Snap. He fastens Luis’s leg in a clamp, above the ankle.
The ancient, emaciated body is stretched pretty tight now. Still soaking in all the fluids. Snap, now the second leg’s in place too.
Alex puts on rubber gloves.
Oh, wait, he turns to me. I promised you those tsantsas, right?
He takes a box down from the shelf and opens it for me to see. Human heads, little ones, their pursed lips sewn shut with string, or is it coarse thread?
Naranjitos, they call them, says Alex. I guess because they’re like oranges.
He yanks the box away and puts it back on the shelf.
A tsantsa like this takes finesse. Crushing the skull so the face stays intact, pulling all the little bones out through the nose, now that’s what I call a masterpiece. Everyone was blown away when they found them in the camp. Yevgeni Khaldei took pictures for the Nuremberg Trials. As proof of Nazi perversion. Luis was supposed to be sentenced but the Biochemical Institute in Moscow requested him as an expert. Like the Yanks with Wernher von Braun. And from Moscow to Milovice, it was only a step.
Let’s open him up, Alex says, nodding to Rolf. Rolf gets up from the tub and just stands there, shaking his head, glasses glinting in the gloom. Alex wrenches something out of his hands, the dish I saw him with in the tent.
He wipes the mucus and vomit on Rolf’s shoulder and shoves the dish in his face.
You see? Na pamyat o Minske, he reads aloud. That’s Russian! Na pamyats pra Minsk, it should say, this is Belarus, damn it! And besides, it should be ‘Mensk’! He flings the dish to the floor. The pieces go flying.
Alex sighs, sits down on the tub.
The Russians are our big brothers. Too big, actually. They want to swallow everything up. Now they’re even muscling in on our tourist industry. It isn’t right.
I notice something in his hand, some kind of doctor’s saw.
What’s wrong with him? I say. Rolf is blubbering quietly.
Our idiot president even spoke Russian when he declared martial law!
What’s wrong with him?
He’s soft, not like you. He was supposed to do the publicity — photos, interviews — then send it out to the world. But he went over the edge. Couldn’t handle it.
Handle?
Journalists, you know, living in the magazine world, cranking out articles, and then this! A little museum in the woods. You can handle it, though, can’t you?
Handle what?
He caved in when it came to signing. When the old-timers signed the agreement with us to put them on display.
You said they asked to do it.
Most of them, yeah. Some.
Uh-huh.
We must become great in enduring the suffering of others, Alex says jokingly. He’s grinning like a schoolboy. That’s right, sometimes we just have to tolerate other people’s suffering. The Nazis really thought it through. Jean Améry, ever read him?
I shake my head. I never read anything except those stupid textbooks, which I forgot as soon as I read them, and the emails for the Comenium, which wouldn’t mean shit to him.
You should. Alex laughed. Seeing as you’re the expert.
Here I am getting schooled again. Hm. I slide my eyes around the room. Infirmary. There must be an operating room next door. There are some boxes stacked along the wall. Canisters, metal and plastic. Some instruments arranged on the shelves. A pair of large pliers attached to the wall above my head.
I turn as the saw in Alex’s hand starts to spin, a whirring sound slices into my ears, it must run on batteries.
Go ahead and take a look around, Alex shouts over the noise. You can help me later!
He turns his back to me and bends down towards Luis.
Keeping an eye on Alex, I reach out my arm and snatch the pliers. Slip them under my jacket. Rolf won’t give me away. He’s too out of it. He tugs on my sleeve, like a child, dragging me behind him. Pattering along like some scared little pet. He used to film people dancing under the ramparts. Now he’s in a bunker where they make people into mummies.
Rolf, I shout, the red grass, remember that? It’s no use. The basement is filled with the whirring sound of the saw.
We enter the little room next door and the pliers nearly fall out of my hand.
He’s sitting there, in a black suit, bent slightly forward, just like I knew him my whole life. All those evenings he spoke to the students of the Comenium, the ones he healed, he looked like this. He’s even sitting on a bunk bed made of slats. Alex is all about authenticity.
I think this is what he wanted.
For me to see Lebo like this.
So I would shit my pants. So I’d know who’s holding all the cards.
It almost worked. I almost said hello.
I realize I don’t hear the saw any more.
I look at Lebo. But I’m waiting for Alex.
So I’m not surprised when I hear his voice. Plus I’ve got the pliers under my jacket.
We’re the last ones who know the witnesses personally, he says. And when they die, the museum will be here, so their stories will live on forever. That’s what Lebo wanted, wasn’t it?
He’s between Rolf and me, feeling around for the light switch. Lebo looks even better in the light. Yeah, he looks good. But he’s dead.
You think it was easy getting the old man on a plane? Alex says. We took him from Terezín by ambulance. All bandaged up. To fool the cops, you see?
Uh-huh.
He wanted to leave Terezín and continue his work here. In the Devil’s Workshop. You have to believe me.
They kidnapped him and made him into a puppet. I’m waiting for Alex to turn his back. I don’t want to see his face when I strike.
So did you kill him here?
Here in our museum Lebo will be for everyone, Alex says, bending down to fiddle with the wires. Not just for some spoiled brats from the West, like in Terezín.
Did you kill him?
Kill? Just the opposite! From now on he shall live in eternity, as our conscience, our strength, our weapon, Alex declaims, tugging on the wires poking out from Lebo’s jacket. Do you know it? Song of Lenin. Did you even go to school?
There aren’t any other mummies in the room. Alex’s way of showing Lebo respect, I guess. But I don’t want to hear him. I don’t want to hear his voice coming out of a corpse.
He wouldn’t want you stuffing people, I say. He wouldn’t want you using all those atrocities as a reason to kill more people.
Not even old ones? Alex’s fingers are fiddling with the wires. He still has on the rubber gloves. They don’t even slow him down.
Suddenly it dawns on me that they must have sawed Lebo up in the hotel room where I stayed. Those stains everywhere. They killed him there.
Maruška, hm, I say to myself. I know you’re with Alex. But sorry, I have no choice.
So you don’t believe me that Lebo signed an agreement? Mr Hard-line says. His voice is totally calm. He’s testing the connections.
That he gave us all the cash? That he went to the bank with us completely voluntarily? None of that ‘Your money or your life’ stuff! Don’t you believe me?
Lebo moves. Tips his head — the current has kicked in. It’s Lebo and it’s not.
I was born on a bunk in the camp, it says. It’s his voice — that was how he used to begin his story, in the evening. A soldier pulled my mother out of a typhus pit, says the old man on the chair … a young drummer boy, son of the regiment. They got married and had a son. But my mother … was afraid of open space … I brought her bouquets … ahem, ahem, ahem … The chin of the puppet in the black hat starts to quiver, like the words are getting stuck. It goes silent. His face is yellow, from the light. Lebo’s head nods up and down, something’s jammed.