Europe Central (54 page)

31

In 9.43, due to desertions, his fledgling Russian formations were all transferred to the Westfront. This defeated their very purpose. (On the Ostfront, the enemy had now taken to calling their trench-lice
Vlasov’s men.)
Vlasov fell despondent—unhealthily so in Heidi’s opinion. Towering over the others, he stood cradling his head as he gazed hopefully down at the smiling Germans, his mouth downcurled in readiness to form the shape of disappointment. Himmler, to whom he was
that Russian swine Herr General Wlassow,
had forgiven his Gatchina speech provided that he write a direct order to his men: forget Russia; go to France. He paced the room, muttering: This is worse than a betrayal. It’s an insult. We’re not even to fight on our own territory now . . .—But his best friend reminded him that the Germans and the Vlasov Men were all in this together now. Anyhow, there wasn’t time to complain about it very long; the Red Army had broken through again . . .

On 6.11.43, when Kiev fell, he became as pale as Hitler had, Hitler pacing, stabbing his finger at the map, shouting to Zeitzler: We won’t be able to save anything! The consequences will be catastrophic in Romania. This is a major position here . . .—But Heidi said: Andrei, I have faith in you. Don’t give up hope. The unhappiness you feel, it’s just your Slavic blood dragging you down! You can overcome this if you fight; let me help you fight . . .

Meanwhile the Americans had broken through at Normandy, it seemed. (How could it have been otherwise? All our Westfront had left were divisions of an obsolete static character.) In the interim, the Führer and Guderian kept trying to increase the production of Panther tanks. Vlasov sat reading the newspapers and muttering: That’s an untenable line.—He often quarreled with Heidi, who thought that he should at least exercise. Twice now he’d called her stupid; she kept count. He kept accusing the German people of a lack of generosity, at which she reminded him that we had bestowed upon him his life, his command, and even a new wife. He was getting pale and flabby now. He couldn’t stop drinking. Upon her mother’s urging, she strove to keep silent.—You married him, Liebchen. Now you have to hold fast. Like it or not, there’s no going back.

I know. I’m not even angry with him really. I just wish he could somehow overcome himself . . .

She approached her husband’s desk. (He was upstairs brooding.) Dear Herr Strik’s business card lay beside the telephone. She dialed.

I’ll talk with him, her kind friend agreed. Just don’t tell him that we’ve had this conversation. And don’t worry about a thing; I’ve studed your Andrushka for quite awhile now . . .

The telephone rang.

Vlasov, said Vlasov.

Do you know Rilke, my dear fellow? Of course not. You’re the son of peasants. Well, one of the early poems is often on my mind nowadays. It’s called “Herbsttag,” and it goes:
Lord, it is time. Summer was very grand . . .
and then in the last stanza there’s a line that runs:
Who owns no house now will build no house anymore.
Do you see what he’s driving at, Andrei Andreyevich?

The voice turned stern.—I said, do you see the point?

Oh, I can hold on a little longer. Don’t worry about me. I’m not—

That’s not what I’m getting at. You need to consider Heidi now. Don’t build your future without a foundation of loyalty and—

Vlasov hung up the telephone.

The plot to kill the Führer on 20.7.44 resulted in the execution of several Vlasov supporters. Heidi’s husband had been well acquainted with them all.—I don’t know them, was the epitaph he uttered. You see, I have been through Stalin’s school.

On 25.8.44, when Paris fell to the Anglo-American Jewish enemy, Vlasov lay down to dream. Heidi wasn’t there at that time. All leisure for sunning herself had been overrun, so that her breasts were now as pallid as the Very lights of our military positions. Oh, yes, she was going gaunt; she’d lost her color. And now little Frauke was sick. Meanwhile Vlasov’s integrity had agreed to see him just one more time to extend or complete their goodbye, and so all the previous day Vlasov found himself in a state of crazy elation because until the end of their forthcoming meeting he could say to himself that she’d taken him back and was really his again; ordinarily they wouldn’t have been sexual together at that time and place, so it wasn’t as if anything were different; he’d be meeting her just as they used to do (except that this time the meeting would have no sequel). I myself cherish a certain envelope, sealed by me, which lies entombed in my desk drawer; on it I’ve written
GREEN STONE. She picked this up from the sea on our last trip together,
with the date.
She actually picked up two stones and asked me if I wanted one. I chose this. I wonder if she already knew that she would leave me two Fridays later?
I don’t dare open the envelope to disturb the green stone which she touched when she still loved me. And if I were to try to tell you more, all I could do would be to stammer something about her big brown eyes. As for Vlasov, we know that he kept a certain copper cartridge in his pocket! (Just as Guderian said,
these men remain essentially unable to break free of recollections of positional warfare.)
He went to bed drunk on happiness, dreamed of drowning, and awoke after an hour. For the rest of the night he stared at the ceiling weeping.

On 8.9.44 Himmler, who’d once referred to him as “a Bolshevistic butcher’s apprentice,” finally received him and agreed to let him command some troops. The action would be called Operation Skorpion. Vlasov nodded. Himmler put on a solemn, almost gentle look for the camera as he shook the hand of Vlasov, who was smiling earnestly, his confusion as dark as the smoke from an antitank gun. (Please remember to tell me what he’s wearing, Heidi had asked him. He came to my first wedding, you know. I thought he looked awfully splendid.)

In that official photograph, Vlasov seems uncomfortable. But even in the old days he always kept his collar more tightly buttoned than the other Soviet generals, who glared or bleared into the camera, with their heads thrown wearily back. Vlasov was a formal scarecrow, drawn in on himself.

We guarantee that at the end of the war you’ll be granted the pension of a Russian lieutenant-general . . .

But I don’t—

Look here, fellow, don’t you know whom you’re interrupting? And in the immediate future, you will continue to have schnapps, cigarettes and women. The problem, Vlasov, is this. We can only entrust our defense to politically reliable elements. Now, in the present situation, you Slavs, with all due respect, can’t exactly be armed and sent off on your own, and until the front gets shortened we just don’t have the manpower to stiffen you up with German personnel . . .

Surely our fate in the event of capture by Soviet troops ought to make for a guarantee!

Ah, we don’t know about that. You changed sides once; maybe you’ll do it again. The other possibility is simply to convert all you Russians to Buddhism. You see, Buddhists are pacifists, so they don’t cause trouble.

Herr Reichsführer, I’m informed that you’ve already mustered
-brigades of Baltics and even Balkan Muslims—

Quite so, but their blood isn’t quite as alien as yours. One has to calculate frightfully coolly in these matters. You see, in the context of the overall military situation—

What we could do with a hundred Panther tanks! Vlasov burst out.

Himmler fell silent. He was anxious. The Anglo-Americans were about to breach German soil.

Vlasov tried to hearten him: Don’t you remember when Guderian broke out from the Meuse and surrounded French and British divisions from the rear? We can still do it even now!

Himmler didn’t care. Himmler didn’t believe.

Vlasov tried to reason with him then, saying: Everyone says that Germany is preparing secret weapons: flying bombs, V-weapons, rockets and I don’t know what else. So why not build up a few Slav armies?

Shaking his head, the Reichsführer replied: If we lose the war against you Russians, it must be because our blood has been poisoned by the Jewish virus.

Heidi’s tanned face hardened when he told her. (Frauke was out with her little comrades, gathering metal for the war effort.) They sat down at the kitchen table and started drinking schnapps. Pretty soon she was sobbing and drooling on his shoulder. They drank themselves quite sober. He muttered: Well, it wasn’t as if I expected him to offer me bread and salt . . .

Is that what they do to welcome guests in your country?

Only for Germans, he replied bitterly. He added: And now not even for them!

They sat in silence, both afraid to say anything, until finally Vlasov, striving to help them withdraw from the isolated position in which they’d found themselves, cleared his throat, traced his forefinger around the rim of the glass and murmured: Don’t worry about anything. If we’re fated to die, we’ll die. Otherwise we’ll survive no matter what.

Fate is everything, his wife agreed solemnly. I’m going to be sick.

I’m still convinced I can counterattack, if I’m deeply echeloned in both wings—

Andrei, I’ll come back in a minute, and then we can—

But Himmler—

This isn’t healthy!

Of course it isn’t, he laughed. But how can you expect anything from an
Untermensch?

Himmler received him again on 16.9.44. (The rumor that the meeting was arranged by Heidi through the mediation of an
-man she’d once slept with may not be entirely without foundation.) Vlasov requested ten divisions. Himmler had only two to give him, and they weren’t ready.

In the interest of Reich security, Himmler had already decided to table Operation Skorpion. As he remarked to
-Colonel Gunter d’Alquen: Who compels us to keep the promises we make?

32

Of course in politics one must gild the truth to the most practical (I mean reasonable) sheen, and so in those autumn days of 1944, when even Vlasov could hardly deny the concentration camps, the hostages shot in batches, the ice-grained women’s corpses frozen to their hanging-ropes (hadn’t he once seen the ice on Zoya’s eyelids, everything grey on grey?), our reasonable Russian was compelled in his latest manifesto to define the war as
a fight to the finish of opposing political systems: the powers of imperialism, led by the plutocrats of England and the USA, the powers of internationalism, led by the Stalin clique, and freedom-loving nations, who thirst to live their own way of life, determined by their historical and national development.
Who could those freedom-loving nations be? No, some things he couldn’t deny. And so, like a troop train occluding all the rearmost station platforms in its coming, one question he had asked and asked again now stopped before his eyes, momentarily blocking any view of Russia’s future.

And what about the Jews? he asked for the very last time.

Sorrowfully clapping him on the shoulder, Strik-Strikfeldt replied: All German-held territories are being cleansed of Jews on political rather than economic grounds.

On political grounds? What exactly does that mean?

My dear fellow, you know very well that everybody in the East is anti-Semitic. And these, well, let’s call them pogroms, they’re a cheap way to win the trusting obedience of your White Russians.