The Jew looks up at the same instant the blow is delivered.
He drops his cap.
‘Pick it up,’ says Manfred, and inhales smoke deep into his lungs.
The Jew bends down to pick up the cap, Semjon places his boot against the man’s hip and propels him backwards against the desk.
‘Hey,’ says Manfred. ‘I told you to pick it up.’
The Jew tries again, Semjon snatches up the cap and tosses it to one of the other Hiwis. The Jew looks across at Manfred, who nods. He moves forward to retrieve it. The Hiwi holds it out in front of him, yanks it away as the man reaches out, then steps forward and punches him, a sudden, snapping jab to the jaw. That’s right, says the Hiwi, and strikes again, his fist an abrupt blur. That’s right!
Another man slaps the Jew hard in the face, takes the cap and holds it above his head. Again, the Jew attempts to retrieve it, again he is struck, jostled, manhandled. A lashing of fists, then a punch delivered deep to the small of his back.
He is sweating, and bleeding.
Manfred gets to his feet, steps up to him, holds up his chin and yells into his face:
‘I want everyone from Zaludok at the hospital in Lida by 14:00. Can I trust you to find every last one of them?’
‘Yes,’ says the Jew.
Manfred wipes the blood and spit from his fingers on the Jew’s sleeve.
_ _ _
Back at Lida, the SS hospital, main entrance, 13:59.
A single truck. A Feldwebel jumps down from the cab and goes round to the back of the vehicle, unpins the tailgate and lets it drop with a clatter. He barks a command and the Jews climb out: suitcases, clothes, battered hats. They think they are being evacuated. The Hiwis come forward, snatch the luggage from their hands, jabbing with their rifle butts. They line them up, a dissipated flock, always the same expressions. I think to myself the Jew will be remembered for this: dullness before death, dying with a shrug, a quiver of the lip, a quiet Elohim Yisrael.
Manfred looks at his watch and gives me a nod.
‘14:03, not bad.’
I study the line-up. Twenty-two individuals. What is left of Zaludok’s Jewish population. In 1942 there were two thousand of them. Before the day is over there will be none.
It is stiflingly hot.
They will be asked the same question: names of Jews deported to the Gulag between 1939 and 1941.
Manfred says:
‘Do you want to do the interrogating?’
‘No,’ I say.
_ _ _
The hospital basement, 15:12.
I rinse my face with cold water from a bowl placed on a trolley in the corridor. Semjon comes in with a boy, seven or eight years old, the last of the Swiderskis. Semjon steers him into the room with a hand on his shoulder, speaks to him softly, nudges the door back with his foot. The boy sees something at the other end of the room, outside my field of vision. He looks at me; his mouth opens slowly. He begins to scream.
The door shuts with a click.
_ _ _
The hospital basement, 15:34.
Semjon opens the door with his elbow. He has the naked boy in his arms. The white corpse is perforated by large, dark holes. He goes over to a rubbish container, blocks the wheel with a foot and dumps the body inside.
Manfred pokes his head round the door.
‘Come on,’ he says. ‘Get a move on.’
_ _ _
The hospital basement, 18:09.
He is lying on the steel bed, the springs of the bare frame are knives in his back, buttocks, hips, lower arms – a wash of blood beneath him. White tiles, creaking springs. The Ukrainian has returned from the table by the sink, he needed to get something, pliers perhaps, and now his knee is embedded in the man’s chest, he waves the instrument about in his right hand, the Jew’s mouth is no longer a mouth, his head is no longer a head, he is inside his own death, screaming, whispering, sobbing, gurgling, wailing: Bliznez, bliznez, bliznez! The Ukrainian jabs at his throat and, as though at the clap of a hand, the Jew succumbs.
The Ukrainian has severed his windpipe.
What he fetched from the table was a pair of poultry shears.
Only the echo of the lungs can be heard now, a low hum from the depths of a soul.
Then silence.
I remove my spectacles, take a handkerchief from my jacket pocket and wipe some mist from the lenses.
My ears are ringing.
‘What did he say?’ Manfred asks. He has risen from his chair in the corner.
The interpreter turns to the Ukrainian, who has climbed down from the bed, a sheen of perspiration upon his skin, and now puts down the shears on the table with a clatter. He is wearing uniform trousers, his chest bare, his head is rectangular and Slavic: all jaw and no brow. He exchanges a few sentences with the interpreter, then stands with his back to us as he arranges his instruments on the cloth, rolls them up and ties a knot.
‘He said he saw him picked out three months ago. His twin,’ says the interpreter.
‘Whose twin?’
‘Bronstejns’. They were identical.’
‘Our man’s name is Bronstejn?’
‘Bronstejns. With an s. One of the Bronstejns brothers came to Vorkuta in ’39. The other stayed in Zaludok and got special treatment in Sjtjutjyn this spring.’
‘Does he have any other names, besides Bronstejns?’
‘He didn’t say.’
‘Goga … did he mention
