Kill the president!
Murder the bastard!
Amid the voices of thunderous approval — apparently this is their favourite poem — I hear a woman shriek. The hefty guy in the leather jacket and somebody else rush the bar and try to grab the man reading, but the ones who want to keep listening form a wall and block them.
The little guy ignores them and goes on reading:
Kill the President!
Axe him, shoot him
Chop off his accursed head
Murder the son of a bitch!
Now the guy on the bar is yelling and tossing his papers into the crowd, people are clapping, whistling. I see the guy in the leather jacket has pulled out a gun, so I rush after Maruška. She’s gone to the ladies’, inconvenient for me, but we can’t go back out on the street, there are trucks full of soldiers out there. I burst in, lean back against the door. She’s climbing on to the radiator, her soggy clothes kind of get in the way, but now she’s wriggling out the window, she kicked the lock clear off the thing, the girl knows how to move! I jump down into the yard, land on all fours, sneak through the rubbish bins. The wind’s died down, it’s quiet now, no snow scraping between my teeth. And look, another rat. I just see the flash of its teeth, then the tail, its mangy behind covered in stains. All of a sudden, bang! We hear gunfire in the bar. I look around for a way out. Can’t stay here. At least now we’re touching, though. Hunched down in the courtyard, wedged tight together. Wow, Maruška’s really shaking. It’d be awful if you got busted, she says softly into my ear, if I lost you. That really got me. I snuggle closer. Alex would kick my arse, she says, if I fucked up my first assignment. A shadow slips across the lighted bathroom window, we pull apart. We’re not the only ones who want out of the bar, now that there’s shooting. I don’t know if the big man did the poet in or what, and with my foreigner’s accent I’m not about to ask. A guy with a beard lands in the yard, boots, quilted coat. Something’s blocking out the light, a big woman climbing out the window, they must be pushing her from inside. The guy that just jumped down reaches out his hands, she lands in the snow, right by me. Yeah, she’s big all right. Hair tucked under a scarf. Ula. But I didn’t know that yet.
I help her up. She’s from somewhere else, I can tell by the look in her eyes: they’re afraid. Not that I’ve met a lot of Belarusians, but the people here are like hawks, always on the alert. Well, she may have been scared in the yard that time, but I turned out to be wrong about her.
A few more people jump down. Talking under their breath. Someone, maybe one of the big guys that pushed Ula through the window, finds a metal door in the shadows behind the rubbish bins. He kicks it, hard. We creep out to the street one, two at a time. Nobody says a word. Maruška and I walk away. I don’t know how Ula got out of there.
We stride down a deserted street. No cars, no pedestrians, nothing. Well, we didn’t get much of a chance to warm up, did we? I say, wrapping my arm around Maruška. I tell her that I’m sure it’ll be safer if they’ve got martial law. We look totally normal. Just two ordinary people, maybe hurrying home to their sick kid. Maruška doesn’t object to having my arm around her shoulders. We walk. I feel lucky.
9
Evil, piercing eyes, pointy chin, this dezhurnaya is one nasty old bag. She won’t let us in. The uniform? Maruška’s ID? Barking orders in Russian? Pleading in Belarusian? None of it works. She’s like a stone wall.
Finally Maruška waved some money in front of her face and the old bag opened the museum’s heavy wooden door. It was a close call. We had to get in. And not just because of Kagan.
There were tents burning on the square. Hundreds of protesters surrounded by cops. We forced our way through the screaming crowd at the last minute. Protesters dropping under baton blows, cops packing them into vans, people fleeing left and right. I squeezed up against Maruška from behind, pushing her forward, covering her back as she cleared a path, kicking people out of the way as we slowly edged through the crowd surging back towards the tents, the epicentre of the madness. Then we broke into a run and didn’t stop till we reached the museum. We could still hear shouting and engines from the square. Finally the old bag snatched the note and opened the door.
It’s warm inside. But the old bag won’t let us go any farther. Maruška has some words with her — Russian or Belarusian, I can’t tell. I look around the entrance halclass="underline" the Museum of the Great Patriotic War. The walls are covered with yellowing maps of victorious campaigns, black-and-white photos of long-dead veterans, magnificent decorations, flags and battle standards, all long since chewed through by moths.
Maruška, I say, this is just like back home! It really does remind me of Terezín. With the display cases and everything, it’s a bit like the Monument.
The dezhurnaya is yapping away at Maruška. Then she points to me. She wants more cash because I’m an inostranyets. Ticket for foreigner! She’s all over us. Maruška tries to explain that I’m a Western expert, I work for the ministry. The ministries are all shut down, snaps the old bag, yanking on my sleeve. I give the dezhurnaya a little pat on the behind, trying to calm her the way Lebo used to do with the aunts when they got mad because somebody had trampled mud all over their kitchen. I get hit so hard I see stars. I fall on my back and see she’s getting ready to kick me.
Maruška makes her move. I see the gleam as she stabs a needle into the lady’s forearm.
The dezhurnaya topples. Maruška drags her off by the legs into the shadows. I should help, but I just sit there, where I landed, on the cold marble. Blood drips from my nose. Oof, that old bag really walloped me. I tilt my head back. I’m sitting under a big black-and-white picture. Guys throwing kids off a truck. A pile of bodies on the ground.
Fascists massacre orphanage, it says.
Maruška squats down beside me, breathing fast. Pulls out a handkerchief, wipes the blood off my face. Looks where I’m looking.
Yeah, and the reason they were orphans was the communists murdered their parents. Who would dare take care of them? They took the kids away to special camps where they died quick. That’s what’s happening in this picture. Azarichi or Chervony berag, Red Riverbank. You might want to remember that. If nothing else.
Awful.
Didn’t have that in your country, huh? Haven’t seen that, have you? But you should’ve, since you’re the expert. You are a Western expert, right?
She gives me the handkerchief. I press it to my nose. Maruška is trying to teach me. Just like Sara.
You know how many people the Nazis killed in Czechoslovakia?
No, not off the top off my head, but we can easily Google it.
Three hundred sixty-two thousand, four hundred and fifty-eight! And you know how many here in Belarus?
About the same?
She clenches her fist. Shakes her head. Rolls her eyes. She is seriously angry. She actually stamps her feet! She looks like an angry teacher, picking on a kid in class.
I give her the bloody handkerchief back. She shoves it in her pocket. My nose isn’t bleeding any more. But it’s all stuck together inside.
They killed four million people here. It’s in the Guinness Book of Records! And you know how many people there were in Czechoslovakia and how many in Belarus?
No.
The same. Ten million. But you in the West, you don’t have a clue! Terezín was nothing!