The Lieutenant's Lover

by Harry Bingham

  Two weeks later, things were all set up for the trip, but then one of the NKVD camp staff needed a trip into town and borrowed a ride on the truck. That meant that the whole deal was off again – they couldn’t sell camp stores under the NKVD’s nose – and they needed to wait again. Four more weeks passed fruitlessly. Either Tonya was unable to leave camp, or when she did she couldn’t find Gisela. Then, finally, on the first day of August, she was in the truck again, with Rokossovsky nervous but excited at the wheel, heading for Bad Freienwalde.

  Tonya had fallen in love with the German countryside. It wasn’t the landscape, so much, that enchanted her. The low hills, little banks of woodland and curving rivers all struck Tonya’s Russian eyes as somehow unreal: built on the scale of a doll’s house. But more than all that, it was the villages and farms that she loved. They had their doll’s house quality too, but in their case it had to do with their neatness, their perfect order. Tonya looked and could never stop looking at the neatly pruned orchards, the tidy fences, the trim cottages, the orderly fields. As Rokossovsky hammered the truck brutally forwards, he talked incessantly, while Tonya said nothing. When they got to town, Rokossovsky sorted out the fuel by himself.

  When they got down to the canal-side, Tonya braced herself against the disappointment of not seeing Gisela again, but the roar of the truck engine hadn’t even died away, before Gisela emerged in her dark skirt and white blouse, wanting to smile, only not able to because of Rokossovsky.

  This time they had no coal to sell, only food: a sack of rice, a sack of flour, five crates of mixed vegetables. Tonya guessed they weren’t just taking food from dead prisoners, they were probably stealing from the mouths of the living too. She didn’t like it. The poor brutes were desperately hungry and every now and then waves of infection would sweep through the camp and another few corpses would be carried out to be buried in the woods by the prisoners themselves. However, Tonya wasn’t in a position to do anything about it, and in the meantime if the food helped Gisela and her family, it wasn’t going to waste.

  They began ‘bargaining’, keeping their roles from the time before: Tonya angry, bullying. Gisela defiant, then beaten.

  ‘How are you? I didn’t see you the last time I came.’

  ‘I’m fine. You saw Jurgen. He can be difficult.’

  ‘No meat, I’m afraid, or coal. But the vegetables are excellent.’

  ‘It makes all the difference. We women have a little collective. We distribute the food so the children never go short. You can see through the doorway there, how healthy they are.’

  ‘Despite everything!’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Last time, I asked you if—’

  ‘I haven’t forgotten.’ This was the first time Gisela’s acting slipped, and she gave a bright smile that showed all her teeth, and both women could feel Rokossovsky scowl in displeasure. Gisela stopped smiling instantly and fell straight back into role – ‘A friend of mine, Herr Kirsten, has a canal-barge. He runs loads of wheat and potatoes straight from here into Berlin.’

  ‘To Berlin!’

  ‘The Heiligensee. Near Tegel. The French sector, I think. The barges are searched sometimes. Your countrymen don’t like seeing food go west. They interfere with things, make it hard. But if you don’t mind lying flat in the bows under some boards, we’ll load the produce straight on top. They’d have to empty the whole boat to find you.’

  Tonya was so happy at the idea, she couldn’t keep the jubilation out of her voice, as she thanked Gisela. Gisela responded cleverly, making Tonya’s jubilation seem like victory in the bargaining contest. She went – humbly, browbeaten – to the warehouse and dragged out some baskets of knick-knacks, rubbish mostly, which she laid out for Tonya’s approving inspection.

  As they pretended to haggle over a few remaining items, they began to deal with some of the practicalities.

  ‘When is Herr Kirsten here?’

  ‘It’s hard to say. His timetables are very variable. It depends on so much that’s out of his control. But every ten days or so.’

  ‘It’s difficult. I can only come so irregularly myself.’

  ‘If you wanted, you could try to hide here, in the warehouse.’

  Tonya could tell Gisela was unhappy with that idea. And in any event, so was she. ‘No. That wouldn’t be safe for either of us. I don’t know how hard they’ll try to look for me, but it would be no good if they caught me… Listen, I’ll try to come here on Mondays. It’s not entirely in my control, but I’ll try.’

  ‘Do you want to say Tuesday? There’s a street market on the Hauptstrasse on Tuesdays. That could serve as an excuse, perhaps.’

  ‘Excellent. Tuesday. If Herr Kirsten can try to be here then – other things permitting, of course – then we can hope to try something then.’

  ‘What about him?’ Gisela indicated Rokossovsky, who was crouching down by the pile of bartered goods: scarves, embroidered tablecloths, children’s spinning tops, blunt chisels, rush baskets.

  ‘I don’t know. He’s scared all the time. I’ll think of something.’

  ‘You will be taking a big risk.’ Gisela spoke soberly.

  ‘Yes. But less than I risk by not trying. I could do none of it without your help.’

  Gisela shrugged. ‘We women must help each other. Nobody else will.’

  Rokossovsky was happy with his haul, pitiful as it was. Tonya made an excuse to go into the warehouse with Gisela, where the two women hugged in privacy. By the time they came out again, Rokossovsky had loaded the truck and was waiting, with engine throbbing, beginning to be nervous. Tonya climbed in, resisting the urge to wave.

  10

  Misha went straight to Hollinger with his news

  They met once a week at what, Misha supposed, he should call a safe house. But the term was too technical, too like the fieldcraft jargon of a paid and trained secret agent. Misha didn’t think of himself like that. He toured the east zone. He kept his eyes and ears open. He passed on anything useful to a friend of his in intelligence. What happened to the information after that, he didn’t spend much time thinking about. The meeting place itself was nothing special: just the windowless back room of a former tourist information office. The walls were painted in a pale, sickly green, and were hung with pre-war posters advertising the many pleasures of travel in the Third Reich.

  ‘It was an old Nazi camp, Buchenwald,’ said Misha. ‘The Soviets just converted it. Same buildings. Same use.’

  ‘Well, that would make sense. Birds of a feather and all that.’ Hollinger translated the phrase direct from the English, then repeated himself in proper German, ‘Gleich und gleich gesellt sich gern.’

  ‘Yes, quite.’

  ‘How close could you get?’

  ‘A hundred metres. But I had binoculars.’

  ‘Not an easy sight, I imagine. For you especially.’

  Misha nodded, rubbing his face with both hands.

  ‘It was awful,’ he said, simply. ‘I was never in Buchenwald. Perhaps never anywhere that bad. But…’ He shook his head. For three hours he had lain on his stomach outside the camp, gazing at it through his glasses. It had been little more than a year since he’d been released from captivity himself, and thus far he’d simply tried to wall himself off from his memories. But back there, in the woods outside Buchenwald, staring at row after row of wooden huts and barbed-wire fences surveyed by machine guns, all those memories had come shockingly back to life. Misha had seen the ragged, starving prisoners moving listlessly between the buildings. It had been awful to watch. The old, hopeless depression had seeped into him like February mist, a cold that no summer warmth could ever hide.

  ‘How long were you in camps?’ asked Hollinger gently.

  ‘Seven years. It felt like a lifetime. After two years, I was sure I would die there.’

  ‘It’s unimaginable. Beyond thinking about.’

  ‘And it wasn’t only me.’

  ‘No, no. Your wife…’

  ‘Lillie. Yes.
I loved her very much. We were happy. And not only her. Otto, her father, died somewhere like that too. I think perhaps one of the reasons why Tonya matters to me so much now is because of what happened to Lillie. To lose one’s wife and best friend is awful. Almost the worst thing that could happen to a man. To lose Lillie and Tonya too – as you say, it’s beyond thinking about.’

  Hollinger nodded, allowing Misha as much time and silence as he needed. Misha had always tried to think of Lillie as she had been: laughing, healthy, bright-eyed, vivacious. He had tried never to think about what she must have become before death: one of those walking ghosts that filled the camps. Mostly he had succeeded in keeping her old self alive. The hours spent outside Buchenwald had summoned up his old demons again, and Misha fell silent. Hollinger, with his usual unobtrusive tact, lit a couple of cigarettes and passed one over to Misha. Neither man smoked much, but there were times for everything.

  They smoked in silence for a few minutes.

  Then, sensing a shift in the mood again, Hollinger drew them back to the main subject. ‘The prisoners. How many?’

  ‘Thousands. Not less than two thousand. I didn’t think more than eight or nine.’

  ‘Poor souls.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Not still an extermination camp, I hope?’

  ‘No. Not that. I’m afraid I know the difference all too well. In any case, that’s not the Soviet way. Stalin doesn’t mind killing people, but he doesn’t do it on a production line like the Nazis. These were prisoners, pure and simple.’

  ‘And nationality? I suppose you couldn’t tell?’

  ‘Mostly German, I think. Perhaps all German. I couldn’t tell.’

  ‘And the camp staff?’

  ‘Soviet, of course. But not many of them. The prisoners looked as though they ran things themselves without much interference. The entire camp staff can’t have been more than a couple of hundred at the most.’

  There was a long pause, before Hollinger asked the million-dollar question. ‘But big enough to need a translator?’

  Misha took another cigarette from Hollinger’s pack before answering. His hands shook as he lit up. ‘That’s the question. For me, that’s the whole question.’

  Hollinger examined his cigarette with scrupulous care, then finished smoking it with as much careful attention as a philosophy don might devote to constructing an argument in logic. When he was done, he stubbed the butt out and said, ‘Antonina was never convicted of anything serious. I’d swear to it. Marta, her handler, has been left in peace. And we know – I can’t tell you how – that the Soviets are short of translators. I can’t believe they’d have sent her back to Russia for anything minor. She’s here. In Germany. I’m almost certain.’

  Misha nodded. ‘I believe you. I think you’re right. I feel it.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘The camp must have translators. Must have. It’s too big, too complex for it to manage without. You see, I know the Soviet way of thinking. In Russia, we’ve always exiled our people. We did it under the tsars. We do it under Stalin. If the Soviet administration here lost confidence in Tonya, what would they do? In Russia, she’d have been sent off in internal exile. Somewhere a thousand, two thousand kilometres from Moscow. Here in Germany, the country’s too small. It’s no distance from anywhere to anywhere. But what’s the nearest thing you can get to internal exile here? What’s the most out of the way, hidden, forgotten place that exists? It’s these special camps. Buchenwald is number two. How many others are there? Not hundreds, or you’d already have known about them. Not even dozens.’

  Hollinger nodded. ‘I agree.’

  ‘And then again, I’ve been to all the big Soviet-German cities by now. I’ve asked around for translators. They haven’t been hard to find, in fact. Lots of people, eager to help for the money. But that’s always been my worry. It feels wrong. The translators I’ve found are the wrong sort. If Tonya had been convicted of some foolish offence, they’d have made it hard for her to stay in touch with the world outside. Not because they suspect that I’m looking for her or anything like that, but because that’s how these people – my people – think.’

  Hollinger finished another cigarette. It was the fourth one he’d smoked since Misha had been with him. He stared at the butt as though suddenly disgusted by the whole idea of tobacco, and threw the pack onto the table behind him.

  ‘So let’s take that as an assumption,’ he said. ‘Antonina is attached to one of these blasted camps. We need to find the camps, then find her. After that…’ He blew out. ‘After that, we’ll just have to find a way to get her out.’

  11

  Tonya sat on her bunk: a wooden frame knocked together from rough sawn wood, a mattress of cotton ticking stuffed with straw, an old cotton sheet now grey with age, two army-issue blankets. It was a sunny day outside, but fresh, and the sharpening autumn air brought out the smell of resin and pine oil from the wooden-walled hut.

  Tomorrow was a Tuesday. Tonya had persuaded Rokossovsky to make a trip down to the market that day. Her plan was an uncomplicated one. She would give him the slip during the street market and run down to the little warehouse. If Herr Kirsten and his canal-boat were there, she’d hide away on the barge then and there. If not, she’d simply go back into town, relocate Rokossovsky and try again as soon as she could. The plan relied on the fact that Rokossovsky would be too nervous of having lost Tonya to give the alarm. Since he wasn’t, strictly speaking, meant to allow Tonya to accompany him into town, she was pretty certain that he’d just scurry back to camp like a frightened rabbit, denying all knowledge of having seen her.

  She felt surprisingly calm. On the one hand, the next two or three days might well determine whether she was safe in Misha’s arms or bound for a convict-train to Siberia. And yet, though she didn’t deceive herself about the risks, she felt calm. If the attempt worked, it would work. If not … well, she didn’t spend much time thinking about the alternative.

  The air outside was still. The ordinary noises of the camp drifted in through an open window. The prisoners themselves created almost no noise. It was one of the saddest things. The Soviets had imprisoned them and then, in effect, forgotten them. There were few interrogations now. There were no charges or trials. No sentences. No letters or visits. As well as physical illness and infection, the prisoners, almost to a man, suffered from depression, lassitude and despair.

  Tonya had come into the hut to pack.

  The instinct to prepare for a journey was an old one, as old as Russia perhaps. But here and now, there was nothing more ridiculous. It wasn’t just that Tonya wasn’t sure how much space she’d have in her hidey hole on the barge. It was more that she owned nothing. The Red Army provided her with her uniform: the clothes she wore now and one change of clothes for when those were being washed. She had some basic underwear and some comfortable boots. She had an embroidered handkerchief that Valentina had given her. She had a comb, a tin mug, a bar of soap, a leather hair-tie, a picture torn from an American magazine that showed a pine forest under snow, a pot of petroleum jelly that she used to protect her lips in winter, a pair of jealously guarded sheepskin insoles that made all the difference when walking in heavy snow. And that was it. She had lost everything when she’d been sent to Siberia. She hadn’t even been able to take a picture of Rodyon or of her two daughters. She was forty-seven years old. She had no family, no possessions, no home, no status, no prospects. And she had come in here to pack! She laughed quietly at herself. Tomorrow she would put the hair-tie, soap and comb in her pocket, so that she had some chance of making herself look neat when she emerged from the barge and went in search of Misha. And that was it. That was all she had and all she needed.

  Would Misha be rich? She was vaguely aware that he might be. Not only had he escaped Russia with his father’s money but, more than that, she knew that he was naturally and prolifically gifted. If he had chosen to go into business, she simply couldn’t imagine that he might have failed. Of course, thoug
h, Germany was a devastated country and there weren’t many rich men left anywhere. But then again, rich was a relative matter. Little though Tonya cared about Misha’s financial status, she felt fairly sure that he’d have managed to accumulate more than a hair-tie, a comb and a bar of soap.

  She laughed again, feeling joyous.

  In the yard outside, she heard a car zoom in through the gates and brake sharply. It was a foolish, showy way to drive, but the fashion for such driving had spread through NKVD ranks, as though such arrogance at the wheel reflected well on the splendour of the state that they served. Tonya listened vaguely to the goings on outside. Normally, they sank into a familiar pattern. The cars, voices, boots, doors, all had their own rhythms, their own customary patterns.

  But right now, there was something different going on. Alerted, Tonya sat up and listened. There was a new voice. She couldn’t make it out, but it had a brisk, snapping quality to it. It was a voice accustomed to giving out orders and reprimands, a far cry from the camp’s usual absence of stiff discipline. Tonya stood up and straightened her uniform. Her boots weren’t properly polished. Recently that hadn’t mattered, but there had been rumours that the camp was to have a new commandant and if a martinet had arrived among them, then grubby boots might become an issue.

  Tonya hesitated. She had no polish of her own, but one of her roommates, the quartermaster’s wife, had a tin that she sometimes let Tonya use. But curiosity won the day over boots. Tonya checked her uniform one more time, then stepped out into the yard.

  The car that had drawn up was a black ZiS limousine, a car that always denoted seniority. The officer who had emerged from it stood with his back to Tonya. She thought she could glimpse the royal blue of the NKVD insignia, but she wasn’t quite sure.