Authors: Ben Pastor
“General,” he spelt out, “it is now five minutes to eight. Fifty-five minutes and ninety-seven questions to go.”
By the time Bora walked out, half of the sheets had been marked. Platonov was visibly too agitated to continue, incoherent, gasping for air, so the medic had to be summoned again. The melancholy Weller faithfully arrived, and the prisoner was reportedly tranquil and resting shortly after 9 p.m. when Bora made his call to request that Platonov’s family be sent to Kharkov. In the morning he expected to get the rest of the information out of him, before personally going to pick up the women at the Osnova train station.
He was psychologically tired. All this trouble for information that Khan Tibyetsky might soon be voluntarily and tenfold supplying the
Abwehr
with. But every prisoner must be squeezed for what he knows, and the more you learn, the more you can cross-reference details.
It was pitch dark when Bora reached Merefa. At this hour every night, fever returned like a reliable friend. It didn’t bother him much, even if in the height of summer he might end up suffering with the heat more. He took it in his stride, because they told him it would last a few more weeks, or months. There were far worse things.
Still, he was on edge. The events of the day weighed giddily on him. What he’d finally extracted from Platonov paved the way for more results; the simultaneous arrival of a ranking defector exceeded all hope… Bora worried for the sake of worrying. As if when things coincidentally went the way they should a void of tension appeared, which had to be filled.
Worry filled the gap, because there was always something to be anxious about.
He didn’t expect to hear from the sentry that Nitichenko, the Russian priest, was waiting for him outside the schoolyard, by the row of graves. “That creep,” he grumbled. “At this hour? What for?”
The sentry didn’t know. Bora walked into the triangle of faint light from the open door, where a picket fence beyond the graves emerged like a monstrous set of fangs from the earth.
“Victor Panteleievich, what are you doing here?”
“
Povazhany
Major,
bratyetz
– little brother, our Lord sends me to you.”
“No less.” Bora breathed in the cool air of night. Two years in Russia had accustomed him to these familiar modes of address, and he no longer wondered why old women called him
daddy
or
grandfather
or a priest
little brother
. “I don’t believe I’m worthy.”
“You make use of irony,
bratyetz
, but we are all under the Almighty’s eye and fist.”
“Yes, some more than others. What can I do for you?”
“You must set fire to the Krasny Yar woods.”
These Russian baboons
. Irritably Bora half-smiled in the dark. “If the Almighty wanted to see all the places razed by fire where people are killed, Victor Panteleievich —”
“Only those where the devil’s work is done.” Left hand spread on his chest, right hand raised, in the slice of eerie kerosene light Nitichenko resembled Rasputin the Mad Monk more than a minister of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church. “From the ruins of war-ravaged villages the
domovyki
have been chased into the wild.”
The devil’s work. Hadn’t he thought of his interrogator’s role in the same terms? Bora inhaled the night air as if its coolness could bring his fever down. “The
domovyki
? If that’s so,” he said, “it doesn’t seem to me a good idea to try to chase those house spirits from the woods too. Besides, wouldn’t they have departed as soon as communism came?”
“This may be true, brother in Christ. And Krasny Yar has been cursed ever since.”
“Well, Krasny Yar isn’t under my jurisdiction, Victor Panteleievich. And if your blessings didn’t get results, what do you expect fire will do? I’d rather not have the spirits getting it into their heads to come and room with you, or with me.”
“You continue to make use of sarcasm, Major. It is a foolish thing.”
Bora gestured for the sentry to remove the priest. “Not nearly as much as believing in goblins. Go home, now, and be thankful that I’m in a good mood.”
Inside, Kostya had laid out some dinner, canned food Bora had no desire to open or eat. The mail had come, some of it hand-delivered by colleagues, slips typed or handwritten, often devoid of envelopes. There were no letters from home, but a note bearing Stark’s signature informed him that a sealed envelope lay waiting for him at the Ministerial Director’s office in Kiev.
Instantly Bora’s hopes were up: SS Standartenführer Schallenberg, Dikta’s mother’s new partner, had recently travelled to Kiev, so the privileged, unopened envelope might come from her. Or maybe not. He was prudent: he’d learnt to take small bites out of hope, and forbade himself to think beyond what the note said. He’d know soon, at any rate, as Geko Stark had promised to forward the mail promptly.
Seated on his camp bed, Bora read the rest of the mail: messages of soldiers who asked to serve under him, who petitioned to be chosen for the new regiment. Many were those who’d been with him at Stalingrad, or those he’d gathered along the way escaping the mortal trap, dragging them through the Russian winter to salvation – if returning to the German lines was such.
It troubled him that they considered him a talisman, one of those fortunate commanders under whom the enemy doesn’t kill you. The duties of his new unit not only implied danger, they were danger itself, daily, different from that of a siege only
because you can move while they shoot at you. And yet they called him
Unser Martin
among themselves, familiarly, “our Martin”, claiming the proximity of trust. They sought recommendations from their present commander, chaplain, army surgeon: and the majority of them had never even mounted a horse. To how many of them could he say yes, granted that regulations allowed for their transfer?
Every day, whatever Bora did, Stalingrad was there, like a droning refrain. At night, he removed Stalingrad. He did not allow anguish to cross the space, at times physically reduced, around himself. Sleep came heavy, brutal, like a seal that made his mind impermeable to memory. At times it occurred to him that criminals lead similar lives, wilfully depriving themselves of entire portions of their experience, a self-mutilation necessary to keep going. He had no indulgence towards himself, not ever.
I know myself and treat myself accordingly
, he reasoned.
I know who I am, the choices I made.
And he never went further in that scrutiny. He hadn’t gone to confession in nearly two years. He mechanically attended field Mass whenever possible, but in Russia even praying had become mechanical, a question of formulae. In Stalingrad he had not prayed, not even when the situation was that of one who has already begun sinking into the abyss. Perhaps because he feared that the Christian’s last powerful hope, that God will listen, would be disappointed. Perhaps because God had nothing to do with Stalingrad.
His lucidity, the lucidity von Salomon envied in him, was polished like a mirror (or a sheet of ice); Bora did not allow the smallest speck of dust to rest on it. It was an extreme process of scouring that removed with acid all blemishes and flaws.
MEREFA
Past midnight. Bora was still unable to sleep. Platonov’s demented offer to buy him off – with what? What could he consider as even remotely attractive to a creed-bound German officer? – still agitated him.
Has he misconstrued my leniency so far? Have I somehow given the impression I’d be open to personal gain? I don’t see how. He spoke of a major’s pay, so it’s money he had in mind, or other valuables. He doesn’t seem the kind of officer who’d try bribery. Or did he already try that card during the Purge and get massacred for it? The only concession I made, against my better judgement, was that his wife will be informed she is to meet him. My plan was to have the women collected and put on a train without explanations (we owe them none), but this is a small compromise. Tomorrow, before they arrive, I’ll make him keep the rest of his bargain. How do I feel? Three-quarters done; to think the Kiev Branch had given up on Platonov. But partial victory tastes bitter after his offer to buy me off
.
Fever contributed to his restlessness. In a twilight state, images overlapped before him in a confused reel: Platonov stealthily offering a handful of gold, the sealed envelope from home containing money instead of a letter, even Colonel von Salomon telling him he’d have to pay in marks for his unit’s mounts. Bora sat up in his cot to drink quinine in half a glass of stale water from his canteen. He’d better put Platonov out of his mind if he wanted to remain level-headed with him in the morning.
He stood to empty his pockets. Out came keys, cigarette lighter, a few coins. Last of all, the button from Krasny Yar. Hand-carved from hardwood, it was the sort of large fastener on a Russian peasant’s coat. Did the latest victim lose it during the struggle that ended in his brutal beheading? Had he not used the butt of his cigar Khan could have stuck it in his mouth to conceal his accent before the SS, but knowing it came from a corpse would be irrelevant to someone who had shot his men point blank without batting an eyelid.
From his trunk, Bora took the cloth-bound, sturdy diary that had survived Stalingrad, and opened it to a fresh page. This diary and the letters to his family were the only things saved from the disaster; whatever few other Russian items he still had dated from before the siege, as he’d left them in this same trunk in Kiev and recovered them since. He sat down at the teacher’s desk, uncapped his gold-tipped fountain pen – Dikta’s gift – and began writing.
The defector is Hendrick Terborch. No doubt about it, and notwithstanding his many aliases, even though I was five when I last saw him. Obviously, I don’t think for a moment that he absconded here because I serve in this area. He did so
in spite
of it, possibly because he was assigned along the Donets with his armoured brigade. It goes without saying that I know more about him than I let out, including the role he played early in the great officers’ purge five years ago. Rumours are that he turned in a few colleagues. After all, he came through that ordeal unscathed while throngs of others were lucky (such would be his term) if they received a bullet in the nape of the neck without having to undergo torture.
Thus, officer corps being what they are, it is little surprise that all those involved knew one another, including Number Five-Platonov and Terborch-Khan Tibyetsky. As a matter of fact, Khan was working for him when Platonov was arrested at Stalin’s orders, and from what I gather he did nothing to succour his commander, although it must be admitted that not many ran the risk during
those days, because it meant signing their own death sentence. Whether or not Khan went as far as supporting the imputations or merely sat by, watching Platonov go down at the trial, can only be conjectured.
In any case, it is prudent to keep them apart and unaware that they share the same building. The risk is that Platonov might be blinded by pride and clam up again. As for Khan Tibyetsky, I’ll be glad when they take him off my hands; security-wise we aren’t nearly as well organized in Kharkov as we ought to be.
Questions: what made a Hero of the Soviet Union change his mind about Russia, given that back in ’19 he burnt all his bridges behind him? Did he have enough? Has he seen the error of his ways, as they say? What does he want from us? What else has he to offer other than the tank model Scherer drools over? It’d have been awkward and possibly unadvisable, but why didn’t he pick up on the line I tossed him, mentioning my relative? He can’t have thought me so dense that I wouldn’t have recognized him, having also admitted to studying his daring feats. I, on the other hand, couldn’t very well openly admit that this apple falls closer to the tree than is comfortable for either of us, as officers and members of our class and family. Clearly he sees no advantage in revealing himself to his sister-in-law’s grand-nephew, a young major who can in no way be of use to him.
Tomorrow I’ll stop by to see how he is faring, as soon as I give a last push to Platonov. Should the old crank play games again, I’ll have to threaten his women’s well-being, and I’m perfectly able to make it sound credible.
These Russians are exasperating. Tonight, far from going away as he was told, that dingbat priest gave me an earful about the dead in Krasny Yar for another half-hour. It’s an odd thing, though. The place apparently does have a dark connotation. Only because they’re desperate for food and fuel do the locals venture into it, seldom alone: those who were killed had risked it because they had no one to accompany them for whatever reason. If I’m to believe Father Victor, of the 6 adult victims recovered (there
were others, children, who except for one never were found), two were bludgeoned to death and had their eyes put out (older men), while three women (ranging more or less from 18–35) suffered multiple stab wounds. All were identified as living in an area that goes from Ternovoye to Selionovka, including the farms known as Kusnetzov and Kalekina. The last victim, whose head is missing, remains unknown; according to the 241st Company he was in his 60s at least. In every case particular ferocity seems to have been exerted. A maniac, one would think, or a totally clumsy blunderer. What is the rhyme or reason to such crimes? How are they linked? The priest doesn’t know whether anything was stolen, but given the times, it’s unlikely the victims carried valuables. That’s why I think of a maniac, or a desperate fugitive, like the Rex Nemorensis we read about in Roman mythology: a condemned criminal let loose in the woods until another felon is sent to try and take his place.