Beyond the Shadow of Night

by Ray Kingfisher

  Diane took the envelope. “Oh, it’s probably not important, but it’s kind of you all the same. Thank you.”

  “Part of the service.” After a flat smile and a forefinger salute he turned and walked back to the truck.

  Diane went inside, her fingers pressing into the envelope, feeling something rectangular and less than an inch thick, but also almost weightless.

  Then something occurred to her that made her lay the envelope down very carefully on the hall table. She was the daughter of a man suspected of being a war criminal. Yes, the allegations might have been made four years ago and no charges were ever brought, but now her father had been murdered, what about those people who could put two and two together? Did her father have enemies from the past? And was the man she’d just seen really from Big Steve’s? There were some very unforgiving people out there.

  She took a few careful paces backward and swiftly spun herself into the living room. Her purse was on the coffee table. Good. For some reason—probably that yappy old dog her physician called insecurity—she’d kept the card with Detective Durwood’s direct line.

  She grabbed her purse, opened it, and ran her fingers around the little pocket on the inside.

  There. Got it. Reading glasses too—get them. Three paces to the sideboard and she placed the card down next to the phone. Next to the bright red card with Big Steve’s number on it.

  Big Steve.

  She thought for a moment. Was she being realistic here?

  She called Big Steve. It got forwarded to his cell.

  “It’s Miss Peterson.”

  “Oh, hi, Miss Peterson. We’ll be another two hours, I figure.”

  “No, it’s not that. Did you send one of your men around here with an envelope?”

  There was a long pause before he replied.

  “Is that okay? We found it on the floor behind that big oak kitchen cabinet. It seemed the right thing to do, having your name on it and all.”

  Diane let out a calming sigh and secretly cursed her father.

  “That’s fine, Steve. I’m sorry I called. It’s not a problem.”

  She put the phone down, letting it drop the last inch.

  “Stupid, stupid, stupid,” she muttered.

  It was her father. He’d been on edge all his life. The doorbell had always made him fidget, and more often than not he would ask Diane to get it. She’d always put it down to laziness. Now she had other ideas. She loved him; he’d been a good father overall. She just didn’t like the fact he’d passed his paranoia on to her.

  Of course the man had been from Big Steve’s. The goddamn truck had been across the street. If anyone knew the truth and had intentions of revenge, there were much easier ways to satisfy that urge.

  But more importantly, her name on the envelope was written in her father’s distinctive handwriting. She shook her head at her own stupidity. Then she headed back into the hallway, and within seconds the envelope was in two pieces, both fluttering to the floor.

  She held the contents in the palm of her hand.

  It was a cassette tape—one with her name scrawled on it in more of that spidery handwriting. Only in the last two or three years had the arthritis stopped him writing. He’d always joked that the son-of-a-bitch disease had more control over his fingers than he did. His daughter’s name he could manage to write; a sentence, possibly; anything more was just not physically possible.

  Diane went into the spare room, where she’d been sorting through the cardboard boxes representing her old life. She shifted two of them to get to the one she wanted. She’d given up telling her father to buy CDs: he always preferred his cassette tapes.

  And here was his player. Which was also his recorder.

  Fear of not knowing dried her throat to flypaper. She needed to hear it now.

  Back into the living room, sit down, player on coffee table, slot the cassette in, press play, clench hands.

  The tape hiss gave way to a cough, then a little breathless gasping. And then there were words, delivered with the trembling voice of a child about to take a beating. It was unmistakable. This was Father. It was Father in a frame of mind Diane had never known before, but it was unmistakably Father.

  She listened, her eyes locked on to the tape player.

  My dearest Diane. I’ve come a long way in my life, and had plenty of hard times. But leaving you this message is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I wish I could tell you this to your face, but my stupid pride won’t let me—just like my gnarled, useless fingers won’t let me write it down. I’m sorry.

  I did a lot of things in my previous life that I am ashamed of. I’ve told you my real name is Mykhail Petrenko, and that I was born and brought up in a small farming village in Ukraine.

  That’s true.

  Something else is also true. I admit I’m a coward for not coming clean earlier. I kidded myself that I kept it secret for your sake, so that you could live a normal life. The truth is that I wanted to tell you years ago, but each time I pictured your face as you heard my words, and I couldn’t bear to do it. I can’t tell you to your face, but I can no longer keep the truth from you.

  You’ll remember four years ago some allegations were made against me. War crimes, they called them.

  They were all true.

  I was at Treblinka.

  I operated an engine. I was a part of the machine—that death factory.

  Even through this recorder, I can’t bring myself to tell you any details. But I was there and took an active part in some horrible, inhuman acts.

  I’ve done my best to lock those memories away for the sake of my sanity and your happiness, to pretend it all happened in a different life. I know I haven’t been the best father to you; many times you’ve wanted to leave home, and I know I’ve stopped you. It’s no excuse, but when your mother left me I felt the emptiness of a family eradicated by circumstances, and it seemed to take hold of my soul. In spite of my attempts to hide my feelings, I’m sure you know how I suffered in those months that followed, and I couldn’t face the prospect of losing you too.

  Apart from that, I think I managed to control myself well, to shut out those blood red memories and hide behind this confident shell of mine.

  But my old friend Asher found me out, so I told him exactly what I did all those years ago. Understandably, he’s very annoyed with me, and he’s just left this house in a foul temper. He’s promised not to turn me in, but I doubt he’ll count himself as my friend now, and in a way that’s worse punishment.

  The phone has been ringing. I know it’s him. He’s prone to bouts of anger but at heart he’s a good, gentle man with very strong principles. Please be kind to him, Diane; he’s very upset. I know him well and I know why he’s calling: he wants to forgive me for my involvement in those evil acts. He would do that for me, even though I don’t deserve it.

  I do, however, ask you to forgive me for what I am about to do.

  Like Asher, you have a lot to forgive me for. I never could face the prospect of you disowning me, which probably explains why I screwed up your life just like I tried to screw up your mother’s. I’m sorry. I never intended to do that. Guilt does that to people, it spreads the misery.

  You’ve been a caring daughter, Diane—much more so than I deserve. I know you’ve made a lot of sacrifices over the years for my sake, so please remember that I will always love you. Over the coming months people will try to make you feel ashamed to be my daughter. Resist that. Believe me when I say that you have nothing to be ashamed of—absolutely nothing. My crimes were my own doing and nobody else’s.

  I’ve kept the lid on this for too long, and it’s done too much damage, way more than I’m worth. But now the past has come back into my life, and I simply can’t live with it.

  I’m so sorry.

  Chapter 34

  Pittsburgh, July 2001

  At the kitchen table of 38 Hartmann Way, Mykhail’s finger dropped onto the stop button of his trusty old tape recorder, then shook uncontr
ollably as it moved along and did the same to the eject button. He’d already taken great trouble to scribble Diane’s name on both the cassette and the envelope. That was good. That was foresight. He was shaking so much now that he would hardly be able to hold a pen, let alone use one.

  And this was Mykhail Petrenko, not Michael Peterson. Asher had just reminded him of that fact—of the history of the man he really was. He was born Mykhail Petrenko, so it only seemed fitting that at this time he should become him once again. Fitting and truthful.

  He took a sharp breath and slowly plucked the cassette from its holder. The cassette was shaking, the envelope was shaking. It was like threading a needle while sitting in a moving car. But by the fourth attempt it was in. He tried to lick the flap but there was no moisture on his tongue, so he reached across to his glass of apple juice, dipped his finger in it, and sealed the envelope shut. He placed the envelope in front of him, next to the tape recorder and his juice, and moved all three to one side—with a care that seemed perverse even to him—to where they would be safe. He glanced down at the remains of the glass Asher had smashed on the floor, then up and through the glass of the back door. That brush, balanced on the paint pot, which was balanced on the brick, was still waiting for him. Those three items might be the only things to miss him when he’d gone. Asher had almost kicked the thing over when he’d stormed out an hour earlier. That had left plenty of time for Mykhail to think, to come to terms with what he knew all along he needed to do. And Mykhail had decided, closing and locking the door for a little privacy, then composing himself before leaving a message for his one and only.

  He reached for the gun. He stared at it for a moment. Strangely, he felt an element of peace, a kind he hadn’t experienced in a long time.

  He rested the muzzle of the gun on his temple.

  He’d been in tears for the past half hour—which was so unlike him—but now there was an acceptance that it was all over.

  Mykhail’s closing thought was of lives being snuffed out in a different world. In a chamber. They screamed, they clawed, they clung on to hope that it wouldn’t be the end. Mykhail didn’t. He had lived his life.

  That was something to be grateful for.

  The tears stopped. The gasping too. He took a calming breath, then listened to the ringing of the phone. It was regular, like the cycle of life. Ringing, then silent and peaceful, ringing, then silent and peaceful, ringing, then silent and peaceful.

  He pulled the trigger.

  At the Pittsburgh bus depot, Asher Kogan was begging the phone to change its tune. Ringing, silent and peaceful, ringing, silent and peaceful, ringing, silent and peaceful.

  Yes, when he’d seen that photograph of Mykhail at the Treblinka museum, his first thought had been that he never wanted to see his old friend again, that he was going to disown him.

  But by the time he’d flown back home he knew that would never happen. That was because he needed answers. He’d spent hours struggling with his own sanity, trying to convince himself that somehow it wasn’t Mykhail in that photograph, although he knew in his heart it was. He felt so betrayed, and needed to ask Mykhail how he justified what he’d taken part in—or, at the very least, whether he admitted it.

  So as soon as he arrived home, he took the bus to Pittsburgh, and by the time he arrived he was ready for a fight. He was ready for Mykhail to deny, deny, deny.

  He found Mykhail busy painting, but the painting stopped when Asher said he had something to say, and soon they were facing each other across the kitchen table. Asher struggled to contain his anger, but told Mykhail what he’d seen at Treblinka—the photograph.

  Of course, Mykhail did deny, deny, deny for as long as he possibly could. Even when he said he didn’t want to talk about it anymore, when Asher was about to leave, the two men continued arguing.

  “You make me sick,” Asher told him. “At first you deny, then you dismiss it like you stole something from the dollar store.”

  “Asher, I’ve explained till I’m—”

  “That’s what gets me the most. You betrayed me four years ago by lying to me, you betrayed me while I lay in hospital and you listened to me talking about my poor sister, and now you’re betraying me all over again when you try to downplay the whole issue.”

  “I’m not downplaying it. Just explaining. Are you too dumb to tell the difference?”

  “Dumb now, am I?”

  “If you can’t understand what I’m trying to say, then yes. I had no alternative. If I’d stayed in that POW camp I wouldn’t be alive now, we wouldn’t be having this conversation, and there would be no Diane. Yes. Yes, a thousand times, I did some terrible things, but so did you, Asher, so did you.”

  As Mykhail stood, Asher squared up to him.

  “I didn’t kill innocent people, Mykhail. That’s the difference between us.”

  “Look, we can’t agree, we’ll never agree. But . . . what are you going to do?”

  Asher stroked a palm across his sweaty forehead and wiped the moisture onto his shirt. He went to speak a couple of times, but nothing came of it.

  “Please, Asher,” Mykhail whispered hoarsely. “Please don’t tell the authorities.” He waited for a response, but there was none. “You’ll destroy me in every way. Don’t you think I’ve suffered enough?”

  “You think you’ve suffered? You had a good job all your life.”

  “I hated my job. I hated the people I worked with.”

  “You got married.”

  “We hated each other.”

  “You told me the divorce was amicable.”

  “Oh, Jesus Christ, Asher. I was lying. It’s what screwed-up sons of bitches like me do.”

  “You’ve still got Diane.”

  “She hates me too.”

  “You think so? Really?”

  “I screwed up her life, and she’s screwing up Brad’s. Don’t you get it, Asher? I hate myself. I loathe myself for what I did. I try to be logical and assess what happened by talking about choices, but the truth is that the fear and self-loathing always take over. Do you honestly think those things take sides? No. They screw up everyone in the end.”

  “I see.” Asher nodded slowly. “So, after denying it and then downplaying it, now you turn it on yourself, like you’re the victim.” He took a long breath and looked his friend up and down, sneering. “God, you’re an arrogant son of a bitch. It’s as if the concepts of guilt and remorse are alien to you.”

  “It’s not like that.”

  “It fits from where I’m standing.”

  “Well, you’re wrong. Please. Listen.” He motioned for them to sit back down, which they did.

  “Asher, it’s true I was like you say for most of my life. I tried to blank it out—to deny. I always told my wife and daughter that I couldn’t talk about what happened to me during the war, that it was simply too horrible to go back over. They accepted that. But in my later years—and I’m talking about well before you came back on the scene—I came to accept that what I did was very wrong. And I’ve often wished that I stayed in that stinking POW camp, that I never set eyes on Treblinka—even if that meant I’d died there. Then it hit me that I’d actually thought that all along, but instead of admitting it I took it out on my wife and daughter. Instead of screwing up my own life by admitting what I’d done, I took it out on them and screwed up their lives, so I lost out anyway. Have you any idea how much I hate myself for all that?”

  Asher gazed at Mykhail’s face, peering into his sorrowful eyes, watching the tears trickle down his weather-worn skin. “I don’t believe a word of it,” he eventually said. “All you’re doing is trying to save your own skin, just like you did all those years ago.”

  “No!” Mykhail screeched. “It’s the truth!”

  Asher stood and took a step back. He should have been pleased to see his best friend squirm after what he’d done. But it wasn’t a pleasant sight. Not even one bit. And the worst thing was that he knew Mykhail was being honest. After all, he was contemplati
ng a world in which Diane had never been born. Asher saw the truth in Mykhail’s eyes; he would have known had he been faking it.

  But now it was Asher’s turn to be arrogant. He felt he could do nothing else.

  Mykhail stood up too, stepping toward Asher, grabbing the lapels of his jacket. “You want me to beg?” he said, now sobbing freely. “Well, I’m begging. Please, Asher. If not for me, then for Diane. Please keep all this to yourself. Please!”

  Anger smothered all thought in Asher’s mind. “Mykhail Petrenko,” he said, “I never want to see you again. We are no longer friends.”

  At that, Mykhail put his head in his hands. “Please, Asher,” he said. “I’ve thought so much about this over the years that it’s destroyed a part of me. The secrets, the deceit, the guilt. It’s been a disease in remission, one I’ve always known could return one day.” He looked up at Asher. “And today, all these years later, it has. You spring this on me and you expect me to have all the answers in a few pathetic minutes. Well, I’ve told you the truth. I can’t say any more.”

  It was then that Asher cracked. He raged and shouted at Mykhail, standing up, pacing around the room, arms whirling, then sitting down again but still not allowing Mykhail to speak. Asher had never possessed much of a temper, but it was as if he’d been saving up what temper he had for those few minutes of telling Mykhail how evil and disgusting he was.

  Again, Mykhail asked Asher to forgive him, and Asher told him to go to hell. Mykhail kept saying he was sorry, now red-faced and panting. He kept asking Asher to understand, to look at it from his point of view.

  “I’ll see you in hell first,” Asher hissed. “Which is where you belong.” Then he stumbled to the door, where he turned around and fired a final salvo. “I will never forgive you, Mykhail. You’re no friend of mine and you never will be. I just hope I never see you again.”

  He left, leaving the door swinging behind him, and staggered to the end of the street, where he flagged a cab down. By the time the cab dropped him off at the bus depot he was starting to feel ill with the stress, and welcomed the chance to sit in the waiting room and recover as best he could. As he watched the motley selection of people passing by in front of him, he started wondering about their histories too—what dark secrets each of them might be hiding. After all, everyone is guilty of something; it’s only a question of scale.