Beyond the Shadow of Night(108)

Mykhail’s closing thought was of lives being snuffed out in a different world. In a chamber. They screamed, they clawed, they clung on to hope that it wouldn’t be the end. Mykhail didn’t. He had lived his life.

That was something to be grateful for.

The tears stopped. The gasping too. He took a calming breath, then listened to the ringing of the phone. It was regular, like the cycle of life. Ringing, then silent and peaceful, ringing, then silent and peaceful, ringing, then silent and peaceful.

He pulled the trigger.



At the Pittsburgh bus depot, Asher Kogan was begging the phone to change its tune. Ringing, silent and peaceful, ringing, silent and peaceful, ringing, silent and peaceful.

Yes, when he’d seen that photograph of Mykhail at the Treblinka museum, his first thought had been that he never wanted to see his old friend again, that he was going to disown him.

But by the time he’d flown back home he knew that would never happen. That was because he needed answers. He’d spent hours struggling with his own sanity, trying to convince himself that somehow it wasn’t Mykhail in that photograph, although he knew in his heart it was. He felt so betrayed, and needed to ask Mykhail how he justified what he’d taken part in—or, at the very least, whether he admitted it.

So as soon as he arrived home, he took the bus to Pittsburgh, and by the time he arrived he was ready for a fight. He was ready for Mykhail to deny, deny, deny.

He found Mykhail busy painting, but the painting stopped when Asher said he had something to say, and soon they were facing each other across the kitchen table. Asher struggled to contain his anger, but told Mykhail what he’d seen at Treblinka—the photograph.

Of course, Mykhail did deny, deny, deny for as long as he possibly could. Even when he said he didn’t want to talk about it anymore, when Asher was about to leave, the two men continued arguing.

“You make me sick,” Asher told him. “At first you deny, then you dismiss it like you stole something from the dollar store.”

“Asher, I’ve explained till I’m—”

“That’s what gets me the most. You betrayed me four years ago by lying to me, you betrayed me while I lay in hospital and you listened to me talking about my poor sister, and now you’re betraying me all over again when you try to downplay the whole issue.”

“I’m not downplaying it. Just explaining. Are you too dumb to tell the difference?”

“Dumb now, am I?”

“If you can’t understand what I’m trying to say, then yes. I had no alternative. If I’d stayed in that POW camp I wouldn’t be alive now, we wouldn’t be having this conversation, and there would be no Diane. Yes. Yes, a thousand times, I did some terrible things, but so did you, Asher, so did you.”

As Mykhail stood, Asher squared up to him.

“I didn’t kill innocent people, Mykhail. That’s the difference between us.”

“Look, we can’t agree, we’ll never agree. But . . . what are you going to do?”

Asher stroked a palm across his sweaty forehead and wiped the moisture onto his shirt. He went to speak a couple of times, but nothing came of it.

“Please, Asher,” Mykhail whispered hoarsely. “Please don’t tell the authorities.” He waited for a response, but there was none. “You’ll destroy me in every way. Don’t you think I’ve suffered enough?”

“You think you’ve suffered? You had a good job all your life.”

“I hated my job. I hated the people I worked with.”

“You got married.”

“We hated each other.”

“You told me the divorce was amicable.”

“Oh, Jesus Christ, Asher. I was lying. It’s what screwed-up sons of bitches like me do.”

“You’ve still got Diane.”

“She hates me too.”

“You think so? Really?”

“I screwed up her life, and she’s screwing up Brad’s. Don’t you get it, Asher? I hate myself. I loathe myself for what I did. I try to be logical and assess what happened by talking about choices, but the truth is that the fear and self-loathing always take over. Do you honestly think those things take sides? No. They screw up everyone in the end.”

“I see.” Asher nodded slowly. “So, after denying it and then downplaying it, now you turn it on yourself, like you’re the victim.” He took a long breath and looked his friend up and down, sneering. “God, you’re an arrogant son of a bitch. It’s as if the concepts of guilt and remorse are alien to you.”

“It’s not like that.”

“It fits from where I’m standing.”

“Well, you’re wrong. Please. Listen.” He motioned for them to sit back down, which they did.

“Asher, it’s true I was like you say for most of my life. I tried to blank it out—to deny. I always told my wife and daughter that I couldn’t talk about what happened to me during the war, that it was simply too horrible to go back over. They accepted that. But in my later years—and I’m talking about well before you came back on the scene—I came to accept that what I did was very wrong. And I’ve often wished that I stayed in that stinking POW camp, that I never set eyes on Treblinka—even if that meant I’d died there. Then it hit me that I’d actually thought that all along, but instead of admitting it I took it out on my wife and daughter. Instead of screwing up my own life by admitting what I’d done, I took it out on them and screwed up their lives, so I lost out anyway. Have you any idea how much I hate myself for all that?”