It brought back the memory of that other pale thin boy, decades earlier. Seeing him again in the courtroom made it seem as if it were just yesterday.
The Nazis had built a huge barbed wire enclosure at the outskirts of Orelets. As Red Army soldiers were captured or surrendered, they were thrown into the open air prison to die of exposure, starvation or thirst. Villagers were tormented by the sight of so many starving prisoners of war — some of whom were neighbours or relatives. One boy could have been no more than 14. His pale thin face showed the first wisps of a beard and his eyes were often filled with tears. It cut Danylo to the core to see this young boy and the others waiting to die.
The Nazi guards had a game. They would pretend not to see when a village woman tossed food over the barbed wire, but then as the starving POWs fought each other for a morsel, the soldiers would shoot into the huddled mass of humanity, killing whomever succeeded in getting a bite. And because the POWs were considered not quite human by their Aryan taskmasters, this activity was considered no more immoral than shooting fish in a barrel. It was unbearable for Danylo to watch this happen without being able to do anything about it. He sent word to his sister in the forest, and they devised a plan.
The next time the guards checked the enclosure for corpses and only one man guarded the open gate, Kataryna made her appearance. Dressed in an open-necked blouse and a tightly cinched skirt, she walked past the entrance, carrying a basket of eggs. Just as the lone guard at the entrance noticed her pass, she caught his eye and smiled. But then her foot caught on a loose stone and she stumbled, eggs scattering around her. As the guard ran to help her back to her feet, some of the POWs were able to escape.
Once they had passed the gate and were heading towards the woods, Danylo walked over to his sister and grasped her elbow. They walked away together as the guard went back to the gate and locked it, never realizing what had just happened.
When they got back to their own cottage, Danylo almost vomited with relief. Had they been caught, both he and Kataryna would have been executed, but that's not what had worried him. It was the "collective responsibility" that was most on his mind. They rounded up villagers for each instance of defiance. He remembered the first time, when a Nazi officer had been killed. That resulted in one dozen villagers being chosen at random, marched into the centre of town, and executed in full view of their neighbours. The bodies were left swinging from ropes in the village square until they rotted and fell down.
How would the Nazis retaliate if they discovered POWs had been set free? But if he and Kataryna hadn't taken the risk, that 14-year-old's eyes would have haunted him forever.
Danylo was brought out of his memory when the music changed. It mellowed and became quiet, almost gentle. Danylo's knuckles relaxed and he was lulled momentarily into thinking the music would be simply pleasurable from now on. It almost sounded like a traditional ballad for a minute or so.
Then it built again. Danylo watched Ian's face and noticed that the boy was no longer weeping. There was a distanced coldness to the face. The hands moved across the keyboard more slowly now, and Danylo waited for the ballade to end. Unexpectedly, the momentum changed. Instead of winding down, it began to build back up with a slow but increasing fierceness. Tears sprung to Danylo's eyes as he remembered what happened just weeks after the POW camps had been established — black uniformed SS swooping down into their village.
Their first target was the Jews, but they came so swiftly that the villagers didn't grasp what was happening. A notice had been put up, requesting that the Jews pack one piece of luggage each and dress in their travel clothing. They were to congregate in the village square at 9 am sharp. The notice stated that they were to be evacuated beyond the war zone for their safety. Some of the Jews were fearful. Rumours of mass killings had drifted into even this remote village, but they were discounted. Germans were civilized, after all. Most packed their bags and congregated as they had been requested to do.
But hours after the boxcars of Jews had left, a strange rumbling could be heard in the distance. It wasn't thunder. Days later, there were fearful whisperings throughout the village. The Jews had been taken only miles away and forced to dig their own graves. And then they were shot.
The terror didn't stop there. Many Jews were found hidden with the other villagers. For each Jew found, a Ukrainian family was shot.
Then the Nazis began the Oblava— rounding up Ukrainian young people from schools, churches, the streets, and loading them into cattle cars for slave labour in Nazi Germany.
Sometimes the auxiliary police would get advance warning of these raids, and when that happened, Danylo could sometimes warn his neighbours to hide their young. But more often than not, the raids were a complete surprise.
Danylo got angrier and angrier as his memories flooded in. The music fit his mood perfectly.
The distanced coldness on Ian's face was replaced by a look of raw anger. He pounded the keys like a punch to the face. Danylo gripped the armrests again, holding on for dear life. Suddenly, the music changed again. The anger diminished and the complexity increased. Ian's shoulders relaxed and he leaned back a bit from the keyboard, playing the notes with a sheer cold showiness. Danylo noticed that the anger was gone from Ian's face. In fact, all emotion was gone.
The music built up again with the same power and intensity, and then, suddenly, it segued into utter abject sorrow. Ian's mask of indifference melted in an instant and was replaced with a look of despair. Watching him, Danylo was also filled with despair.
Danylo gripped the two rings that hung from chain around his neck and remembered when he first began to wear them.
The Nazis continued with the hated policy of communal farming that had been initiated by the Soviets. And as the months passed, their food requisitions became ever more impossible to meet. The resistance fighters who were hiding in the forest depended on the villagers to hide food for them. They also depended on them to steal medical supplies and weapons. Very young girls and old women were the best couriers. They could hide a pistol in the fold of a skirt, or vial of morphine in their head scarf, and the Nazis, who were disdainful of Slavs, took a long time to catch on to what they were up to.
Danylo had managed to steal three pistols from the police station and he had hidden them under the manure pile. His mother was an expert courier, but she was caught on her way to the forest with the third pistol hidden at the bottom of a basket. For her transgression, the Nazis not only sentenced her to death, but they made her choose six other village women to join her. If she didn't choose, she knew that the Nazis would, so with a shaking hand, she pointed out the six eldest women in the village. After they were shot, Danylo was ordered to dig the grave. Before he buried his own mother, he gently tugged her wedding ring past her knuckle, and then he removed his father's ring from a strap around his mother's neck.
So much grief. Too much for one soul to bear.
Then the ballade ended.
Ian sat with his head down, his hands stretched over the keyboard as if he were calming it, comforting it.
The audience sat in stunned silence. Danylo sat in his chair feeling limp. How could mere music have such a powerful effect?
The auditorium was so still that it could have been empty.
Danylo pushed himself up to a standing position and with slow determination, began to clap his hands. For moments on end, the only sound in the whole room was of Danylo's two hands slapping together. Then another pair joined in. And another. Danylo noticed through the corner of his eye that Lisa's parents had stood up beside him. He turned to face Mrs. Nguyen and he nodded in acknowledgement. Danylo looked down and saw that Ian's mother's face was wet with tears, but she was grinning. She stood up, and so did Mr. Smith. And they continued clapping. Pockets of people throughout the audience stood too. By this time, the clapping had changed from a small peppering to a rhythmic intensity. Almost a chant. Within moments, the whole audience was on its feet, clapping and chanting, "More! More! More!"