Nine

If God lived on earth, people would break his windows.

Jewish proverb

Minsk, a city dragging its history behind it like a sack of boulders. A place full of surprises, remade after the war by dreaming Russians. Avenues, they said when they woke up, their heads groggy. Colonnades. Obelisks. Monuments.

Now a place ancient and young, timeworn and eager. A city and its own younger brother, living together in close quarters. The bright air is strikingly clear, and in the distance, there are waves of undulating apartments in pale green or ochre stucco. A river meanders along, its surface scattered with dots of light. But behind all this, loitering in alleys, slipping around doorways, there are other things, hidden things: lucent warmth, grittiness, spiky courage — things liable to erupt in startling ways.

The investigator picks her up at the airport, a man in his forties, the skin shadowed around his eyes, his mouth finely curved, uneven.

Todar Pavlovich, he says, eyeing her disapprovingly.

He is a disapproving man — of her, the airport, his car, the city itself. Especially the city.

Rubble after the war.

He says this as if it was the city’s fault, and he has not yet forgiven it — still holding on to a grudge about the disappearance of this building, that corner. But these changes, these missing pieces must have vanished before he was born — perhaps these are borrowed grudges, inherited from his parents as a child. Of course, a child can hold a grudge — even a second-hand one — as keenly as an adult. Something that can be orienting, steadying — almost sustaining.

The architecture — first Stalin, then Khrushchev, says the investigator moodily.

They pass an Orthodox church, white with blue cupolas dotted in gold, then a park of balsam and fir trees. A bronze statue, a man, stands with his coat thrown over his shoulders, a cane in one hand, poised mid-motion on blocks of granite, his eyes blank.

Yanka Kupala, says the investigator, in answer to her question. A poet. Died falling down stairs. Or maybe he killed himself after naming names. Or maybe he was murdered.

Too many choices. Reality should be less optional, less fickle, she thinks. Something solid, fixed to the spot, as faithful and unblinking as an owl.

The NKVD, they went after the writers, poets, artists, he says. Executed twenty-two of them in one night alone. A disaster for a small country.

Does she know any Belarusian artists? Soutine, born in a shtetl near Minsk, a man who painted the rabbi, and was beaten up by his son, an Orthodox butcher. But he moved to France early on. Chagall, of course, his father a herring-seller. A painter of acrobats vaulting from swings, of willowy couples sailing through the sky.

The investigator takes her to a bar, shelves of dimly lit bottles behind the counter. In a few minutes, plates of sausages and potato pancakes appear, the barman wiping his hands on his apron.

I cannot guarantee anything about these witnesses, says the investigator. He eats slowly and primly. I know the problem is identifying the man. But it is getting harder and harder to find witnesses who are still alive — they are dying like insects.

Flies? she says.

Flies are insects, he says severely.

What are you expecting them to say?

He runs through what they have said to him so far, adding in his own caustic remarks.

Any other prospects? she says. The researchers suspect that he was involved in executions, they want to track down every lead possible.

Maybe you should hear these ones first, before you send me on a wild bird chase, he says.

She resists the temptation to say goose.

After two glasses of vodka, he becomes expansive, begins talking about himself. He has a soft, guttural accent, turning his English into a line of low, rumbling words. When he talks about his plans, his ambitions, his usual disapproval recedes.

Chicago or New York, he says. I could work for a large law firm, I have seen the kind of work they do, who they hire.

His face lights up a little as he talks; this new side of him is so nakedly hopeful she has to try hard not to laugh. Perhaps working with him will be more agreeable than she thought.

He has done some work for a lawyer in Boston, investigating importers, exporters. It will lead to more, he thinks. The man was impressed with his thoroughness, his clarity. A man with influence and — the investigator rubs his thumb and first two fingers together.

Wealthy? she says.

Jewish.

She hesitates for a minute, while he goes on talking.

I’m Jewish, she says, interrupting him.

A second of revulsion, then his face reassembles and smooths out.

The pitfalls of a name that gives so little away.

A stealth Jew, says Nate.

You should have told me, said a new boyfriend over and over. Someone who had drifted off shortly afterwards. You should have told me.

She never seems to get used to this, it always surprises her. Who did they think she was before? Who do they think she is now?

Sometimes people look at her reproachfully, as if she had been working undercover, and had unfairly caught them out. You don’t look Jewish, they say, then wish they could stuff this inane sentence back into their mouths.

Ashkenazi hair, says her aunt.

You know what I mean, the person says silently, as if they shared some heavy-nosed, olive-skinned understanding.

The investigator is fully composed now, but more distant than before. Or perhaps she is more wary of him. They will both brush this aside, act as if this moment never happened.

Tomorrow, the first interview, he says, the witness has moved to a place outside Babruysk. The interpreter and the KDB officer will meet us there. Do you want to rest now, prepare for tomorrow?

A KDB officer will be at the interviews, Owen had said before she left. A diplomatic requirement for permission. We have to do this through governmental channels. They were fine when we were after Nazi war criminals — if anything, they were helpful. It might be a different story this time.

Yes. It might. The Belarusian KDB — the inheritor, the keeper of the NKVD legacy.

Her hotel room is small, old-fashioned, the wallpaper striped in brown and cream. An uncomfortable-looking chair is drawn up to a desk — three gold foil-wrapped chocolates, an orange, an overripe plum arranged in a row on it. A narrow wardrobe on the other side, a samovar of hot water in the corner. The bedspread is tired-looking, but clean, and the room smells like crumbs.

She sits down at the desk, tries to concentrate on her questions, to read the short profiles the investigator has given her. But she is too restless, her thoughts flitting around, and her burns are nagging at her — healing, but itchy. She wants to get out, to see this place, Minsk, to hear it, to be in it.

The night is warm, spring drifting into summer — people hurrying home under the street lights, carrying parcels, bags, umbrellas. She watches their faces as she walks, looking at them as long as she dares — their expressions tired, distracted. A tight-lipped man, a woman smiling at something to herself.

As she passes the street lights, her shadow changes, shrinking on the sidewalk, then stretches out again. The street signs with their Cyrillic lettering are impenetrable to her. She has a brief glimpse of what it might be like to be illiterate, an existence without written words, surrounded by graphic silence.

She wanders into a grocery store. The smell of curdled milk, shelves of dark bread, a small meat counter — chicken breasts with pimpled skin, pig trotters. Rows of white and green cheeses, honeycomb, jars of pickles — peppers, tomatoes, onions. Packages of dates, figs, apricots tied with hemp. A tank of fish in the corner — hake? carp? — the water dirty, the fish grey and whiskered, primeval-looking. Another display case has varieties of pickled cabbage salads, green, purple, scattered with carrot shreds or small chunks of pork. An entire wall of vodkas.

None of this makes her hungry or thirsty at the moment — the oily pancakes are sitting heavily in her stomach. But she is tempted to buy something, if only to become involved in this purposeful scene for a moment, to be purposeful herself. To be someone other than an observer. Some vodka, perhaps, something to keep in her room. She studies the rows of bottles, but the language defeats her again, and she picks one at random.

A line, but not a long one. Two women are talking in front of her, they look like a mother and a daughter. The younger one is lively, laughing, the older one saying little. Behind her, a man and a woman seem to be bickering quietly, but the rest of the line waits patiently. When she reaches the cashier, she pulls out her money, looks up inquiringly.

But the women is shaking her head, flicks the bill with her finger.

Wrong language. Wrong currency.

···

Yes, says the investigator the next day, his disapproval slipping again for a moment. We are the kings of vodka — Russian vodka is nothing. Nothing. We have vodka with pepper and honey, vodka with cowberries, birch leaves, bison grass. Vodka filtered through black flint or platinum. Every kind you can imagine.

···

The countryside, grey and damp, the sky iron-coloured. A thin mist over the fields, blurring the spears of mauve-and-pink wildflowers in the ditches. In the distance a peat fire, the smoke smudging the horizon. A stream follows the side of the road for a while, a gleaming snake, and they pass fields of young flax, rapeseed flowers, separated by stone fences. A rowdy flock of swallows goes by, the birds diving and rolling in the air.

Past Babruysk to an old farmhouse, a sour cherry tree blooming in front, piles of worn tires, bleached sacks. The door is answered by an elderly woman, a small birthmark on one of her cheeks, flossy white hair.

Sardechna zaprashayem, she says. Welcome. She offers them bread, salt, honey, tea.

An older man sitting in the corner nods to them, his face framed by bristling white brows, one sharp eye. The other is a puckered scar, a few age spots on his skin. On his lap, an old cat kneads the blanket over his knees.

The floor is covered with a woven rug, and the shelves on the wall hold rows of jars — runner beans, yellow peppers, onions, relish. A whole shelf of dark beets alone, floating in brine, like jars of pickled rubies. On the other side is the fireplace, surrounded by white ceramic tiles, a metal firebox below. And over in the corner, soft cheese in a cloth, hanging over a bucket, a giant larva.

The KDB officer is already there, young, square-faced, a dark blond crewcut. He introduces himself tensely. The interpreter — call me Polina — is livelier, her glossy black hair pulled back into a clip, her fingernails bitten down, her voice with a stretchy, violin-like quality. She mocks the officer a little, as if his stiffness was a personal dare. He does his best to ignore her, although his eyes follow her around the room as she sets up a recorder, puts out lapel microphones. She ignores his eyes, although she moves her hips a little more than necessary. But when she puts on her headset, clears her throat, she is serious, capable.

Testing, she says. Her voice changes as she begins to recite a strand of words in a slight singsong.

When she is satisfied, they begin.

Tell us what happened.

I was named by someone, says the man in a raspy voice. I am not sure who, even now. Although I have my suspicions.

He glances at the elderly woman, who nods at him — go on.

My father and mother were Ukrainian Jews, from the Homyel voblast in southern Belarus — there were many of us there. I was born in Homyel city, but moved to Minsk to get a job. I married my wife — he gestures to the woman — and we had three boys. I worked in the municipal archives as a senior clerk for eleven years, never a complaint. Some of those years were good years for Jews in Minsk — we had the State Yiddish Theatre, heders and yeshivas everywhere, a hundred synagogues. Almost half the population, we were, Yiddish was one of the official languages. Can you imagine?

No. She makes an attempt to imagine this, to envision walking down streets, mingling in crowds, knowing that she was surrounded by Jews. A tiny sense of relief comes over her, a relaxation of muscles, the loosening of a hidden tension — a tension she hadn’t known was there.

But then it all changed, says the man. They closed the synagogues, they banned the heders and yeshivas, they went after the kosher grocers, the Jewish tradesmen. They banned the Sabbath. We could see it happening, but we never thought it would get worse, each new measure was a shock. We steeled ourselves to bear each change, thinking that it was the last, hoping that it was all temporary. Clearly this cannot continue, we thought. A new government will come in. Or they will come to their senses. Then in 1938, three NKVD officers came to my apartment, and told me to confess that I was a traitor, a wrecker, a member of the fifth column, that I was sending information to the Bund.

Never, I said. Impossible. I am entirely loyal to the revolution. I would never do such a thing. What information could I possibly send anyway? The marriage register? Tax records? I know nothing important, there is no military information here, nothing worth anything.

But they arrested me despite this, and took me to the NKVD building, where an officer beat me with a club around the head and ribs, beat me until my clothes were covered in blood.

The old man coughs, a wet cough that seems to shake his frail body, and then spits into a basin beside his chair. The woman gets up from her chair, pulls aside a grubby curtain under the firebox to reveal logs, some old pans. She takes a log and adds it to the fire, stirring it up.

The next day, says the man, the officer beat me again, this time with a chair leg. He hit me so hard on the side of my face that he took out my eye.

He gestures to his puckered socket.

He made me crawl on all fours, he forced me to bark like a dog. He threatened to beat me with barbed wire. He told me he would kill me, he would shoot me in the head if I did not confess. If I confessed, if I named others, they would send me to a forced labour camp, but at least I would not be executed. He made me stand for five days without sleeping, without sitting or lying down, stoiki, he called it. When I could not stand up any longer, when I kept falling over, he would beat me again. He brought in a younger man, a clerk, so they could take turns.

Finally, I confessed, although I still refused to name others, to this day I have never named anyone else. The clerk wrote up a confession, which they forced me to sign, admitting that I had attempted to create an uprising, that I was a spy, that I was guilty of anti-Soviet agitation. Then they sent me to a labour camp.

In the labour camp, I had to cut down trees with an axe so dull it took hours to get through the trunk of one tree. The rations were so scanty, I had to catch rats and eat them to stay alive. Most of the prisoners had dysentery, frostbite, scurvy, lice — the lice alone almost drove me mad. People died every day from tuberculosis or typhus, every day there were more bodies. I was not released until 1948.

She asks him about the NKVD officer, the clerk.

They were men, they were police, the elderly man says, shrugging.

Did you recognize either of them at the time?

No.

Did they refer to each other by names?

Not that I remember.

Did they have any identifying numbers or badges?

Not that I remember.

She shows him a photograph of Drozd. Was he one of the men?

The man squints at the picture, turning it this way and that.

Yes, Todar showed me this, he says in his cracked voice. I think it might be the clerk, I think it might be him. Although he was much younger then. And his hair was different. His eyebrows were thicker then, too.

This is important, says the investigator. These men should pay for beating you, for sending you to the labour camp, for what they did to other people as well.

The KDB official raps sharply on the table.

If you are not sure it was him, do not say that it was.

The man looks at the official as if seeing him for the first time. He takes in his uniform, his insignia, his scowl. Then he seems to shrink a little.

I might be mistaken, he says. These things are difficult to say.

He looks down at the cat, strokes him a few times, and coughs again.

She almost groans. What had she expected in a place where facts had been malleable for so long, where they had become saleable commodities? Things that could be created, exchanged for survival, for protection, for relief from torture or death.

She asks more questions, but the man becomes vaguer with each one.

On the way back, she watches the countryside flow by, the countryside where Drozd grew up. Is there anything here, some element in this terrain, in this soil that gave rise to him, that poisoned him, deadened him? But this sleeping landscape seems placid enough, lovely — a light rain falling, the soft grey mist still there. Clumps of ghostly birches, the fields stretching out, blurred into delicate greens beside the road.

She closes her eyes for a minute, puts her head back against the seat.

These stories — first the affidavits, now these recitals — are wearing her down. Their details are beginning to creep into her everyday life, when she dozes, when she dreams, into any gaps in her thoughts. When I could not stand up any longer. Where the space was the size of a grave. When every day there were more bodies. And they leave an imprint of sadness on her, spongy impressions on her arms, her legs, her mind.

But the testimony of this witness would not help them much. His evidence would not survive even the mildest cross-examination.

You’ll have to do better than that, says Louis.

···

Does he expect you to snap your fingers, conjure something out of thin air? says Nate. No, ignore that, he probably does.

From a distance, Nate seems to have expanded, spread out, drifting through the telephone. She is still waiting for this thing — whatever it is — to assume a real shape, to cohere and harden into something with edges, folds, corners. She is puzzled by its formlessness, but not impatient — she has fallen into this as softly and easily as rolling over. If she starts trying to shape it herself, to impose some form on it, she might end up with a version of her past relationships, instead of something with its own unique contours. But soon, very soon, she hopes that it will become more tangible, a thing she can press against her face, clasp to her chest. Something that she can touch, that she can wrap around herself, that she can hold in her hands.

She feels a warm, silvery cramp in her chest.

Are you still there? he says.

···

She is crouched beside the row of leafy plants and her legs are beginning to ache. The basket in front of her is only half filled with strawberries.

Law school, the end of second year. Nate has persuaded her, has convinced her she will have a good time. We need to get out of the library, we need the fresh air. And I have a recipe for jelly, strawberry with basil.

But the sun, at first a welcome warmth, is now hot, drilling across her back, and her hands are sticky with juice. She stands up, shakes out her legs, and moves to the next row. Here she tries pulling the glistening berries off in handfuls, but she crushes too many of them this way, the smell almost spicy. All she has to do is fill this basket, she reminds herself. But the basket is filling so slowly that she lifts it up to see if there might be a hole in it.

She rubs the back of her neck, then stands up again to stretch her legs. Nate, in the next row, his basket almost full, looks up at her.

This is too much like work, she says.

Only a row or two more, he says encouragingly.

Let’s make less jelly.

What a thought.

One more row, she says.

Three, he says.

She picks up her basket as if to throw the strawberries at him.

You wouldn’t dare, he says doubtfully.

A long, slow arc, brilliant red in the sun.

···

An hour, a day, week. How long has she been sitting there, in this room or another, Polina’s singsong running through her ears? Watching the investigator study his fingernails, the KDB official tapping his pen. The investigator is a smoker and the familiar smell makes her more receptive, she feels she can listen to almost any story, no matter how weak, how flawed, with a nicotine-stained equanimity. So far: a farmer, a welder, a mathematician, a teacher. Each with a harrowing tale, each with only the most dubious identification of Drozd.

They are compelling despite this, so different from each other, but alike in their underlying bluntness, their clarity. As if the horrors they experienced had burned away an outer covering, and left them with a shell-hard core. Undaunted afterwards, persisting in creating new lifetimes for themselves. Even now, they continue in these uneven duets with the world, still closely — valiantly — coupled to their lives. What kind of fortitude, what kind of nerve does that take?

Not many possible witnesses left, says the investigator. So many of them were executed, or they died of their injuries, or died in the labour camps, or died since then, infirmity, age. Not many left.

She is surprised at how fiercely she wants to win this case now, something that has crept up on her. She is convinced there should be some moral compensation for the destruction this man helped to wreak, some redistribution of circumstance and consequence. Particularly since there is no sign of any remorse on his part, no sign of regret, nothing that might be a form of atonement. Unless living an ordinary life, a humble life, the small virtues of it, a thousand tiny moments over time, unless these things have their own redemptive force.

No, this is not enough. At least in his case.

Perhaps this is not the way to think about it, though, the idea that someone’s good deeds and bad deeds are linked at all. Or that there is some formula, some equation that can be applied to come up with a tally, an accounting. A moral netting out. Particularly since good and bad must be ever-changing configurations.

Some things are unredeemable, say the spiders. Some people owe a permanent debt to justice.

But justice requires evidence.

We’re not alchemists.

···

The doctrine of frustration. A man rented a music hall (“God’s will permitting”) to hold a series of fêtes and concerts, including a quadrille band, a wizard, tightrope performers, rifle galleries, and boats on the lake. The music hall burned down before the event, and the man sued the owners for failing to provide the hall. The Court of Appeal found that the owners were excused from their obligations in the same manner as if a painter commissioned to do a portrait had been struck blind. The perishing of the hall, said Lord Blackburn, made the thing impossible.

···

There’s no one else, Ida says again.

Sure, says Marvin, and begins setting up the rented mourner chairs.

She was my closest friend. I owe her this. And those uncles are hopeless.

Sure, says Marvin.

The shiva. She is eleven, almost twelve, she refuses to sit in one of the short chairs, to be there for the Kaddish. She refuses to wear the torn black ribbon.

She wouldn’t want this, she says. She wouldn’t want this.

Her voice is thin, she is shocked, reeling inside.

Yes, she would, says Ida wisely. She puts her arm around the girl, who stays stiff for a second or two, then shrugs her off.

Then I don’t want it.

The prayers, the hand washing, the candles. In her dazed state, the girl feels as if a small cloud of Jewishness has engulfed her, something unknown, murky — not her aunt’s familiar rhythms.

Marvin winks, an empty gesture, as if they are on the same side, even though they are not. But she knows he means to be kind.

She still insists on staying outside, refusing to talk to people, throwing a ball against the side of the house — off the wall, off the paved driveway.

Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud.

Leg under the ball. Leg over the ball. One, two, three alairy, kick the cat out of the dairy.

I’m so cold, her aunt had said. I’m so cold. Tell that nurse to bring me another blanket. I’m so cold.

Her laboured breathing, the tremors in her hands.

Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud. Seven, eight, nine alairy, meet me then in January.

Ida plays music — wistful, beautiful songs — to entice her inside. Marvin raises an eyebrow — during a shiva? — but she shrugs. What’s the harm?

Nothing will bring her in, though, except to eat and sleep.

Between the thuds, she hears voices she knows. Here come the uncles now, in a clump, walking up the front path. Nervous, they have banded together for protection, Gus smoking hard.

She agrees to go inside with them, only because they look so worried, as if they might be subjected to some ritual against their will.

Finally, says Ida reproachfully to them.

They sit at the dining room table, dark mahogany so burnished she thinks that plates might slide right off it — she imagines them skating around its surface, people grabbing frantically for them with both hands.

Sweet potato kugel, says Ida, setting out dishes and forks.

They are drowning in a mountain of kugel dishes — noodle, cheese, potato — people bring it every day. As if this starchy dish were a cure for mortality, a remedy for death.

The uncles glance at the covered mirror on the wall, look at their plates suspiciously. Then Rudy begins nibbling on his piece, and Gus starts eating with his eyes closed, a test of his mettle.

Delicious, Malcolm says, smiling at Ida, and she pats her hair involuntarily.

Come home, says Gus.

Soon, says Ida. She’ll be home soon. It’s good to mourn.

She puts her arm around Leah again.

But Leah is not mourning. All her energy is focused on shutting it out of her mind, sealing it away.

The yellowing skin. The muscle cramps. Her metallic breath.

Why the hell don’t they heat this place? her aunt had said.

Someone had brought a box of teas to the hospital for her, tea samples in small round tins, a metal tea egg with a small chain. Every day, Leah brewed it — the nurses let her use their electric kettle — as precisely as possible, according to the instructions. She put fresh cold water in the kettle, she shut it off as soon as it boiled, she added a teaspoon of tea to the tea egg. Then she carefully steeped it — three minutes for white tea, two minutes for black and green tea. They were working her way through the box: Oolong, Orange Pekoe, Assam, Darjeeling, Ceylon White.

This one is supposed to be malty and smooth, she said, reading the description.

Her aunt made a sound, half cough, half laugh.

I’ll drink it later, she said. Leave it on the tray table.

Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud. Seven, eight, nine alairy, sitting in a cemetery, ten, eleven, twelve.

Midway through Darjeeling, on the way to her aunt’s room, a nurse headed her off in the corridor.

I’m so sorry, honey. Let me call someone for you.

Incomprehensible. Unimaginable. Unbearable.

An ocean of pain swamped her. Her mind snapped shut.

Outside, a flock of starlings burst into the air, twittering fiercely.

···

Rain is coming down in warm gusts as the investigator parks the car. She has slept badly, her eyes feel roughened, tired.

This is a good one, you will see, he says. But he has said this before each witness, so she only nods.

Irina Novik. A doctor, although she is in her eighties now, and no longer works. This is a country, a place of old women, they say, the men dead before their time — executed, worked to death, blown up in wars. She lives in an apartment, she is standing in the doorway, a dress of blue linen, a cardigan on her shoulders. Her black eyes watchful, the skin translucent over the veins on her hands, the rings on her fingers sunken into the flesh.

The place is dirtless, whip-clean, all blues and greys. Fabric has been tied over the chairs and sofas, making their surfaces softer. The KDB officer looks larger, stiffer here, out of place in his uniform.

A pot of coffee, an apple torte. The woman limps as she walks, her ankles swollen.

The investigator explains again: This is for a foreign court case, no, not here. They are looking for information.

The woman keeps turning her rings around, looking at the KDB official.

You should speak freely, says the investigator. She is a lawyer — he points at Leah — you have the protection of the law.

Nothing will happen to me?

Nothing will happen to you, says the investigator.

But how does he know? Leah thinks. How can he be sure?

The KDB official is frowning on the other side of the table.

The woman pours out the hot coffee, wiping the drips off the bottom of the spout with a cloth after each cup. After the last one, she pauses for a few seconds, holding the coffee pot in mid-air. Then she puts it down abruptly, with a sigh — a deep, balloon-like sigh, as if she had been holding her breath for decades.

We lived in a village near Minsk, she says abruptly. My father was a group leader at a kalhas, a collective farm, and also looked after the draft horses. My mother worked in the kitchens there — that was where they met, and eventually they had five daughters. I am the middle one, the oldest one died last year. My father loved the taste of mushrooms, so my mother would gather them for cooking.

Mushroom picking is big here, the investigator says to Leah. The silent hunt, they call it.

Polina frowns at him, and the woman continues.

It was September, a warm September, rainy. Good for the mushrooms. My mother had heard of a small copse on the outskirts of Minsk between the Ring Road and the Zaslauje Road that had many mushrooms. She took us there, the children, we all had baskets. We picked all afternoon, the light was fading, but there were so many patches of them, we wanted to pick as many as we could.

We were getting deeper into the copse when we heard the noise of shooting. Get down, snapped my mother, get down, get down. She was annoyed, she thought there were boys shooting grouse or hares. They should not be shooting here. Then the shooting stopped, and after a little while she let us stand up again, and we went looking for the last few mushrooms before the sun set.

A moment — Polina makes an adjustment to a microphone and then nods.

I found a clump of chanterelles apart from the rest, and then another and another, until I was separated from my sisters. As I was turning to go back, I heard voices. I went towards them, and saw a clearing through the bushes, through a wire fence, where two black vans were parked. Several NKVD officers were shovelling sand into a pit and smoothing it over. I could see a hand, a foot sticking out of the pit, before they pushed them down and buried them. Then they left in the vans.

The KDB officer is rigid, his pen tapping twice as fast as usual. Be careful what you say. Tap, tap. Make sure it is the truth, that your memory is not tricking you. Tap, tap.

The woman looks at him, anxious but stubborn as well. Now that she is finally telling this story, she is not willing to stop, perhaps she is not even able to stop.

I know what I saw, she says doggedly.

Not a word, my mother said later. Not one single word, not a word to anyone. If they knew you were there, they would kill you.

A few days later, we were coming back from the market and we saw a man sitting by the side of the road, his back against a tree, reading a newspaper. As we went by, we saw that the man was a dead body that had been propped up. Someone had dug up a body in the night and posed it like that. My mother and father looked at each other, and then my mother said again: not a word, not one word. So even though I heard other stories over the years, I said nothing. But now things are different.

This forest, says the investigator. Where was it?

It was Kurapaty. Kurapaty forest.

The investigator turns to Leah. An NKVD execution site. Where they took people to kill them, not only from Minsk, from other places in Belarus as well.

She sits very still.

No, says the KDB official loudly. It was an execution site, but it was the Germans who killed people there. All those rumours, this is all they are. It was the Germans, they were German-style executions. Russian guns? They used Russian guns they had captured when they invaded. Don’t forget, this woman was a child, she is confused, it was so long ago.

Why do you say the men you saw were NKVD officers? she says to the woman.

They were wearing NKVD uniforms. We would see groups of officers in the street sometimes, even I knew what the uniforms looked like. And it was several years before the Germans invaded, I was seven or eight. The Germans came when I was ten.

There, says the official. You will take the word of a seven-year-old child?

I remember, says the woman. And I know what I saw.

Did you see the faces of the officers? says Leah.

Yes, when they were shovelling, they went in and out of my view between the trees, the bracken.

Leah shows her the photograph. Was he one of the officers?

She studies it carefully and then puts it down on the glass coffee table.

No, she says.

Are you sure? blurts out Polina, then begins fiddling with her headset to cover her confusion.

Yes, I’m sure.

Leah feels herself sag. Of course. This case. This hapless case. What had she expected? She will be suspended in this limbo of missing evidence forever.

One more try.

Have you seen this man before at all? she says. Anywhere?

Yes, says the woman.

Where?

At the graves, Kurapaty. As I was saying.

The KDB official tenses up again, raises his voice. But you said he was not one of the officers.

He was a driver, he drove one of the vans.

···

Kurapaty. A carpet of wood anemones, white flowers stretching in every direction beneath the spruces, rows of black crosses between them. She is standing with the investigator, the forest dim and green in the morning light.

If spirits really do depart the dead, if there are phantoms of some kind that rise from bodies, this forest must be thick with them, she thinks. A city of dead souls, elbowing each other, stepping on pale, cold toes, jostling for position. Thousands of bodies, hundreds of thousands. Officially, only thirty thousand.

But nobody believes that, says the investigator.

No surprise, then, that these spirits might be crowded. A fifteen hectare forest tomb.

Have they left some residue of their thoughts, their emotions here, some substance cast up at death? Some essence of being that arose at the very moment of passing? Unlikely, perhaps, although even a scientist might grant that unknown — as yet — things such as this might exist. In a world of quantum physics, of sound waves, of particle theory, perhaps other unseen forces should not be ruled out too quickly. As a matter of science, was the idea that such a large number of deaths might leave their mark somewhere — a mark that might one day be as measurable as radon or carbon dioxide — so impossible?

Either way, a profoundly melancholy place.

Congratulate your researchers, she says to Owen. Give them a hand. Give them a raise. Tell them their intuitions were impeccable.

This was a war, says Drozd. If they were troops killed in battle, thousands of soldiers, nothing would be thought of it. This was a war, a battle to protect the revolution, these were the casualties of the other side.

Jus ad bellum. The just war, war as a natural right. Out of fashion in principle, persistent in reality.

Persons taking no active part in the hostilities shall in all circumstances be treated humanely. Fourth Geneva Convention.

The rules of war. Clumsy. Honourable. Absurd. This mass slaughter, this bloodbath is permissible. This one is not. Soldiers, yes, even conscripts. Civilians, no.

They were all enemies, says Drozd. Attempting to destroy us. And some of them were not really people. Jews are not really human. This is a proven fact. They are closer to animals. They are filth. And the others were scum — the kulaks, the traitors. It was a war.

Do you really believe these things? she says.

Yes, he says loudly.

Then why were you hiding the bodies?

···

Is there anything to the argument that it was the Germans at Kurapaty? she says to the investigator.

No, it is pigwash, he says.

Hogwash, she says silently to herself — but at this point, he can call it whatever he likes.

Even a commission set up by the Communist Party found it was the NKVD, says the investigator. That the shootings took place between 1937 and 1941, part of Stalin’s purges. Before the German invasion in 1941.

What about the idea that they were German-style executions?

Shooting people at the graveside was not invented by the Germans.

···

If Kurapaty is not full of crowded spirits, if it is only earth clinging to old bones, there is still Dzyady, the feast of the dead. When deceased ancestors visit the living, a gentle gathering.

Superstition, says the investigator, but he seems tolerant of it — indulgent rather than his usual scorn.

A relic of a time when the boundaries between this world and the next were more flimsy. A day when relatives of the dead sweep their graves, pour vodka around the headstones, leave food. A moment when they invite the restless dead into their houses. Come in, come in, welcome, warm your cold bones by the fire. Hoping for a dreamlike word, a gossamer touch from a departed brother, a husband, a mother. Places are set at the table for them, honey, barley porridge, eggs, blini laid out. The table is circled three times with a candle, and the doors and windows are opened, the names of the dead are called out. Come in, come in, make yourselves comfortable, come and be with us. They drift in, smelling of sweet death, they settle down, silently companionable. At the end of the evening, they return to the everlasting, unless a particularly amiable one is kept around. And for the others, if they seem reluctant to go, if they want to settle in where they are? They are swept out with a broom.

Now, on Dzyady, people come to Kurapaty, says the investigator. They collect near the Luch watch factory, they march slowly past Kalinoŭski, past Lahoiski Trakt, past Mirashnichenka, then on to Kurapaty, clutching their crosses and banners.

What do the dead say to them, their rustling hands, their whispery voices among the trees?

We are here. We are waiting.