Behind the eyes we meet

by Mélissa Verreault

  Pick up the fruit, wipe it on your trousers, and bring it to your mouth. Tell yourself you saved it from becoming rotting mush underfoot. People devoured human remains in this same casual manner, flashing a smile to indicate a service rendered. They were all going to die from something or other; and they all had to eat. A circle of life fit for vampires, driven to savagery by hunger. No, Sergio wouldn’t talk about any of it.

  He wouldn’t talk about

  the deathly silence surrounding these forbidden meals

  the astonishing approval of the Russians, who only half-heartedly opposed the macabre picnics

  the disturbing energy of those who feasted directly on the open viscera of prisoners barely departed

  the curiosity that haunted all the men in the lager—even the most repulsed, the most down-to-earth, the most devoutly Catholic

  the shame that accompanied each thought marked by an unhealthy interest

  the dried blood that stained the collars of those who weren’t content to simply imagine, blood that was not their own, blood of a former brother in arms now deceased and digested

  the reddish smudges that revealed your true nature, what you were really made of.

  What you had inside wasn’t courage but the savoury remains of your old pal. Your innards became mixed up with those of people you once respected. Oh, but you still had respect. You just expressed it differently. You wiped the corners of your mouth with your shirttail after every meal.

  Sergio didn’t judge the weak and desperate men. Nor did he try to understand their actions. Deep down, he knew. This depravity wasn’t surprising; it had always fuelled human nature. But he wouldn’t talk about that, either. If he had children one day, he would never tell them how monstrous humans can be, only of how they disappoint. Sergio often thought about how many of the cannibals were likely fathers. Would they have been willing to eat the flesh of their offspring just as they devoured men they had stood alongside, even liked?

  He thought back to the stories his mother used to tell him when he was little, stories of ogres and boogeymen who gobbled up naughty children. He began to wonder how much was pure fiction. What he held true as a child was reduced to crumbs by the obscene realities war had revealed.

  Complexion, the natural colour of human skin. Caucasians have rosy beige, almost peach undertones. The fairer shades are closer to ivory, while those with a sanguine temperament are often darker-skinned, with red and purplish colouring. But Sergio would never again associate human flesh with these hues.

  Life would now take on the scarlet of an organ being dislodged and torn apart, with a sharp canine seemingly designed for that very purpose.

  Counting the Ghosts

  one by one, the prisoners fell sick from malnutrition. Episodes of cannibalism no doubt hastened the spread of bacteria, which the men unknowingly ingested along with their lifeless companions. The epidemic wreaked havoc on the camp; within six months the thousand Italian prisoners numbered only four hundred and fifty skeletal zombies who wouldn’t last long themselves.

  Disease preyed on the weakest first, then anyone thrown in its path. It attacked with lightening speed, showing no mercy. Dizenteriya, as the Russians called it, started with a violent fever and unbearable diarrhea; it finished off the men after nearly two weeks of intolerable suffering. The barracks themselves became unbearable, transformed into death traps with scarcely any standards of hygiene. Though the Russians had designated a hangar for the ill, this did little to halt the scourge.

  Many of those infected refused to own up to their symptoms, not wanting to end up in the “dead man’s shed.” They held onto vague hopes for recovery and knew perfectly well that once moved to the sick hangar their health and odds of survival would only deteriorate faster still.

  The truth was that even by staying in a bunkhouse where most of the men were uninfected, they wouldn’t make it out alive.

  Their immune systems had crumbled after months in detention; they would have had trouble fighting off a common cold. By remaining among the healthy, they only made death by wretched diarrhea a certainty for all.

  One morning Fausto woke up with an awful pain in his stomach. Terrified, he went to see Sergio.

  “I think I’ve caught the bloody thing. I’m a dead man, Sergio.”

  “Don’t say that,” his friend whispered. “Maybe it’s just indigestion. Who knows what they put in that damned green soup. It’ll pass.”

  “I doubt it. I’ll have to go to the hangar, or I’ll contaminate you all.”

  “If you go, you’ll die twice as fast.”

  “Better that way.”

  “If it’s suicide you’re after, find another way to do it.”

  “I don’t want to die. I want to see Cecilia again. I want to go back to school and become a doctor. I want this war to end. I want to go home.”

  “And that’s just what will happen. I promise.”

  Sergio knew he was lying, though normally he was incapable of even the slightest fabrication. But what else could he tell his friend? Often the most reassuring words are little white lies padded with good intentions. Sweet words, comforting words, familiar words; soothing fictions to ease an inevitable truth. Fausto would never see his family again, and Sergio felt awful for leading him to believe otherwise—all in the name of friendship.

  By some miracle, Sergio managed to evade the bacteria that decimated the camp. He remained in relative good health; he was among those doing the burying, not being buried. Each day began with digging a mass grave for his less fortunate companions.

  A man would pass through the barracks at daybreak, taking stock of how many men had perished during the night. Counting the ghosts, as Sergio called it. “How many dead?” Usually one or two. At this rate, he thought, they’ll soon be asking “How many survivors?” It would be faster.

  The man in charge of counting the ghosts was himself a prisoner, a long-time detainee who had been assigned a few thankless tasks dressed up as privileges. The Russians supervised the camp, but the prisoners kept it running. Lager veterans were rewarded with positions in the kitchens or the infirmary. Though they had no say in the matter, the inmates were labourers and lived by the same principles that most employees do: chain of command, promotions, seniority. Benefits, vacation, or wages, however, were nonexistent and conditions for dismissal were drastic: no notice was given and you were politely eliminated once your presence was no longer required.

  Few companies could have survived on such a model, but the economy of war had little use for the usual administrative systems. All risks were permitted, even the prospect of decimating the workforce. Still, at some point the Russians realized that they had taken their anti-capitalist logic one step too far. Mismanagement had reduced the workforce by three-quarters. The dream of a Bolshevik nation where all enemies of communism worked in forced labour camps was slowly collapsing.

  Four days after his melancholy discussion with Sergio, Fausto disappeared. It was a genuine disappearance, not a euphemism for an atrocious death. He was nowhere to be found.

  He was missing at the morning headcount and nobody could say whether he was dead or alive. The Russians didn’t make a fuss over his strange vanishing act; they simply added his name to the “deceased” column without further inquiry. He couldn’t have gotten very far.

  Fausto’s mysterious disappearance comforted Sergio as much as it troubled him. He believed Fausto had used his remaining freedom to do what he wished with the little life left in him. In this way, Sergio made peace with his own free will. For the first time in a long while, he realized that he still possessed some degree of independence. Suddenly, Sergio felt immune to his enemies’ attempts at total subjugation.

  Fausto had found a way to break free from captivity, signalling to those he left behind that something else was still possible.

  Weeks went by without any mention of Fausto.
Though he wasn’t concerned for his fate, Sergio thought of his friend constantly. He was certain that whatever had become of him, things couldn’t have gotten any worse.

  Lend-Lease I

  summer 1943. The Italian troops who had managed to break through the pocket of resistance along the Don River and flee on foot the previous winter had just returned home. Meanwhile, the Russians continued to face down the Germans, securing an overwhelming victory at the Battle of Kursk. It was thanks to the Americans that the Red Army soldiers had found the energy for combat: the USSR profited greatly from the Lend-Lease program enacted in 1941 under Roosevelt. The policy allowed the United States to supply war matériel to Allied nations without involving themselves directly in the conflict. Boats delivered supplies and equipment via the Kola Peninsula, the Bering Strait, and the Persian Corridor.

  It was cause for celebration each time a military convoy docked. A soldier’s Christmas. Hundreds of containers were unloaded. They contained explosives, machine guns, petroleum products, cotton, leather, tires, boots, and metals, not to mention Jeeps, motorcycles, locomotives, airplanes, tanks, and—above all else—millions of tons of food.

  Before receiving food from America, the Russians had eaten as poorly as their prisoners. They’d had their fair share of green soup and black bread and now rejoiced in the eggs and powdered milk provided by their generous sponsors.

  Or rather, their generous lenders-leasers. The Russians had accepted the contributions as gifts, pretending they didn’t understand English. But the help was loaned, not given. There would be no tax receipts for big-hearted Americans at the end of the fiscal year. They expected something from the Russians in return, but what that was was not yet clear. It would become clear, though, by the end of this war and the beginning of the next. That grim, jaded, hostile, unfeeling, tense war. That cold war.

  But for the moment, at least, they could finally eat.

  The Russians also owed their nourishment to the forced labourers in the lager. Once spring arrived, the men were sent to work the dry Mordovian land and eke out a few withered vegetables. But first they had to clear the forest surrounding the encampments, felling trees as they felled men. Without scruple, without restraint, they tore away the useless growth and replaced it with something that would bear fruit. Sergio could feel his chest tighten each time his makeshift axe slashed through the bark of a conifer. He was ill suited to this life of constant blows, thrashings, and bruises.

  The labourers got to work the moment the sun rose, equipped with their rudimentary tools. They stepped over corpses rotting in mass graves and cleared a path to the edge of the wood, a boundary that was pushed back each day owing to their constant efforts. They should have worn gloves to protect against the icy wind and prevent wood shards from piercing their calloused skin. Rubber boots, too, to keep their feet dry as they tramped through the mud. But that was out of the question. So the prisoners went about their chores with splinters in their hands and water in their boots.

  One morning they had just arrived at the clearing site when a Pole cried, “Tutaj! Znalazłem coś. Chodźcie zobaczyć. To chyba jakieś zwłoki.”36 He had found human remains. What had once been a slender, solid figure now resembled a discarded puppet with no hand to guide it. The Mordovian winter had slowed the decomposition, and the body remained virtually intact. The face, however, had been pecked over by some rapacious bird, leaving it unrecognizable. Sergio could nevertheless identify the man hiding behind the morbid costume thanks to the tattoo visible on his left wrist: C-E-C-I-L-I-A.

  I don’t want to die. I want to see Cecilia again. I want to go back to school and become a doctor. I want this war to end. I want to go home.

  Fausto’s words echoed in Sergio’s mind; he could almost hear his friend’s voice breaking. So this is where he had come to die. Among the insatiable birds of prey and the crackling branches.

  Sergio let out a loud, heavy sob. A few of the men turned to look in his direction. He pretended to gag and kept the identity of the body from the curious Russians, who were looking on with amusement. They didn’t really care who had been stupid enough to believe he could escape his fate.

  Five hundred metres.

  That was more or less the distance separating the bunkhouse where Fausto had been held and the place where he had collapsed, exhausted.

  His freedom had lasted a mere five hundred metres.

  One thousand five hundred steps

  borne by the uncertain but plausible dream of a new start.

  Fausto’s fantasies of warmth and a long life had died with him.

  That day, Sergio broke up the hardened earth with more vigour than usual. As if his own freedom depended on it. He vowed the section of land he was working for the Russians would be more beautiful than the rest. When the soil thawed through, the men planted tiny seeds that in a few months’ time would produce potatoes, beans, carrots, and millet—the only crops that would grow in such unfavourable conditions.

  It was not a plentiful harvest, but it was enough to fortify the soldiers and prisoners. Strangely enough, a small patch of earth measuring about five metres by five yielded more than the rest of the garden. And the more the plants were pulled up to feed the men, the more they seemed to redouble their efforts and bear a greater crop.

  The patch where Fausto had been left to decompose.

  * * *

  36.I’ve found something! Come see. I think it’s a body.

  Lend-Lease II

  the winter had decimated the lagers, and the Soviets were alarmed to note how their labour supply had dwindled. With the arrival of spring, the American foodstuffs, and the harvest from the pitiful garden, they were prepared to offer an almost reasonable diet, hoping to fatten up the prisoners and save those they could.

  Once the American food arrived at the camp where Sergio was being held, eating habits changed almost overnight. Although meals weren’t necessarily more flavourful, they were more frequent and the portions were generous. The Russians went so far as to wake the prisoners at night in order to feed them. They were stuffed with powdered food which, mixed with boiling water, became ersatz meat, grains, or dairy products. At first, the captives were skeptical of the change in diet. But soon they gladly downed the chalky, over-salted meals. They suspected the Russians were receiving aid, since the food had no hint of a communist aftertaste.

  One evening, a friend of Sergio’s came across a torn packet of soup bearing the words Made in USA Best before 03-14-1944. He shared the discovery with the others. March 14, 1944. They all silently prayed to make it to that date, too, which seemed terribly far off.

  Many would go on to believe, even long after war’s end, that Americans lived off those dehydrated minute meals. So this was how the American dream tasted? Of smoke and mirrors.

  From inside the camp, eyes wide with incredulity, the prisoners were at a loss to explain the Russians’ new-found generosity. They couldn’t understand why their captors were suddenly so concerned with their health and waist measurements. Lend-lease. The food was a loan, not a gift, with hefty expectations attached. Compliance, hard work, obedience, unflagging effort. The Soviets wanted them to hit a respectable weight, though they wouldn’t earn any more respect for it.

  After a month of opulence, the prisoners were weighed. Everyone was handed a card on which their results were recorded. Sergio felt as if he was headed into the boxing ring already knowing he would lose the fight.

  Forty-five kilos.

  Sergio had never been a large man, but it was the first time he’d seen those numbers on a scale he happened to be standing on. He weighed as much as a twelve-year-old. The officials marked his card and told him to go stand with the other able-bodied men. Clearly it didn’t take much to be considered healthy.

  After the physically fit were separated from the infirm, who would most likely be shot dead, the Russians formed new groups by country of origin
. There were about four hundred Italians in total, and they were moved to a nearby camp housing only Italian nationals. Sergio was afraid they would be even worse off there, but it turned out he needn’t have worried.

  Prisoners in Lager 58 were treated with more dignity. They were adequately fed, sent to the infirmary when necessary, and allowed to sleep more than three hours a night.

  Sergio would recall very little of this period of his internment. Two years of his life vanished into thin air. The only thing he would remember was how those two years ended.

  Like a Frog in Winter

  on october 13, 1943, Italy declared war on Germany. The Russians were happy to break the news to the Italian prisoners, whom they regarded as even sorrier than before. Cowards, traitors, scaredy-cats—they found all sorts of names to describe their weakness and cowardice.

  Though they had gotten wind of their country’s shifting alliances following the signing of the Armistice of Cassibile, the Italian detainees were unaware of the impact a treaty with the Allies would have on Italian nationals at home and at war. Already reeling from the conflict, their country descended into animal-like confusion and was unable to fend off the ensuing German invasion. A world war spiralled into a civil war, and it was impossible to say which of the two was worse.

  When a family’s house is on fire, they don’t much care if the rest of the world is being bombed to hell.

  The Italians were forced to choose sides: support the Allies, who controlled parts of the south and Sicily, or fight on alongside the Germans, who occupied the rest of the peninsula. Of course, not everyone wanted to get involved. Better to stay neutral, some claimed. Perhaps they thought doing so would save them, spare them from bullets and disillusionment. Instead, those men and women felt the impact of their divided country most; they were constantly called on to justify their indifference and break up any skirmishes that erupted between members of the two sides.