The Crow Girl (102 page)

Charlotte catching Madeleine by surprise when she’s watching the video her foster-parents have hidden.

Three girls, one eating excrement.

Around them people in pig masks.

Just like in the pigpen at Viggo’s farm.

As a punishment for watching the film she is grounded and P-O visits her every night.

What would her memories of childhood have looked like if she had grown up with her real mother?

Madeleine isn’t prepared for the emotions flooding over her. She hasn’t got words for them. Her emotions have long been dormant. So long that only the memory of them is stored in her body, not linked to any particular event.

These emotions manifest themselves in a tear running down her cheek.

A solitary, heavy tear of longing for something that never existed.

The old woman walks up the second flight of steps and disappears into the darkness.

Victoria Bergman stays where she is, leaning against the railing. Behind her the silhouette of Sofia Church looks like a vast beacon raised against the sky.

Madeleine approaches. Stops at the bottom of the steps and looks at the bowed back from behind.

Then she sees it slowly straighten up. Victoria raises her head, and her pale hand takes a firm grip of the handrail.

Death is rich in comparison to life, Madeleine thinks, putting her hand in her pocket and taking hold of the revolver.

Life is monotonous, and fairly easy to learn. A journey from scream to scream where your hopes are limited and words of explanation vanishingly few.

Victoria turns round, and for a brief moment they look at each other.

Memories she’s never possessed come to her, growing like a wave about to hit a stony beach.

A single tear for a stolen past, and she feels cold and tired as she realises that she has reached the bottom and only the journey back remains. She wants to get away from the cold, to thaw out.

Her head fills with images.

Memories she wishes she had had wash over snapshots of her past. A swell forcing its way with a gentle hiss between algae-covered rocks, only to subside and slowly withdraw to the sea.

A mother with her daughter in her arms. The comforting warmth of a soft breast. A hand caressing her chin and stroking her hair.

A daughter doing a drawing for her mother. A smiling sun in a blue sky, and a girl playing with a dog in a green field.

A mother carefully removing a splinter from her daughter’s finger. She gets a plaster, although there’s really no need. And hot chocolate and cheese sandwiches.

A daughter coming home from school with an apron she’s sewn for her mother. Blue, with red hearts on it. The seams are a little crooked, but it doesn’t matter. The mother is proud of her daughter.

The tear stiffens on Madeleine’s cheek. A single tear of longing, absorbed by her skin and leaving a pale, almost invisible trace of salt.

They could have loved each other.

Could have.

But were denied the chance.

Victoria’s gaze is distant, hidden behind a veil of madness. She can’t see me, Madeleine thinks. I’m invisible.

She loosens her grip on the revolver.

Mum, she thinks. I feel sorry for you, and it’s enough of a punishment to let you live. You’re like me. No past, and no future. Like the first empty page in an unwritten book.

Victoria Bergman starts to climb upward. Slowly at first, but soon with quicker, more determined steps. She reaches the top of the first flight, then the second.

Then she too is gone.

Madeleine realises that she’s done the right thing.

There’s nothing more to do and her body slumps, in a fraction of a second of relief.

From now on you’re all dead to me, she thinks. I’m putting my burden down here. I’m too tired, someone else will have carry it now.

There’s just one thing she has to do. Babi Yar. After that she’ll never come back, and she’s decided to leave her mother tongue behind her as well. Never again will she utter a word of either Swedish or Danish. Never again, not after the final word she says now.

‘Sorry,’ she says, without a single person to hear her.

On Monday 29 September 1941, all Jews living in Kiev and its suburbs must show up at 08:00 at the corner of Melnikova and Dokterieva Streets (near the graveyard). Documents, money and valuables must be taken. Also take warm clothes, underwear, etc. Those who disobey and are found in/at another place will be shot.

FATHER WAS SILENT
during the meal, and apart from the hand moving the spoon between the dish and his mouth, back and forth, he sat completely still. She counted twenty-eight spoonfuls of soup before he put the spoon down in the empty dish, picked up his napkin and wiped his mouth. Then he leaned back, put his hands behind his head and looked at her brothers. ‘You two, go to your room and gather up the last of your things.’

Her heart was beating hard as she reluctantly swallowed another spoonful of soup and tore off a piece of bread. She missed her mother’s soup; this just tasted of soil.

Her brothers picked up their dishes, stood and put them in the washing-up bowl by the wood stove.

‘Do your dishes first,’ he said, and she recognised the irritable tone. ‘It’s good porcelain, and they might let us keep it. Better that than leave it here and be sure of losing it. Put the silver cutlery in the wooden tray by the door.’ She could see him shifting position from the corner of his eye, and perhaps he was irritated by her as well? Sometimes he got cross when she didn’t eat up.

But not this time. When her brothers began clattering their dishes he smiled, stretched across the table and ruffled her hair.

‘You look worried,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing to be scared of, is there?’

No, she thought. Not for me, but for you.

She avoided meeting his gaze. She knew he was staring at her.

‘Beloved
tokhter,
’ he said, stroking her cheek. ‘We’re only being deported. They’ll put us on a train and take us somewhere. East, maybe. Or north, to Poland. There’s not much we can do about it. We’ll just have to start again, wherever it is.’

She tried to smile, but it didn’t really work because she was starting to have doubts about whether she was doing the right thing.

She had seen the notice on a wall down by the Monastery of the Caves, where the Orthodox fools locked themselves away. Voluntarily living their whole lives on bread and water in small caves without windows, to get closer to God. They were fools.

On the sign the Germans had put up, it said that all the Jews in the city had to go to the Jewish cemetery.

Why didn’t they ask the Orthodox to go to their cemetery?

Just three days ago no one in the street had known about their roots. After all, they didn’t live in the Jewish quarter, and weren’t particularly religious. But the day after she had sent the letter with their names and address to the Germans, everybody knew about it, and some of the neighbours who had been their friends up till then had spat at her when she went to the market.

You
shmegegge,
she thought, glancing quickly at her father as her brothers went into the bedroom to pack the last of their things.

She knew she wasn’t his child.

She used to think she was, because before Mother died no one spoke about it, but now everyone but him knew about it. Even her brothers knew, and that was why they hit her when they got fed up with hitting each other. That was also why they were able to use her body as they liked.

Mamzer.

For several years she had thought that the way people looked at her and whispered was because of something else, that she was ugly or was wearing shabby clothes, but it was because they knew she was illegitimate. She had got confirmation when she was at the greengrocer’s and bumped into one of the girls in the neighbourhood who maliciously told her that Mother had spent ten years living with the handsome painter who lived two blocks away. Her brothers had called her
mamzer
several times, and she hadn’t known what the word meant. But when she met the girl in the greengrocer’s she had worked out that it meant she wasn’t part of the family.

She looked at her father again. The soup was cold, and she couldn’t get another spoonful down.

‘Just leave that,’ he said. ‘But eat the bread up before we leave.’ He passed her the last scrap of dry bread. ‘After all, we don’t know when we’re next going to get any food.’

Maybe never, she thought, putting the bread in her mouth.

She sneaked out when her father went to get the wheelbarrow that their belongings would be taken away on. Apart from a thick sweater, trousers, socks and a pair of shoes that she had taken from one of her brothers’ suitcases and was now carrying under her arm, she had nothing else with her except her father’s shaving knife.

She ran down the streets with her dress flapping around her legs, and it felt as if everyone were staring at her.

Mamzer.

Even though it was barely light there were a lot of people on the streets. The sky was dirty grey and covered with clouds, but on the horizon there was a streak of morning red that made her anxious. She avoided groups of uniforms, German and Ukrainian alike. They seemed to be working together.

Where was she going to go? She hadn’t even thought about that. Everything had happened so quickly.

Out of breath, she stopped at a street corner where there was a little cafe. She looked around. She had run a long way and didn’t know where she was. There were no street signs at the intersection and she quickly made up her mind not to worry about where she was and to go into the cafe toilet and use the shaving knife. As she opened the door she noticed that her bare shins were muddy.

Soon she was standing in front of the cracked mirror in the toilet, hoping that no one would disturb her since there was no lock on the door. She began by rinsing the mud from her legs under the flush on the toilet, which was really just a hole in the ground. There was no paper or towel in there, and no sink either. The water was almost dark brown.

She got changed, but because she didn’t want to be caught naked she first put her brother’s trousers on under her dress, then pulled the dress off and pushed it down into the bin with her underwear. Then she got down on her knees, held her head over the hole and pulled the flush again. It smelled awful and she held her breath to stop herself being sick.

She had to pull the chain three times to get her hair wet enough. Then she got up and stood in front of the cracked mirror. The shaving knife was cold in her hand.

She started by getting rid of the long, dark hair at the back of her head, then the sides. Suddenly she heard male voices outside the door and froze.

She shut her eyes. If they opened the door then that was it, she’d never be able to hold it shut.

But the voices quickly disappeared, and a few minutes later her hair was almost completely shaved off and she smiled at her reflection.

Now she was someone who could be of use, someone who could work. Not a
mamzer
.

I’m going to be strong, she thought. Stronger than Father.

‘THIS IS IT,’
Jeanette says, opening the steel door in the cellar beneath Viggo Dürer’s garage and pointing with her arm before immediately going back to her work in the outer room.

The pathologist looks in through the doorway with a strong sense of reluctance. He realises immediately that this is going to take all night.

The grief he had suffered over many years is nothing compared to the collective despair contained in this room. The room itself is an installation, a calculated staging of sorrow, death and perversion.

Only three hours later can he begin to see an end to his work.

One by one his colleagues have excused themselves, and he sympathises with them. Now he’s left alone with just one forensics expert. A young man who, despite the look of revulsion on his face when he entered the room, has gone on working almost mechanically without complaint. Ivo can’t help wondering if his young colleague is forcing himself to put up with it because he feels the new recruit’s pressure to put his best foot forward, no matter what the cost.

‘You’ve done a good job,’ the pathologist says, switching off the tape recorder he’s holding in front of his mouth. ‘There’s no need for you to stay any longer. We’re almost done, and I can finish up myself.’

The young man glances at him. ‘No, thanks. I can manage.’ He smiles a wan, almost watery smile, and Ivo looks at him curiously.

He switches on the recorder again. Everything has to be documented.

In front of him are the four steel cables, and from the corner of his eye he can see the object on the floor. He’s trying not to look at it, and begins with what’s hanging from the cables, attached to small hooks.

‘In summary: the genitals of forty-four boys, the organs preserved using a technique that’s a combination of taxidermy and embalmment. The material used as stuffing is ordinary clay.’ He begins to walk along the cables with his eyes attached to the ceiling. ‘The type of clay varies, but in most cases it appears to be a type of fuller’s earth not found in Sweden,’ he adds dully, and clears his throat.

He turns round and glances at the object on the floor.

He wouldn’t like to call it a sculpture, but recognises that it’s a description that comes fairly close to the truth.

A sculpture of a human insect. A sick fantasy.

Then he returns to the steel cables again. ‘Forty-four photographs, one of each boy; the pictures were taken after embalmment, with dates added by hand, running from October 1963 to November 2007.’

He curses the fact that there are no names or locations, then walks further along the cable and stops at the other end, next to the wall, beside the large extractor fan.

‘At the end of each of the four steel cables there are completely dried hands, all of them amputated above the wrist. Eight in total. To judge by the size of the hands, they also appear to have come from children …’