Jáchym Topol - Devil's Workshop

Of course, Arthur snaps his fingers impatiently. And how many of the dead were Jews?

Maruška reaches into her satchel, pulls out a file and leafs through it.

Roughly, dammit! Screw the details, Arthur barks.

About a third, Maruška says. According to Wikipedia!

There we have it. Arthur bangs his fist on the table. That’s an awful lot, you understand? Now he’s talking to all of us, not just Kagan.

A third of the Devil’s Workshop money should go to Jewish victims.

That’s an awful lot. The president is concerned that our people won’t allow it.

Kagan is silent. All of us are.

You saw what they’re like, Arthur says. There’s no way to contain them. Simple people. Devoted to the president. They’ve never eaten so well. They’re not anti-Semites, God forbid, but they really believe that stuff about poisoned rats. He shrugs.

Kagan squeezes his fingers, his knuckles crack.

You need to find a way to explain to your people, Arthur tells Kagan. The president is appointing you head of the Committee for Coordination with Jewish Groups on the Devil’s Workshop Project. Fixed salary. Are you in?

I didn’t care how Kagan answered. I just sat there listening to the crackling wood. A few other modest little fires blazed around us. The partisans crawled into sleeping bags laid on top of beds of pine needles. The one in the red cap brought us blankets. I threw one over my shoulders. Nobody objected.

I open my eyes and see Alex lying on a bed of needles. Maruška’s hair is under his elbow, as red as the coals I was staring at as I fell asleep, thinking of her. What did I expect, though? They had come to us together. But back then I didn’t know she had kids. I certainly do now. My road to Maruška was at an end.

OK. I get up and walk away. Past the fire pit with the glowing logs. I steal into the forest and head for the broken asphalt road.

How far from here to Minsk? I’d walked from Terezín to Prague. But back then it wasn’t freezing. And there were cars going by.

Suddenly I hear the hum of an engine. I dive into the snow behind a tree and see them. The commander driving, Kagan beside him, arm around his shoulders. Singing, laughing, passing a bottle back and forth. Couldn’t thumb them down, obviously.

I try to walk through the forest, but the trees are too thick here. I sit down on a trunk, apparently felled by a storm, pull off my boots, take out the Spider. It only takes three tries, with the help of some wet snow, to get it down my throat. Now it’s inside me. That’s what I wanted.

I don’t have to wait long. Red Cap is the first to spot me, sneaking around with his Kalashnikov. He sees me, gives a whistle. The next thing I know, Alex is on top of me, throwing a noose around my neck. And we start back.

You amaze me, Alex says. This is a chance for you to continue what you started with Lebo. Don’t you think he’d be happy?

I don’t know, I say. But yeah, I’m glad they found me. In spite of the rope around my neck. The forest here makes me sick.

Are you nuts, trying to run away?

What should I tell him? That I’m used to crawling through catacombs, but this forest makes me want to throw up? That, yes, I helped Lebo, and had a crush on Sara, and Maruška too, oh well, but I don’t give a damn about his plans? He wouldn’t understand.

Hey, guess what we’ve got? Alex says. Duschegubky . Soul eaters. This is where they tested out the gas vans. We found two, if you can believe it. Rusted out, but the whole system is intact. The locals kept chickens in them.

Are you serious?

Yeah! You had two villages razed in Czechoslovakia, right? Lidice and that other one — Maruška would know the name. But they torched nine thousand here, some of them people and all. That was the Ost Plan, extermination of the Slavs. Don’t tell me you wouldn’t like working on that.

He’s dragging me behind him. Too fast. The noose cuts into my neck. He stops.

Know what? Alex says. Hand over the archive and you can go wherever you want.

I look around the woods. Shake my head. There’s nowhere for me to go.

Where is it?

I try to say in the hotel, but I can’t, because of the noose.

You didn’t leave it in the hotel, Alex says. I already looked. Did some tidying up, too. They didn’t do a very good job of cleaning before you came! Sorry ’bout that, syabro ! We sometimes work in that room. I bet you’ve got it on you, haven’t you? If I make you strip naked, you’re going to catch cold.

I keep my mouth shut.

You swallowed it, didn’t you? Alex laughs. Of course, what else? Well, let’s go, c’mon. He jerks the rope.

Where to? I rasp.

Khatyn. You can give me it there.

Maruška, you cute little decoy, leading all the other goats and goatlings under the knife. We’re driving along, sitting under a tarpaulin, Alex is across from me, Luis Tupinabi’s head in his lap. The old man’s eyes are closed, if his face didn’t twitch every now and then I’d think he was dead. We sit stiffly in the piercing cold. I look over at Maruška. I couldn’t be with the flock, or with Sara, or with you, or with anybody I wanted to be with, but here we are, riding together across this chilly land. Alex slaps his palm on the tarpaulin from outside. Don’t sleep, he shouts, we’re almost there! The sputtering tractor that’s towing our cart up the wooded slope is driven by my old friend Red Cap. A guy with glasses sits with us, Kalashnikov across his chest. We’ve long since left the asphalt, no ditch for me to hide in along these roads, trees all over the place like they’re standing watch.

I see a building, a small house, through the mist and light snow. We stop a little way past it, at a tent. The flap is open. Inside, a stove, and next to it, in the gloom — it seems everything here is either in the gloom or in the mist — a huddled figure, holding a dish, puking into it.

Rolf! I cry. He stares at me through his glasses, tries to get up, retches. Na pamyat o Minske , I decipher the Cyrillic on the edge of the dish.

Some tourist you are, puking all over a Minsk souvenir! Is that for your mum, or your girlfriend? I give him a slap on the shoulder. I’m happy to see him.

Listen, Maruška’s outside! It’s like a regular reunion, isn’t it?

Rolf laughs like I’ve told some amazing joke. Then coughs and starts retching again. He’s a wreck. This isn’t the happy-go-lucky guy I knew in Terezín.

He pukes into the dish again. With shaky hands he sets it down on the flowery camping table, lays his arms on the table too, and puts his head on them. I think he’s sobbing.

I remember that time he wept in the bunkroom — so did I. Then I freeze. Where’s Lebo? Is he dead? I blurt. I have to know.

But Rolf just starts spewing again.

I decide to go and look for Maruška. Tough Maruška, the mummy, hm.

She’s still under the tarpaulin. I lift up a corner and see her with Tupanabi’s head on her lap, wiping his cheeks and face with a handkerchief, I wonder if it’s the same bloody rag from the museum in Minsk. The two bruisers with rifles don’t put them down for a second as they move boxes and plastic bags into the tent. Probably food and stuff. They pay no attention to me.

Maruška pulls the old man’s cadaverous hand from the blankets and, stroking his face, slips a syringe from her sleeve into her hand and inserts the needle into his arm. She pushes the plunger, pauses, looks at me, staring me in the eye. Sees my lips move, saying her name, quietly. I lower the tarpaulin. I look around. Alex is nowhere in sight.

I take two, three steps away from the tractor, to see if anything happens. And the next thing I know I’m in strips of mist, it gives me cover, till the wind breaks through the mist on my left and shows me what’s ahead.