The Last Girl by Stephan Collishaw Page B

between the branches of the apple trees. The evening was still and preternaturally quiet. Beyond the river, the hills rose steeply and their tips caught the last bloody light of the day. The ghosts followed through the trees, skimming above the dew-damp grass, closing the dandelions gently in upon themselves.
    Egle had soup in the large oven. She pulled it out and set it in the centre of the table. The room was warm. The light came mainly from the oven where, through the open door, a fire burnt brightly. A pair of flies buzzed dozily around the unlit lamp. I sat heavily in a seat by the table, opposite the young, beautiful girl. Her eyes sparkled in the light of the fire and her hair shone. Egle fussed over us quietly. She ladled large bowls of soup and cut thick slices of dark bread. The smell of roast meat filled the room. As she served me, Egle came close so that I could smell the soap on her body. Her hair was cut shorter than her daughter’s, but it was handsomely dark. She had a shapely, full body.
    When it had grown quite dark Egle switched on a dim lamp in the corner. We drank beer and I listened to the women singing together. They sang about girls who met boys and lost them abroad, about boys wanting girls and having to pay the price. The boys rode white horses and the girls wore white dresses. Songs I had grown up with. Melodies to keep the ghosts outside the shuttered windows.
    Later in the evening, when tiredness was pulling at my eye­lids, they sang a new song, the lilt of which was not familiar. I listened quietiy, recognising the strange non-Baltic harmonies.
    Shluf Meine Kind, they sang, their dark heads together.
By dine veegel zitzt dine mame,
Zingt a leed un vaynt.

Sleep, my child,
My comfort, my pretty,
By your cradle sits your mama,
Sings a song and weeps.
You’ll understand some day most likely,
What is in her mind.
    â€˜You’re Jewish?’ I said, astonished.
    Egle nodded slowly. ‘Yes, I am Jewish. My husband wasn’t. I remember that song. My mother sang it to me when I was a child.’

Chapter 17
    â€˜My mother survived the war in a village,’ Egle said. ‘She was the only member of the family who did, as far as I know. The story is vague; I remember the details only from my childhood, long ago. I can tell them now, but who is interested to listen?’
    Jolanta leaned against her in the dim light. Her eyes had closed and I could tell from the gentle and regular rise and fall of her chest that she was sleeping. Egle stroked her hair.
    â€˜Tell me,’ I said simply, for it seemed that at last the ghost had risen and I must sit and listen.
    â€˜We lived in Vilnius before the war. When the Nazis came, my father went to join the Soviet forces, to fight against them. ‘My mother was pregnant with me, though she did not know it. My father, you see, was not to know he had a daughter. My mother moved around. I was born in a village close to the Latvian border, where she had found refuge. It was not safe, but safer than in the city. A family there sheltered us. My mother pretended to be Polish. God was gracious, the Angel of Death passed over the small cottage we lived in.
    â€˜At the end of the war, who could believe that things were safe? My mother lived on in the village and married the son of the family who had sheltered us. They were poor farmers. She kept to her story of being Polish. She invented a whole life for herself. She was from Krakow, an educated family that had been destroyed by the Nazis for their patriotic behaviour. They changed my name to Egle. That was how I grew up, a proud Polish girl, the daughter of an impoverished farming hqme. Only at night, when I was small, she sang that song to me as I went to sleep.
    â€˜Vividly I recall her sitting by my small bed in the corner of the room, leaning over me, her long hair falling across her face. Tears misted her eyes as she sang, her voice sweet, low, full of longing and of loss. I