The Forest of Souls

Jake felt oddly reluctant to return home and finish off his article with the contribution from Marek Lange. He stared into the distance, remembering how Lange’s face had frozen into blankness. The old man had held the photograph, and he’d said…Jake relaxed and let the memory form. He was in the room. It was chilly and the light was dim. Lange was motionless, staring at the picture. Everyone is afraid. Fear makes people…made me…I should not have done it. The bear at the gate…I was there. I was there. And the little one…And then in Russian: I should know. I did know. It is wrong.

I should not have done it. Done what? What should he have known, and what did he know? What had the photograph brought so shockingly to Lange’s mind? And then Faith Lange had arrived and got her grandfather off the hook. But before she came in, the old man had said something else. Minsk. It was in Minsk.

Ghost fingers touched his spine.

He had decided what he was going to do. He left the rest of his coffee and walked down the narrow steps to the street. A train clattered over the bridge above him, making the iron sing. He was going to pay a visit to Sophia Yevanova.

6

The sign on the door said ANTONI YEVANOV, DIRECTOR. Faith took a deep breath. She had never met Yevanov on a one-to-one basis before and would have liked a bit more preparation for this meeting. She’d prefer not to feel rushed and harassed, her mind still picking over the events of the morning. Yevanov had a reputation for impatience and for swift, sharp judgement.

She glanced at her reflection in the glass over a picture. She looked a bit windblown. Her hand moved automatically to smooth her hair–but she was aware of Trish’s eyes on her, and suppressed the impulse. She knocked on the door, waited for an acknowledgement, then pushed it open.

The room was spacious and airy. White walls reflected the light from a south-facing window that looked out across the campus, a stunted arcadia in a cityscape of concrete, stone and glass. It was deserted apart from a group of students hurrying out of the driving rain.

‘Dr Lange.’ Antoni Yevanov was coming across the room to greet her. He was tall–well over six foot, and she had to look up at him as he shook her hand. His face was thin, with arched eyebrows and the characteristic high cheekbones of the Slav. She knew that he must be in his fifties, but despite the few threads of grey in his dark hair, he looked younger.

He ushered her towards the desk, and pulled out a chair for her. ‘Please sit down.’ His movements were quick and vigorous. The room felt cool to her, but he was in his shirtsleeves and his tie was loosened. She noticed the jacket of his suit slung over the back of his chair, and was enough Katya’s daughter to observe the drape of good cloth and fine tailoring.

As she sat down, she took a moment to absorb her surroundings. The wall behind his desk was lined with bookshelves. A map of Europe patterned in reds and greens hung opposite the window. Faith recognized it–it had been the cover of his most recent book.

There were papers spread across the surface of the desk, and the computer monitor was flickering. He also had a laptop in front of him, on which he’d apparently been working before she arrived. A whiteboard beside his desk was covered with lists of ongoing projects.

He waited until she was sitting down, then took a seat in the leather chair behind the desk. ‘Dr Lange,’ he said again, then with a brief smile, ‘Faith. I’m sorry we haven’t had a chance to talk before. I realize that your own research is being delayed while you settle in, and I’d like to get things moving there. The software you developed when you were at Oxford gets a very favourable mention in The Journal of Statistics. I have some thoughts about the ways in which you plan to move forward with this that I’d like to discuss with you another time. I am delighted that you are joining us. Now, how are you settling in?’

‘Very well,’ she said.

He asked her about the work the people on her team were doing. She’d spent her first week making sure she was familiar with all the ongoing projects, and was able to bring him up to date.

He nodded when she’d finished, then said, ‘And Helen? Helen Kovacs?’

Faith had been hoping to skip over the topic of Helen until they had had a chance to talk. ‘She’s working on her paper. We have a meeting arranged to talk about it.’

His eyes narrowed slightly. ‘I have some concerns about it,’ he said. ‘Especially as she didn’t make it to our meeting this morning.’

‘You had a meeting with Helen?’ Helen hadn’t mentioned a meeting with Yevanov. ‘I’d arranged to see her this morning.’

He frowned. ‘She didn’t make it to your meeting either?’

‘No. She left a message with Trish that she might be held up.’ It was a poor defence at best, and Yevanov didn’t look pleased. She wondered what was going on. There were issues here of which she was unaware.

She remembered Trish’s waspish remark earlier when she was on the phone to Yevanov: ‘She isn’t here. Again.’ Helen was letting herself drift into deep water. The academic world was cut-throat. There would be very little slack allowed to anyone who wasn’t putting in 100 per cent, no matter what kinds of personal problems they might be dealing with.

He was speaking again, and she made herself concentrate. ‘The Bonn conference is a particularly important one. I have made time to attend it myself, and it is essential that any contribution we make from the Centre is of an appropriate standard. I need to confirm the status of the paper with the organizers. I understood that the research stage was complete, and it was simply a matter of writing this up.’

‘That’s my understanding.’

‘So what is the significance of the material from the Litkin Archive?’

‘The…what?’ Faith had no idea what he was talking about.

‘The Litkin Archive,’ he said again.

She felt completely wrong-footed. ‘I don’t know anything about it.’

He ran his finger along the line of his jaw, frowning. ‘I was hoping you could enlighten me. The archive is a bequest from a Russian collector, Gennady Litkin. It consists mostly of wartime papers from what became the USSR, but there is some material relating to this country. It’s a fascinating resource, but completely undocumented. The Centre controls access, and I only found out this morning that Helen had formally applied to look at some papers. It is my responsibility and, normally, these applications come to me, but I’ve been away, so I don’t know what she had in mind.’ He picked up a form from his in-tray and studied it. ‘Does the Ruabon Coal Company mean anything to you?’

Faith shook her head. ‘I’m positive Helen’s research was complete. She wanted to discuss her writing schedule with me.’ She might as well clear this with Yevanov now. ‘I was going to get a few of her teaching hours covered to help her catch up.’

He nodded, as if he agreed with this. ‘But the archive?’

‘I think she must have been looking for some additional data.’

He raised his eyebrows as he studied the paper in his hand. ‘Possibly.’ He didn’t sound convinced.

‘Or maybe it was research for something else,’ she said. ‘Her PhD was on the decline of the coal industry. She was preparing it for publication.’

He was still reading the form. ‘No. She wouldn’t have got permission for unauthorized research. There are legal problems over the ownership and, until the papers are properly archived, access to the collection is closely controlled.’ He ran his fingers through his hair and tugged it in frustration. ‘I explained all of this…’ He tossed the form back on to the desk in exasperation.

His phone rang. He excused himself and picked it up. ‘Yevanov…Yes, I am aware of that…As soon as she arrives, please…’

She glanced at his bookshelves while he was talking. He had books on international law, books on the recent Balkan wars, books on Rwanda, books on Iraq. She saw a copy of Mein Kampf and heavy tomes on the Nuremberg trials. He also had, incongruously, some collections of fairy stories and folk tales, including the Russian collection that Grandpapa used to read to her. She went across to the shelves for a closer look.

Russian Fairy Tales. Faded gold lettering on green binding. She heard the phone being put down, and turned. He smiled when he saw the book in her hands. ‘You think this is an odd thing for an historian to have?’ he said.

She shrugged. ‘They’re part of history, in a way. They’re beautiful stories.’

‘They are. And they are very old, probably the oldest records we have.’ She gave him the book and he turned it over in his hands, a faint smile on his face. ‘Not many people are familiar with them these days.’

‘I grew up with them,’ she said.

He looked across at her in surprise. ‘So did I.’ He flicked through the pages. ‘“Once upon a time, deep in the dark forest where the bears roamed and the wolves hunted, there lived an evil witch…”’ He raised an eyebrow and looked at the line of books on the shelf behind him: The Nuremberg Trials; The Fall of Srebrenica; Inside Al-Qaeda. ‘It’s a simple explanation, but I sometimes wonder if we’ll ever come up with anything better.’ He smiled. ‘It’s unusual to find someone who knows of these. We have something in common.’ He held the book out to her.

She took it and turned the pages, scanning the familiar titles: The Snow Child, Havroshechka, The Firebird. ‘My grandfather used to read them to me.’

‘Your grandfather is Russian?’

‘Polish. He was a refugee.’

‘Then it’s interesting he read you those stories. There is little love lost between the Poles and the Russians. But we have something else in common. My mother is also a refugee, though she didn’t get out until after the war. Those were dreadful times.’

‘Is she…?’…still alive, Faith wanted to ask, but didn’t know how to word her query.

‘Her health is poor. She’s lived in this city for many years, but now she needs caring for–something she does not admit.’ His smile was rueful. Then he looked at her, and his face was cool and professional again. ‘Don’t worry about the meeting this afternoon,’ he said. ‘Helen’s problem will wait for a different occasion. I’m aware of her situation–I’ll do what I can. Once again–I’m delighted you have joined our team.’

He stood up as she moved to leave, giving a slight bow. ‘Make an appointment to see me…’ he looked quickly at the board ‘…in a couple of weeks and we can talk about your work.’ He held the door open for her. She was aware of Trish watching her as she left the office.

As soon as she was in the corridor she tried Helen’s mobile, but the phone was switched off. There was nothing she could do for now. She felt exhausted, as though she’d just run a few miles, but at least her encounter with Yevanov seemed to have gone well. It was odd that he had collections of the same stories that Grandpapa used to read to her when she was small. She had grown up with stories–Grandpapa reading to her during quiet evenings, the long walks together when he told her stories about his childhood: the house that Great-Grandpapa built, the orchard, the trains in the forest, the witch in the wood…

The Red Train

This is the story of how the trains came to the forest.

It was spring, and there were men in the forest, strangers. The sound of axes rang through the air as they cut the trees. They were clearing the land for the railway, Stanislau said. Marek took Eva along the paths to watch as the men worked, watching the tree they were cutting as it swayed and rustled, its branches whispering as it fell until it crashed down to the forest floor. And the men would shout to each other, and the chains would clank as the horses pulled away the tree that had fallen.

Eva would watch and listen. The tree seemed to struggle as the axes bit into its trunk, and then the sigh as it fell was sad, and the leaves of the other trees would rustle in agitation as the fallen one was dragged away. Sometimes the men would call to the children, and they would run back to the house in the clearing.

When the trees had gone, the rails came, long tracks that wound their way through the forest. And the men who built the rails built a bridge that crossed the river–much bigger than the wooden bridge where Stanislau led the horse carrying the orchard fruit to market.

Then the trains came, huge metal engines pulling wagon after wagon after wagon. The wagons were made of wood, apart from the wheels which were iron and sped along the track, making sparks fly up into the air. And the train carried a fire in its heart to make it go, and the fireman shovelled in the fuel and the train moved, sometimes slowly as if the engine was tired of pulling the long line of trucks, sometimes flying along through the forests, the smoke from the engine trailing behind it.

First, there was the sound of the whistle, then the smoke through the trees and the line would start to sing as the train came nearer and nearer and then burst along the track. Da da dah, da da dah, Marek would sing the song of the train. West to east and east to west, the trains ran night and day.

Eva loved the trains. Before she was old enough to walk the woods on her own, she would dawdle behind her brother, carefully, infuriatingly, holding him back from the things he wanted to do, until he became distracted and she could slip through the undergrowth and into the shadows and make her way through the trees with their shivering fronds that hung down and ran their fingers across her face and tangled in her hair.

She knew the times and the places. She would come to the clearings, the places where the trees had been cut and the ground built up with stones to carry the iron rails. And she would crouch by the line with her fingers on the rail, waiting. And then the iron would begin to hum beneath her fingers, before her ears could hear it, and she would leave her fingers there a bit longer and a bit longer, daring herself, then she would move back to the edge of the trees, waiting as the iron sang. And she would hear the beat of the engine, and sometimes the wail of its horn, and then it would be there, on top of her, in a rush of power and steam and smoke, and she would smell the burning cinders and see the men as they powered the engine, and sometimes they would see her crouched among the trees, and they would sound the horn and wave and laugh, and she would wave back, and then the train was gone, and Marek was calling with frantic anger from the forest behind her: ‘Eva! Eva!’

And she would go home with him and help Mama feed the hens, or sort the eggs, or draw water from the well. And the summer wind would blow, soughing in the trees, and she would hear birdsong and the sound of the carts bringing the men back from the fields. Nearby, the hens scratched and clucked, and bees hummed in the flowers that grew round the door.

And away in the distance, to the east, she heard the whistle of the train.

7

Jake parked his car in the road outside the Yevanov house. It was in a similar suburb to Marek Lange’s, from the same era, and built in the same style. But there, all similarities ended. Sophia Yevanova’s house was surrounded by a well-kept garden that had been planted with a view to year-round colour. As Jake walked up the drive–swept free of autumn leaves weeks ago–he admired the brilliant reds and greens of the dogwood, the yellow of the winter jasmine that climbed up the front of the house among the last leaves of the creeper, whose stalks were now almost bare.

As he stepped through the front door, smiling his thanks to the woman who admitted him, he felt the warmth of the house envelop him. The hallway gleamed with polished wood. Vases of spring flowers on the hall table and windowsills dispelled the winter. ‘Good morning, Mr Denbigh.’ The woman, Mrs Barker, greeted him with the warmth that befitted a favourite. She led him through to the room at the back of the house where Sophia Yevanova customarily spent her days.

She was confined to her chair, but she sat upright, as though she could rise from it with the ease of a dancer rising en point. In fact, she looked like a dancer, with the fine-boned delicacy of a classical ballerina, or like a sculpture or a painting, a work of art ravaged by time.

As Jake was ushered through her door, she put down the tapestry she was working on–every time they had talked, her hands had been restlessly occupied–and held out her hand to him. For all her elegance and composure, he thought she looked poorly–paler and more tired than the last time he’d talked to her. The illness that had imprisoned her must be making its presence felt.

‘Miss Yevanova.’

‘Mr Denbigh. How good of you to call.’

‘My pleasure.’ The courtesy was the simple truth. He took pleasure in her company.

Her dark gaze held his, then she smiled. ‘I will have tea, Mrs Barker.’ She raised an enquiring eyebrow at Jake, who nodded. ‘Mr Denbigh and I would like tea–the Darjeeling, I think. Thank you.’ The woman withdrew.

Sophia Yevanova laid her tapestry carefully on the table and waited until the door was closed. ‘I thought I had told you enough stories to keep you occupied for longer than this, Mr Denbigh,’ she said. ‘I see I must try harder.’

The last time he’d visited, they had talked about her life in Minsk as a girl, living in the shadow of Stalin’s terror. In a way, she was right. There was more than enough in everything she had already told him for a book, but so far, they hadn’t talked about the Nazi occupation. They’d touched briefly on the deaths of her fellow partisans, and her response had been unequivocal: ‘They are gone. I will not speak of such deaths.’

He looked at the wall behind her chair. An icon hung there, its jewel-like colours gleaming from the shadows. It had been the one thing of value, ‘apart from my son’, that she had brought out of Belarus. She had smiled when she said that, her eyes going to the photograph on the side table that she kept within easy reach–her son, Antoni Yevanov.

She’d told him the story. Passing by the church in Minsk after it had been looted by the fascists as they retreated from the Red Army, she’d seen the gleam of gold in the dirt and rubble, and found the icon–the virgin and child–intact and undamaged. It had been a sign. ‘I knew then that God was going to let me live, He was going to let me get away.’ She had brought the icon to England, and even in her darkest moments, she had never considered selling it.

He was struck again by the shadows under her eyes, the parchment-like whiteness of her skin. ‘You look tired,’ he said.

She arched her eyebrows at him. ‘If you tell a woman she looks tired, she will assume that you mean she looks old.’ He began to speak, but she raised her hand to stop him. ‘I am old. I am not foolish enough to pretend otherwise.’

‘I’ve got something I’d like you to see,’ he said.

‘Well then, you must show it to me.’ The tea arrived, and she took care serving it. For her, tea was an important social ritual, poured from a silver teapot into white, translucent china.

He took the photographs out of his wallet, and waited until she put her cup down on the occasional table beside her, then passed them to her. She studied the first one, the family standing outside the house, holding it away from her face. ‘There were many such,’ she said indifferently, handing it back to him.

He watched her carefully as she gave the photo of the young man in uniform the same careful scrutiny. He thought her lips tightened a bit, but otherwise she displayed no emotion. ‘Old photographs,’ she said. ‘You have been doing your research, Mr Denbigh.’

He nodded, not letting his disappointment at her lack of reaction show. He knew from past experience that she would sometimes appear to ignore something he said or something he asked, then return to it later when he’d given up hope of an answer.

‘So you are going to Minsk,’ she said.

He’d told her about his planned trip. ‘I’m leaving after the weekend,’ he said. ‘Just for a few days. Where should I go?’

She shook her head. ‘There is nothing left,’ she said. ‘Not of my city. I can’t advise you.’

‘I want to find the old city, what’s left. I can bring you back some photos, if you want. I could try and go to the village where you were sent when you were twelve.’

She smiled faintly. ‘You are assuming I want to find my past,’ she said. ‘I left it behind years ago.’

He nodded. He could understand that. ‘I’d like to hear more of your story,’ he said. ‘If you have time.’

‘Very well.’ The room was silent apart from the sound of the rain. The last time they had talked, she had given him a spare, unemotional account of her childhood in Minsk. Her parents had both been members of the communist party, but life in the city had been hard. There was poverty and deprivation throughout the country. ‘My father was a good party member,’ she had said. ‘He was also a good husband and a good man.’ She had ended her story when she was twelve, when her parents had sent her to live with relatives in a village on the outskirts of Minsk, Zialony Luh.

‘We lived in the aftermath of the revolution,’ she said now. ‘It was a terrible war. You know about the history?’

He nodded. ‘I’ve read the books.’

‘The books…’ Her smile mocked knowledge gained that way. In the dull light of the afternoon, her face was a paler shadow among shadows. ‘I remember my last weeks in Minsk. It was winter, 1937. So cold. I have never known cold like it before or since. It was as if the world had frozen in the face of what was happening and all that was to come. I remember it was late and I was hurrying to get home. I was walking along the road near the building where the police worked–these were Stalin’s police, the NKVD. The building was just ordinary offices. Many people worked there.

‘And then I saw it. Narrow openings at the bottom of the walls. They were barred, but there was no glass. They made windows, of a kind, to the cellars. And that night, there was steam rising up, out through the bars, thick in the icy air. The breath of hundreds of people, crammed into the NKVD cellars, waiting…People they had arrested. Some people that I knew, maybe. How many were packed down there, I can’t imagine…’

She looked at Jake. ‘Where did they go? The arrests never stopped.’

There was only one answer to that question.

‘We knew,’ she said. ‘But no one talked about it, or not where they thought they might be overheard. But it got so bad in Minsk, the arrests. That was when my father decided to send me to Zialony Luh, on the edge of the Kurapaty Forest.’

Kurapaty. Jake looked across at her, but her eyes were fixed on the distance, as if she had forgotten he was there.

‘I had a cousin there, Raina. She was my age, and she was beautiful. These things matter to young girls, even in such…The young are very stupid. When I got there, Raina’s mother, my aunt, tried to send me back. “It’s bad here,” she said. But there was nowhere for me to go.’ She closed her eyes.

‘This is tiring you,’ Jake said. ‘You need to rest. We can do this another time.’

She looked at him with wry amusement. ‘I think you should listen while you can. I may be ashes next time we meet. It is just–it was so long ago, but when I talk about it, it is like yesterday.’ She was quiet for a moment, then she began speaking again. ‘It was the trucks. I remember the sound of the trucks. They went by into the forest, all afternoon, all evening. My aunt kept the shutters closed tight. “It’s cold,” she said, and sealed the gaps with rags. But that night, something woke me. I was sharing Raina’s bed. I crept out, careful not to disturb her. I wrapped my shawl around myself against the cold, and I pulled away the rags and opened the shutters. And then the sounds I had half heard were clearer. It was a dry sound, over and over: klop-klop-klop and quiet. Then klop-klop-klop again. And a moaning sound that went on and on in the night, and sometimes a cry that muffled into silence. I knew the sound of gunfire. We all did. But this was so…regular, so…methodical. And then Raina woke up and she closed the shutters and pulled me back to the bed.’ Her face was mask-like, frozen with memory.