HS02 - Days of Atonement

by Michael Gregorio

  ‘Has the room been cleaned, Hanno?’

  I was shocked by the bluntness of the question, and took a deep breath.

  ‘This is how we found it. Only the bodies have been removed,’ I said.

  ‘There should be blood . . .’ Helena murmured, taking a step closer to the bed. ‘Here on the floor,’ she said, pointing with her finger. ‘There ought to be stains. Though many days have passed, a pool of blood would leave a mark on a wooden floor.’

  ‘They have faded,’ I assured her, taking a step forward, then stopping. I did not wish her to imagine the horror that we had seen. ‘It may look as if someone has made an attempt to clean the place, but . . .’

  ‘You are correct, Helena,’ Lavedrine growled from behind my back. He went on in a more determined manner: ‘There is very little blood, given what happened here.’

  ‘What reason could there be for anyone to clean it up?’

  Helena’s hands were tightly clasped together, her knuckles white, as if she were praying for a miracle to happen. I could see that the thought of someone cleaning up the blood perplexed her terribly. Suddenly, her eyes opened wide with fright.

  ‘Is this what those rumours were talking of?’ she asked, her gaze shifting from me to Lavedrine.

  ‘Which rumours?’ I asked her gently.

  ‘That what the killers wanted was the children’s blood. That the Jews might be involved.’

  I shook my head. ‘We have no . . .’

  ‘The babies were butchered,’ Lavedrine spoke out, drowning my voice. ‘Two of them were mutilated. And there is, indeed, very little blood. These are facts. Can you tell us nothing new?’ he implored her.

  I was surprised by the tone of his voice. He had lost all hope of interpreting the mystery of that house. What could he possibly hope to learn from her?

  Helena looked around slowly.

  She crossed her arms over her breasts and shivered, as if she suddenly felt the cold. She seemed smaller, even more defenceless without her cloak. Suddenly, her head lifted sharply, and her eyes darted towards Lavedrine.

  ‘Frau Gottewald lived here,’ she murmured to herself. ‘Alone with her children.’

  ‘Does something surprise you?’ Lavedrine enquired.

  I could see that she was tense. A vein was throbbing visibly in her temple.

  ‘What is here does not surprise me,’ she replied. ‘I am more surprised by what is not here.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I asked.

  She looked around as if to convince herself of what she was about to say.

  ‘There is very little sign of a woman in this house,’ she said.

  33

  ‘CLOTHS?’

  Our mouths hung open, our eyes gaped wide. We might both have been punched in the stomach, as Helena explained what she meant.

  ‘I have searched all the drawers,’ she went on, pressing her lips to the tips of her fingers like a priestess praying. ‘Down in the kitchen, up here in the bedroom. In that tiny box-room behind the bed as well. There is a trunk and a small cupboard, containing some clothes. Not many. A few dresses, a worn-out pair of shoes. The children’s things . . . They were only here a short time, I know, but, well, there are some things that a woman simply cannot do without.’

  Lavedrine darted a look at me.

  If he thought that Helena was speaking some strange language that only a married man could comprehend, a common logic of shared domesticity that was wholly alien to him, he was wrong.

  ‘Helena, be more precise,’ I urged, equally puzzled.

  She stared at me before she spoke. It was a look that I recognised. An expression she adopted when the little ones failed to behave as they ought, or failed to understand something obvious that she had told them more than once. ‘Just think of our home. Think of our kitchen. What sort of things do you always find there?’

  I shrugged uncertainly. ‘Apart from the furniture . . . We have more, of course.’

  ‘Go on,’ she urged me.

  ‘Well, there are plates, pots, pans. Shelves where we keep them. The row of cups on hooks. The cupboard, the larder. Onions hanging near the fireplace. Oh, and jars of spices, honey, and preserves,’ I blurted out, as if suddenly inspired.

  ‘What else?’ she insisted.

  I thought for a moment, finding it difficult to recall details, though we had been living in the house for many years, and every day I entered the kitchen frequently. ‘The sieves hanging on the wall,’ I added, ‘for straining flour and making cheese. The flour bin, of course. But . . . what?’ I was growing desperate. ‘The bread sack dangling from the shelf, so the mice won’t get at it. Ah yes, I remember now. Aprons hanging up behind the door. The mop and bucket that Lotte uses when she does the housework . . .’ I stopped, but I had not finished. There was more to our kitchen than I had thought. More again that I still had not described. I began to see what Helena was getting at.

  ‘You were in the kitchen just last night,’ she coaxed, ‘preparing something for today. You told me that it was messy.’

  ‘I was coating writing-paper with silver salts . . .’

  She did not let me finish, her brashness grating on my spirits.

  ‘What did you do last of all?’ she insisted. ‘When you had finished?’

  I looked away in embarrassment. What right had she to question me with Lavedrine standing there looking on, a supercilious grin on his face?

  ‘I wiped up the mess,’ I said.

  ‘What did you use?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know!’ I replied, my patience running out. ‘An old shirt, I suppose.’

  ‘Exactly,’ she replied with a beatific smile. ‘Rags, dusters, cloths for cleaning the house, washing the floors, drying dishes. One for cleaning the windows, a different one for polishing the floors. You can’t mix them up. A different one for every separate task.’

  As she spoke, I thought of the piece of wool she kept in the attic for polishing fruit. She would use it, wash it, then hang it up to dry, for fear that mould would get into it and ruin the apples that were unblemished.

  ‘Cloths . . .’ Lavedrine murmured. ‘There are none in the kitchen.’

  ‘Nor here in the bedroom. Or in that box-room,’ Helena added. ‘But the absence is much more peculiar. It isn’t just a question of rags. I have not seen a flannel or a towel for washing and drying the children. Not a single one!’

  She said it forcefully, her finger pointing up in the air like a schoolteacher laying down the laws of grammar or arithmetic. ‘And that’s not all,’ she continued. ‘I looked inside the drawers and the tallboy. There are three female outfits hanging there, two of light summer material, and a winter dress which is old and worn out. But there’s nothing else. Frau Gottewald was the wife of a Prussian officer. She’d have more, much more. And that is not the most glaring omission. Do you recall when we married?’ she asked me. ‘My trousseau?’

  How could I forget it? Two large chests of dark cherrywood had accompanied Helena over the threshold of our house in Lotingen. Her mother had been filling those trunks for years in preparation for her daughter’s wedding-day. They contained every piece of cloth or linen that a housewife would ever need; everything to keep her house and person in respectable order. On the night of our wedding, Helena had appeared like a vision from Ancient Greece, a brocaded linen nightdress stretching down to her feet, the cuffs and shoulders adorned with large pink silk bows.

  ‘Every bride banks on her trousseau,’ Helena continued self-importantly. ‘But what has become of Frau Gottewald’s?’

  I remembered returning to our house after the dragoons abandoned it. Those Frenchmen had destroyed everything. Only a single cotton sheet was left, and that had been torn into strips and used for bandages.

  ‘Frau Gottewald may have lost her linen in the war,’ I said. ‘Just as you did.’

  ‘Indeed, it is possible,’ she allowed, turning to Lavedrine. ‘But we have hardly been back inside the house a year, and I have already made up a good pa
rt of the loss. Not the treasures my mother gave me, unfortunately. But the common things. Some from shops and pedlars, others Hanno brought back from Danzig when he went in May. And Lotte is good with a needle. Old things may be made into new. No house can function without rags and cloths of all descriptions, monsieur . . .’

  Her hands flew to her cheeks, which flamed with the rush of blood. She turned to me. ‘Oh, Hanno,’ she whispered, ‘I . . . I hardly know how to say it. Unless . . . Unless they are hidden somewhere in the house, I fear to think what may have happened here. Who would carry them away . . .’ She hesitated again, covering her mouth as if some thought had shocked her.

  ‘What troubles you?’ I said, moving close.

  She stared fixedly into my eyes.

  ‘Her towels, Hanno,’ she whispered. ‘No young woman could ever do without them.’

  She glanced at Lavedrine to make certain that he had understood.

  ‘Bien sûr!’ he exclaimed, slapping his forehead with the palm of his hand. ‘How blind men are! A woman of childbearing age. Her menstrual discharge. You are right. How could I fail to think of it?’

  In his enthusiasm he did not limit himself to speech, but launched himself across the room like a cat who had spotted a mouse. His hands fell on Helena’s shoulders, his face hovered inches away from hers. She looked down quickly, defensively, as if she thought he meant to devour her.

  ‘Your presence has been invaluable, Helena!’ he cried. ‘Infinitely precious! I knew that you would be our trump card.’

  He gazed at her proudly, then suddenly his hand flew up and came to rest on the nape of her neck. His head leant forward, his mouth hovering over her forehead. But with sudden urgency, he dipped his head and kissed her full on the lips.

  ‘Incroyable, ma chérie,’ he murmured, pulling back slowly.

  I stood transfixed. A wave of rage washed over me. Fire blazed for an instant, then freezing cold took its place. I clenched my teeth, as I had done whenever father thrashed me in my childhood. If I gave in to anger, I would lose face twice over. Cold indifference is a poor defence against violent passions. But there is no other.

  Slowly, a curtain seemed to lift before my eyes.

  Helena was standing rigidly, her arms dangling helplessly at her sides. The Frenchman’s aggression had ruffled her hair and brought more bright colour to her cheeks and forehead, but her eyes flashed here and there, anywhere but at the man before her. I had never seen her so confused.

  But Lavedrine was not put out. He held her firmly, his hands resting on her shoulders, and continued to exult. ‘How could I miss such an obvious connection? That is where the blood went! Taken away, carried off, soaked up, removed by means of the rags and cloths. We did not see them in the house because they are not here. Not one scrap of absorbent material. All gone . . .’

  Suddenly, he turned away, and began to pace the room, up and down and back again, from one end of the bed to the other, close beside the window. He ran his hand mechanically through his curls, and muttered to himself in French like a man in a fit.

  He stopped in the corner where the ramp of stairs descended to the kitchen below, tapping his forefinger rapidly against his pursed lips. He glanced from the stairs to the bed, then back again, calculating distances, or so it seemed.

  ‘The victims were brought up here, and their throats were cut. Then, the boys were mutilated. . . .’ He trailed to a close. ‘But why search out the rags in the house? Why carry the blood away?’

  ‘And where was the mother while all this was going on?’ I added.

  ‘Perhaps they made her clean the mess,’ Helena said, aghast with horror. ‘Before they took her away with them.’

  Lavedrine tapped his temple, as if to awaken a hypothesis in his fuddled brain.

  ‘Where would those blood-soaked rags be taken to?’

  ‘Evidence,’ I said. My voice was firm, despite the tension in my jaw, and the bunched fists hidden beneath the folds of my cloak. ‘To prove that the massacre had taken place. To demonstrate that the blood of the family had been spilt. Whoever came to do the deed had to take back tangible proof that he, or they, had carried out their orders.’

  Helena was quaking visibly, I realised suddenly, her shoulders jerking violently, whether from fright or from the cold. But Lavedrine moved to comfort her more swiftly than I did. He took three paces across the room, unlatching his cloak, draping it tenderly around her shivering frame.

  ‘There is no reason for you to stay here any longer, Helena,’ he said with a show of concern. ‘You must not fall ill for the sake of a generous heart.’

  I did not move, but I watched them: Helena enclosed within the Frenchman’s cloak; he, like a solicitous lover, hovering at her side.

  ‘You still hold to your theory, then?’ he challenged me. ‘That the violence that thundered down upon this house came from Kamenetz. Is that it, Stiffeniis?’

  ‘I have seen nothing to shake my belief. Not even the absence of tea-towels can shift me,’ I answered coldly. Helena had seen the room, she had drawn her conclusions. While I did not dispute them, I was not convinced of the relevance of her observations.

  ‘You are wrong,’ he said, his eyes darting hungrily around the room. ‘The answer lies here. Inside this house. In this very room, if you like.’

  He strode to the far side of the bed, and raised his finger to the wall.

  ‘The children’s heads were aimed in this direction. The pattern of the bloodstains, the spattering of spots on the wall, the size, the colour, the intensity of each spot . . .’ He stopped in mid-phrase, and turned to my wife. ‘Excusez-moi, Hélène,’ he apologised. ‘I say again, you need not stay, you know.’

  My wife smiled weakly. ‘I must,’ she said.

  ‘You are a most courageous woman.’ He smiled and bowed, moving close to the bed. ‘With your permission, then, I shall press on with my considerations. The children were lying here, their heads resting on the right-hand edge of the bed. Imagine the blade slicing down’—he made a gesture with his hand—‘the blood shooting up in this direction. There are blood-marks directly above on the ceiling. That is, almost four feet above the point where the head was positioned. The blood spurted back in this direction towards the wall, falling here on the floor like large raindrops. Can you see the form here, like a flower? Less blood, but a significant amount sprayed up onto the wall beyond. A very fine spray made up of minute droplets.’

  He stepped back two paces from the bed, and pointed to the floorboards. ‘This is the spot—this area here—where the children bled to death. We ought to find the greatest quantity of blood in this position, but as you see, the staining on the floor is minimal.’ He turned to Helena. ‘Thanks to you, we now know why. Indeed, I think it might be possible to make out wipe-marks in the bloodstains which do exist. But this is not all that we can say,’ he continued, walking towards the foot of the bed, speaking all the while. ‘As we move away in this direction, those spots on the wall become smaller and smaller, then, finally, they disappear in this pale spray. Let us say, this point marks off the extreme perimeter of the area within which the actual murder took place. Mutilation after death would cause loss of blood, but without a living heart to pump it . . .’ Suddenly, he looked self-consciously at Helena. ‘Forgive me,’ he said.

  ‘Please, go on,’ she implored with a shudder.

  ‘Any sign of blood outside this circle,’ he continued, tracing an imaginary ring with his finger over the bed and the wall behind us, ‘is not consistent with what we are able to observe of the modus operandi of the slaughter. Do you concur, Herr Procurator?’

  ‘Go on,’ I echoed, gritting my teeth.

  ‘At this point, something changes. It is significant, I believe.’

  He walked to the end of the bed, and crossed to the window. Outside, the sun disappeared behind the massive white clouds. He dropped down on one knee, and stared at the wall beneath the window ledge. I knew what he was leading up to. Mutiez had noticed the marks the night
that we had first entered the house. Traces of blood on the far side of the bed, a long way from any other bloodstains.

  ‘Come and look,’ he said, turning his head, looking at Helena.

  I stepped back, allowing Helena to pass, then I followed her around the room.

  ‘I have been back twice to study them, but I can make no sense of these marks at all,’ he murmured. He had told me as much when I returned from Kamenetz, and had mentioned the fact again the day before. It was becoming something of an obsession.

  Helena bowed down low, close to Lavedrine’s shoulder. I did not need to exert myself. From where I was standing, beyond the mass of the Frenchman’s untidy curls, I could just make out those puzzling marks on the wall. They were not random splashes, being larger even than the largest spots on the opposite wall, which were close to the radius of action that Lavedrine had traced out with his finger. It was difficult not to believe that those marks had been left there on purpose.

  But why?

  Why kill the children on one side of the room, then transport a quantity of blood to the other side of the room? And how had it been done? By dipping a rag in the blood, as Helena suggested, then daubing the wall with the cloth?

  ‘There is something distinct about them,’ Helena murmured. Her voice was low, but steady. ‘Certainly, these marks are of a different type. Am I correct in saying that? They are quite unlike any other bloodstain in the room.’

  Lavedrine nodded vigorously. ‘The problem is the rough, porous surface of the wall. The blood has soaked into the plaster, which is already ruined by the damp. And there is mould to compound the mixture. It is all but impossible to read. What’s your opinion, Stiffeniis?’ he asked, half turning to me.

  I did not reply. Instead, I set my shoulder bag down on the floor, opened the flap, and began to take out the materials that I would need to conduct my experiment. I had prepared everything the night before in the dark of the unlit kitchen at home.