For Those Who Dream Monsters (12 page)

“The
next thing I knew, German soldiers came storming into my cousins’ house. They
beat up my uncle and tore up the floorboards in the kitchen. The next-door
neighbour had told them that we’d hidden grain under the floor. They didn’t
find anything, and the farmer got a clout round the ear hole for making them waste
their time, but he’d made his point.

“I
didn’t confront him again until the war was over. The communist authorities
weren’t interested in the wild accusations of an adolescent girl – or her
mother. In any case, the farmer was a man of influence. He had grown wealthy on
the suffering of the unfortunate souls he had exploited and, although the other
residents on the street viewed him with distaste and went out of their way to
avoid him, he didn’t care. He now drank with the NKVD, and, when the Soviets left
Poland to the Polish communists, he drank with the chief of police. It was made
very clear to me that if I continued with my accusations, things would end very
badly for my mother. By the time the communists were overthrown, the farmer and
his family were dead. The man and his wife died of natural causes, but not
until they had buried their only son. It’s said that he was drunk and – for
some inexplicable reason – wandered out onto the tracks beyond the field at the
back of his parents’ house, where he was hit by a train.” The old lady paused,
and I thought that she’d finished her story. I tried to think of something
appropriate to say, but after a moment’s hesitation, during which she seemed to
be sizing me up, she carried on.

“Sometimes
I dream about her,” she said. “Sometimes, especially in autumn and in early
spring, when the mist rises from the marshy ground, I see her walking along the
ditch at the far end of the field. Mostly I just hear her crying…” The woman
broke off, tired and sad. I could tell I wasn’t going to get much more out of
her. She fixed her rheumy eyes on me, and seemed to wait for my full attention.
I placed my glass of tea carefully on the table and returned her gaze.
Something in her tone changed; became more urgent, almost pleading. “I’ve
waited fifty years to tell her story to someone who would listen,” she finally
said. “To someone who could tell her story to the world and … right the wrong.”

I
lowered my eyes and finished my honey cake, weighing up whether or not to tell
my down-to-earth editor the story of the girl in the blue coat. As I sipped the
last of my tea, I already knew that the ‘ghost story’ wouldn’t make it into my
research notes…I know what you’re thinking, but, in any case, it wouldn’t have
made a difference; my boss dropped the Miedzyrzec story. It wasn’t that he was
unhappy with my report – quite the contrary; I’d managed to find two credible
eyewitnesses of the so-called ‘ghetto liquidations’, during which the Jews who
had been rounded up or enticed out of hiding with promises of immunity were
robbed, beaten and murdered, or herded onto trucks and driven to the local
train station for transportation to the gas chambers of Treblinka and Majdanek…
No, my research had been thorough, as ever, but the ghetto liquidation story
was abandoned in favour of the Chelmno death camp; aerial photography had
uncovered a hitherto unknown mass grave in the nearby forest, and my boss was
keen for the
History Magazine
to be the first publication outside Poland
to cover the find.

And
so I forgot all about Miedzyrzec, and the old lady, and the girl in the blue
coat. Until fifteen years later – when I was working as a war correspondent for
Reuters in war-torn Iraq. I’d been stationed with the US regiment I told you
about for over a month. We’d been lucky: the territory that came under our
patrols was fairly quiet, and the worst thing about the posting was the heat
and the desert wind. No matter how carefully you covered up, you could always
taste sand in your mouth, and the grit would irritate your nose and make your
eyes run – despite the shades we all wore virtually around the clock.

Then
one night I saw her – the dead girl from Miedzyrzec. She stood in the mist at
the bottom of the old woman’s field, looking at me with eyes of death and
sorrow. The cold blue-grey of that Polish landscape couldn’t have been further
from the blistering yellow of the desert into which I awoke, and yet no amount
of burning desert dust could dispel the horror I felt. That day the convoy I
was travelling with drove into a trap – a double whammy, if you like – of a
landmine and a car-bomb driven by a suicide bomber, who died on the spot, along
with five of the soldiers who’d become my friends over the past few weeks.
Nobody escaped without injury; some of us lost limbs, one young man from Idaho
lost an eye, another boy lost part of his jaw. I was lucky; I escaped with
shrapnel in my knee and cuts to my back and arms. But it shook my confidence in
my indestructibility – for a while, at least.

With
all the blood and guts and horror of the aftermath of the attack, I forgot
about the girl in the blue coat once more. But she came back. Whenever I became
complacent, whenever things were going a bit too well, or when I simply forgot
about my own mortality, she came back. Don’t get me wrong, people weren’t blown
up around me every time I dreamt about her, but each time reminded me of the
unpredictability and cruelty of the world we live in; of death which will one
day come for all of us, and of the fact that she’s still waiting – waiting out
there in the cold, the damp and the dark for her story to be told… And I’ve
been dreaming a lot lately.

I
see I’ve rendered you speechless. Well, I’m sorry. Like the old lady in Miedzyrzec,
I’ve waited many years to tell that story. I realise it doesn’t quite fit with
the image of the tough old reporter that we’ve created together, but you must
promise to allow me to tell it to the world as I’ve told it to you today. You
know it now. And, believe me, if either of us is to have any peace in this
world or the next, then it must be told. Promise me.

“His words, not mine,” the ghostwriter looked his publisher straight in the
eye. “So you see, we have to keep it in. It’s what he wanted.” It was a plea
more than a statement.

“Nonsense!”
the publisher scoffed. The writer’s sentimentality and inexperience were
starting to annoy him. Perhaps it had been a mistake to give the Johnson gig to
someone so young. “Don’t you see? A supernatural yarn about a dead girl goes
against everything else you’ve written. It’s out of character, it’s completely
inconsistent with the rest of the book; it will alienate our readers and ruin
Johnson’s reputation.”

“You
don’t understand …” the writer implored.

“But
I do understand. I understand that including a drugged-up old man’s fantasies
in what is to be his legacy to the world would not just be
unfair
to
Frank; it would be a total violation of the trust he placed in all of us to
tell his story.” The publisher studied the writer closely. The young man’s face
had blanched and he was starting to sweat. “Look,” the older man’s voice
softened a little, “Frank Johnson was hard as nails. Not a fanciful bone in his
body. If he’d been in his right mind the last time you saw him, he’d never have
said what he said. He was a tough, unshakeable war correspondent who did a
dangerous and responsible job, and did it well – you know that better than
anyone. Now his reputation is in our hands. And there’s no way this publishing
house is going to destroy his legacy for the sake of some crazy story that he
told you in his last days, high on morphine.”

The
writer had lowered his gaze to his hands, which were clasping and unclasping in
his lap like the death throes of a beached fish. When he raised his eyes again,
the publisher was shocked to see in them a look of desperation and – perhaps –
fear. When he finally spoke, his voice shook, and for a moment the publisher
had the worrying notion that the writer was going to burst into tears.

“You
don’t understand,” the young man practically begged. “I’ve … seen her.”

“What?
… Who?”

“The
girl.” The publisher stared at the writer uncomprehendingly. “The girl in the
blue coat.”

“What
do you mean? Where?” The publisher wasn’t sure what disturbed him more: the
writer’s evident breakdown or the fact that he now found himself alone in a
room with a madman.

“In
my dreams… Nightmares.” The writer looked down at his now motionless hands.
“She walks along the ditch at the bottom of a field. It’s cold. It’s lonely.
When the wind blows in my direction, I can hear her crying. And then she looks
at me… I see her every night… Her eyes are like death. Full of betrayal and
sorrow that can never be healed. Grief not just for her own short, painful
existence, but for all those whose bones or ashes lie in unmarked graves. I
can’t stand her eyes. The desolation in them gets inside you. It makes you wish
you were dead. Makes you wish you’d never been born…” The publisher was too
stunned to react and, after a moment’s pause, the writer carried on. “I don’t
know how Frank Johnson lived with it… He was a … strong … man.” The writer
raised his eyes once more, but did not meet his boss’s incredulous gaze. His
attention was focused on the window at the far end of the office, behind his
listener’s back, where something – a gust from the air-conditioning unit
perhaps – caused the reinforced textile strips of the cream-coloured blind to
stir and rattle softly against the glass pane. He added quietly, “I’m not …
that … strong …”

A TALE OF TWO SISTERS

I

Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
—
William Shakespeare,
The Tempest

I always loved Shakespeare at school. Never went on
to college. I guess the possibility just didn’t figure on anybody’s radar. Once
I turned sixteen and school was over, I went straight back to work on my
parents’ farm. But I didn’t stop reading. The number of times my father caught
me stretched out under the oak tree at the far end of the north field with a
copy of Macbeth or King Lear
…
Once, in a fit
of rage, he swore he’d cut the old tree down, and he did too. But don’t think
that my father was a bad man – not at all. He just worried that he would die
and leave my mother with no one to take care of her. He loved my mother, you
see – loved her like a man possessed. He wouldn’t let her sew at night lest she
strain her eyes; he wouldn’t let her help in the fields so she wouldn’t become
all hunched over and sore-backed like the other women in the village. He
wouldn’t even let her milk the cow in case she got cowpox and her dainty little
hands grew blistered and calloused. Very delicate she was – my mother.
Pale-skinned and raven-haired, with haunted green eyes. My father always said
that she’d married beneath her, and that he was the luckiest man in the world.

But my father shouldn’t have worried; it was my mother who died
first. Cancer, the doctors said. Her cheeks grew gaunt and her whole face
appeared to recede until her huge frightened eyes seemed to be all that was
left, like a pair of emerald moons shining brightest before their eclipse. Her
slender body shrivelled away to nothing. And her raven locks became streaked
with white, then fell from her scalp after the hospital treatment – like
discarded angel-hair once the festive season is over and Christmas trees are
thrown on the compost heap to rot. My father’s cries were pitiful to hear. His violent
episodes became more frequent as his drinking increased; my mother – the only
thing that had stood between him and his baser nature – was gone. He didn’t hit
me – as even through the veil of cheap whiskey he must have remembered my
mother’s screams the one time he’d laid a hand on me – but he found my books
and burned them.
Coriolanus
,
Hamlet
,
As You Like It
, all
the tattered copies of the Histories and Tragedies I had acquired from
second-hand bookstores in the nearest town with the pennies my mother had
slipped me out of her housekeeping money. All gone up in smoke. Only
The
Tempest
escaped annihilation. I think my father simply hadn’t seen it – for
there is no other explanation as to its survival. It was as if Prospero had
come out of retirement and conjured up a supernatural mist – shrouding the
small volume and rendering it invisible for five long minutes while my father
rampaged through my tiny room. Or some such thing. When my father finally fell
asleep on the kitchen table, tears in his eyes and an empty bottle in his hand,
I picked up
The Tempest
and left. I never saw my father again.

Four years later, aged twenty-two now and having worked my way across Europe
doing odd jobs, I found myself in Eastern Poland. I’d wanted to come here for
some time, as my mother had mentioned that her mother came from a village in
this part of the world. I hadn’t pushed her on the subject, as it always seemed
to make her sad; I gather that the family had fled some pogrom or other when
the Russians occupied the region. But I regretted not having asked exactly
which village it was
…

The country was beginning to recover from forty-five years of
communism, but nobody had told the peasants in its easternmost areas. Here
people still scratched a meagre living from the difficult soil.

I’d saved some money working as a hotel receptionist in Lublin,
and I knocked around the countryside, half-heartedly looking for my
grandmother’s village, and whole-heartedly enjoying the exotic landscape of
ramshackle settlements and unspoilt forests.

I fell in love with the little village of Switeziec at once, and
took up temporary residence with an old lady who let rooms and cooked a great
breakfast. To my delight, her grandson Piotr – a friendly young man of eighteen
or so – knew a little English; and what he didn’t know, he made up for in
enthusiasm, expansive gestures and an easy laugh, which always seemed to be
bubbling just under the surface, ready to erupt.

“They start to teach English in school as soon as compulsory
Russian was kicked out,” laughed Piotr when I expressed my surprise at his
linguistic skills. I couldn’t help but think that Piotr made a nice change from
the serious, somewhat gloomy majority of young Polish men I’d come across so
far. Young men who reminded me too much of
…
well
…
me. Yes, I
realised that laughter was something that didn’t come easily to me, and I often
chided myself for my inability to kick back and have fun.

“You come to Switeziec at good time,” Piotr flashed a full set of
healthy-looking teeth at me. “We have big party tonight.” I waited for Piotr to
continue, then realised that he was awaiting my response.

“Oh, I see. Well. Thanks for mentioning it, Piotr, but I’ve got to
get an early start tomorrow if I’m going to get to the next village
…
” Piotr blinked
uncomprehendingly. “You remember what we spoke about? – I’m trying to find the
village my grandmother’s family came from?”

“Oh, I see.” Piotr looked crestfallen for a moment, but the teeth
were out again soon enough. “But tonight is very special night. It’s
…
longest day. Very
special.”

“Oh. Midsummer’s Eve?
…
So it is.”

“Yes. We have very special party. It’s tradition. We have fire and
the girls make
…
out of flowers
…
and light candles
…
and put them on river, and the boys have to catch them.”

“What?”

“I not explain well
…
” Piotr’s frustration was painful to watch. “It’s tradition
…
You will like
…
Please,
you come with me.” Whether it was a chance to practise his English, or to show
off his foreign friend to the other villagers, or just his innate friendliness
and desire to be a great host that rendered my presence so seemingly important
to him, I don’t know, but when Piotr’s smile started to waver, I gave in. So,
later that evening I found myself following him and a group of his friends to
the river that flowed west of the village.

Twilight had been slow in coming. Beyond the various shades of grey, an orange
glow emanated from the riverbank. As we got closer, the sounds of singing and
laughter steadily grew. There was a large bonfire on the nearside. Young men
sat around, drinking beers and talking excitedly. On the far bank, and about
fifty metres upriver, was another bonfire.

“The girls are making
…
erm
…
out of flowers,” Piotr
tried to explain, following my gaze. “Like this.” He used both hands to draw a
circle in the air.

“Wreaths?” I suggested.

“Yes, wreaths
…
Normally you put on head, like this,” Piotr demonstrated
by lifting the invisible circle and placing it on his head, “but today they put
candles in them and put them on river.” I nodded, doing my best to understand.

“The boys catch the
…
wreaths. And when a boy catch the wreath, he can kiss the
girl who made it.”

“I see
…
But how do you know whose wreath you’ve fished out?”

“Oh, I think the boys – they just kiss the girl they like.”

“That sounds like cheating to me,” I quipped.

Piotr looked at me, worked out that I was joking, and started to
laugh.

There was a flurry of giggling and excited shrieks from the far
side of the river.

“Look!” cried Piotr, “Girls put wreaths on water!” And sure
enough, a dozen or so little lights came floating in our direction. Some went
out almost immediately, others sank without a trace, but a few continued to
float and burn, carried downriver by the strong current.

Piotr’s friends giggled no less than the girls, and rushed down
the bank with the other youths.

“Come on!” Piotr called out as he hurried after the others, who
were already braving the freezing water to intercept those wreaths that hadn’t
yet drowned.

I followed cautiously, afraid of slipping and falling in. I’d
always been scared of water; even before the time when my father had tried to
teach me to swim. He’d used the same method his father had used on him: he’d
rowed us out to the middle of the lake near our farm, and pushed me out of the
boat. I don’t remember much after that, except that he’d had to fish me out
himself; his anger at having to get wet tempered by the fear that he’d actually
drowned me and that the shock would kill my mother. He never gave me another
swimming lesson, evidently deciding that having a pathetic runt of a son was
better than having a dead one.

The mirth on the riverbank was infectious, and I couldn’t help
but smile as Piotr beat his friend to a wreath and pulled it out of the water,
waving it in the air and whooping in triumph. Then I saw something that stopped
the breath in my lungs.

She was standing between the willows on the far bank, a little
aside from the other girls. The light from the bonfire seemed to die before it
reached her, and she was bathed in shadow. At first I thought that one of the
willows had moved, and I felt startled and disorientated. As I peered into the
gloom, my eyes adjusted, and then I saw her quite plainly
…
no, ‘plainly’ is the wrong
word – for there was nothing plain about her at all. The bonfire, the singing,
the shouts and laughter – everything subsided and disappeared for a moment. All
I was aware of was the girl on the other side of the river. She was tall and
slender, her dress as pale as her delicate features. Her waist-long hair was so
fair it seemed to glow blue in the twilight. As I stared, the girl turned to
face me, and I finally understood what people meant when they said that their
heart had skipped a beat. I paused, steadying myself, and inhaled deeply. She
smiled at me and, despite the distance and the scant light, I could tell that
her lips were the colour of coral. Every detail of her form was etched into my
memory from that moment on, forever. The only strange thing was – perhaps
because she tilted her head down shyly, perhaps because a strand of flaxen hair
fell across her face – I couldn’t see her eyes.

The girl waved at me; her hand small, with long, tapering
fingers. I looked around to see whether she could be waving at someone else,
but there was no one behind or next to me. Hesitantly, I waved back, and she
waved again, beckoning me to join her on the far bank. My heart beat so fast I
could hardly breathe.

“Piotr!” I ran up to the boy and grabbed his arm.

“Hey,” he turned towards me and grinned. “Look! I have a wreath.”

“Where can I cross the river?”

“Huh?”

“Where’s the nearest place I can cross the river?” I slowed my
words right down, articulating each one as clearly as I could.

“Just there, to the right,” Piotr’s confusion was replaced by
mere surprise, and he pointed downriver. I peered into the darkness, but saw
nothing. “There are logs put on river. About twenty metres that way,” continued
Piotr, adding, “Hey, why do you want to go to girls’ side anyway?” Then he
grinned, “It’s cheating!”

“The girl,” was all I managed by way of an explanation.

“It’s cheating,” Piotr repeated, laughing. “You’re supposed to
catch a wreath first
…
Anyway, which girl it is you like?”

“The girl,” I pointed across the water, but she was gone. An
indescribable, overwhelming feeling of loss and longing came over me; I felt like
I’d been kicked in the stomach and I figured I must be having a panic attack of
some sort.

“What girl?” laughed Piotr, then stopped laughing as he saw the
look on my face.

“The blonde girl,” I tried to explain, my eyes scouring the
opposite bank. “Look, Piotr, thanks,” I stammered. “I’ve got to go.”

I staggered off in the direction of the makeshift bridge, leaving
a perplexed Piotr muttering to his friends – something about the lovelorn
foreigner, no doubt.

Soon I was standing next to the bridge – a couple of logs thrown
over the fast-flowing river. I stared down into the murky water.

Full fathom five thy father lies.

If I had any chance at all of finding the girl, I’d have to get a
move on. I placed my right foot on one of the logs, then, checking to make sure
there was nobody watching, I got down on my hands and knees, tested the logs
and started to crawl along them, one hand and knee on one log, one on the
other.

The gushing noise of the current made me feel giddy. I determined
to crawl straight over to the other side, without looking down. I made it about
halfway across, but then I caught sight of something white in the water to my
left.