Jáchym Topol - Devil's Workshop

She’s walking next to me like she’s used to it. Not being careful at all. She doesn’t realize I’ve got to get out of here. Alex is still in there. Rolf. The partisans will kill me.

For a second a flash of sunlight shines through the drizzle and mist. Her uniform’s covered in stains. But her hair is glowing. She keeps laughing. I’m laughing too. She’ll never run away with me. She’s got kids.

We come to the bottom of the hill. The forest starts here. Birches. I stop. There’s one more thing I want to know.

Did you give Lebo an injection too? When you guys brought him here?

Yeah. We got you into Minsk under the Czech-Belarusian agreement on transportation of prisoners. Greased a few palms, you know how it is. Look at those trees over there!

Were you with Lebo at the hotel?

No, I was with my boys. My brother took care of him.

So do you know what’s in the museum?

Are you crazy? I’ll see it on opening day. It’ll be great! There’ll be people coming from Minsk and all over the place. I’ll put on my ceremonial uniform. I can’t go in this. See? She stuck a slender finger through a hole in her coat and wiggled it around.

A beautiful woman like you could go dressed in a potato sack!

Cut it out! I don’t like that kind of talk!

But she isn’t angry. And she didn’t kill Lebo. If she had, she would’ve told me.

Look, you can go over there in those trees! I’ll turn around.

I go down to the trees, peel off a strip of bark. Anything happening? No. I have to do it. I’ll be gentle. I start back uphill towards her.

Hey, wait a sec, she says. She smells it too. The smoke. Carried here on a gust of wind. The thick smoke of a fire.

Stop! she shouts.

I speed up. I want to put the bark over her mouth so she can’t scream. Knock her down. Put her to sleep.

I ram into her full force, she sinks to her knees, head twisted back. Did she faint? Has she had enough? But then suddenly she’s like an animal, springing up from her knees, the needle bounces off the piece of bark I’m holding up. She comes at me again, I sidestep, grab her hand, we slip, she falls on top of me, jams the needle into her thigh. Not a sigh. Nothing. This is not what I wanted.

That’s what I keep telling myself, this is not what I wanted, Maruška, this is not what I wanted. I carry her down the hill in my arms to the dead village, lean her up against a wall, there’s still red in her cheeks, she’s breathing. I pick her back up and suddenly a burst of flame leaps from the roof of the cabin below us, green and orange fiery serpents creeping across the museum roof. The sound of cracking and muffled blows carries to us on the wind. The rafters caving in, or that chemical stuff blowing up.

I lay her on the bed in the tent. Maruška. You only got what you were going to give to me. So this is your sleep of the just. I take off her boots. Loosen the belt on her jacket. Cover her up. They’ve got all kinds of blankets and sleeping bags.

I fish around in her satchel. Swallow a blue one, put a handful in my pocket.

She’s also got scissors in there. I’ll just snip off a single strand, she won’t even notice. Not that I’m some kind of pervert! I just don’t know how to say goodbye.

I wrap a red strand of her hair around my fingers. Hold it up against the sky, as the flames swallow up the museum. The sky is red.

I just stay like that.

With her.

I don’t have much time, though.

Where will I go?

I fish around in my memory: it’s there, stored in the database, the address. I probably have the envelope too, somewhere. Or maybe not.

I wouldn’t work with Mr Mára, not a chance. But I’ve got money. From the game. It might be enough to make a fresh start, I fantasize.

It’s a nice fantasy.

I feed the stove. A lot. She needs warmth.

And then I hear it.

The tractor. Good thing it’s so noisy. I see Red Cap in the driver’s seat. And there are others. So I slip out under the canvas, vanish into the mist.

Through birches, bushes, sparse vegetation, over the nearly frozen snow. I don’t want to go back in the woods. I have a panic attack, out on the plain, but then I see a big black blot in the distance. Could be a marsh, a grove of trees, but it might also be a house, a place with walls where I can draw strength. Maybe at least some boulders, a hole in the ground. A ditch, a gully, a place to hide and watch the world go by.

The attack passes. I look down, focusing my eyes on the ground, and walk. An island of blackness lies in the twilight ahead like a prospect of hope.

I’m grateful to Alex for these clothes, that’s for sure. It’s like being in a protective cocoon. The thingamajig is frozen inside me.

Alex. Why did he tell me about the gutting? When somebody says they want to kill you, believe them: Lebo taught us that too. Where will I go? Everybody I knew is gone. I look down at the cold earth under my feet. It’s so much work just walking, I can’t even think of Maruška.

I make out the first cross through the flakes. It’s snowing. The wind is knocking me around. But I rejoice. And I’m also more on the lookout. People. I’ll get out of here somehow. This chilly land will let me go. Won’t eat me up, suck me in.

More crosses, in a row. I walk between them, lift my eyes, and, good, my head doesn’t spin.

The blot turns out to be a smallish hill covered in trees, bushes. I have to tramp through the crosses to reach the foot of the hill. Little crosses, big crosses, a massive pole, six feet tall, crossed with two smaller ones. Next to it a tiny cross of spruce branches with a faded pink ribbon fluttering. Surrounded with stuffed animals. A bear, a monkey, a couple more. Tattered, I guess from the wind and rain. They’re weighted down with stones. A few more tiny crosses.

I think I wailed. Out loud, which is just reckless. Another graveyard.

I push back the branches of the first trees. There are crosses everywhere here too. Also stones, some with inscriptions on them. In Cyrillic. And in my alphabet too. Names. A Jewish stone engraved with a star — I know that from back home.

I make my way slowly uphill through the crosses. There are also names carved on the trees. Some of the scars are grown over, others shine clearly against the bark. Not a human footprint anywhere, though. No signs of dog paws or goat hooves, nothing.

Even if I did dare to leave the hill of crosses and go back out there on the plain, the wind would’ve swept me away. Tiny, stinging hailstones whip across the landscape. I make my way through the crosses, they’re even thicker here than the trees, up to the top.

There’s a man standing there. I slip down into the snow, behind a rock.

Beard, quilted coat, knee-high boots. Looks like one of the guys from Arthur’s partisan outfit. But there’s no weapon in his hands. Or on his back. He’s holding a sack. Fishes some kind of shiny trinket or something out of it. Flings it into the snow among the crosses. Whistles to himself. Moves on. Towards me.

I slither away across a shallow grave. Slip behind a tree and slide down the ridge. Then I hear something. In the gorge, the ravine. A horse whinnying. I see a hefty woman in yellow overalls. Shielding her eyes with her hand, searching in the drizzle, looking up, towards me. The only thing I’m holding on to, unforgivably, is some slender tree roots. They give way and I go tumbling down, landing at her feet. So Ula and I meet again.

We compare stories about that night at the Falvarek. She remembers it well. The rat-filled courtyard. The city under martial law. So what’s the situation now? I ask. She says the president has probably crushed the opposition. But they’re still fighting in Minsk, and probably elsewhere too. That’s why they’re staying off the roads. But there hasn’t been a signal for days now. She says she’ll explain all that later.