talk about it, I’m not going anywhere,’ he said.

  ‘I want to show you something.’ She stood up and went across to the table. She came back with a small piece of paper in her hand. ‘Look,’ she said, holding it out to him.

  It was a photograph, another black-and-white one, the same dimensions as the one of Lange in his uniform. He looked at it. It was a picture of Faith, a younger Faith wearing…He realized it couldn’t be her. The photograph was far too old.

  ‘That’s Eva,’ she said. ‘My grandfather’s sister.’

  ‘She looks like you. She looks a lot like you.’

  She took the photograph back and studied it again, nodding slowly. ‘He never talks about the war, I told you that. But after that day you came, he–it seemed to start something. He had a load of cuttings about the Nuremburg trials, about the people who got away, the ones who escaped to the west and got rich and lived happy lives. He was reading them the night he had the stroke.’

  He didn’t know what to say. This was what he’d been waiting to hear, but now the moment had come, he didn’t want to pursue it. Instead, he steered the conversation away. ‘Did you know he was ill?’

  ‘I knew there was something wrong.’ She told him about a phone call she’d had, her grandfather’s confusion and his apparent but unspecified fear.

  ‘And he just collapsed?’

  ‘I don’t know. I found him when I came down in the night. He was just sitting at his desk…’ She frowned. ‘The doctor thought he might have fallen–there was a bruise on his face, but he was just, you know, slumped in his chair…’ She stopped abruptly.

  Jake touched her hand. ‘But he’s improving?’

  ‘He won’t settle. Something’s worrying him, but he can’t tell me what it is. They say if he won’t rest, he won’t recover.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

  ‘It’s so strange,’ she said. ‘There’s nothing left. All his things–they’ve gone. I think he must have sold them, or given them away. He’s got no money, nothing.’

  Jake reached out and brushed the hair back from her face so he could see it more clearly. ‘Faith?’ he said.

  She turned towards him, and he ran his fingers down her cheek, tracing the outline of her mouth, and the line of her throat.

  When he kissed her, her mouth was soft. Her lips parted under his and he pulled her closer, slipping his hands under the soft wool of her jersey. Her skin was smooth and felt warm under his fingers. He could taste the wine on her tongue, and smell the fragrance of her hair. He stopped thinking about why he was there. He moved back on the settee, easing her on top of him, letting his hands find the inside of her arms, the smoothness of her back, the soft hairs at the nape of her neck. He could feel her relaxing into him with each touch, and time drifted away.

  The ringing of a phone jerked him back to the present. She reached for it, pulling herself away from him, her sudden urgency making her fingers clumsy. She checked the number, and the alarm faded from her face. ‘I thought it might be the hospital,’ she said, putting it down without answering it. She looked at him, then her eyes dropped and she reached for her jersey that had fallen on to the floor, smoothing it out slowly. ‘Maybe this isn’t such a good idea,’ she said.

  The break had given him time to think as well. He’d been stupid, he’d let himself get carried away. The moment had taken them both and, if the phone hadn’t rung, he knew where the evening would have ended. He was h
ere as part of his investigation into her grandfather, and if what he suspected were true, he was going to expose Lange. He was, irretrievably, the enemy. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t be. It’s me. I’m just not…Things are in chaos right now.’

  ‘I know,’ he said. He smiled at her. ‘I can still be sorry, right?’

  ‘Me too.’ She smiled back at him as she slipped the jersey over her head and pulled the arms straight.

  He spoke quickly before caution could stop him. ‘There’s something I have to tell you.’ In his mind, he could see the face of the girl choking to death on the end of the rope, watched by the curious eyes of the soldiers. It made it easier to go on. ‘I found something out when I was in Minsk. About your grandfather. It might have something to do with what’s upsetting him now, but I don’t think it’s what you want to hear.’

  She was suddenly still. ‘Go on.’

  ‘You remember that photo I gave you, the one I found in my notebook?’

  She nodded, but didn’t say anything. He found it hard to meet her gaze.

  ‘He told me it was taken in Minsk. I got a copy of it and took it with me. I wanted to see if I could track it down.’

  She didn’t say anything. Her face was impossible to read.

  ‘It was taken outside the old NKVD building. And the uniform he’s wearing–it’s their uniform. Faith, your grandfather was a member of the NKVD.’

  She rested her forehead on her hand as she absorbed what he’d told her.

  ‘The NKVD–they helped to carry out one of the worst massacres of the last century–and one of the places they did it was close to Minsk, in the years up to the Nazi invasion. That was one of the things I went to research, that massacre. I didn’t expect to find your grandfather there. I had no idea. But he was. Thousands upon thousands of innocent people were shot and some of them were buried alive. I’ve seen the memorials. I’ve seen the death pits.’

  ‘And he was involved? You know that he was involved?’

  He shook his head. ‘I don’t know anything yet.’

  ‘Then maybe you should wait until you do.’

  He sighed. In every way but one, she was right. Part of him was cursing the way he’d put her on her guard, but he’d made the choice deliberately. ‘I wanted to warn you what might be coming.’

  Her hands tugged nervously at the sleeves of her sweater, pulling them down over her wrists. ‘Is this why you interviewed him in the first place? Is this why you came here tonight?’

  ‘I interviewed him for the reason I said. I was doing some articles on refugees. But I had to research his background, and that’s when I began to wonder. It was obvious he was hiding something, and then I picked up on the Minsk connection. So that’s why I wanted to see him again. Tonight, I wanted to see you.’

  She looked sceptical, but she didn’t comment. She was holding the photograph of Eva, and when she spoke, she kept her eyes fixed on it. ‘That photograph–I think it must have been taken around the same time as this one. They look as though they come from the same set.’ She looked at him to make sure he was following what she was saying, and he remembered that she was an expert in interpreting old documents. ‘Photographs were a luxury–there must have been a reason for taking them. They wouldn’t have had money for casual snaps. It was 1941–the invasion was imminent. He would have been about to leave them. It’s a picture taken for his family. You’ve seen it. He was proud of it. He wasn’t involved in anything he was ashamed of.’

  This was more or less what Adam had implied when he had accused Jake of interpreting what he was seeing with 21st-century hindsight. Jake was impressed by her reasoning. It was possible that Lange had been a young and naïve recruit to the security police–but how long would that naivety have lasted, under the onslaught of Barbarossa and all that came afterwards? Jake thought about Lange’s reticence, his hidden past, the place he had been and the time he had been there. Lange acted like a guilty man, and Jake knew what guilt there was to feel.

  It wasn’t only the Stalinist massacres. He had listened to Adam’s stories of the men, the officers of the law, who had saved themselves by turning on their own people once the Nazis had overrun the country. And Lange was tormented by some kind of remorse. I should know. I did know. It is wrong. ‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘I just know that your grandfather lied about his past and he lied about the war. He’s trying to hide something.’

  ‘But not that. He brought that picture out of there with him, remember.’

  He could feel her breath on his face. He would just have to move his hand an inch to touch her, but it might as well have been a mile.

  ‘What are you going to do? Are you going to write about him?’ She looked tired and defeated.

  ‘I’m waiting for more information.’

  ‘And then you’ll write about him?’

  He nodded. ‘Yes. I will.’

  She sat staring at the light glinting off the facets of her glass. ‘I think you’d better go,’ she said.

  He stood up. ‘I’m sorry.’ He wasn’t sorry for having told her, he was sorry that the story was there to tell. He picked up his coat which he’d left round the back of a chair. He shook it out, and the movement in the air blew a sheet of paper on to the floor. He picked it up and glanced at it.

  Ma_y _ro__ene__.

  Ma_y, Maay, Maby, Macy, Mady.

  He felt the electric shock of recognition. ‘What’s this?’

  She took the paper off him and looked at it. ‘It’s something the police found in Helen’s notes,’ she said. Her voice was weary. ‘I was trying to fill in the gaps. No one knows what it is.’

  He knew. The gaps had filled themselves in as soon as he saw it.

  Ma_y _ro__ene__.

  Maly Trostenets.

  The death camp outside Minsk.

  Faith sat in the house, turning the photograph round and round in her hands. Jake had gone. The next time they met, if they ever saw each other again, they would be polite and distant as if tonight had never happened. She could still feel the warmth of his mouth on hers, the pressure of his arms, and she knew–and felt angry with herself for knowing–that she had wanted him to stay, that if he’d kissed her again…She had wanted him to stay. They shouldn’t have talked, they should just…it was a time for a different kind of communication.

  Her head was aching. She switched off the gas fire, not trusting it after what Jake had said. She looked at Eva’s photograph again, a girl with a delicate beauty, on the brink of adulthood. She looks like you…His face had been warm when he’d said that.

  She had to forget Jake Denbigh. She’d found other things with this photo, a wallet and a letter. She’d put them aside because she was afraid of what she might find. She unfolded the letter and looked at it. She didn’t know what she expected, but the letter surprised her. It was dated 1965.

  Dear Marek Lange

  We cannot consent to what you propose. When our daughter came back to us, it was on the clear condition that she return to the Church and the ways of the Church, and that she raise the child in the Catholic faith.

  Now our daughter is dead, we fully intend to carry out the obligations she undertook. We do not think you are a suitable person to do this. We have sent the child to the Sisters of Mercy. They will care for it in their children’s home in Cork.

  We pray for the soul of our daughter every day, and pray for you in the hope that one day your soul, too, will be brought to God.

  Patrick O’Halloran

  Her great grandfather. He believed terrible things about his son-in-law. It was as if even addressing him was an occasion of contamination. Dear Marek Lange…The letter was about Katya, their granddaughter, but it sounded so cold. Maybe they thought that she was tainted by the identity of her father. The child. Faith shivered. Whatever bargain Deirdre O’Halloran had made with her parents to be allowed back into the fold, Grandpapa had not been prepared to fulfil it. He had brought Katya back to England–and honoured his dead wife’s wishe
s by sending her to the convent she came to love. No matter what rebellions she may have had when she was younger, Katya’s Catholicism was an abiding part of her life.

  Faith put the letter on one side. Whatever that story was, there was no one left to tell it. She opened the wallet again. She was looking for something, anything, that would refute the charges that her mother and now Jake had made. There was something else in one of the pockets, a small card. She pulled it out and looked at it. It was a membership card that told her in 1959 Grandpapa had been a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain.

  He hadn’t repudiated Stalin. For the first time, she found herself wondering if Jake, if Katya, could be right.

  The Meeting

  This is the story of a betrayal.

  The winter streets were dark and dangerous. Eva wrapped her coat more closely round her, and hurried along the road, keeping her face lowered, her walk purposeful. Her eyes moved quickly from side to side, checking the people around her. If a patrol stopped her, she was going to say that she was on her way to work, on her way to the hospital.

  The streets weren’t empty yet. Marek had chosen a good time to meet. It was the time when people were moving between work and home, the time when people were finishing what they had to do for the day before they barred their doors against the winter cold, and against the worse things that the occupation had brought into the city.

  She was near the old part of the town now. The road forked, and she turned down the smaller street. It was quieter here. There were no passers-by, nobody hurrying home to get out of the cold, to get away from the patrols and the malign eyes that watched from the shadows.

  Despite herself, her feet began to move faster, past the buildings with their dark windows, past the wavering light of the street lamps, light and then dark, light and then dark. She thought she heard something. She hesitated, and looked back, but the street was deserted. Threads of mist drifted in the yellow light and vanished in the waiting shadows.