Authors: Ben Pastor
Besprizornye
(or
besprizorniki
) is a Russian term…
The sound of an engine coming to a halt in the gravelly yard outside the schoolhouse, the dull click of a door opening as
someone alighted from it, caused him to pause and cap the gold-tipped pen. Weeks ago, it had been the
Heeresrichter
’s unannounced arrival, but other visitors were just as likely. Warily Bora unlatched the holster and moulded his fingers around the P38.
“Major, it’s Bernoulli.”
Bora breathed out. One look at him through the door, and the judge was merciful enough not to remark on the scant security of the premises. “I found eyewitnesses in support of your statements about Alexandrovka and the other places,” he added as the younger officer stood to greet him. “The paperwork is here for you to review before you sign.”
Bora didn’t look forward to entertaining, although of all possible intrusions, the military judge’s was the least likely to indispose him. “Take a chair, Dr Bernoulli. Make yourself comfortable.” He then mentioned the car accident (remaining testily vague about it) only because he had to justify the presence of noticeable cuts and bruises.
Seated across from him, Bernoulli refrained from asking questions. Only an unconvinced pressing together of the lips, on this side of a sympathetic smile, remained on his face.
Was his making light of the crash believable? Bora closed his diary on the drying ink. He was aware of the obstinate impression he was giving. Without modifying it, he turned thoughts over in his mind, careful not to express them. If he closed his eyes, he saw the slender row of birches at the foot of the ravine, pencilled white against the green shadow and delicate in the face of his rudely plunging vehicle.
What lovely, feminine trees
, he thought, under Bernoulli’s serene scrutiny.
As charming a set of witnesses to an accident as I could hope for
. But also
I will not share the rest with him: why give details?
Judges are by necessity used to facing reticence. Bernoulli rested his briefcase on the floor, leaning it against the leg of his chair. He let his attention wander from the weathered, canvas-bound diary to the small framed photo Bora kept on the teacher’s desk. The portrait seemed to intrigue him: short-sighted as he
was, he removed his eyeglasses and held it close to his face to observe it.
“A fine-looking young woman,” he commented. “Your wife?”
“Benedikta, yes.”
Any worldly-wise man would readily perceive how the close call of the morning had played a part in him taking out his girl’s photo. Bora felt exposed. He realized with trepidation that he risked slipping into one of those moods when you couldn’t lie if you wanted to; his obstinacy was geared to make him keep his silence, because he needed instead to talk.
All Bernoulli was doing amounted to a rather paternal contemplation of Dikta’s portrait. “Congratulations. She appears to be a fitting German counterpart to you, such as we’re taught to recognize these days.”
Bora set his face hard. His stubbornness was more than a veneer over different feelings. It was a family trait, cultivated to an art without ever becoming ill-mannered. He was therefore very surprised by the impulse to capitulate and talk simply because a seven-tonner had nudged him off the road and prevented him from being surely as dead at this time as anybody who was destined to die. He slowly but jealously took the framed photo from the judge’s hand. Dikta was and remained his aesthetic, athletic ideal. Whether it
was
love, well… he was convinced it was passionate love, although it could be physical enchantment for all he knew, because he himself had had no great time to devote to the building of a solid relationship. And Dikta adored him to the extent that she could adore anything.
It was raining elsewhere, not nearby. At Pomorki, maybe, on Larisa’s pomegranates and wild hyacinths. The coolness of early evening was doing his fever good, even though the flies revelled in it. Bernoulli seemed to have forgotten about paperwork, and the risk of revealing himself a little seemed small to Bora in the face of greater things.
“She and I,” he said, “I don’t know how to put it, we’re somewhat…
perfect
at this time.”
“I can tell.”
“The thought of it worries me. Or, rather, the thought that we won’t remain such for long. That I might not, due to the war…” As he moved the diary on the table aside, the sealed envelope with Dikta’s naked photo inside, which Bora had been tempted to open and worship tonight, fell out and lay on the surface between them. He felt foolish. “Forgive me, Dr Bernoulli: I don’t know what I’m saying, or why I’m even saying this.”
The judge’s glance migrated from the framed picture to the envelope with Bora’s name penned on it. “Because it’s on your mind; it’s understandable. But perfection as a state or condition is in itself a question of
lack
: lack of error, of faults, of flaws. You and your wife might be too closely identifying your relationship with the illusion of such absence of flaws. Young couples – handsome couples – often live on the tethering edge of their fear of losing what they have, what they are.”
“I know; I’m aware.” Bora stared at the envelope. It was too complicated to explain that insecurity heightened the preciousness of his relationship with Dikta, simultaneously eroding it. Love remained in the middle of it like a seed in the husk, wholly dependent upon the quality of the soil to determine whether it will wither or bear fruit. “But it doesn’t help.”
Two handsome young people, thus far without the tedium of daily routine. Dikta always impeccable – smile, skin, hair, nails. He couldn’t imagine her less than perfect. And she probably couldn’t imagine him less than the spruce, whole, good-looking cavalry officer. A polite world, sensible but aesthetic; orderly routines, where even divorces were polite; voices seldom raised. Homes where breakfast was served on silver trays, a change was required for dinner, rooms kept their dustless immaculate appearance; even the roughness of the boys’ sports and the unfailing practice of horsemanship did not soil that world. Discipline, respect, holiday schedules, rank and propriety kept in mind always; generosity, charity part of that world as forms of duty. Flowers fresh on the table, manners kept throughout.
Bora inconspicuously (he thought) replaced the powder-blue envelope inside his diary.
“Is that an unopened letter from her?”
Bora had seldom felt so vulnerable; it seemed to him that everything around could bruise his already battered self. “No, it’s – a photograph she sent.”
“And you resealed it?” Under the dance of flies, Bernoulli patiently sat on the other side of the table, wiping his eyeglasses. He was no more expecting an answer than Bora was about to give one.
It thundered, so far away that the low rumbling seemed to come from another world, much further than Pomorki. Bora wearily latched his holster.
“There are still too many ties, Dr Bernoulli, too many attachments. After Stalingrad, I thought I’d cut loose of everything and everyone; for my own egotistical good, because it hurt so much to keep caring in the face of disaster. But it was enough to see her again in Prague, see my mother… I’m sure you confront such feelings, or have done in the past.”
“I let go of my eagerness for perfection long ago, Major. Which doesn’t mean I don’t suffer: it’s my human lot. I no longer suffer the dread of the Fall. Losing a bit of perfection – which means of course losing it all – opens the way to wisdom.” The small cloth the judge used to wipe the lenses was folded neatly, put away. “If I may make an observation, you are going about it yourself, although in a headlong way: you court disaster by risking a lot, by risking more than your war career demands, even. Accept the fact that trouble will come looking even if you do not actively court it. Unless you’d rather be a part in your own undoing.” Bernoulli paused, straight in his chair and yet without rigidity. “That’s it, isn’t? Perfection lost through self-immolation attains a heroic quality that accidents do not afford. You are – forgive me – an arrogant young man.”
“Yes. And it’s no excuse to say that I was brought up to be arrogant. Arrogant and polite, which is less of an oxymoron in
my family than it seems.” It shamed him to be seen through so precisely, yet there was a sense of release as well, bordering on comfort. Bora wanted to look away, but didn’t.
The judge did it for him, changing the subject to help him, or because he’d come to discuss very different matters after all. “I brought sworn statements from Ukrainian witnesses, one of them a physician, confirming what you observed at Drobytsky Yar.”
“Good.”
“If you say so.” Bernoulli unclasped his briefcase. “Within months,” he added slowly, “everything leads us to believe that army counterintelligence will be taken over. Your
amicus curiae
reports to the War Crimes Bureau; the new ones and those you sent in from Poland and Russia in the past three years may fall into the wrong hands.” From a folder, he took out typewritten sheets with the photographs taken by Bora clipped to them, bearing the headings
Alexandrovka–Merefa, Drobytsky Yar, Pyatikhatky Forest
. “Think it over, Major.”
“I have. I want these to go in. I want someone to pay attention to them.”
The papers were turned so that Bora could read what they said, although he merely scanned them.
“Unless you revise your position, then, the die will be cast for good.”
“It was cast long ago.”
Bernoulli tightened his lips before saying, “Sign here, then.”
Bora did, with an ear on the mutter of distant thunder. He watched the judge place the sheets in a folder, and this inside his briefcase. From the open door, a delicate, penetrating scent of flowers flowed in. Bernoulli inhaled. “Are there linden trees in the neighbourhood?”
“Not too close. It’s the evening and the damp in the air that makes them perceptible at a distance.”
“Makes it good to be alive, don’t you think?”
Bora nodded. Saying
I can’t see myself growing old, Dr Bernoulli
was unthinkable. They were all in God’s hands, each one of
them: the judge, his brother, their loved ones. For him, having signed his name belonged to this moment of scented air as much as anything else.
It’s raining on Pomorki and my father’s old lover, who used to race in a sleigh through the snow to reach him at night wherever he was in Russia because their physical love was excessive like mine and Dikta’s. It is good to be alive, but only because I’ve signed off on those papers
.
Before long, thickening clouds would hasten the close of day. The presence of a visitor insured against interruptions, but a downpour would force Kostya and the careless sentry under the lean-to roof behind the building, within earshot. “Doctor Bernoulli,” Bora began, “I’d appreciate your opinion on something in relation to Khan Tibyetsky’s death. Are you in haste?”
Bernoulli answered that he wasn’t. In silence he listened to Bora’s summary of his exchange with the SS medical personnel and phone conversation with Odilo Mantau, commenting eventually, “I see. It all points to a variety of scenarios. Have you entertained the possibility that they were speaking the truth at the Sumskaya first-aid station?”
“How so? Khan’s body was taken there, and they outright denied it.”
“Not about Khan’s body, Major. About sending a medic to the RSHA jail the night before he died.”
Aching all over, Bora uncomfortably shifted position in his chair. “Well, what else could have happened? Are you suggesting that an intruder infiltrated the system, unbeknown to the RSHA?” He’d hinted that much to Mantau, so he acted scandalized for the sake of appearances. “It’d be egregious!”
“We live in egregious times, Major. It all depends on what Khan knew about what, or whom, and how important it was to silence him. Didn’t Hauptsturmführer Mantau tell you the prisoner clamoured to be returned to
Abwehr
custody?”
“From the moment he was brought in. Apparently he threw a tantrum about it the evening of 6 May.”
“In that case…” Bernoulli seemed for a moment absorbed by the echo of thunder outside, or by the growing scent of trees in full bloom. A fly landed on the spotless cuff of his shirt, and he calmly waved it away. “In that case, once he made it into the jail, it would be conceivable that an operative, in the enemy’s pay or not, could have gained a suspicious prisoner’s trust by claiming to come from you, or from Colonel Bentivegni. The RSHA is not wholly impermeable; the request for medical intervention could be intercepted and acted upon. Wasn’t there a mix-up with the Russian cleaning women as well? The right man might have succeeded in leading Khan to believe a plan was afoot to return him to
Abwehr
custody.”
Yes. Unbelievable as it sounded, Mantau didn’t even have a name to hand. There was no telling what had really happened in Khan Tibyetsky’s cell the evening of 6 May. Bora was torn between a desire to disregard the suggestion and a desire to strongly latch on to it. “But this is 1943 Kharkov, Dr Bernoulli, not the island of Montecristo!”
“Or Shakespeare’s Verona. Yes. But we needn’t suppose the plan was for Khan to feign death like Edmond Dantès or fair Juliet in order to escape. Become ill enough to be transported out of the jail, maybe.”
“That would imply administering some kind of medication in advance. I had thought of it. But the fact is, the D ration contained enough nicotine to kill him outright.”
“Or so reads the post-mortem.” Bernoulli leaned over to snap the clasps of his briefcase shut. “There are precedents in criminal history. If you have someone’s trust, Major, you can lure him into chewing a poisoned D ration. But you can just as well trick him into swallowing a deadly pill after ingesting a perfectly harmless candy bar. That way, chocolate
and
poison would be present in the oral cavity and in the stomach.”