The Book of Dirt Page 12

  5

  Their black robes disappeared into the curtains on the surrounding walls. Three stern men: disembodied heads and hands. On the table before them lay a dossier—the indictment, only a few pages, provided in triplicate. The men read in murmurs, stopping only to ask a question of the officer standing at attention behind the desk nearby. He answered through a police interpreter. The men returned to the papers, the clickety-clack of a typewriter continuing throughout. They looked up as one, a single organism, at the condemned man, crumpled on a steel chair, his hands tied with cord. The three heads of Cerberus, guarding the gate to Hell. Five days of interrogation, then here. It was not their place to consider what he had endured. They knew enough—that in the nearby palace the interrogative method was refined torture. Here, in the single courtroom of Pankrać Prison, it was their job merely to make a show of justice. The charges were unremarkable: clandestine sales, forging ration cards and making black market purchases. A profiteer. Nothing more. The trial would take less than ten minutes.

  When they first came to arrest him, Jiří B assured his wife and son that he would be back that afternoon, that it was a misunderstanding, that he was a simple businessman trying to get by in difficult times. It was a calculated charade, designed to fool the Gestapo men who had knocked at the door just as his family were finishing their breakfast. The men spoke no more than was necessary and waited by the entrance for Jiří to gather his things before ushering him outside and bundling him into a waiting car. Ottla lingered on the porch, trying to catch a glimpse of her husband. The car idled by the kerb just long enough for her to see the larger of the Gestapo men fasten a blindfold over Jiří’s eyes. It was an unnecessary caution. Everyone in Prague knew where these unannounced visitations ended and, anyway, Jiří was familiar with every pothole on the short drive to Peček Palace in Bredovská Street. He had banked there briefly before the war, and stood outside its imposing black facade during the recent demonstrations while the crowd demanded the release of his friends.

  He thought it easiest to confess, to name names, not out of fear or spite but out of expedience. It would be enough to deny his captors the pleasure in their cruelty; he wanted to watch the dissatisfaction in their gaze as they slid the sharpened bamboo reeds under his fingernails, or stubbed out their cigarettes on his cheeks, or touched the electrodes to his exposed balls. These men in their black shirts and pants were merely playing out scenes that had, through constant practice, been rendered almost natural. Only their hands gave it away: the men were always unsure what to do with them, where to position them. It was uncomfortable watching them. Jiří saw no need to prolong it. Let them do their jobs. They didn’t want to be here any more than he did.

  When they were finished with him, when they were ready to bring him before the court, the blood and the bruises would render him almost unrecognisable.

  The girls slept soundly, the train’s rhythmic rattle dissolving into dreams of summer play as it carried them back from the country. Františka Roubíčková let her eyes drift to the passing fields. How quickly one can fall under nature’s spell, she thought, to believe in the promise of peace. Somewhere beyond it all a war was being fought, one in which they were all expected to do their part. Even in her little town of Miličín, where the birds still sang and the honey still flowed, men watched over crops like fretful parents. There were records to be kept, quotas to be met. Penalties to be paid. ‘They’ve conscripted us all,’ Emílie had said while they sat outside on the veranda in Sudoměřice, watching the girls splash in the lake. ‘Even the bees.’ She took a sip of tea and placed the cup back on the saucer. ‘And you?’

  Františka could not tell her sister how it was in the city, not the truth, anyway. Two months had passed since Pan Durák closed his business, casting Ludvík back into the grips of his affliction. Most days now, Františka sought comfort in the hum of her sewing machine. Only when the girls returned from school did the clamour of life resume. She saw little of Ludvík and had stopped watching the clock as curfew came and went. So seldom did he lie beside her at night that he did not notice the small gap Františka had made, pushing their single mattresses apart.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘And me.’

  ‘What about that husband of yours?’

  ‘He gives what he can. He has other concerns.’

  ‘So nothing, then.’

  ‘His parents are suffering. The factory is gone, sold for a pittance to a manager who promised to keep Papa Roubíček on in the storeroom. Four days it lasted before he was fired. Now he puts on airs so we don’t think them a burden, but we can sense the despair behind his crooked smile. To think all this time they’ve helped us get by and now, in their need…We try to help. I try to help.’

  ‘Frantishku, please. At this rate you will all starve and I won’t have that on my conscience. For years I’ve held my tongue. Oh God, how I wanted to say something while you scampered around in the dirt like a fieldmouse trying to make ends meet. But no, it was your choice, your doing. You wore Ludya’s sickness like a girdle. But this is different. Elias and I have talked about it. We want to help. We have our obligations to their Reich, but it is a good season, this year. The hives flow freely and the earth is burgeoning. Our larders are full and those bastards are none the wiser. When you leave you must take whatever you can. My dear, it’s enough that you insist on calling yourself a Jew, but you need not live like one.’

  ‘I couldn’t possibly—’

  ‘Damn your pride. Take. And when it is gone, send the girls for more. Give their barren aunt some joy.’

  Františka Roubíčková knocked on her neighbour’s door. From the stairwell behind her she heard the click of a latch, a slow creak and the snap of a tautened chain. Františka held her package close to her chest—a square of butter wrapped in baking paper, a jar of honey and what remained of the salami she had sliced for her lunch, bundled in a dishcloth. It was only right, she thought, to share this first bounty with her friend. But why? The debt had been repaid, forgotten. Yet each act of kindness was still stained with her disgrace. What would it take to right the order of things? Kindness, time, gifts, friendship: she had tried them all. No. Absolution would have to come from within. She would first have to forgive herself her original sin of weakness.

  A faint scratching came from behind the door. ‘Ottla?’ she whispered. The scrape of metal hissed through the landing as a series of locks were unbolted. The door swung open to reveal her friend, unkempt, pale and drawn. Ottla pulled her close, heaving as she sobbed. Františka felt the damp warmth of tears seeping into her collar. In the flat light of the corridor, she saw swirls of dust above the litter on the floor. The sobs receded and Ottla stepped back. She took Františka into the sitting room and, as she sat on the couch, Ottla began to mutter, as if a valve had been twisted loose.

  They had come for Jiří soon after Františka left for the country. For the first two days Ottla waited by the door. On the third she pulled down the blackout blinds and fastened them to the windowsills with tape. Until he returned it would be night, for that was when Jiří usually came home, when they would sit together as a family for their evening meal and talk of the day’s events. She scolded Bohuš when he complained about the gathering grime. Her bed grew cold, unwelcoming. When Jiří had not returned for a week, she took her pillows and a blanket to the sitting room and lay them on the couch. The slightest noise would wake her and she’d rush to the door. Mostly it was nothing but, if it was Bohuš, she scolded him again: for staying out late, for breaking curfew, for giving her hope. Exasperated by her moods, he carried the pillows and blanket back to her bed. ‘Let me wait up,’ he said. And so she slept for the first time, but her head filled with horrible dreams: the fatal shot, the swing of the trapdoor, the snapping of his neck. In the morning, she checked the mailbox. There was no letter. She went out to check on the lists of the dead plastered across the city walls. Jiří’s name was nowhere to be found. It became her daily ritual. Bohuš spent less time
at home.

  Official notification of Jiři’s fate came three weeks after he was taken. He had been sentenced to six months’ hard labour in the south. Matthausen. He would return in the winter, if he returned at all. Ottla could send him provisions but, given the nature of his crimes, all packages would be scrutinised. Anything for which she could not give a proper receipt would be confiscated and she would be brought in for questioning. She had yet to send him a thing and could hardly eat for the worry and the guilt. Bohuš couldn’t understand and had taken to treating her like an invalid, forcing food into her mouth. Sometimes he looked at her with disdain, like he was already an orphan, tethered to the graves of his parents. He could not wait to escape, to run to his friends at the SOKOL youth club.

  ‘But he comes?’ said Františka.

  ‘Yes,’ said Ottla. ‘He comes.’

  Františka knew she would spend the afternoon here; she would tear the brown tape from the curtains, let the day back in. She would go to the kitchen, find bread, cut away the mould and prepare a meal. Tomorrow she would return and do it again.

  All this time she had been mistaken: absolution does not only come from within. It is also found in the depth of another’s despair. There is no satisfaction, no pleasure to be had. Absolution is a shrivelled kernel of shit: hard, unpalatable. It chokes away what is left of your soul. But it restores the balance. It silences debt’s echo.

  Every day it starts anew. The morning siren howls across the camp, but they are already awake. At night, exhausted, they had prayed for sleep. And still they lay there, staring into the dark until the whispers began. They spoke of their families, but not of their crimes. The night is no confessional, it cannot swallow shame. What is there to say, anyway? That what they did was of no consequence? That if only they’d had more strength, more courage, they might have done something that warranted death? Here they broke rocks, or the rocks broke them. Here they served their sentence, one day at a time. Each day an eternity.

  Jiří B counts the drops of piss as they fall onto his blanket from the bunk above. He does not know how long he’s been here, how much of his sentence he’s served, only that it is enough not to be bothered by the failing bladder of a dying man. Soon they would take the poor soul to the infirmary, from where he would not return. Jiří pushes the blanket aside and gets out of bed. His face is level with his bunkmate. The old man smiles and holds out his hand. Jiří takes it and brings his cracked lips to the knuckles. ‘Sleep, sleep,’ he says. ‘There’s still time.’ The old man mumbles and closes his eyes. Jiří rushes to the mess hall. A cup of tepid coffee and a crust of stale bread: fuel for a day in the quarry.

  As the leaves turned yellow, the laughter of young girls danced on the cool Miličín breeze. They tried to outdo each other with their adventures. If Marcela smoked out the hives, Irena dived in the lake. If Daša slept alone in the attic, Marcela slept on the floor beside her aunt. For those short visits they forgot the occupation, forgot what it meant to be a Jew, and when it came time to leave, their souls were light and their cases heavy.

  At home, too, their stomachs were full. Even Ludvík who, despite all his failings, knew better than to ask questions, ate like a free man. But he took without giving, and for that Františka grew further away from him.

  Ottla counted the days until her husband’s release, scoring each one on the 1940 Baťa calendar that she kept on the kitchen bench. There was solace to be found in numbers, comfort in the shifting weight of time. Ottla did not blame Jiří for what had happened nor did she entertain the possibility of his guilt. It is no crime to provide for your family, she said. She was not bothered either by the appearance of so many familiar names—men she had not met but who she knew were important to her husband’s dealings—on the lists of the condemned. A wife ought not assume the worst of her husband for the company he once kept. Where were they in her time of need, anyway? They had not come to console her. They did not bring her groceries or anything that might help her get by. Curse them and their fair-weather ways. After all that Jiří had done for them! Ottla stood and straightened her skirt. She picked up her pencil, leaned over the calendar and crossed off another day.

  It was almost November when the first dusting of snow fell on the city. Františka opened her pantry. The girls had returned from a weekend in Miličín but this time there was not enough to fill the shelves. The frost had come early to the fields. The bees, too, had taken to their hives and would not come out. Daša spoke of a strange hush in the yard, the stillness of hibernation. What a privilege, Františka thought, to sleep through the war, to not know hunger. She had been expecting this day and had hoped to be better prepared. They would all have to make do with less. But how? Already, she could hardly recognise Ludvík’s parents, with their distinguished clothes now so ill-fitting. How mean she would feel watching Papa Roubíček kiss the sachets of rice or barley that she brought, knowing that she could have given more. And what of Ottla B? Until the ground softened and sprouted again, it was not Františka’s concern. Let them fend for themselves. So long as her girls were fed. It is no crime to provide for your family.

  On the day designated for Jiří’s release, Ottla resumed her vigil by the door, but he did not come. She waited through the night and the days that followed, afraid that the moment she stepped away he would stagger into an empty hallway and think she had abandoned him. Still he did not appear. Bohuš came and went like a house cat, to feed and attend to his bodily needs. He often smelled of fertiliser or gasoline or sweat. He was a man now and she was proud but also afraid. More than ever, he needed a father to guide him. Her Jiří: provider, survivor and, dare she say it, hero. Ottla stood by the door and waited.

  Františka Roubíčková stopped on the pavement outside 13 Biskupcova Street and looked at the building on the other side. A white winter’s sun shone in the clear sky. It was strange, Františka thought, that she had not heard from her friend. She had knocked on the door, whispered through the keyhole. Nothing. She left a small package on the mat—enough for a little cake to celebrate Jiří’s return—and headed back downstairs. As she stepped onto the street she thought better of it and ran back. The package was gone.

  Could the rumours be true? Štěpánka Tičková had spoken of a spectre that had recently crept through Biskupcova Street. It shielded its face from the light, she said, as it stumbled forward, tripping on the pants that hung from its cinched waist, before disappearing into a nearby building. Heavens above, Štěpánka insisted, there was no mistaking it. That sickly creature was all that remained of Jiří B.

  ‘She buys disinfectant,’ said the shopkeeper to the small group gathered at her counter. ‘Mostly iodine. And bandages. Sometimes she takes apples, razor blades. She refuses to talk. Just goes to the shelves, takes what she needs, and pays. I ask after the husband, but she will not be drawn. He is sick, that much is for sure. I suspect he has been quarantined, which suggests only one thing: consumption. She is taking the right precautions, sterilising the house like that, but watch yourself near their building. This is no time to be stricken.’

  ‘Syphilis!’ said Jáchym Nemec. ‘It was the same with my uncle. Caught it from a whore in Bratislava on one of his business trips. One day a car arrived and two men whisked him away to a spa. It was my aunt who called them; she wanted it all taken care of with a minimum of fuss. He stayed there for months while worms bored holes in his brain. They stuck him with so many shots of Salvarsan that he had to sleep on his stomach for the first few weeks. But there was no improvement. He ended up covered in rashes and pissing blood. His death was attributed to liver failure—that’s what the doctor put on the certificate—so at least my poor aunt was spared the humiliation. They even gave her back his amputated arm free of charge. It was still fresh—he only outlived it by a fortnight. Every man who glimpses Armageddon in this occupation runs to the nearest whorehouse. Poor Ottla, she is now left to nurse that bastard while he oozes his infected discharge over her bedsheets.’

 
; ‘It is obvious how she survives,’ said Štěpánka Tičková. ‘Look at her, all quiet and pious, hiding her face in a shawl as she canters past. I’m telling you, it is different across town in Holešovice. There she wears much less. I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s how he caught it in the first place. Did you never ask yourself how they could support such a life? Always grandstanding, he was, but I have it from a reliable source that there was no company, no business to speak of. Such shame that family brings to our street.’

  A sharp rapping on the glass. Františka recognised Bohuš’s shoes immediately—from her sunken vantage point it was how she knew the comings and goings of most of her neighbours. She rushed down the hallway and into the foyer. Bohuš was peeking through the mail slot as Františka approached. ‘Please, Paní Roubíčková, you must let me in.’ She fumbled with the lock until it slipped free. Bohuš pushed past, crouching as he ran. Františka closed the door and followed him.

  ‘Bohuš.’

  ‘I’ve come for—’

  ‘Your mother?’

  Bohuš shook his head. ‘She doesn’t know I’m here.’

  Well dressed, in suspenders and a loose-fitting shirt, Bohuš had the beginnings of a dark moustache and a wispy beard. He was growing into a fine young man, with a serious and determined manner. And yet there was still something childlike about him: scuffed shoes, a soft hat perched over unevenly trimmed hair, a crooked smile not yet dulled by the demands of adult life. As he shifted from one foot to the other, Františka saw his maturity ebb and flow: first a man, now a boy, now a man again. His essence was elusive. He could be a panhandler, a student, a layabout or the son of a banker. He would blend into any street, any environment. He reminded her of Daša in that there was nothing that marked him out as a Jew. Františka looked at him with fondness. It was only their kind, she thought, who had a future in Prague.