by Philip Kerr
A month passed. And then another. Long months of work and food and sleep and no memories, for it was best not to think about the past and, of course, the future was something that had no meaning in the camp. The present and the life of a voinapleni was all there was. And the life of the voinapleni was bistra and davai and nichevo; it was kasha and klopkis and the kate. Beyond the wire was the death zone, and beyond that there was another wire, and beyond that there was just the steppe, and more of the steppe. No one thought of escape. There was nowhere to go, that was the real communist pravda of life in Voronezh. It was as if we were in limbo waiting to die so that we could be sent to hell.*
But instead we—the German officers at Camp Eleven—were sent to another camp. No one knew why. No one gave us a reason. Reasons were for human beings. It happened without warning early one August evening, just as we finished work for the day. Instead of marching back to camp, we found ourselves on the long march somewhere else. It was only after several hours on the road that we saw the train and we realized we were off on another journey and, very likely, we would never see Camp Eleven again. Since none of us had any belongings, this hardly seemed to matter.
“Do you think we could be going home?” asked Metelmann as we boarded the train and then set off.
I glanced at the setting sun. “We’re headed southeast,” I said, which was all the answer that was needed.
“Christ,” he said. “We’re never going to find our way home.”
He had an excellent point. Staring out of a gap in the planks on the side of our cattle car at the endless Russian steppes, it was the sheer size of the country that defeated you. Sometimes it was so big and unchanging that it seemed the train wasn’t moving at all, and the only way to make sure that we weren’t standing still was to watch the moving track through the hole in the floor that served as our latrine.
“How did that bastard Hitler ever think we could conquer a country as big as this?” said someone. “You might as well try to invade the ocean.”
Once, in the distance, we saw another train traveling west, in the opposite direction, and there was not one of who didn’t wish we were on it. Anywhere west seemed better than anywhere east.
Another man said: “‘Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns, driven time and again off course, once he had plundered the sacred heights of Troy. Many cities of men he saw and learned their ways, many places he endured, heartsick on the open sea, struggling to save his life and bring his comrades home.’”
He paused for a moment and then, for the benefit of those who’d never done the classics, said, “Homer’s Odyssey.”
To which someone else said, “I only hope that Penelope is behaving herself.”
The journey took two whole days and nights before, finally, we disembarked beside a wide, steel-gray river, at which point the classics scholar, whose name was Sajer, began to cross himself religiously.
“What is it?” asked Metelmann. “What’s wrong?”
“I recognize this place,” said Sajer. “I remember thanking God I’d never see it again.”
“God likes his little jokes,” I said.
“So what is this place?” demanded Metelmann.
“This is the Volga,” said Sajer. “And if I’m right, we’re not far south of Stalingrad.”
“Stalingrad.” We all repeated the name with quiet horror.
“I was one of the last to get out before the Sixth Army was encircled,” explained Sajer. “And now I’m back. What a fucking nightmare.”
From the train we marched to a larger camp that was mostly SS, although not all of them German: There were French, Belgian, and Dutch SS. But the senior German officer was a Wehrmacht colonel named Mrugowski, who welcomed us to a barrack with proper bunk beds and real mattresses, and told us that we were in Krasno-Armeesk, between Astrakhan and Stalingrad.
“Where have you come from?” he asked.
“A camp called Usman, near Voronezh,” I said.
“Ah yes,” he said. “The one with the church steeple.”
I nodded.
“This place is better,” he said. “The work is hard, but the Ivans are relatively fair. Relative to Usman, that is. Where were you captured?”
We exchanged news, and like all the other Germans at K.A., the colonel was anxious to hear something about his brother, who was a doctor with the Waffen SS, but no one could tell him anything.
It was the height of the summer on the steppe, and with little or no shade, the work—excavating a canal between the Don and the Volga rivers—was hard and hot. But for a while at least, my situation was almost tolerable. Here there were Russians working, too—saklutshonnis* convicted of a political crime that, more often than not, was hardly a crime at all, or at least none that any German—not even the Gestapo—would have recognized. And from these prisoners I began to perfect my knowledge of the Russian language.
The site itself was an enormous trench covered with duck-boards and walkways and rickety wooden bridges; and from dawn until dusk it was filled with hundreds of men wielding picks and shovels, or pushing crudely made wheelbarrows—a regular Potsdamer Platz of pleni traffic—and policed by stone-faced “Blues,” which was what we called the MVD guards with their gimnasterka tunics, portupeya belts, and blue shoulder boards. The work was not without hazard. Now and then, the sides of the canal would collapse in upon someone and we would all dig frantically to save his life. This happened almost every week, and to our surprise and shame—for these were not the inferior people that the Nazis had told us of—it was usually the Russian convicts who were quickest to help. One such man was Ivan Yefremovich Pospelov, who became the nearest thing I had to a friend at K.A., and who thought he was well off, although his forehead, which was dented like a felt hat, told a different story from the one he told me:
“What matters most, Herr Bernhard, is that we are alive, and in that we are indeed fortunate. For right now, at this very moment, somewhere in Russia, someone is meeting his undeserved end at the hands of the MVD. Even as we speak, a poor Russian is being led to the edge of a pit and thinking his last thoughts about home and family before the pistol fires and a bullet is the last thing to travel through his mind. So who cares if the work is hard and the food is poor? We have the sun and the air in our lungs and this moment of companionship that can’t be taken away from us, my friend. And one day, when we’re free again, think how much more it will mean to you and me just to be able to go and buy a newspaper and some cigarettes. And other men will envy us that we live with such fortitude in the face of what only appear to be the travails of life. You know what makes me laugh most of all? To think that ever I complained in a restaurant. Can you imagine it? To send something back to a kitchen because it was not properly cooked. Or to reprimand a barman for serving warm beer. I tell you, I’d be glad to have that warm beer now. That’s happiness right there, in the acceptance of that warm beer and remembering how it’s enough in life to have that and not the taste of brackish water on cracked lips. This is the meaning of life, my friend. To know when you are well off and to hate or envy no man.”
But there was one man at K.A. whom it was hard not to hate or envy. Among the Blues were several political officers, politruks, who had the job of turning German fascists into good anti-fascists. From time to time, these politruks would order us into the mess to hear a speech about Western imperialism, the evils of capitalism, and what a great job Comrade Stalin was doing to save the world from another war. Of course, the politruks didn’t speak German and not all of us spoke Russian, and the translation was usually handled by the most unpopular German in the camp, Wolfgang Gebhardt.
Gebhardt was one of two anti-fascist agents at K.A. He was a former SS corporal, from Paderborn, a professional footballer who once had played for SV 07 Neuhaus. After being captured at Stalingrad in February 1943, Gebhardt claimed to have been converted to the cause of communism and, as a result, received special treatment: his own quarters, better clothing and footwear,
better food, cigarettes, and vodka. There was another anti-fa agent called Kissel, but Gebhardt was by far the more unpopular of the two, which probably explains why sometime during the autumn of 1945, Gebhardt was murdered. Early one morning he was found dead in his hut, stabbed to death. The Ivans were very exercised about it, as converts to Bolshevism were, despite the material benefits of becoming a Red, rather thin on the ground. An MVD major from the Stalingrad Oblast came down to K.A. to inspect the body, after which he met with the senior German officer and, by all accounts, a shouting match ensued. Following this, I was surprised to find myself summoned to see Colonel Mrugowski. We sat on his bed behind a curtain that was one of the few small privileges allowed to him as SGO.
“Thanks for coming, Gunther,” he said. “You know about Gebhardt, I suppose.”
“Yes. I heard the cathedral bells ringing.”
“I’m afraid it’s not the good news that everyone might imagine.”
“He didn’t leave any cigarettes?”
“I’ve just had some MVD major in here shouting his head off. Making me into a snail about it.”
“Show me a Blue who doesn’t like to shout and I’ll show you a pink unicorn.”
“He wants me to do something about it. About Gebhardt, I mean.”
“We could always bury him, I suppose.” I sighed. “Look, sir, I think I ought to tell you. I didn’t kill him. And I don’t know who did. But they should give whoever did it the Iron Cross.”
“Major Savostin sees things differently. He’s given me seventy-two hours to produce the murderer, or twenty-five German soldiers will be selected at random to stand trial at an MVD court in Stalingrad.”
“Where an acquittal seems unlikely.”
“Exactly.”
I shrugged. “So you appeal to the men and ask the guilty man to step up for it.”
“And if that doesn’t work?” He shook his head. “Not all of the plenis here are German. Just the majority. And I did remind the major of this fact. However, he’s of the opinion that a German had the best motive to kill Gebhardt.”
“True.”
“Major Savostin has a low opinion of German moral values but a high opinion of our capacity for reasoning and logic. Since a German had the best motive for the murder, he thinks it seems reasonable that we should have the most to lose if the killer is not identified. Which he believes is now the best incentive for us to do his job for him.”
“So what are you telling me, sir?”
“Come on, Gunther. Everyone in Krasno-Armeesk knows you used to be a detective at Berlin’s Alexanderplatz Praesidium. As the SGO, I’m asking you to take charge of a murder investigation.”
“Is that what this is?”
“Maybe none of this will be necessary. But you should at least take a look at the body while I parade the men and ask the guilty man to step forward.”
I walked across the camp in the stiffening wind. Winter was coming. You could feel it in the air. You could hear it, too, as it rattled the windows of Gebhardt’s private hut. A depressing sound it was, almost as loud as the noise of my own rumbling belly, and I was already reproaching myself for not exacting a price for my forensic services. An extra piece of chleb. A second bowl of kasha. No one at K.A. volunteered for anything unless there was something in it for him, and that something was nearly always food.
A starshina, a Blue sergeant named Degermenkoy, standing in front of Gebhardt’s hut, saw me and walked slowly in my direction.
“Why aren’t you at work?” he yelled, and hit me hard across the shoulders with his walking stick.
Between blows I explained my mission, and finally he stopped and let me get up off the ground.
I thanked him and went into the little hut, closing the door behind me in case there was anything in there I could steal. The first things, I saw were a bar of soap and a piece of bread. Not the shorni that we plenis received, but belii, the white bread, and before I even looked at Gebhardt’s body I stuffed my mouth full of what should have been his last meal. This would have been reward enough for the job I was doing, except that I saw some cigarettes and matches, and as soon as I had swallowed the bread I lit one and smoked it in a state of near ecstasy. I hadn’t smoked a cigarette in six months. Still ignoring the body on the bed, I looked around the hut for something to drink and my eyes fell on a small bottle of vodka. And finally, smoking my cigarette and taking little bites off Gebhardt’s bottle, I started to behave like a real detective.
The hut was about ten feet square, with a small window that was covered with an iron grille meant to keep the occupant safe from the rest of us plenis. It hadn’t worked. There was a lock on the wooden door, but the key was nowhere to be seen. There was a table, a stove, and a chair, and feeling a little faint—probably from the cigarette and the vodka—I sat down. On the wall were two propaganda portraits—cheap, frameless posters of Lenin and Stalin—and, collecting some phlegm at the back of my throat, I let the great leader have it.
Then I drew the chair up to the bed and took a closer look at the body. That he was dead was obvious, since there were stab wounds all over his body, but mainly around the head, neck, and chest. Less obvious was the choice of murder weapon—a piece of elk horn that was sticking out of the dead man’s right eye socket. The ferocity of the attack was remarkable, as was the brutal instrumentality of the elk horn. I’d seen violent crime scenes before in my time as a detective, but rarely as frenzied as this. It gave me a new respect for elks. I counted sixteen separate stab wounds, including two or three protective wounds on the forearms, and from the blood spatter on the walls it seemed clear that Gebhardt had been murdered on the bed. I tried to raise one of the dead man’s hands and discovered rigor had already well set in. The body was quite cold, and I formed the conclusion that Gebhardt had met his well-deserved death between the hours of midnight and four o’clock in the morning. I also discovered some blood underneath his fingernails, and I might even have taken a sample of this if I’d had an envelope to put it in, not to mention a laboratory with a microscope that might have analyzed it. I did, however, take the dead man’s wedding ring, which was so tight and the finger so badly swollen that I had to use the soap to get it off. Any other man’s ring would have fallen off his finger, but Gebhardt drew better rations than any of us and was a normal weight. I weighed the ring in the palm of my hand. It was gold and would certainly come in useful if I ever needed to bribe a Blue. I looked closely at the inscription on the inside, but it was too small for my weakened eyes. I didn’t put it in my pocket, however; for one thing, the trousers of my uniform were full of holes, and for another, there was the starshina outside the door who might take it upon himself to search me. So I swallowed it, in the certainty that with my bowels as loose as vegetable soup I could easily retrieve the ring later.
By now I could hear the SGO addressing the German plenis outside. There was a cheer as he confirmed what most of them knew: that Gebhardt was dead. This was followed by a loud groan as he told them how the MVD were planning to handle the matter. I got up and went to the window in the hope that I might see one brave soul identify himself as the culprit, but no one moved. Fearing the worst, I took another bite off the vodka bottle and laid my hand on the stove. It was cold, but I opened it all the same, just in case the killer had thought to burn his signed confession; but there was nothing—just a few pages from an old copy of Pravda and some bits of wood, ready for when the weather turned colder.
A shallow closet, no deeper than a shoe box, was fixed against the corner of the hut and in it I found the Waffen SS uniform that Gebhardt had ceased wearing when he’d switched sides. It would hardly have done for an anti-fascist officer to have carried on wearing an SS uniform. His new Russian gimnasterka was hanging on the back of the chair. Quickly, I searched the pockets and found a few kopecks, which I pocketed, and some more cigarettes, which I also pocketed.
With time growing short now, I took off my own threadbare uniform jacket and tried on Gebhardt’s. Ord
inarily it wouldn’t have fitted, but I’d lost so much weight that this was hardly a problem, so I kept it on. It was a great pity his boots were too small, but I took his socks—those were an excellent fit and, as with the jacket, in much better condition than my own. I lit another cigarette and, on my hands and knees, went hunting around the floor for something other than the dust and the splinters I found down there. I was still searching for clues when the hut door opened and Colonel Mrugowski came in.
“Did anyone come forward?”
“No. As a result, I can’t believe it was a German who did this. Our men aren’t so lacking in honor. A German would have given himself up. For the good of the others.”
“Hitler didn’t,” I observed.
“That was different.”
I pushed Gebhardt’s cigarettes across the table. “Here,” I said. “Have one of the dead man’s cigarettes.”
“Thanks. I will.” He lit one and glanced uncomfortably at the dead body. “Don’t you think we should cover him up?”
“No. Looking at it helps to give me ideas as to how it happened.”
“And have you any? Ideas about who killed him?”
“So far I’m considering the possibility that it was an elk with a grudge.” I showed him the murder weapon. “See how sharp it is?”
Gingerly, Mrugowski touched the bloodied end with his forefinger. “Makes a hell of a shiv, doesn’t it?”
I shook my head. “Actually, I think it was probably meant to be decorative. In here. There’s a couple of nails and a mark on the wall facing the window that’s consistent with this having been part of a small trophy set of horns. But I can’t say for sure, since I’ve never been in here before.”
