Icchokas Meras
The setting sun, red as a fire, peered into the pit from the other bank but no longer saw a single living person, though he, alive and well, stood near a long, uneven ditch that skirted the gravel pit, while his accomplices, the whole group of them, roamed about, dividing up the clothes and possessions left behind by the executed.
Standing with his legs apart, as before, with the same glassy eyes as when he fired the last shot a short hour ago, he scanned the naked corpses lying strewn in the ditch. His eyes, together with the black abyss of the barrel of his automatic, quietly traced a circle. The metal butt pressed firmly beneath his heart. He knew that it was over, that there would be no more today, but he still didn’t want to release the metal clenched tightly in his palms, the metal which, in his hands, had the capacity for murder.
Having scanned the ditch he reluctantly squinted at the red sun suspended in the sky. He then opened his eyes wide and looked at the group tussling over the pile of possessions. His glance stopped and pierced each of them separately. For a moment he forgot the haul and saw only life. His eyes glittered like glass for he wanted to pull the trigger and start shooting again, even shooting at the group below. The index finger of his right hand bent and then pressed the trigger half way…
‘If I released several rounds, I’d lay them all flat,’ he said and laughed heartily. ‘Not a single one would be left alive, I’d shoot them all.’ He imagined how they would fall with their hands outstretched, curling up with faces grimaced in pain, how the streams of blood would soak into the yellow, almost transparent sand to leave dark, quickly drying stripes.
Holding the index finger of his right hand still, he turned and looked again at the naked dead bodies lying in the ditch.
‘If they all rose right now I could shoot them again,’ he mused.
He caressed the barrel of the automatic and burned his hand. It was still hot.
He swore several times and only then heard a whisper rising from the ditch:
‘Mama, mama, mama…’
And then:
‘Open your eyes, open your eyes.’
The young girl gently stroked her mother’s hair, but her mother did not move. The mother lay with her head lowered, her legs curled up, her lips were a pale blue. Only her hands were as before, behind her back, fingers tightly entwined as though even now she was still clutching her daughter and shielding the child with her own young body.
The girl caressed her mother’s cheek. She tried to pry open her mother’s eyes with her tiny fingers, but the woman’s cheeks were getting cold and her eyelids, heavy as those of a wooden doll, would close again.
‘Open your eyes, open your eyes.’
He was delighted. He spread his legs wide again and, no longer feeling any pain in his right hand, he grasped the automatic, placed his index finger on the trigger and held the butt firmly against his chest.
The girl was unable to communicate with her mother. She stood up and climbed out of the ditch. The girl was already grown up. She was three years old. And she had the courage to ask for help because her mother wasn’t listening and did not open her eyes.
She extended her left hand and said to the man:
‘Come… Open my mother’s eyes.’
She was pale, this grown-up, three-year-old person. She was naked like the rest. Only two red stains smouldered in this whiteness: her long hair, red as a fire, that covered almost her entire face, and the large, red apple in her right hand.
The man who was standing at the ready, didn’t know that the girl’s apple had once been white. A white summer apple with two tiny incisions – the marks of two milk teeth. The girl had carried that large white apple all this way and had not once let go of it. She had the time to leave the two tiny incisions in the skin of the apple when everyone was lined up by the rim of the ditch and when her mother had pushed her behind her back. The apple had turned red after it had rested on her mother’s chest.
‘Come… Open my mother’s eyes.’
The girl extended her left hand.
He stood still. Then the girl extended her right hand, which held the red apple. She wanted to give him the apple so that he would come and open her mother’s eyes.
He was delighted. His chin quivered with satisfaction. He was delighted – one had risen from the ditch. He had been ready for a long time and the index finger of his right hand slowly, slowly pulled the trigger. He savoured every minute and did not want to lose it. But perhaps he had waited too long, had extended the moment too far, the moment between life and death. And when he felt the resistance of the trigger, when all that was needed was to pull harder in a final sudden movement, his eyes were dazzled. The girl’s hair was fire-red and it blinded him like the red setting sun.
He closed his eyes and when he opened them he felt that he really was looking at the sun. He closed his eyes again and now he saw the red apple.
‘Come… Open my mother’s eyes. I’ll give you the apple.’
He looked at the girl and again saw the sun, then the girl and the apple, the apple, the girl… Three circles red as a fire. Larger, smaller, larger.
He no longer knew where to aim, where to shoot, and the black abyss of the barrel traced wide, fitful arcs.
Finally, he fired.
‘Come… Open my mother’s eyes.’
Evidently, he had fired at the sun.
He fired again.
‘Come…’
At the apple?
‘No, I must fire at the largest of the red circles,’ he thought. ‘If I fire at the sun, then surely I will hit that red hair.’
He fired one round after another.
The group dividing up the clothes of the executed fell into disarray. Someone moaned. They all dropped to the ground behind the piles of clothes.
‘Stop, have you gone mad!’ they screamed.
But he kept shooting at the largest of the red circles.
‘Stop, we’ll kill you!’ they shouted.
He changed the clip and kept shooting.
Then no one was shouting anymore, and many barrels turned toward him spitting fire and bullets.
He collapsed to his knees and then fell. As he was falling, he grasped the burning barrel, but his hand no longer felt pain. His eyes bulged but they were still glassy only there was a redness under the glassiness, as though the red summer apple had painted them.
The group hastily packed the things into wagons and left.
And then the gravediggers came to the gravel pit. Young men and old – gravediggers. The shovels did not appear heavy. The sand in the gravel pit was packed evenly. But these men walked, dragging their feet, heads lowered.
They were not gravediggers. They had been ordered to be gravediggers.
Among them were a father and son. The father was a short, bent man with grizzled hair and half-closed eyes. The son was tall with wide blue eyes and thick, fair hair that always fell onto his face because of his bowed head. Both were called Ignas. The grandson, who had not yet arrived in this world, was Ignas too.
The son looked at the ditch through a shield of drooping hair and said:
‘Father, how can the earth endure this?’
The father was silent.
The son kicked a clump of earth that had fallen from the edge of the gravel pit.
‘You see,’ he said again to his father, ‘the earth is dead. It is earth and nothing else. You can kick it, stomp on it, soak it with blood. The earth is dead. It doesn’t care.’
‘No, son,’ replied the father. ‘The earth is alive. You’re young and you don’t understand.’
‘No!’ said the son. ‘Just look. They dug a pit, shot them and left. We came to cover it up. We will cover it. Yet, the earth is silent. It is dead, it doesn’t care. You can kick it, stomp on it, soak it with blood.’
‘That’s not true!’ said the father and gave his son a stern look. ‘The earth is alive, you’ll see for yourself.’
The men were ordered to cover the ditch so that no traces were left, but instead they pushed the earth, trying to form a grave. It was a long grave, stretching across the entire length of the gravel pit. They had not planned it, but each man did the same thing.
‘You see?’ the father said, thinking about the grave.
So what, if the men didn’t do what they had been told to do? The son didn’t understand. He was still young.
They were both digging at the spot where the girl was lying. The shooter who had been shot was sprawled nearby.
‘Bury the girl,’ said the father to his son.
The son put down his shovel, picked the girl up in his arms and carefully lowered her into the ditch. His eyes were half closed like his father’s so that he would not see too much. He would have closed his eyes altogether but he had to bury the girl.
After that they continued digging, avoiding the shooter as if they hadn’t seen him, even though he lay right next to the ditch. His head was hanging down on top of the executed people, his hands clenched in the sand and his legs were stretched straight out. His bulging, glassy eyes still glittered. He didn’t want to be dead.
His trousers were green and contrasted starkly with the white sand.
‘He’s in the way,’ said the father. ‘Let’s push him over.’
The son raised his shovel and was ready to push the green legs into the ditch, but his hands froze. How could he throw this green thing next to that pale girl with the red hair and the red apple?
‘Wait,’ the father said, thinking that his son had not understood him.
He did not push his shovel under the man’s legs to throw him into the ditch, but instead pushed it under his back. The only way they could lift him was out of the ditch. The son looked at his father and his eyes were radiant with joy. He also pushed his shovel under the man’s back. They spat on their palms and threw the green-clad man out of the ditch.
The other men gathered around, coming from the right and from the left. They were silent, but looking at the father and son, they all had the same thought. They lifted the shooter with their shovels and carried him out of the gravel pit.
On the other side, just past the road, there was a steep slope. Below that lay a gully that always teemed with crows. It was the city garbage dump. At the edge of the slope the men swung their burden and threw it into the gully below.
On the way back, the father said to the younger Ignas:
‘The earth is alive, it is always alive.’
The son looked at his father’s half-closed eyes that had seen many things and bowed his head. They resumed their digging and finally a long grave, neatly formed by work-hardened hands, extended along the length of the gravel pit.
Translated by Ada Valaitis from Icchokas Meras, Stotele vidukelej, Vilnius: Lithuanian Writers’ Union Publishers (2004).
Icchokas Meras (born 1934) lost his parents in the Holocaust and was rescued and raised by a Lithuanian woman. He became famous after the publication of his novels A Stalemate Lasts But a Minute (Lygiosios trunka akimirka, 1963) and What the World Rests On (Ant ko laikosi pasaulis, 1965) in which he tells narratives of the Holocaust and examines Lithuanian-Jewish relations using romantic ballads, parables, and mythological narrative forms. Meras later works – the novels Striptease, or Paris-Rome-Paris (Striptizas arba Paryzius-Roma-Paryzius, 1976) and Sara (2008) – appeared after the author moved to Israel and reflect a surreal narrative style, which is unusual in Lithuanian prose.