The Dark Room (28 page)

—Why do you have to know? I don’t understand that. Really. Why do you have to know?

Micha shrugs. She has her back turned, she can’t see.

—
I just do.

—What good will it do?

—
I don’t think you can really look at it that way, Mina.

—I can. And I think you should. Look at it from someone else’s perspective, you know. Mine, your mother’s, Mr. Kolesnik’s. Think about other people.

—
I do.

—Liar.

Micha stares at her back, furious, knowing that she’s right.

—This is my grandfather. Do you remember him shooting the Jews in your village?

—
Oh, fuck that, Mina.

—What? That’s your question. It’s what you want to know, isn’t it?

She kicks the door and jams her fists into the small of her back again. Michael sits at the table and starts to cry.

—I’m pregnant and you want to go away to Belarus and talk to an old man who never wants to see you again about something that he doesn’t want to remember. That’s the way it is, Micha, you see?

He doesn’t answer; doesn’t trust himself. He wishes she could come and put her arms around him, but he knows she can’t. He can see that in her fists and shoulders.

Micha cries because he knows she is right. It is unfair to leave her alone and pregnant. He is hurting her, his mother, father, uncle, sister, Kolesnik, and Oma, too.

But he also cries for himself.

This is my Opa. Do you remember him killing the Jews in your village?

Mina asked the question, and he can still barely say it inside.

Micha writes to Kolesnik, and Kolesnik writes back.

The old man says again that he doesn’t feel able to help, but this letter, too, is polite, and a phone number is printed clearly at the top with the address.

Micha refolds the letter carefully and puts it away before Mina gets up for work.

Micha thinks about phoning, but in the end he writes again. It is easier, he can be calmer, the request more composed. He can lie.

It is a research project about the German occupation of Belarus, to be used in teaching materials covering the war and Holocaust. To complete it, I need details of the daily lives of the German soldiers and policemen who served in the area. I think I can understand your feelings about the time, Mr. Kolesnik, but I believe you can help me, and perhaps help future generations avoid the mistakes of the past. I would therefore be very grateful for your time.

Micha says nothing about Opa. Another lie. Indirect, by omission, but a lie all the same. And if he is honest, Micha knows it is not there to protect the old man; only to protect himself.

He promises Kolesnik that he will ask no questions, look for no details about his own life.

Anything you don’t want to answer, you can just say so, and that is fine. And if you want to stop, at any time, then I will just go away.

Micha tells himself that this goes some way to make up for the lies.

—Have you thought about what will happen here if you go?

—
What?

—You haven’t, have you?

Mina cuts a slice of bread and watches Micha cook for a while.

—Your family, Michael.

—
I know.

—You don’t. You don’t know what you are doing.

Mina flattens the bread with her fingers, leaning against the fridge. Micha wonders who she has been talking to.
Mutti, Luise.
What they have been saying.
I should ask.
He can feel Mina waiting.
I should want to know.

—You think maybe your Opa drank because he was guilty?

—
Maybe.

—It could just have been the camp he was in. Or the prison. Wherever the Russians kept him.

—
Mina, please. Please don’t try to persuade me not to go.

—I think a camp would have been enough for me.

She stops talking, eats her squashed bread. Micha wills her to look at him, but she doesn’t.

—I don’t know what they did with German soldiers, but they were terrible places, Michael.

Micha watches her eat a bit more bread.

—I treated an old man who’d been in the Gulag.

—
You never told me.

—It was before I knew you. He’d been out for twenty years, but his body was still affected. Malnutrition, beatings. He was an alcoholic.

Mina eats the rest of her bread and then she stirs the food on the stove. She stands very close to him, but Micha feels she doesn’t want to be touched.

—
But I saw the pictures of what they did there, Mina. Where Opa served.

Mina carries on stirring.

—
I have to know if he did those things, too.

—Why?

—
I just do.

—That’s not good enough for me, Micha.

She is not angry, though. This time it is Mina who cries. Micha stands with her. He tries, but he still can’t explain.

—
I love my Opa, Mina. I don’t know what else I can say. He might have done something terrible. It’s just important for me to know.

—Will you still love him if he killed people?

—
I don’t know.

She stares at him.
I did think of that, Mina, and I really don’t know.

—He might not remember. This Kolesnik. He might not know, Michael. You might never know.

Micha reaches out, rests his hand on the small of her back. She turns and puts her arms around him. She cries. The baby is a small, proud bulge between them. Micha pushes his face into Mina’s neck.

Herr Lehner,

I have given your request some thought, and in the light of your assurances, I think I can offer my assistance.

Kolesnik

—
I thought, if you wrote it out for me, then I could copy it.

She is amused by Micha’s request, Mina’s friend of a friend. She offers Micha a cigarette, reaches over to pick up the ashtray from the next table.

—Who are you writing to, anyway?

—
Andrej? He’s a friend.

—You speak no Belarusian? No Russian?

—
No.

—And you have a Belarusian friend who speaks no German?

—
Yes. I stayed with him.

—I see.

Micha is still nervous, despite the woman’s smiles.

—
Coffee? Cake?

—Coffee would be great.

He leaves his letter with her on the table and goes up to the counter to order. When he gets back, she is not smiling anymore.

—You want to tell your friend that your grandfather was a Nazi in his country?

—
Yes.

—Over one-and-a-half million killed, you know that? Two million?

—
Yes.

Micha nods, but he didn’t know.
Why did I not know that?

—A whole generation of my family.

—
By the Nazis?

—By the Nazis.

She is holding out Micha’s letter, but he doesn’t take it back. He thinks,
She is married to a German.
He is amazed.

—
You are married to a German.

—Yes.

No explanation.
Why should she explain to me?
She reads the letter again.

—I hope your friend is understanding.

—
I have to tell him the bit about Jozef Kolesnik. It’s a small place. He will find out I am talking to him anyway, and I would rather he knew from me.

—Okay. If you say so.

She writes for a while, then she stops.

—You don’t know him very well?

—
No.

—You don’t know about his family?

—
No, but he knows I am German. He was very welcoming. His mother, too.

She shrugs and writes some more. Micha feels uneasy now, not sure at all.

—Listen, you can send what you like, but if you change your mind, just leave out this part.

She circles five sentences.

—Those are about your grandfather. It’s up to you, but the letter will still make sense without them.

•  •  •  

Micha is late. He gets to the station in plenty of time, but first one train doesn’t come, and then another.

The people on the platform turn to each other and whisper, filling the unexpected time. Micha thinks of his father, who is always early, and how he will be waiting for him. And he thinks:
Why today? Why did the trains go wrong today?

—
Sorry. It was a long meeting.

Micha’s father shrugs, buys him a coffee. They stand at the kiosk, and commuters hurry their snacks around them. Micha wasn’t planning to lie.
I could have told him, about the trains
, but it just came out. And it sounds flippant, thoughtless; just exactly like a pointless lie.

He thinks I came late to hurt him.

Micha has hurt his father, before he even opened his mouth.

—I don’t want to say much, Michael. I will be quick.

He looks around the station concourse.

—My father was a soldier. He died at Stalingrad, and I never knew him, but I know that he fought soldiers, not civilians, and so I can live with that. It was a war. I can live with that. Askan was in the SS. Waffen-SS, but SS all the same, and he served in the east. This means. To me. This means that there is always the possibility. That you are right.

Micha stays quiet.
He said it.

Micha looks at his father, watches him shake his head. Vati coughs, and then he goes on.

—I knew Askan for many years, ten years. I loved him, I love your mother, and she loved him very much. In my heart, you see, I can’t believe that he could kill. In a battle, yes, but not what you think. Not murder.

—
Himmler said it was a battle. A war against the Jews.

—Michael. Let me finish.

Micha nods. He is sorry. He lets his father choose his words.

—However much I don’t feel he could do that. However much. There is always this possibility.

Micha looks away from his father, down at his cup, allows him to continue without his son’s eyes on his face.

—I have never told your mother that I think this, and I never will. I am only telling you now because I want to explain. I wanted it to stop with our generation. Yes? Bernd, your uncle, was already born after the war. Do you understand? I didn’t want you and Luise to be touched by it. Askan loved you both. That’s the part of him I wanted you to have.

Vati gathers his briefcase and coat. Micha can’t look at him, so he doesn’t know if his father is looking at him.

Mina is right. I don’t know what I have done.

BELARUS, SUMMER 1998

It is embarrassing, being here again; Micha hadn’t expected that. The last time he saw Elena Kolesnik, he cried outside her house, and she gave him vodka and wanted him to leave.

She has made food, good heavy bread, and Micha occupies himself by looking at the photos on the windowsill while she lays the table. One is of Kolesnik and his wife, when they were younger, middle-aged. Both wearing overcoats, buttoned up against the cold. Shoulders hunched, standing on stone steps covered in snow. Arm in arm, hands in mittens, Kolesnik’s wife holds a small bunch of flowers to her chest. Both are looking past the camera, at the ground. Both smiling, but self-conscious, too. When Micha looks up, he finds Kolesnik standing in the doorway.

—
This is the two of you?

—Yes. Our wedding. We were quite old already when we married, you see?

—
Not so old, really.

—Yes, we were. Lucky to find each other.

The old man smiles. He speaks to his wife, and she smiles, too. At Micha. She says something to her husband.

—Elena says it is our only photograph together. It is true.

His wife speaks to him again and he nods.

—We have known each other almost all our lives, and only one picture.

—
Please tell your wife I will take a photo before I go. I will send it to her from Germany.

Kolesnik translates and his wife nods, blushes, pleased. Micha is pleased, too.

He watches Kolesnik while they eat. The old man’s hands are broad and hard. Thick skin over large bones, creased fingers with heavy knuckles and wide, flat nails. They move slowly, the hands, from plate to mouth, rest on the table while he chews. Micha looks up at his face, looks away. The old mans eyes were on him, too; watching him watching.

After they have eaten, Micha and Kolesnik drink vodka together in the kitchen. The old man watches while Micha sets up the tape recorder, loading the batteries, setting the levels. Micha wrote to him about it; told him he would want to tape their conversations, but he can see that Kolesnik wasn’t expecting this today.
Shit. Not on the first day.

—
I thought we could just get used to talking? With the tape running?

—Yes. Good idea, good idea.

Micha stops the tape, rewinds a little and presses play. Kolesnik’s
Good idea
hisses back into the room, tinny but clear. The old man smiles, but his eyes flick quickly away from Micha’s. Shocked at the sound of his own voice.

They sit together in the kitchen among the pots and pans and
plates and the tape turns, recording the silence. There is a new loaf of bread on the stove and onions in a box on the floor. Everything in its place; heavy boots by the door, leather mittens hanging from a shelf painted the same color as the wall. Elena Kolesnik walks through every so often, moving between house and garden, ignoring Micha, the rolling tape, working around him, as if he weren’t there.

—We will stick to our arrangement.

—
Yes.

Micha answers, although it wasn’t a question. Kolesnik nods. The skin around his eyes creases, resting somewhere between a squint and a smile. Micha knows it is a caution. The old man is drawing a line which both of them can see.

Micha puts the batteries on charge before he goes to bed, the red light glowing in the black night. He makes a mental note to give Andrej extra money for electricity before he goes home.