Sul Campo Del Mare - Vilenica

V2-2010.PM52516/13/100, 12:14 PMJáchym TopolHe handed me a little piece of fabric.“These are NKVD facings,” he said. “The graves keep turning things up.A family photo in someone’s lining. An officer’s stripes. You break open aclod and in it you might find a twist of newspaper like what the executionersused to keep their shag in.”We walked on past the crates. Towards the next pit, or rather crater.This one had timbering only round the top. Forehead lights illuminatedthe narrow, pale faces of some girls, who looked so strange there, likeglow-worms crouching down in the muddy pit. Little brushes and trowelsflashed between their fingers.“A classic in-between layer from the war period,” Kagan explained,pointing down into the pit. “Jews. The place above where we’re standingbecame the ghetto during the war. The Germans wiped them all out thenburned it to the ground. No one knows about this one.”Once more he directed his torch at a little table. A small heap of objects.Rusty, twisted pieces of metal. Yep, the very kind of stuff we used tofish out of the ground beneath Theresienstadt for Lebo. Bent safety-pins,a hair-grip, some small shiny bit, perhaps a flattened bullet. And somethingelse.“Teeth!” Kagan tapped the table. “The country folk they herded intothe ghetto had had nothing done to their teeth, but your intellectualscouldn’t get by without the odd filling or even a false tooth here and there.Here they’re all dumped together. But what’s this then?”And now Kagan was showing me a little badge, a tiny silver skull. Andhe went on picking things out of the pile, yep, now there were some buttonsthat he shoved under my nose. Then he flashed the torch right in mymug, I jerked back, straight into the lad with the wheelbarrow. I hadn’tnoticed him amble up behind us. And he’d got another colleague withhim, likewise in muddy wellies. The girls started clambering out of thepit and headed slowly our way. I guessed they didn’t want to miss anythingtheir boss, Kagan, had to say.“They shot German prisoners here as well, though they had to dig theirown pit, a little way off from the Jewish graves. There’s a bit of historicalirony in that, wouldn’t you say?”And now Kagan thrust some army uniform buttons at me, and a beltbuckle with a swastika. And a badge with a skull.The girls took the things from us and laid them out on the table. I’d liketo have had a word with them. Much better than being lectured at. I wassick to the back teeth of all these subterranean burials. A lifetime’s supply.This Kagan guy had sent Maruška away. I was pretty riled. I scannedthe girls, in case they reminded me of someone.And then it hit me... yep, this is the very type, with pale features, all twistedinside with pain, they would come and join us back then, the pallet-seekers...the girl placing the buckle on the table had a hard, cracked look...though whenever she glanced towards Kagan a softer hint crept into hereyes.251