Authors: Ben Pastor
It would soon be too dark to drive safely, especially alone. Bora decided he would invite his guest to stay, and relinquish
him his cot overnight. He pondered the judge’s words and noted the sting of the sutures on his knees and elbow, in a singular alertness of mind and body. “The scenario would solve the dilemma I ran up against,” he admitted. “Namely, how could the intended victim pick a poisoned ration out of several available to him in the cell? As you suggest, perhaps he didn’t. Provided that Khan was directed to ingest a capsule or pill
after
eating a candy bar at daybreak, and that he obeyed, it’s possible that none of the rations were ever poisoned, by the babushkas or anyone else. The whole set-up could be intended to hide the fact that he was handed the poison the night before by the sole person he’d trust, someone he believed had been sent by the
Abwehr
. But whether or not they’re involved at the Sumskaya first-aid station, I can’t prove any of it.”
Bernoulli set the briefcase on the table and stood up from his chair, imitated at once by Bora. “You can’t prove any of it unless you catch the murderer.”
“Right.” Taller than the judge, Bora found himself at eye-level with the bare, unlit light bulb (there was no power in the building). When he’d first entered the schoolhouse weeks earlier, above the lamp had hung a blackened strip of flypaper, close to saturation. It had disgusted him to hear and see the swarm of flies buzzing as they starved on the gluey spiral, and he hadn’t replaced it. Now, despite Kostya’s scouring, the flies and mosquitoes came in, as it was too warm not to keep the door and windows open most of the time. “I apologize for the flies, Dr Bernoulli.”
“We do our job, insects do theirs – such as it is. I don’t like flypaper, either. Anything else before I go?”
“Actually, yes. I’m not sure the army surgeon at Hospital 169, Oberstarzt Mayr, is telling it as it is, either. He asked me to track down his non-com assistant, who was reassigned after General Platonov’s death. At the same time he covertly pulled strings with Gebietskommissar Stark to get him shipped homewards as soon as possible.”
“Ah.” Bernoulli sat down again. “May I ask how you found out?”
It was the same question Mayr had posed to Bora in the morning, receiving no answer. This time he said, “Yes. Last Friday, after the overnight conversation you and I had at the special detention centre, the
opportunity
presented itself for me to read what the district commissioner had recommended in a letter to the General Army Office Medical Inspectorate, Personnel Branch.” It was a neutral way of admitting he’d unsealed the correspondence Stark entrusted to him. Bernoulli frowned, but said nothing. “At first I even suspected the Commissioner of playing some sinister role, and surprised a colleague by downing a few drinks over it to clear my mind. All Geko Stark did was honour a request by Dr Mayr, the medic’s direct supervisor, to have him reassigned, and to keep the detail from me. Understandable: after all, I was officially trying to enrol Sanitätsoberfeldwebel Weller in my regiment. This morning, the surgeon had an oddly cool reaction when I informed him of Weller’s upcoming repatriation. By implication, I was suggesting that I knew there’d been political manoeuvring on his part. The question is: why does Dr Mayr want Weller spirited out of here? You’d think he fears the young man might blow the whistle on him, or something of the sort.”
The dim hour, along with the moisture and electricity in the scented air outside, laid a strange siege to the room. The judge, however, stayed Bora’s motion to light a kerosene lamp. “Blow the whistle concerning what, Major Bora? Sit down, please. You do not surmise Platonov was done in as well?”
The stitches pulled and hurt when Bora sat. “I ask myself what I
do not
surmise at this point, Dr Bernoulli. I have it from a credible source that Oberstarzt Mayr received a less than stellar performance report while on the Western Front, for openly refusing to continue treatment of a badly burnt and mutilated pilot. During his unit’s stint near Pyatigorsk, casualties who
could not be transported died coincidentally on the eve of being left behind.”
“So? As a philosophy major with an interest in ethics, you of all people should know there’s a higher law – higher than a physician’s oath, even.”
“I also know that Dr Mayr waited twenty-four hours or more to perform Platonov’s autopsy. During IC training, we were taught that some substances become undetectable in a corpse after a given lapse of time. Aconitine nitrate, for example, which a surgeon suffering from neuralgia might keep handy, or castor oil plant derivatives. All highly toxic if you only vary amounts and proportions by a hair.”
Bernoulli squinted behind his eyeglasses. “But if it was Mayr who carried out the post-mortem, what need did he have to wait? He could have lied to you about the toxicological findings all along.”
“Except that I could have asked for a second opinion and caught him in the lie. By waiting a safe amount of time, it would no longer make a difference.”
“Granted. Still, the rule of
cui prodest
seems to apply here: who stands to gain from killing one or the other high-ranking Soviet? From what you told me, Major, it doesn’t convince me that either one of the surgeons had a motive.”
“Unless they acted under orders, or could be blackmailed.” Bora stared at the whiteness pencilling the judge’s collar, a sign of the perfect shirt beneath his blouse. “Dr Mayr did mention blackmail at one point.”
“Spontaneously, or in reply to something you said?”
“To something I said. But he is rumoured to be politically unreliable.”
“Politically unreliable… So are the two of us, in a manner of speaking. I mean, when our findings relate to German crimes of war.” Bernoulli hinted a tight-lipped smile. “Does it make you uncomfortable that I’m saying this?”
“It makes me very uncomfortable, Judge.”
“And less than
perfect
, probably. Anyhow, why would the SS medical personnel at the first-aid station send someone to murder Khan Tibyetsky? Political unreliability scarcely applies to that quarter.”
“Well, one can exceed political zeal. My information is that the SS surgeon at Sumskaya, far from being a ‘bonesetter’ as Hauptsturmführer Mantau seems to think, was lately a euthanasia expert at the Central Office for Race and Resettlement.”
“Which doesn’t explain why Tibyetsky, who wasn’t even a
subhuman Slav
, should be done away with. Is this all you have in terms of evidence, Major?”
If I were a defendant in his courtroom, he couldn’t be more successful at making me tell. Will I regret trusting him?
Bora had to force himself to look Bernoulli in the eye. “This morning’s accident to my vehicle – there was a time bomb involved. No doubt about it; I recognize an explosion when I see one. As far as I can make out, the charge was placed under the chassis, and timed to go off when I’d most likely be driving. I’d have been, too, if I hadn’t gone off the road shortly after leaving the hospital. I’ve got pieces of the clockwork mechanism there.”
Bernoulli glanced at the trunk, where Bora was pointing. He gave no sign of wanting to examine the fragments. Slowly, he said, “I take it you don’t believe it was Soviet sabotage.”
“Don’t know. It went off exactly half an hour after I’d had a rather heated exchange with Dr Mayr at Hospital 169.”
“Think of what you’re saying, Major! Did you only visit Hospital 169 in the morning?”
“No.”
“So where else did you stop?”
Bora lowered his eyes to Dikta’s small portrait. Her pouting young face had an incredible fairness under the narrow, inclined brim of her summer hat. In the silky shade, she was radiant. He’d taken the photo in Berlin two years earlier and it remained his favourite, although not hers. “After I signed off on a shipment of remounts, I drove by the first-aid station
on Sumskaya, then to divisional headquarters, and then to the riverside fuel depot. There, I admit, I left the vehicle unattended for maybe a quarter of an hour, because they created some difficulty around my lack of gas rations. I carry Colonel Bentivegni’s special permit for extra fuel, but it didn’t fly with them until I’d made a couple of phone calls. Everywhere, excepting of course headquarters and the hospital, where all told I must have absented myself from the vehicle for half an hour, I stayed only a matter of minutes.”
“Which is all it takes for a trained hand to plant a bomb. I’m no connoisseur, but to my knowledge such charges can be timed to go off in several hours’ time. Theoretically, the device could have been primed yesterday. How many places did you visit since then, and how many times was your vehicle left unguarded? It’s still only circumstantial evidence, Major. The pursuit of justice requires more than that, and I can’t help you.”
“I believe I would have heard it ticking over a period of hours, but it makes sense.” The idea of having driven the day before from one Kharkov army store to the next in search of butter and sugar, and then to Larisa’s house on and off roads, with a bomb more than just theoretically waiting to explode under his seat, was a sobering one. Bora tried uselessly to imagine himself in Berlin with Dikta, the day of the photo. “Thanks for hearing me out, Dr Bernoulli. That’s a big help already.”
The stormy, declining hour enhanced the pallor of the judge’s shaven skull, the veins marking his temples making him look frailer than he was. He’d rested the briefcase on his lap, and toyed with the brass clasps, opening and closing them. “What will you do now without transportation?”
“I’m having my senior non-com drive up from Bespalovka to Borovoye in a captured GAZ-64 meant for the regiment. If I don’t find a mount in Merefa, I’ll have to ride one of the draught horses from my
Hiwi
’s droshky to meet him there. Even a draught horse is preferable to no horse at all.”
Bernoulli stood. Accompanied by Bora, he reached the doorstep, where he stopped to breathe the air. The wind had changed, however, and in lieu of the scent from the trees, wet gusts of air blew against the schoolhouse in advance of the rain. “There are more details about the Alexandrovka Mennonites I might be seeking for reasons of my own, Major. In case I need to see you again, will I find you here?”
Bora nodded. “If orders to the contrary don’t reach me before then, until the end of the month at least. It’s getting late, and it’s about to pour. May I suggest you spend the night with us, Dr Bernoulli?”
“Thank you, no. Regardless of the weather, I mean to reach Kharkov before dark.”
After Bernoulli left, Bora – for all his being a disciplinarian – chose not to make an issue of the sentry’s inattention. It meant in turn carelessness on his part, but after Stalingrad he had rare moments of invincibility; this was one such one, especially after surviving the morning’s incident. He opened his diary again, because he’d been in the process of verbalizing something relevant when the judge had entered the room.
Besprizornye
(or
besprizorniki
) is a Russian term that indicates waifs, homeless and destitute children.
I first read it in Josef Roth’s
Reise in Russland
, a collection of the articles he wrote while travelling through the Soviet Union in the 1920s. It struck me then because the author described his subject as living on nothing but “air and misery”. Summing up what little I’ve heard about Krasny Yar’s mysterious dwellers – their lack of real weapons and the ghastly awkwardness of the murders, the choice of feeble or elderly victims, the pilfering pranks – I came to the conclusion that they are not Soviet partisans. It’s also very unlikely that they should be deserters (ours or Red), or civilians in hiding, who’d go out of their way to keep unnoticed. The small sandal Nagel found had the appearance of having lain in the Yar
for more than a few weeks: it could belong to a girl as well as to a male child. Besides, would the Kalekin boys wear
sandals
in the ice-melting season?
By exclusion, that leaves the possibility of one or more madmen (witness Kalekin’s head stuck on a pole) holing up in the Yar for the past generation, or else (given the cyclical nature of the murders, whose timing coincides with periods of serious crisis) a periodical frequentation of the woods by different groups, perhaps by stray youngsters, or
besprizornye.
After all, the man of the 241st reported seeing and being followed by a boy while at Krasny Yar.
Officially, I will not give an opinion until there’s real proof. Jotting down my notes this evening (it’s raining at last), I can easily imagine a band of wild, lawless youths who’ve survived the past two years of war as best they could, stopping at nothing to protect their turf. Why not? Some of Russia’s best and cruellest fighters are 17 years old or thereabouts. If I’m right, those presently at Krasny Yar have nothing to do with the crimes committed before 1941, much less with the rape and mayhem of the civil war days (
that
has to do with Makhno and the hidden valuables).
What if the Kalekin boys (orphaned of their fathers and spoilt by their grandfather, as their mothers told me) ventured into the woods and were killed by contemporaries because they might tell of the hideout? What if the Kalekin boys themselves joined the gang instead, and (directly or indirectly) were involved in their inquisitive grandfather’s death? It would explain the presence of the wooden button at the spot where he was attacked.
Making a trophy of the severed head is no more aberrant than some practices already enacted on the Russian front, on both sides. Colonel von Salomon balks at fetishism, but out of superstition will not walk on the shady side of the road. Here we all have to do our utmost to keep sane: sanity is the exception, not a lack thereof!