Jáchym Topol - Devil's Workshop

I run out. Slam the door shut behind me. Take a deep breath. And another. Drink in the air, relief. Suddenly the noose pulls tight around my neck, and I slip, fall on my back, I can’t feel a thing.

So the two of you worked it out? says a voice as I come out of my fog. My head is in Maruška’s lap. We’re in the tent.

Does it hurt? You had a rope around your neck. I just tugged it for fun. Sorry!

Ice, I say with some effort. My head feels like it has axes floating around inside it.

She drops two pills in my mouth. Hands me a glass. Takes one herself.

Alex was on my case pretty bad, what with you running away all the time. So I snagged you. Just for practice, though!

I sit up. Look around.

So you finally wised up and decided to give us those records of yours.

How do you know? Everything’s better after those pills. As usual. But my neck is going to be one giant bruise.

Alex would never have let you leave otherwise. From the museum. I would’ve been upset if he’d gutted you.

Upset? You mean it?

You swallowed it, didn’t you?

I nod.

So go shit it out.

She didn’t have to be so vulgar about it. If Alex was going to gut me, she’d have given me an injection. But nobody’s going to take out my guts. I lie on my back. It’s nice here. Stove glowing. Rain beating down on the tent.

At least with the rain it’ll take a while for the fire to make its way out of the basement and reach the wood of the cabin. At least I think there’s a fire. There were flammables all over the place. But maybe it went out. And Alex’ll be back any moment. We need to get out of here.

Maruška, I’m embarrassed! I can’t do that in front of you.

Oh, please! You’re like a little kid!

Why don’t we go for a walk so I can loosen up my bowels? Just for a couple minutes, OK?

I don’t know!

I’m frozen solid. You’re a nurse. You should understand.

I could give you something to make you vomit.

Come on, please!

OK, but if that doesn’t work, I’m giving you a laxative.

In the end she agrees to go for a walk. I set off, leading the way. Up the hill towards Khatyn, the dead village. That way we’ll have the hill between us and the museum, in case there’s smoke — she won’t see it. I don’t know what I’ll do if Alex turns up.

The first chimney rises up from the mist ahead of us. And Khatyn’s first demolished house. What’s left of it. We walk side by side. She’s got her satchel. Just like when we were walking in Minsk, Sun City.

Hey, I say to her, getting my courage up. What about your boys, your kids?

What about them?

Who are they with now? Their grandma?

No.

So where are they?

They stayed in the house. With the other kids. The older ones. They’ll figure it out, they’ll either run away or hide. Those people won’t hurt them.

You don’t sound too sure.

Nothing’s for sure. But it’s part of the plan, part of the teaching technique.

What plan?

The plan to survive.

Huh?

My boys are faced with situations. Like all of our children. Different situations, so they learn how to cope from early on.

I remember the crazy mob, the screaming, the stones, the sticks, the way the house shook from the explosions.

That’s pretty harsh.

They have to learn how to cope. Nobody knows what’ll happen.

That’s true. Who are the other kids you were talking about?

Our friends’ kids. Mark Kagan was the one who came up with the teaching technique. But the boys are probably safe by now. They’re probably with their dad.

Huh? I thought your husband was Alex.

He’s my brother.

I grabbed her hand and squeezed so hard she gave a little squeal. There was no way she could’ve known that a boulder had just been lifted from my heart. Depriving someone of their brother is awful, I admit. But if I had made orphans of Maruška’s boys, I don’t think I could ever have forgiven myself.

We keep walking uphill. Then along the black stones, past the other ruins. A bell tower or two. Made of stone, not wood. The bells don’t move an inch, even in the wind.

Normally you hear the death knell all the time here, Maruška says, pointing to the belfries.

Yeah?

In memoriam. The bells run on electricity, but we need it for the museum now. Some say it’ll bring us bad luck. What do you think?

It takes all I’ve got not to slip and fall on the rocks.

Our mum survived the Khatyn massacre. I’m sure Alex told you. She was seven. They nailed our grandfather to the barn. Burned everyone else alive in the cottage. She hid in the shed. They ran her through with bayonets and burned down the shed, but somehow she managed to crawl out and get away.

Her little brother, my uncle, that is, was wearing boots with soles cut from old tyres. People wore them in those days. My mum saw the executioners coming, so she told him to take them off. So he wouldn’t burn too long in the rubber. So he wouldn’t suffer any more than he had to. But my mum’s bad luck was that officially there were no survivors of Khatyn, especially not a little girl like her. That’s how it was written down, that’s what they reported. And all of a sudden she comes out of hiding and says, I was there, I saw it, and those men were speaking Ukrainian.

What men?

The killers. Which means it wasn’t only Germans, but Soviets too, you see? It was a disaster for her. There was only one story she told about it when she came back from the concentration camp in Siberia. The one about the galoshes. It freaked me out, you know. The horror of it.

So who’s your husband, then? I wanted to know everything about this girl.

Kagan.

I stop in my tracks. So she’s married to that harsh old man. I turn around, so she can’t see my face.

She touches my shoulder. It’s good that you’re with us. I’m glad.

I don’t see any smoke above the museum. We can go downhill now.

Want to know how we met?

Absolutely.

I was just a little girl, but I couldn’t get it out of my brain, Maruška says. The world is a place of horror, that’s all I kept thinking. Because of what happened. The killing. That’s what people are capable of. And it’s going to happen again. What do I do?

Uh-huh! I say. I knew that one.

Whenever anyone looked at me, the first thing I’d do is think to myself: Will they hide me or turn me in, when the time comes again? I’d walk in someplace and right away: Where would I hide? The attic? The wardrobe? And it just kept getting worse. I thought maybe I should just kill myself. I mean, the world’s so ugly and full of cruelty. People are evil.

I look at Maruška. Talking about what it was like for her. She didn’t look at all like a bunk seeker, though.

Alex brought me to Kagan. A million people died in the concentration camps in Belarus. But not Kagan. A lot of people like me went to see him. They still do.

He went through it all as a little boy. They killed all his people. He was in the ghetto when it burned. Dug himself out of a mass grave. Saw people eating people. And he was able to talk about it. We listened. And we laughed together. You can live with all the horror and in spite of it. He taught us that. He rid me of my obsession. You give everything to a person like that. If that’s what he wants.

Hm.

She stops in the middle of the slope. Giggles. She must’ve popped another pill. Yep, she digs around in her satchel and hands me one too. I swallow it down with a handful of snow.

Remember how we had to run for it from the Falvarek?

Yeah!

We both giggle a while.

This Devil’s Workshop’s going to mean work for a lot of people. Maintenance men, technicians. Security guards, guides, all of that. And tourists bring money. It’s only right that the descendants of the people who got murdered should get some cash out of it, don’t you think? Anyway, there’s nobody else around here. And when I get old, I can live in peace and be the dezhurnaya. In our museum.