“You have not seen murder before,” he said, jabbing the air with his cigarette, trailing smoke in a lazy arc. “Do not argue. This is a truth. You were nervous when you arrived tonight, the thought of crossing near where the woman died was disturbing. Ghosts were in your mind. But you have courage. You made the journey alone. I know this because I remember the first time I saw murder. I was not seventeen. And this is how I know that evil can come out of the ordinary.” Arsov grimaced. It was not a pleasing sight, and for a moment he looked every one of his ninety years.
“You are shocked that she was killed in our safe surroundings. I, too, found murder where I felt safest. In my village we knew of war, but as a distant idea. When it came, it came swiftly. It came with the Fritzes. When they invited us to a field at the edge of the woods. To collect data they said, and we believed them. We were deep in the heart of Russia and some of the children had never seen Roman letters before. They were excited. I remember how they begged to see the list with their names.”
The nurse stood and without a word left the room, shielding a candle before her.
“When my family crossed the top of the hill we saw that the ditch was dug. The pit deep enough to hide a man and ten meters long, gutted into the hard cold ground. Easier for us. The walk wasn’t far and the surroundings were familiar, so we hadn’t time to worry. We had only a few minutes. Two … maybe three. Not enough time. Too much time.”
Agnes wanted him to stop; he was veering too far from what she needed to know, but she couldn’t speak. He was Russian and of a certain age. She knew what had happened in the last World War. The mass murders.
“In my life there are entire weeks that I don’t recall; that day I remember each fraction of time. It is as if I lived it once and then saw it every day after. Do you know this feeling?” he asked.
She swallowed, remembering George’s death. The distant scream that only later she knew was his. How the rain started to fall. The exact temperature of the air. The sound of traffic. All ordinary and yet all now part of that day in a way that made her pulse quicken and her mouth taste of adrenaline.
“I can tell you how the air tasted heavy with fir,” Arsov continued, “and the smell of cow dung mixed with fresh earth. The air was dry and cold. Truly cold, so that our lungs hurt while we walked and so dry you could draw a spark merely by rubbing against someone.” He tapped his cigarette ash and it fell to the floor and singed the antique carpet. Transfixed, Agnes watched the silk threads char.
“The sun touched the tops of the trees and the pit was in shadow. It took us a few extra seconds to understand. To see. Those who came before had laid their shovels at the edge of the ditch and were waiting. Not running or threatening or begging, but waiting. Disbelief on their faces. You know what is about to happen but your mind says—impossible.”
Yes, impossible, she wanted to scream. Impossible that he was dead. That he had killed himself. That he deliberately left her and their sons. She reached for a glass of water and it shook, sloshing liquid onto her lips and down her suit jacket.
“I held my mother’s hand and helped her climb across the uneven ground. My baby sister, my Anya, clung to my other hand and behind us I could feel the touch of the others bracing so they wouldn’t stumble as we pressed together. We didn’t want to humiliate ourselves. Can you imagine the state of someone’s mind to ignore the men with guns pointed at them, the harsh commands of a tongue few understood, and the obvious threat of that ditch, and yet be concerned about falling? About loss of dignity?”
Agnes glanced up at the light of a candelabra to stop the tears from forming. Why? she had wanted to scream every day since George’s death. Why?
Arsov smoked and watched the fire. “The Germans are an efficient people. It took only a few minutes for us to be in place and another few for the job to be over. I had never heard gunfire like that. The report of a rifle I had known from infancy, but not the thunder of a machine gun, and it sounded like the end of the world. In a way it was. My mother and sisters turned to me, they clung to me in desperation and that is how they saved my life. When the guns sounded I fell with my family, pushed down the embankment as they collapsed. The bastards shot into the ditch. My father taught me languages and I could understand the orders and heard them pointing out survivors. ‘There! In the blue cap!’ ‘There, the woman with the crying baby!’ You can’t imagine what these words meant to me. My friend in the blue cap he hated but that his grandmother made for him. My older sister and the crying baby, her daughter.”
Outside there was a loud crack followed by a thundering boom. Agnes half rose. Branches, even entire trees, were snapping under the weight of the ice, bringing down more power lines and blocking roads across the region. Arsov ignored everything and she sat down awkwardly.