Beyond the Shadow of Night

by Ray Kingfisher

  The sun was full, and he took a second to bask in its warmth. What else was there left to enjoy? He was distracted by a noise and glanced down the street, where the small armored vehicle had been driven—to hunt out more Jews in hiding places, no doubt, like forcing rabbits out of a warren. He also saw a man holding a portable flamethrower, apparently setting anything and everything he could find on fire. Any parts of the city that hadn’t been bombed were clearly now being destroyed by more manual methods, courtesy of the flamethrower and the armored vehicle.

  The leader of the guards, a bespectacled SS officer in a meticulously pressed field-gray uniform, barked an order to the guard on his right, who marched over to Anatoli, standing awkwardly at the end of the row. He was having difficulty holding one of his arms up—where he’d taken the bullet in his shoulder. The guard screamed at him, and Anatoli’s face contorted as he tried to obey.

  The guard patted the sides of Anatoli’s jacket, eventually coming across the pistol. He held the pistol in the palm of his hand for a second, as though examining it or trying to guess its weight. Then he put the muzzle of the pistol against Anatoli’s temple and pulled the trigger.

  Josef immediately took a pace forward and shouted at the guard, but the guard pointed the pistol straight at him and he stopped, gasping for a moment.

  “Hände hoch,” the guard said, and Josef returned to his place in line, staring at Anatoli’s corpse and the splatter of fresh blood on the bricks behind him.

  The guard looked at the pistol again, nodded approvingly to himself, and said, “Mmm, das ist gut.”

  Then he moved on to Adolf, searching him too.

  And again, he found a pistol. But Adolf bolted, moving quickly for a tall man, sprinting down the street, jerking left and right. The guard laughed for a second, then lifted both pistols and sent four bullets into Adolf’s back.

  He sighed, then looked at the pistols again. He nodded, impressed, and turned to Josef.

  Josef’s hand immediately fell to his pocket, but the guard pulled his arm away. He stood in front of Josef, their faces inches apart, and put his hand into the pocket Josef had reached for.

  Again, a pistol was pulled out.

  Then the officer, standing behind the guard, said something to him. It was intoned as a question, and Asher heard the word Josef being mentioned.

  The guard stepped in front of Josef and said, “Du bist Josef Kurowski?”

  Josef gulped, then took a few breaths, but didn’t speak.

  “Josef Kurowski?” the guard said, their heads now inches apart. “Ja oder nein?”

  Josef spat in his face.

  The man sneered, took a step back, pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and cleaned his face, taking his time to wipe every last drop of spit from every last crease and wrinkle.

  While this was happening, Asher decided he would do the same as Josef. Yes, he would spit in the man’s face, perhaps punch him, even knock him over. They were all going to be shot anyway, so what did he have to lose?

  The guard folded the handkerchief, again clearly taking more time than necessary, and turned back to face his officer. A few words were exchanged.

  The guard shouted down the street, toward the armored vehicle and the man holding the flamethrower. He made a beckoning motion with his hand, and the man with the flamethrower started walking toward them.

  Josef started speaking, then babbling, and finally pleading. As the guard talked to the man who had just arrived, Josef fell to his knees and put his hands together. Asher didn’t understand the words, but he knew the man he had come to respect and admire was now begging.

  The guard took a step back and barked “Ja!” to the man, who pointed his contraption at the still kneeling, still praying Josef. He pulled the trigger and Josef became a whirling, screaming fireball, his arms flailing, his body thrashing around on the ground. But the man didn’t stop, adding more fire just to make sure.

  Time was meaningless in Asher’s state of mind, but it probably took something in the region of a minute for the flamethrower to do what a bullet would have accomplished in half a second. Josef’s slumped figure was motionless, but still the flames caressed it. Asher felt the coldness of a dribble coming from the corner of his mouth. He took a few gasps to stop himself from being sick, then turned to see that Rina was lying motionless on the ground, eyes closed. For a second his eyes searched her coat for blood-soaked holes, then he came to his senses. Whereas he had almost been sick at the punishment, she had fainted.

  He lowered his arms and bent down to reach for her, but a guard screaming in his face changed his mind. The smack of a rifle butt on his cheekbone sent him down to the ground. He was told to get up, and obeyed without question. All thoughts of punching or spitting at the guard were placed back in their box, locked there for as long as the flamethrower was around. Even then, the guard only stopped screeching once he’d given Asher another thump, this time in the middle of the chest.

  Another guard stood over Rina, opened his water bottle, and splashed her face. She groaned. He bent down and gave her a slap across the face, then another. She stirred, bringing her hands up to protect herself. The man shouted at her, and within a minute she’d struggled to her feet, albeit staggering and stumbling.

  The guard who had searched the other three men now did the same to Asher, and Asher felt unable to do anything other than hold his breath, brace himself, and pray.

  The guard found no gun. He stepped back and looked Asher’s dust-caked figure up and down. “You have no weapon?” he said in confident Polish.

  Asher could do no more than cough. They stared at each other for a few seconds, then Asher gasped as the guard’s pistol was raised, the muzzle pressed low against his forehead. For a moment he looked the man in the eye, saw the rash of stubble on his chin, the greasy sweat on his cheeks. Then he closed his eyes.

  “They wouldn’t let us have weapons,” he heard Rina shout.

  Words were exchanged between the guards, but still Asher felt the cold, hard steel against his forehead, pressing against his skull. Now he opened his eyes, and beyond the blurred image of the gun at his head, he saw another guard searching Rina.

  “They didn’t trust us,” she said. “Told us we were only children.”

  The guard found no weapon on her.

  And still Asher had the gun against his head.

  There were more heated discussions between the guards. “Nur Kinder,” one of them kept repeating. Asher heard the guard in front of him sigh, and felt hot breath momentarily warm his face. Then the man took the gun away.

  Now Asher was being shoved forward, staggering and gasping like he’d just run a mile. Soon, he and Rina were walking down the street, helped by the muzzle of a gun occasionally prodding them in the back.

  A few minutes later, Asher and Rina were deposited at the meeting point next to the railroad station. They sat down on the earth next to each other. Asher put his arm around his sister and looked left and right. The square was contained on all four sides by either brick or solid fencing, and was patrolled by those armed guards the authorities seemed to have an endless supply of, whether SS, Gestapo, or Stormtroopers.

  Asher had often walked past the square over the past couple of years, and each time it had been thronged with people waiting to be taken away.

  Today it was less than half full.

  They had chopped off all the meat and were now scraping away the gristle.

  But where exactly were they being taken? Asher looked around, his eyes falling on a man a few yards away, gnawing away at a potato. Would he have any more idea what was happening?

  The man noticed Asher staring at him and stopped gnawing. He put his hand into his pocket and pulled out two more small potatoes, then reached over and handed them to Asher.

  Asher thanked the man, but there was no reply: he stared straight ahead again and continued gnawing away.

  Then a dot of darkness appeared on Asher’s knee. Then another. He looked up and got a spl
ash in the mouth. It tasted good. Soon the raindrops were bouncing off their heads, and Asher grabbed Rina’s arm, pointing toward a wall at one side of the square. They both stood and hurried over, settling down there with their backs leaning against the wall. Asher took his coat off and held it over both their heads. He handed Rina one of the potatoes, and they both started chewing.

  For a second, Asher considered using the rain to clean the mud off his meal, but even a little mud would fill his belly a tiny bit more than the wood-like flesh of the raw potato alone, so he left it on. And the little seed sprouts added variety, as well as providing something to hook his teeth onto.

  The rain continued after they’d finished eating, the drops dancing on Asher’s already soaked back. He used his wet sleeve to wipe the blood from the side of Rina’s face, and they huddled together; it was starting to get cold.

  “At least we might find out what happened to Mama, Papa, and Keren,” Rina said.

  Asher said nothing. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

  Chapter 19

  Interview room 3, Allegheny County Jail, Pittsburgh, August 2001

  Diane sat down and tried not to smile, tried not to show any signs of friendship. It was a hard habit to break, but the “friend of the family” stuff would have to go. And if it struggled, she would have to put it down.

  “You got what you wanted,” she said. “Just the two of us. So tell me what happened.”

  He nodded and then waited, drawing a long, wheezy breath before speaking.

  “You said you wanted to know everything—everything about me, everything about your father, and the reason for his unfortunate death.”

  “The reason why you murdered him, yes. But please, take your time. I really would like to know everything.”

  “Very well. There’s a lot to say—more than you might think. But I want you to hear it.”

  “Good.”

  “He told you we were born within a few days of each other in Ukraine, didn’t he?”

  “Yes, and you kind of lost touch with each other some years later. So what happened after that?”

  “I’m going to tell you everything, Diane. That includes the childhood we shared, how we came to be brothers in all but blood, how we lost contact, what happened to us both in those years, and how we made contact again, which you probably already know. But I warned you there was a lot to say, and you need to hear everything to really understand the reasons behind what happened between us last week.”

  “I’m not sure any of that will help me understand,” Diane said. “I get that you were close as kids and I get that life was tough for you back then. But it was tough for my father too.”

  “Oh, I agree. And it didn’t get any better for a long time. We both had hard decisions to make—decisions that followed us around for the rest of our lives. But I want you to know what sort of man your father was.”

  Diane peered at him, as though trying to bore holes in his face with her eyes. “Hey, he was my father. I know all about that.”

  “But do you? I mean, how well did you really know your father?”

  “What are you getting at?”

  “Do you think he was a good man?”

  She nodded immediately, then stopped, uncertain.

  Yes, her father had carried her up to bed every night for a week when she’d sprained her ankle. Yes, he’d once driven her at breakneck speed to school for that ski trip and he used to take her to the swings at the local park. But there was also the way he behaved at those house parties and how he’d sabotaged her love life. In her teens she’d referred to him as General Grump whenever he got bad-tempered and grouchy. By her twenties she’d realized that the word grouchy didn’t quite cut it in this instance, and the General Grump joke had started to wear thin. In hindsight, it should have been clear to her that he was in the habit of spiraling into a pit of self-obsession or insecurity or paranoia, or a mixture of all those things. In reality, she didn’t want to think that way, and he probably wouldn’t have wanted her to think that way either.

  Images of his sullen face drifted into her mind. When she had no boyfriend and he had her all to himself, he was almost a model father. Companionship, help around the home, a friendly ear and encouragement when she needed it, someone to hear her laughter when she watched TV—he ticked all those boxes. But whenever she brought a boyfriend home or went on a date, he would turn into General Grump for days afterward. He would grunt instead of speak, never get her a coffee when he was getting one for himself, and make remarks about anything she cooked—usually not even finishing it. She knew this was all down to his fear that she would leave him, a fear he’d made clear to her that day she would never forget, many years ago. In more recent times he seemed to accept Brad more readily—partly because he’d known him since he and Diane were just friends, and partly because after all these years it seemed a given that Diane would never move out of Hartmann Way.

  So yes. She knew her father. She knew the good, the bad, and the abominable. She also knew that what was private should stay private.

  “Do I think my father was a good man?” she said. “Well . . . actually, yes. If I have to choose between yes and no, then yes, I think my father was a good man. He wasn’t perfect, but he was perfect to me when I was growing up.”

  “And when your parents split up, why did you decide to live with your father rather than your mother?”

  Her face froze for a few seconds. “You know, that’s a really horrible question to ask.”

  “I’m sorry. Yes, it is. But once or twice, when your father was drunk or melancholy—usually both—he’d let slip one or two things he used to do. I know he was very needy where you were concerned, very . . . well, it’s hard for me to say any more because I have mixed feelings about him.”

  “And did you have mixed feelings about him when you shot him?”

  His composure immediately dropped, a look of shock flashing across his face, his small eyes opening fully for once. He recovered quickly. “I think you’ve just matched me in the horrible questions category,” he said.

  “I’m sorry, but you seem a different person to how you’ve been all these years.”

  “I’m really not, Diane. But I guess it’s reasonable for you to think that way.”

  “And please stop patronizing me. I’m sorry for the horrible question, but I’m trying to figure out what the hell my father did to you to make you hate him so much.”

  “That’s what I’m going to explain to you.”

  “So, you did hate him?”

  “Mmm . . . that’s a tough question. We really were like brothers, so I guess it’s okay to say I hated him because I loved him too. I still do, come to think of it. And I miss him. You might find that hard to believe, but I really do.”

  “You know, I remember how well the two of you got on, so somehow I do believe you. But I need you to tell me what happened.”

  “Very well.” He took a sip of water.

  Then he started telling Diane about how the Petrenkos and the Kogans shared a farm, how both families welcomed sons into the world in 1923, how the young Asher and Mykhail played together and fought together, and how they shared food and an interest in tractors and fishing trips.

  And he carried on further, describing how they were parted when Asher left for Warsaw, and how each boy coped without his best friend—his brother in all but blood. Asher suffered in Warsaw and ended up fighting with the resistance, whereas Mykhail joined the Red Army and was captured, becoming a puppet for his Nazi masters.

  And there they were interrupted by a guard and told they had five minutes left.

  “We haven’t finished,” Diane said. “Could we carry on again tomorrow?”

  The guard shrugged. “That’s entirely up to the old guy.”

  “Of course,” the old guy said.

  They stood up, Diane grabbing her purse.

  “Where are you staying?” he said.

  “With Brad at the moment, till I sort out Father’s ho
use. Then I might stay with Mother.”

  “You’re not moving in with Brad?”

  She paused, then shook her head. “I’ve missed out on a lot with Mother.”

  “You’ve missed out on a lot with Brad, I’d say.”

  Diane screwed her face up. “Excuse me?”

  “I just think you deserve a little happiness, that’s all.”

  “The man who killed my father tells me I need a little happiness. You’re a real piece of work sometimes, you know that?”

  “Yes. It sounds bad, I understand, but I do care about you. I can well imagine the games your father used to play to keep you from leaving him.”

  “Look, I’ve had enough. My head’s spinning. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  They both left the room. Diane went into the parking lot and called Brad to pick her up.

  Chapter 20

  Warsaw, Poland, 1943

  Asher and Rina were now on the train—headed for where, they weren’t at all sure.

  It looked and felt like a freight carriage, and was packed so tightly with people that their shivering bodies were starting to warm up and their clothes were merely damp rather than soaked through. Most of the other people were wrecks of bodies, their rag-clothes baggy, their faces craggy. Asher had tried talking to one or two, to ask if anyone knew where they were going, but had found no appetite for conversation.

  Only Rina would talk. “Do you think we’ll find out what happened to Mama, Papa, and Keren?” she said.

  Asher’s mind was dry of words. It wasn’t making any sense. Rina wasn’t making any sense. She must have known the most likely fate to have befallen them. Surely she knew.

  “I hope they found that heaven Mama was talking about,” she said. “A nice, sunny place in the country with enough room to grow vegetables and keep chickens.”

  Asher was about to tell her she was talking nonsense, deluding herself, but then he saw a hardness in her eyes.