The Last Girl (25 page)

Changing in one of the booths, I sat on the grass watching the rowers work their way up and down the Wilja, which glittered in the sunlight. I could not see Rachael or her husband, Ira. To escape the sun, I took a walk in the pine forest. The air was fine and fresh. As I made my way back to the road I noticed the scarlet Tatra parked in the shade.

It was a lovely car. The hood was folded back and I could smell the leather of the seats. A silk scarf lay on the passenger seat. Hers. Furtively I glanced around and picked it up. The silk was cool and fine when I held it to my lips, like the smell of the pine forest. Faintly there was the scent of the soap she used. I closed my eyes and drew in a deep breath.

‘Hello?' a man's voice called in Polish.

I whirled around to find him close behind me, tense in his pale flannels. He was shorter than I, but stronger, evidently fitter.

‘Steponas.'

She was a step behind him. She was pale. Her husband turned to her, an enquiring look on his face. ‘You know him?'

She did not answer immediately. Her eyes were on the silk scarfl held in my hand still, suspended close to my lips. Slowly the dark eyes travelled up to my face and I felt them searching it. I felt weak with shame. Her deep, immeasurably deep, eyes came to rest upon my own. Silently she held my gaze.

‘Yes,' she said. ‘Yes, I know him.'

I flushed scarlet, to match the smart sports car. I turned and dropped the scarf back onto the pale leather seat of the car.

‘Steponas Daumantas,' Rachael said to her husband. She seemed to have recovered. ‘We're from the same village. We went to school together.'

lra's face relaxed. A friendly smile spread across it. ‘No kidding? Really? Hey, that's great.' He was about thirty-five years of age, a compact man. His hair was cut short and his skin glowed healthily. He proffered a hand. He wore a large golden ring. His handshake was firm, manly and warm.

‘Ira Troiman,' he said. ‘Proud husband of your school friend.' He spoke with a slight American accent, an affectation popular then among the fashionable businessmen who regularly travelled abroad. He gathered Rachael into his large brown arm. She smiled faintly, her eyes not leaving my own. I nodded in acknowledgement.

‘Well, what a coincidence to find you here by my car,' Ira continued gaily. ‘She's a beauty, isn't she?' He slapped the side of the car affectionately.

‘Yes,' I said. ‘Yes, she is.'

‘Why don't you join us,' Ira said. ‘We were just going for drinks. It'll give you two old buddies a chance to catch up.'

I shook my head quickly. Though it had been my very intention to somehow insinuate myself into their company, now the opportunity had arisen I felt ashamed; the thought of going for drinks horrified me. Ira opened the door of the Tatra for Rachael. He held it while she lingered.

‘Come on,' she said quietly.

Mutely, I got into the car, feeling my legs sticky against the soft cream leather of the seats.

We drove to a quiet restaurant on Giedyminowska, not far from my aunt's. It was early evening, the city was quiet but for the small groups of young communists exultantly wandering the streets. Ira laughed at them good-humouredly. I considered telling him Fisk's views on his capitalist activities, but did not. At the restaurant Ira drank German schnapps and ordered champagne for his wife.

‘What are you drinking, Steponas?'

Since arriving in Wilno I had drunk little other than cheap vodka, but I indicated that I would join him with the schnapps. He raised his glass and we drank a toast to old friends. I struggled to keep the irony from my voice. Rachael sat in silence as Ira chatted, regaling me with his opinions on the Soviet occupation. We had not been sitting long before Ira glanced at the smart watch on his thick wrist. He raised his eyebrows.

‘Got to be going,' he said. ‘I'm running late.' He stood up and leant over to Rachael. ‘Why don't you stay and chat?' he said, kissing her briefly on the cheek. He shook my hand warmly, looking me in the eye. ‘Nice meeting you, Steponas.'

As he passed I smelt the subtle scent of his aftershave. Rachael studiously inspected the champagne she had scarcely tasted.

‘I should go too,' I said. The schnapps was sweet and I found it quite undrinkable after the samogonas.

I had risen from my chair before she spoke.

‘I'm sorry,' she said, not looking up from the champagne.

‘What do you have to be sorry for?' I replied, belligerently.

‘Just sorry,' she said. She looked up. ‘Sorry for this whole mess.'

‘It doesn't look such a mess for you.'

‘You think you are the only one to feel anything?' she said. ‘Do you think that I never felt anything? What was I supposed to do, would you like to tell me that? Would you like to tell me why what I did was so wrong?'

‘I loved you,' I said petulantly.

‘And I loved you, Steponas. But we were children. We were playing. This is not a world for children. I don't know whether you noticed but there are soldiers in the streets. They are Russians and God knows what that will mean for us, but, thank God, at least they are not the Germans. And still, if it were not for the war, this is Poland. I am a Jew and you are not. What are you asking for? I don't understand.'

‘How can you be so cold?' I dropped back into my chair, opposite her. ‘You reason about love and then just cut it from your heart?'

‘Ach, you are a poet! What is reason to you? But do you remember where your poetry led, Steponas? Reason is important. Maybe for you there is more room for risk, but I do not want to sit up at nights cradling my children, fearing for what might happen to them. I fear life without reason. I fear your poetry and all you poets. You are dangerous.'

She looked at me furiously, filled, perhaps, with the resentment she had felt the night of the poetry competition when she had sat holding her young cousin, listening to the jeers of drunken village men outside her window. I regarded her, stony faced. Shamed but bitter. She reached out her hand and rested it on my own.

‘You're right,' I relented.

‘Sometimes I wonder,' she said, half burying her face in her hands. ‘I mean, I wonder if there is right and wrong. I have such dreams at night. I have such fears for the future.'

‘Things will turn out fine.'

‘I pray to God.'

‘Ira seems confident. He doesn't seem to be worried about the communists.'

Rachael smiled. ‘Ira is incurably confident.'

‘He seems like a nice man, anyway,' I said morosely.

‘He is a good man, Steponas. He is kind and hardworking.'

‘And rich.'

The corner of her mouth screwed up. ‘How did you get so cynical? Is that how the poets must be here?' She regarded me disparagingly.

‘I'm sorry,' I said and paused. ‘Rachael, the things I would like to say just don't come out. I'm afraid. My friend read me a poem, he said it reminded him of me: “I shall stand with him there, a stray wanderer, and silently we shall yearn”. I am afraid of being that – a stray wanderer, forever outside the window.'

She placed her hand on mine again and smiled faintly.

‘I used to enjoy the talks we had,' she said. ‘I miss them.'

‘Me too.'

‘Maybe you will come for dinner with us one day? Ira would be pleased, I am sure.'

‘Yes. Maybe.'

Rachael pulled a jacket across her shoulders. ‘I have to go,' she said. I nodded. She turned and waved, briefly, as she left the restaurant. I downed the schnapps with a grimace and ordered vodka. Rachael's champagne stood barely touched, a semi-circle of her red lipstick printed at its rim from where she had sipped at it. I rubbed it, smudging the lipstick onto my finger. I brought it up to my own lips and tasted it. Sweet.

The Soviets, after gaining control of the city, turned it over to the Lithuanian government in Kaunas, and then withdrew. Almost immediately rioting broke out. Bands of Lithuanian thugs roamed the night-time streets, drunk and enraged. Searching out Jews and whatever other trouble they could find.

It was October and the air was cold and damp. Jerzy and I tumbled through the half-lit streets on our way home from the Staromiejska. A thick fog had drifted across the city, blanketing it. Rounding a corner by the university we were set upon suddenly by a gang of youths. A short, stocky young man dressed in a worn dark suit and no overcoat grabbed the lapels of my coat and thrust me against the wall of the old university. Without my support Jerzy dropped to his knees and before any words were spoken a boot landed in his stomach. He doubled up with a faint groan and rolled onto the glimmering, wet cobblestones.

‘Where you been?' the stocky youth growled in Lithuanian. There was no sense to his question beyond ascertaining what language I spoke.

I was taken aback and concerned for Jerzy, who was not moving. For a couple of seconds I did not answer, as my fugged brain tried to clear itself. I was too slow. The wind was suddenly knocked from me and my body crumpled in a painful spasm.

‘
Palauk!
' I gasped. ‘Wait! I'm Lithuanian.'

My short attacker paused. He grunted. Without another word they turned and disappeared into the fog.

Jerzy had not moved. I knelt over him. The cobblestones cut into my knees painfully. A gash on his forehead was bleeding darkly. I lowered my cheek to his lips to see if he was breathing. He grimaced as I put my face close to his.

‘Don't kiss me.'

‘You piss-head,' I said. ‘I was hoping they had killed you. I was just going for your wallet.'

I pulled him up and looped his arm around my shoulder. Slowly we trudged up the hill winding into the ancient lanes of the Jewish quarter of the city.

‘Can't you sing a Lithuanian song or something?' Jerzy joked. ‘Just to let them know.'

The fog thickened, drifting down the narrow, cobbled streets. The city was full of noises it was hard to determine. We listened uneasily as we walked. The fog was illuminated suddenly as we turned into Stiklu. It glared red and the muffled sound of shouting seeped out from the glow. Oaths and a woman's scream. Glass cascaded onto stone and there was the sound of a sudden huge intake of a monster's breath. Flames tore through the fog. A man was shouting somewhere, discordant accompaniment to the woman's cries. Pleading. We stopped on the corner, staring into the dim glow. The male voice was broken Russian, Polish; the woman, without control, screamed Yiddish pleas to the invisible sky. The cries were strangely muffled·by the fog, so that the scene was like a drama played in a too small theatre.

Jerzy turned. ‘Let's get out of here.'

I stood transfixed, holding him. The fog shifted, giving a surprise glimpse of the narrow lane, like a tableau, figures arrested in violent postures. And then it closed in once more, enveloping them. Jerzy pulled at my arm but I resisted.

‘The Jews,' I muttered. ‘They're after the Jews.'

‘The Jews, the fucking Poles, who cares.'

A figure sprang from the fog, almost colliding with us. The man started, his face a plastic mask of fear. His forehead and cheeks were blackened and his hair oddly cut. It was only when he passed I realised it had been burnt away at the front. Jerzy broke into a shuffling run after him. The fleeing figure, looking back over his shoulder, must have thought he was being chased. He let out a piteous shriek and doubled his speed, disappearing within seconds into the hulk of the fog.

‘Jerzy,' I called. He stopped and turned on the edge of visibility. When I did not move he sloped off.

I stood rooted to the street corner. This was the rage I had provoked in the village with my poem. That night they had gathered outside the homes of the Jews in the village. Perhaps they were outside her window tonight, too. Perhaps she was huddled behind shuttered windows, whilst they threw stones. I broke into a run. I ran through the ghostly city streets. Surreal pockets of animated hatred punctuated the dead silence. The fog isolated the attacks. It muffled the shouts, the explosions of glass, the shattering wood, preventing them from carrying beyond a few metres. In my haste I stumbled upon attackers prising cobbles from the street to lob at the windows of shops. Gelbhauer the Shoemaker. Fiszlinski the Baker. Haberkorn the Photographer.

When I reached Zawalna, it was quiet. Not even the fog stirred. I walked slowly to her house, treading the damp leaves underfoot. No lights showed in the windows. The whole street was in darkness. I lingered in the gloom, unsure what to do. For some time I paced backwards and forwards until my mind had cleared totally of the effects of the vodka we had drunk at Staromiejska. The fog made my clothes damp and the cold wet air crept in through the thin cloth and chilled my body. I stamped my feet to warm them, but the sound echoed hollowly and dark faces appeared behind windows, staring out into the street wide-eyed with fear, watching, afraid I was a rioter.

I stumbled back to our apartment. Jerzy lay sleeping and I huddled down in the bed with him, fully dressed, letting his fragile warmth soak through the damp clothes.

In the morning the city was quiet. The fog had dispersed and we walked with our heads down. But with darkness the rioting began again. The streets of the city were littered with glass and the air was acrid with the smouldering fires ignited by primitive hatreds.

On 15 June 1940, as Hitler's tanks rolled into Paris, Stalin's returned once more to the streets of Vilnius. Smetana, the right-wing Lithuanian president, slipped out of the country in the night, along with other influential politicians and intel­ lectuals. We had been liberated. ‘Long live Soviet Lithuania – the Thirteenth Soviet Socialist Republic' read a leaflet the ebullient Fisk pressed into my hand.

‘It's a blow to the head of the fascist thugs that ran this country,' Fisk expostulated loudly as we walked along Giedyminowska, now Gedimino. I cringed at his high-pitched confidence, wondering how many of those in the crowds pushing along the pavement, glancing at us, were those self-same thugs who had been burning Jewish homes and murdering unfortunates in dark streets.