(You can’t hang all hundred and ninety million of us, Zoya had said.)
His erstwhile captor General Lindemann came to congratulate him, and they clinked glasses.
I must say, that was a riveting speech! These people believe in you, there’s no doubt about it . . .
Frankly, I’m in despair, said Vlasov, for he’d just learned that the formations of Russian volunteers had all been broken up and distributed among German units.
Upon my word now, what kind of thing is that for a military man to say? Just be patient a little longer, and Berlin will come around, I promise you!
You see, it’s not just the war crimes, it’s the absurdity. How can your leadership fail to understand that by alienating the masses, they’re obstructing their own purpose?
The German general sighed and said: Never mind, my dear fellow. The East and the West are two worlds, and they cannot understand each other.
On his return to Berlin, the spring mud of the Reich now mouse-green like Hitler’s field jacket, he sent another memorandum admonishing the Reich government: The mass of the Russian population now look upon this conflict as a German war of conquest. (Zykov lost at solitaire and recited another stanza from Pushkin.) He advised his masters that even now it might still be possible to regain good relations with the people, so terribly had they suffered under Communism, but it was essential to make immediate changes in occupation policy.
Olenka the typist had disappeared, but her replacement, a Latvian brunette named Masha, was an even more fun-loving girl.33 One morning he awoke at the Russian Court Hotel with her still sleeping in his arms. Gazing into this gentle face, he seemed to see the closed eyes of his broken wife. (And I myself, I see the big brown eyes of the woman who finally left me, the one who would have stayed with me forever if I’d only made a certain promise. She was my integrity.)
22
I repeat: Thus far, the assault on Vlasov’s character had accomplished only a limited tactical breakthrough. The attackers did not know how to achieve operational shock. As Strik-Strikfeldt so wisely aphorized: Too much propaganda is merely propaganda.
And so he found himself back at work. Coolish and warmish Berlin spring days, cloud-sogged skies and linden-shade, these exudations transfused themselves most pleasantly into his bones. He sat wondering what to do. Zykov had not yet gone missing. One wall of his shabby little office was stacked up with bales of a colleague’s literary production: And this underworld of the Untermensch found its leader: the eternal Jew!
He received a warning from the Gestapo that the USSR had sent a certain Major S. N. Kapustin to infiltrate his army and assassinate him. He didn’t care. Drunkenly he told a bored file clerk of the female gender: I remember when I counterattacked at Nemirov. Tank fighting for four days—
Just as a shattered concentration of troops tends to polarize around the towns or command posts it knows, which is why the attacking enemy will tend to close lethal circles around those very points, so Vlasov couldn’t help but be obsessed by that Geco cartridge of his, which he turned round and round between his fingers, trying to steel himself against the next offensive. Zykov laughed at him. Masha once stole his toy, just for fun, but he became very angry until she begged his pardon and blushingly dropped it back into his hand. There always seemed to be so much schnapps on hand that he stopped writing manifestoes. Indeed, he soon became so listless that he scarcely bothered to chat with the man from the Office for the Germanization of Eastern Nations. A. A. Vlasov might as well have been one of Berlin’s time-smoked building-stones crowned by winged figures, figures with crucifixes or figures with lances, all time-blackened into their own silhouettes. The Germans grew concerned about his health. Moreover, another proclamation of his phantom army had just come out and they didn’t want to make him into too much of a one-man show. Why not let him disappear for a bit? So, with Strik-Strikfeldt as chaperone, they sent him on a rest cure. Oh, yes; they permitted him to tour the Rhine, whose coils sometimes nearly complete a circle, their aquatic thumbs and forefingers squeezing various peninsulas of forest and slate-roofed houses into almost-islandness, while summery leaves strain outwards. He visited Köln, Frankfurt, Vienna . . .
What a sight they are! cried his best friend, merrily squinting his eyes. Look quickly, my dear Vlasov! No, no, over there! Why, they practically take my breath away . . .
In a park, rows of German girls stood with outstretched arms and breasts, mimicking their stiff wax-doll Lehrerin who stood above them on the monument’s steps, calling out: One—two—three—four! All together!
Vlasov continued to drink. After considerable efforts (none of which his ward seemed to appreciate), Strik-Strikfeldt obtained permission to take him to a convalescent home for-men in Ruhpolding, Bavaria. It was there that Vlasov met his German wife.
23
If you have ever happened to see Adolf Ziegler’s “The Four Elements,” which hangs over the fireplace of our Führerhaus in München, you may remember, in the middle panel of that triptych, a slender, small-breasted blonde who sits nestling against her darker-haired sister, staring modestly at the checkerboard floor while her elbow guards the junction of her chastely clenched thighs. There is something absurd (or, as Vlasov would say, unrealistic) about the poses of the other three nudes, especially the darkhaired one who daintily pulls a bit of drapery across her lap while clasping a harvest sheaf in her right hand. The blonde’s compact, withdrawn posture appears at least natural and comfortable. The relentless tidiness of the room which that painting dwells in, the drollness of the little round table between sofa and hearth, the fresh-scrubbed bricks of the hearth, and, above all, the insistently allegorical quality of Ziegler’s work, all work together to sugar-coat its lewdness into a veritable pill of propriety. And the ridiculous gestures of those Aryan goddesses double-coat the pill. Nobody would ever hold her arms so, or tilt her head so, unless perhaps a machine-gun blast had caused that effect when it tumbled her into the mass grave! But the seated blonde (if we disregard the empty bowl which Ziegler directed her to hold) could almost be a figure out of “real life.”
Have you guessed that Heidi Bielenberg was an athlete? She’d been one of those blondes with braids, those blue-eyed blondes who, screaming with crowd-happiness, outstretch their white-sleeved arms in salute behind a protective wall of expressionless-men whose helmets are adorned with swastikas within red shields; so that everything everywhere grows white, black, grey, red and blonde. We first see her in a wall of German girls in tight-fitting undergarments, raising globes above their heads: One—two—three—four! All together! Heidi’s instructor told her that she might be capable of excellence, if she worked hard and governed herself with inflexible harshness. That was easy for her. She’d always been like that. Her mother was the same. Heidi wanted to be in the 1936 Olympics, but that proved impossible. Fortunately, in our Reich there were many other exciting things to do. She became a crack shot with a revolver, and got licensed to keep a pistol (I think a 7.65-millimeter Walther). Her pretty face, which specialists had measured with calipers from nose-bridge to chin, and her hair, matched against various reference-rectangles of tinted glass, both passed muster, scientifically validating her as Aryan. At a regional competition, she stood atop a rolling hoop, outstretching a swastika flag in each arm. Then they’d invited her to take part in the Nuremberg Rally, where she shared a tent with two other girls and got to see the Führer with her own eyes! (She’d kept in touch with her tent-mates. One had already given birth to a pair of Aryan twins at a Lebensborn facility. The other was now making eighty-eight-millimeter shell fuses, in order to do her part for total war.) Shortly after the Röhm purge, Heidi won the Reich Sports Medal, whose possession is required on the part of any girl who aspires to wed anman. Himmler himself, who knew perfection when he saw it, had already entered her into the topmost classification in the card indexes of theHead Office for Race and Settlement.
She met her first husband at the 1938 Yuletide bonfire. Everything about him
felt right to her, from his agility when he danced, to the strangely tender gaze of his skull-emblem’s baby-eyes. Everything happened in a rush. Holding his arm, clutching the bouquet in the crook of her elbow, she passed beneath the arch of saluting hands as the wedding guests chanted: Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil! Germany was already at war then, so she’d hardly seen Otto after the honeymoon. Two years later (it was by one of those swinging-door coincidences the time of Vlasov’s capture, one husband out, the next one in), Heidi received and immediately framed the regimental telegram, which proclaimed OUR PROUD SORROW. His commanding officer also wrote her a letter, assuring her that it had been both heroic and instantaneous. Heidi framed that, too. She retained an almost virginal conviction that since she had suffered, fate was unlikely to require any further sacrifices from her. It was only at the vigil over his swastika-draped coffin, with her mother clasping her hand and so many of his comrades at attention, holding wax torches, that Heidi realized the seriousness of this struggle against Jewish bandits. Slowly she commenced to understand certain remarks and silences which she had hitherto dismissed as fruitlessly enigmatic or even defeatist. Her mother, who continued to trust in a good resolution of everything, did her best to draw Heidi back up into the mirror-pure realm of faith, and succeeded even more rapidly than she had anticipated; for the widow needed, in the spirit of the times, to give herself unendingly, and show that she could be strong unto death. Every day she went to pistol-practice. In spite of maternity, she continued to possess the streamlined body and frank appetites of a Sportfräulein. She loved hiking, skiing and other exercises in keeping with that wise Nazi adage: The javelin and the springboard are more useful than lipstick for the promotion of health. To Vlasov it was an immense pleasure merely to see her eat: white German bread slathered with sweet butter (not even apparatchiks could dine like that in Russia), great draughts of German Pilsbier, half a roast chicken at a go. At such times her face shone with such utter engrossment in her own enjoyment that he could hardly help being carried out of his gloom. If his admiration of what he thought of as her innocence might have had a patronizing quality, well, patronization is kin to the voyeurism of an old man, who wants to do what he no longer can. The sad pale face of his own immaculateness had withdrawn forever behind the blackout curtain. He was tainted now; he was mature. Why not look with pleasure upon the antics of somebody who was still fortunate to be in her moral childhood? Moreover, Heidi had a stunning chest.
I don’t know whether I love you or not, he told her with his accustomed frankness. But after all this time I, I have very strong sexual feelings . . .
Smiling, the young widow recited: The healthy is a heroic commandment.
24
She felt dreary most of the time. Oh, yes, she was dead, desolate, cut off; what she loved was far away beneath the Russian earth. (No name on the grave, they said—only his helmet.) As long as she could remember, she’d hated to be alone. Sometimes there was nothing to do except flip through Signal magazine. What she admired the most about this General Vlasov was that he owned a dream for which he was willing to fight fanatically to the end. (This fellow led the main attack on our Army Group Center during the Battle of Moscow! crowed Strik-Strikfeldt with loving exaggeration.) She had heard so much about his qualities—his unshakeable will, his charisma with subordinates, his intelligence and above all (for we Germans believe that strength forms its own justification) his prowess on the battlefield. She knew about his Order of the Red Banner, and the medal he’d received in China. (You really admire him, too, don’t you, Herr Strik?) She even knew about the wife in Moscow. It was said that he hadn’t yet cooperated with Germany a hundred percent. Who can blame Heidi for hoping to smash his defensive front?
Andrei, you’re a biologically valuable man, she said, crossing her muscular thighs. You’re a fighter, a son of the soil. You deserve to have two wives. The Führer needs your children . . .
Vlasov laughed in embarrassment.—The Führer doesn’t know he needs me—
Well, then he hasn’t been informed. But didn’t he approve your Smolensk Declaration?
He needs to act on it, or the Ostfront cannot be held! I’m getting worried about that. Moreover, the number of tank battalions in each Panzer division must be increased. Fortunately, Guderian’s been appointed Inspector-General of Armored Troops—
Heidi rose and touched his hand.—I think you’re a real Nazi and you don’t even know it. Tell me this. What’s your heart’s desire?
To fight for the liberation of Russia.
That’s exactly what my husband said. Do you find me beautiful?
Scarcely knowing what he was saying, Vlasov muttered: Heidi, when I look at you my heart beats fast . . .
Since you’re ready to die for the Führer, I’m ready to give you what you want.
25
Of course she couldn’t believe that in this Slav’s arms she’d be able to breed an Übermensch, but at the beginning it wasn’t even about breeding. (Vlasov is said to have played a guitar when he wooed her. He was always sweet with her little daughter Frauke.) The blond, blue-eyed-men who came here to recover and then went back to the Ostfront to die, she’d had as many of them as she liked. Perhaps she wanted a change from bread and butter.
A little later, with what Himmler used to berate in Heydrich as “cold, rational criticism,” she began to brood on the lesson of Stalingrad. Her convalescents (the lucky few who’d been airlifted out of that so-called “fortress”) couldn’t help telling her how it had really been, especially when they lay weeping in her arms. Nearly everyone except General Vlasov was getting cold feet now!—They promised Paulus full supply by air, so he wasn’t permitted to break out even when the Panzers still had enough fuel. So we kept starving, and the Russians kept shooting and tightening the ring . . . (What else did her charges mention? Probably not the German prison cages, nor the Russian epidemics cured with flamethrowers.) And so Heidi unrolled the map, and her pet Slav, whom they jokingly called the democratic people’s Jew, held down the furling corners like a good doggie. Below Leningrad crouched the flag comprised of four squares, two white, two black: 18. Bolshevo; then clung Korück 583 below that, Span. Legion to the west of it,Nordlund in between, all of them seemingly sheltered by that black front line which ran east along the gulf shore below Leningrad, then curved by fits southeast and southwest, down toward Moscow. But her soldier-boys had whispered to her that the Russians were beginning to introduce homogeneous tank armies, hundreds and then thousands of those terrible T-34s. They could break through anywhere, at any time. What if the war were really lost? Maybe even then Heidi could be First Lady of the new Russia if she married General Vlasov and he . . .—Like everybody associated with theshe’d grown accustomed to dreaming magnificent dreams. Besides, her mother insisted on marriage to legitimize the relationship.
Andrei darling, what do you think of what I just said?
Looking at the map, not at her, he replied with a sad little grin: Oh, well, in Moscow I had to haul everything on sleds attached to tanks. The struggle for life—
She flung her arms around him. She said: I understand you with all my heart.
The hostility of her friends, and especially of her mother, who could hardly have imagined her to be capable of committing racial disgrace with a Slav, was painful, to be sure, but not unexpected. Moreover, there comes a moment in almost everyone’s life when fate (as our Führer would call it) summons us to cross the gulf of change, and reestablish ourselves in an antipodal world. At such a time, even the most earnest protestations of those who love us dwindle into the merest formalities of departure.
And perhaps it enhanced Heidi’s self-confidence that in every true German sense she was better than the man she’d agreed to marry. Oh, she could admit that without pity toward herself! (Allegations that Strik-Strikfeldt, whom everyone considered to be sunnily indispensable, had loaned her a copy of Vlasov’s Gestapo file, need not be entirely ruled out.)
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