Read Online Rag and Bone by James R. Benn - Free Book Online

blood on his sleeve. I was scared, but there was no time to do anything, nowhere to go, it was all shouts and pop pop pop , Icouldn’t think. There were NKVD officers standing around with clipboards and lists of names. They took a group of ten men in front of me and pushed them up and over a hill. I heard the shots, and then they came for us, bayonets sticking into our backs. They were calling us Polish pigs, telling us to hurry, hurry, or they’d shoot us right there. I fell at the top of the hill when I saw what was there. A huge pit, and it was full of bodies. I remember thinking it was astounding that so many of us had run to our deaths like that. I saw four men kneeling and a Russian walk behind them, bang, bang, bang, bang, and they all tumbled into the pit. There were men in the pit—Russian prisoners, they looked like, not Poles—stacking the bodies. One row of heads in one direction, the next row feet in that direction. It was so unbelievable that I was no longer afraid. I sat on the ground while madness went on around me. I don’t know why they left me there, although it was only a minute or so. I saw men pushed up the hill, saw pistols being reloaded, saw more bodies fall. It was mechanical, like a killing factory, except we were in the woods, on a beautiful, clear spring day. I see every moment of that minute, over and over again, every day. Every hour. Every night. Do you understand?”
    “Yes,” I whispered. “How …” I didn’t have to finish, the question was obvious.
    “The NKVD officer, the one who had questioned me. He was there, and he had a list of names. There were six of us. You see, he’d had appendicitis. He was in hospital, and hadn’t finished his interrogations. He was angry that we’d been sent to the forest with the others, since he needed to produce confessions. Well, a dead man can’t confess, can he? He had a guard detail, and they beat us, but that was nothing. They put us into a Tshorni Voron and drove us to the NKVD prison in Smolensk.”
    “A what?”
    “Tshorni Voron, Black Raven in Russian. A special NKVD bus for transporting prisoners. Locked compartments on eitherside, just big enough for one person to squat. You can’t stand, can’t sit. When you see the Black Raven, you see death itself.”
    “But you didn’t die.”
    “No, I didn’t,” Tadeusz said mournfully. “They sent four of us to Lubyanka, the main NKVD prison in Moscow. I never saw any of the others again. I never saw the NKVD officer again. Nobody came for me; they just fed me and kept me in a cell. They didn’t even beat me. I think they forgot about me, or lost my file, or perhaps the NKVD man was denounced and he was in the cell next to mine, I have no idea. One day, a guard came and gave me extra food and clean clothes. The next day, they put me in a truck with ten other Poles. I don’t talk to anyone, I don’t trust them. But they put us on a train, a real train, not in a railcar, but in a car with real seats. We got off in Buzul’uk, and there were Poles everywhere. They tell us the Nazis invaded Russia, and now the Russians want us to fight the Germans. But I trust no one. They send us through Persia, to Palestine, and the British give us uniforms, and food, and everyone asks about the camps. But I say nothing. Do you understand?”
    “You don’t speak, because if you did, you’d have to tell the story,” I said.
    “Yes! Yes, you do understand. I did not speak at all, not one word, not in Buzul’uk, not in Persia, or Palestine, or Egypt. Not on the ship, not in London, until I came here. Not until I met Piotr and got to know him. He is a good man. Then I decided to speak, for Piotr. But it is not easy, you understand. Can I go now?”
    “Yes,” Kaz said. “That was very helpful. I will take you back to your room now.”
    “Thank you, Piotr.” He held on to Kaz’s arm and didn’t look back.
    “A drink, Lieutenant Boyle?” Major Horak asked.
    “No, no thanks. Tell Kaz I’ll