The Mascot (40 page)

We raised our glasses in response.

“To the brothers!”

The following morning we waited in the departure lounge for our flight to Riga. My father leaned forward, his hands clasped together. “How could Erick have been confused about the house he grew up in?” my father asked me.

I shrugged impatiently.

I had a number of explanations in my mind but decided to keep them to myself. Talking about them would not move us further on our journey. Initially I had been simply grateful that other evidence—the mass grave, the memories of Volodya and Anya—had been enough to persuade my father that he'd found the right village. The subsequent last-minute discovery of his original home, of which he'd retained memories, had been beyond all our expectations.

The boarding of the flight to Riga was announced, and the three of us made our way wearily to the departure gate.

I quietly observed the profiles of my mother and father as they rested in their seats across the aisle from me. My father must have sensed my gaze because suddenly he opened one eye and, without looking at me, asked, “When do we get in, Marky?”

“Not long now!” I replied. “Some water, Dad?”

“I'll come with you,” he said, following me to the rear of the plane. We stood together at the water fountain.

“Will you change your name, Dad?” I ventured.

My father raised his eyes to heaven. “God forbid,” he chuckled. “To Ilya Solomonovich Galperin? What a mouthful!”

I had something else on my mind. “Dad,” I ventured, “what was it that bothered you when you looked at Anya's photograph on the shelf?”

“What do you mean?”

“I saw your reaction,” I persisted.

My father didn't respond immediately. He sipped on his water, reflecting on my question. Then he spoke.

“Do you remember when I was in Volhov, hiding in the tree, when the partisans passed below me?” he said.

I nodded.

“And I caught a glimpse of one of the women and thought I recognized her…Judging from the photograph I saw of her in Koidanov, I now believe that woman was Anya.”

With that my father returned to his seat.

Moments later, the voice of a stewardess announced our descent into Riga.

W
e made our way through passport control at Riga's gleaming new international airport, a stylish edifice of glass, Baltic pine, and concrete. While Belarus had paid a high price for its struggle against Nazism, Latvia, which had welcomed its Nazi occupiers, had now begun to prosper.

In the taxi on the way to our hotel in the old quarter of Riga, we saw that the landscape was dominated by enormous billboards advertising Vodafone, Mercedes-Benz, and Kylie Minogue.

“Unbelievable,” I heard my father say. He had always described Latvia as gray and cold—a place for dour, Nordic-looking people whose forests might be inhabited by elves and trolls and woodsmen. Latvia, I thought, might prefer it if we were to go away, leaving its past undisturbed so it could get on with its bright new future.

I woke at dawn and decided to go for a walk in the old town. I dressed quietly and slipped out onto the damp cobbled streets that reeked of powerful antiseptic. I wandered through the narrow lanes and could see now that I'd misjudged the affluence of the city. In this quarter there were fewer signs of gentrification: for every renovated shop front there was also a run-down or abandoned building.

It was now daylight and there were more people on the street. I turned into a broad square that had a fountain in its center. I perched on its edge, taking in the buildings that formed the perimeter of the square. Opposite me was a relatively new building, the Museum of the Occupation of Latvia.

In my research of Latvian wartime history and its postwar dealings with its past, I had soon come across references to the museum. According to one report, the site of the museum was originally occupied by a museum of Jewish history in Latvia. The Jewish museum had been evicted from the site and shunted into a single room in a back-street of the old town. The author argued that this incident symbolized the way the Latvians handled their wartime history: replacing one of the most savage aspects of their recent past with a “cleansed” version.

Indeed, opinions on Latvia's “complicity” during its period of so-called occupation remain divided. According to some historians, Latvia was not “occupied.” Many Latvians had “welcomed” their Nazi visitors, whom they saw as liberators from Soviet oppression. But there was more than political expediency behind this attitude. Some historians argue that Latvia adopted the Nazis' ethos enthusiastically because of its native, often virulent anti-Semitism.

I looked at my watch. It was almost eight o'clock. I hurried back to the hotel.

My father and I had lots of territory to cover on that first day. He wanted to find the apartment on Valdemara Street, where he had lived with the Dzenis family, and the Laima chocolate factory.

My mother pleaded off, saying that she was content to rest for a while, but I could detect disappointment in her voice. I knew that she felt her exhaustion was disloyal to my father.

We hailed a taxi outside our hotel. “Valdemara iela,” my father told the driver, without giving a house number.

“Don't you remember the exact address?” I asked.

“No. But I would remember the building instantly. Mirdza said that it was number ninety-nine. Wherever it is, I'll find it.”

“It's that one,” he said, nodding at a building diagonally across from where we were standing. We crossed the street and stood before the brick-and-concrete apartment block.

“It's not number ninety-nine,” I said.

“But I'm certain this is the one.” My father lingered in front of the building.

“Number ninety-nine must be around here somewhere,” I said. “Come on.”

We began to make our way slowly along Valdemara iela. My father seemed perplexed and he dawdled, reluctant to move on. He had taken no more than a dozen or so steps when he stopped abruptly.

“No,” he said firmly. “Mirdza must've got it wrong.”

Without waiting for me, he strode back toward the building we'd just left. I caught up with him outside its entrance. “This is it,” he insisted. “Flags flew on either side of the front doors. On one side there was the Nazi flag, on the other the Latvian flag.”

I walked up to the building's facade and examined it. Indeed, there were two metal cups embedded in the brickwork that might have functioned as flagpole holders. I called my father over to see.

He only nodded a response, then backed away from the building in order to get a view of its upper stories. “We lived up there on the top floor. That was my bedroom window,” he said, pointing.

I walked up to the glass doors on the ground floor and strained to get a look inside, but the lobby was dark.

“Come on,” my father said, brushing past me and pushing open the door. He stepped in ahead of me. The deserted foyer reeked of cat urine.

“The foyer is exactly as I remember it,” my father said quietly. “Of course, it was in better condition back then.” He pointed to the center of the room. “There was a stand there with fresh flowers in a vase. It was changed every day by the elderly caretaker. Mrs. Impuls was her name. I used to love coming down in the morning when Uncle and I were off to work. As we went downstairs and got to about there”—my father pointed to the last of the steps—“I'd close my eyes for just a second and breathe in the smell of the flowers.”

My father gazed up into the darkened stairwell and began to climb the stairs. I could sense his mounting excitement as we reached the third floor. Before we'd even reached the landing, he turned to me, his face beaming, and pointed up at a door on the left.

He knocked but there was no reply. He knocked again and waited. After several moments he reached for the doorknob and began twisting it frantically. The door was locked. He hammered loudly on the door, abandoning all restraint.

“If only I could get inside,” he said. He thought for a moment. “I know,” he said, crossing the landing to another door and knocking loudly. “Hello!” he called out. “Anybody home?”

“The building is uninhabited, Dad.”

He ignored me and continued to bang on the door. Eventually he gave up, and in an uncharacteristic gesture of disappointment, he remained motionless for some time with his head resting against the door.

Later that morning we stood opposite a famous landmark to Latvian independence on Brivibas iela.

“I want to show you something,” my father said. “It's this way.” Once on the street, he picked up speed. Then abruptly he stopped. “Look!” he said, indicating with a nod of his head.

In the near distance was a small art deco clock tower. Its face was illuminated, as was lettering down the side of the tower that spelled out
LAIMA
.

My father reached the tower and gazed up at it. “Laima, laima,” he said affectionately. “This was a famous meeting spot for everyone in Riga. ‘I'll meet you at the Laima clock,' they'd say.”

“What does
laima
mean?” I asked.

“‘Luck,'” he answered wryly.

My father looked around in all directions. “Let's get to Laima Chocolates,” he said, taking off up the street.

My father stopped at a street corner and waved back at me. “Quickly!” he called out, attracting the attention of passersby. “It's down here. Miera iela. Peace Street.” Then he hurried on.

I caught up with him farther down Miera iela, where he'd suddenly stopped. Transfixed by the building opposite him, he didn't appear to notice me. It was a factory, and perched on its rooftop was an enormous sign:
LAIMA
. My father had found it without a moment's hesitation.

“It's been over fifty years,” he said pensively, “but it's as if it were yesterday. See over there!” My father pointed across at the entrance, a wooden door adjacent to a row of dusty display windows.

“That's where Uncle was waiting for me when I met him for the first time. I can see him now stepping out of the shadow of the wall and onto the pavement with his hand extended.”

My father continued to reminisce in a hushed tone about his time at Laima. I glanced at him and saw that he was looking in all directions as he spoke, as if he were frightened about being overheard. He seemed acutely conscious of the fact that he'd been in the company of Dzenis and Lobe.

“Are you okay?” I asked, giving him a curious look.

“Let's go around the back,” he said. In a flash, he disappeared around the corner of the building, and I found him in front of a tall steel gate topped with barbed wire. He leaned his back against the gate. I was certain he was remembering the deportations from the yard.

“You know now what was going on in there?” I asked him gently, sure of what his answer would be.

His nod was almost imperceptible, as was his simple yes. “Those people were Jews transported to an unknown destination where their fate was more or less sealed.”

“Did you understand at that time what was going on, Dad?”

“No,” he answered firmly. “I must've been only eight years old when this occurred. I'm not trying to excuse myself. I sensed that something was up, but I couldn't put my finger on it. It was only later that night when I was alone in my room that it clicked. But then I told myself that Uncle would not let that sort of thing happen. He was a decent man, a fair man. Even now I cannot accept that. I believe he was forced to cooperate. Like me. Did I do wrong to pass chocolates to those poor people?”

We were both silent now. My father pressed his back against the gate as if he could block the passage of the trucks and their unfortunate passengers. Then all of a sudden he bolted, fleeing in the direction he had come, without a final glance at Laima. I chased after him, calling out for him to wait, but he was already some way down Miera iela.

He maintained his frantic pace, keeping his head down as he passed Annas iela, where the Latvian SS quarters that he'd watched when distracted from his studies in Dzenis's office had been located. Annas Street, such a sweet name for a street of such poison.

I caught up with my father just as he reached the far end of Miera iela. “What's going on?” I asked.

He fought to regain control of his breathing. I waited until he was ready to speak.

“It's harder than I thought,” he said, looking around and avoiding eye contact with me.

I sensed that he was embarrassed by the intensity of his response to seeing Laima again.

“My past is coming back too quickly,” he said in a low voice. “It's good to find things, but bad to remember. Maybe that's what it is.”

I guided my father back to the hotel for some rest.