As she ate, Pavel plied her with questions. He seemed eager – amused – to hear about her time in Siberia, and wanted a battle-by-battle account of her battalion’s progress from Stalingrad to Berlin. ‘Excellent, excellent,’ he kept saying. He seemed to take no account of the suffering Tonya must have experienced, only joy in the violence and the victory.
They talked about old times and family. Their father, according to Pavel, had died in 1940, from ‘too much vodka’. Neither Tonya nor Pavel had ever experienced much love or kindness from the old man, but Tonya felt sad that he had gone, all the same. She asked him, of course, about her daughters.
‘Bezprizornaya,’ he said. ‘Waifs and orphans. They will be alive somewhere, but who knows where?’
‘They aren’t orphans, sir.’
‘Ah! That’s characteristic of you, Sister, if I may say. A typical female, you place biology above politics. Biologically, are they orphans? Maybe not. But politically, of course they are. Kornikov and yourself both convicted under article 58. That’s as serious as things can be. Maybe they were the ones who denounced you, eh?’
‘No, Pavel, that was you.’
He chuckled in merry delight, as though she’d just complimented him. He didn’t either deny or admit the charge, but any remaining doubts that Tonya had had vanished on hearing him laugh. Aside from her very first word on seeing Pavel arrive in camp, it was the first and only time that she allowed herself to drop the ‘sir’.
‘Saboteurs of the revolution. The country was full of them then. Of course, things are in a more secure position now. A hard purge, Sister, that’s the only way to cure a sick cow.’
‘Rodyon was a good man, sir. He did his best for his country and the workers. He did his best for people like us. You used to love him.’
Pavel’s mouth, always so mobile, hesitated now between different emotions. Tonya had finished her food. She didn’t feel comfortable with her brother. He felt more strange to her than a real stranger would have done. She couldn’t bring herself to believe in the closeness of their relationship.
‘I did, yes, but did you? I fancy you could never get that other one out of your head. That bourgeois of yours.’ Tonya said nothing, and Pavel waited a few moments to see if more time would draw a response. It didn’t. ‘I’ve read your file, you know. You can’t hide things from me.’
‘Hide? What things, sir?’
Pavel threw his head back and gazed up at the ceiling before quoting, perhaps verbatim, from some remembered lines in her file. ‘“The accused was intercepted in the vicinity of the Brandenburg Gate, on the point of entering the British sector. The accused attempted to evade arrest. She did not at first submit any reason for her presence there.” Eh, Sister? But the comrades who wrote that didn’t know what we know.’
‘Didn’t know what?’
‘Malevich. He is in Berlin, or at least he was. His name turned up on a list passed to us by our dear friends in the American administration. You see, Sister, when one gets to a certain rank, one starts to learn things. Interesting things. I know why you were crossing into the west. I know who you were looking to find.’
Tonya felt a sudden horror. If Misha had kept his Russian name, and if the NKVD knew about him, then his position must have been horribly dangerous. Pavel knew it too. He leaned into the silence, extending and enjoying it.
Eventually he said, ‘We paid him a visit. Not me personally, but… He wasn’t there. He had moved on. There was a boy there, no one else.’ He grinned widely as if the whole episode had all been a great joke.
Pavel’s willingness to toy with Tonya’s emotions on this subject raised a sudden fury in her. She spoke still with a soldierly respectfulness, but with anger shaking in her voice.
‘I stayed in Russia for you, sir. When Misha’s family left, he would have gone too, except for me. And I only stayed because of you and Babba. I stayed for you!’
Pavel rocked for a moment or two in silence. Then he skipped back to a topic they’d left some time back, as though the intervening conversation hadn’t taken place.
‘So, Kornikov,’ he said. ‘You say he was a good man?’
‘Yes sir.’
‘He was convicted of terrorism against the state, but you still say he was a good man?’
‘Yes sir.’
‘You’re wrong, Sister. And I can prove it.’
Tonya didn’t respond, but she felt her face go blank and numb. Her plate of food, Pavel, the room itself, seemed to vanish down the wrong end of a telescope. Pavel’s voice came at her from a long way away.
‘What do you mean you can prove it, sir?’ she heard herself saying.
From a long way away, from another planet almost, she heard the answer.
‘You said he was a good man. And you’re wrong. He still is. Oh yes! That’s right. Kornikov’s not dead, Sister, much as you might wish him to be. Like you, he left his re-education camp in Siberia to join the Red Army. He survived too – a pair of old leather boots you two must be for toughness – and is now serving the state. A beautiful posting it must be too. Imagine the seashore! The lapping waves! The women! I suppose he has a fancy for women of that sort…’
‘What do you mean? Seashore? Women of what sort…?’
‘Preobrazheniye,’ said Pavel, rolling the words. ‘He is in Preobrazheniye in the region of Primorskiy Kray.’
Tonya shook her head. The sounds were Russian, but also strange. She had no idea where Pavel was talking about. The idea that Rodyon was still alive – that she still had a husband! – was astonishing to her. The fact rolled around in her head like summer thunder.
‘Your eyes, dear Sister. Always aslant. I’m your own brother. I can tell you these things straight. You look Asiatic. Mongol, one might say. Not that it spoils your looks, now. Not at all! But I’m quite surprised you haven’t heard of Preobrazheniye. I’m sure there are more than a few Asiatic women there too. Why, Preobrazheniye is only a couple of hundred kilometres or so from Vladivostok.’ He held up his finger and thumb, so that they were only separated by a centimetre. ‘From your precious husband to Japan itself, it’s only this far, the merest hop.’
4
As soon as he could, Misha drove to Eberswalde. The main road headed north to Schwedt. A smaller one branched south-east to – well, little enough. There was only one town of any note, Bad Freienwalde, and apart from that, scattered villages, sleepy and provincial.
Once again, Misha felt the prickle of certainty, stronger now than ever before. Germany was too small for an internal exile on the Russian scale. But here was its direct equivalent: quiet, backward, unpopulated. If an NKVD man wanted to make use of Tonya’s special skills, but wanted to keep her out of the way of trouble, then the Oderbruch would be the ideal place to do it.
Misha took his Kübelwagen into town, then killed the engine. What next? He didn’t know, but strongly felt that something would present itself. He strolled down the little Hauptstrasse, under a line of elm trees. With the light shining through the last November-yellow leaves, they looked almost translucent, as though the branches were thronged with butterflies. A once-weekly food market was beginning to clear away. Misha approached one of the stallholders, clearly a farmer, and asked him how far it was to the ‘Ivan’s special camp’. The stallholder didn’t know or wouldn’t say and shrugged the question away. Misha tried another two men, before finding a man who wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and said, ‘Six, seven kilometres into the Oderbruch. About that.’
So Willi was right! Misha’s excitement increased further. It wasn’t a pleasant sensation, more like the tightening of claws into his skin, than anything else. Of course, this might not be the camp … and yet, everything fitted. Misha was still walking, still furiously thinking, when he noticed a Soviet solider walking towards him. A Soviet tank regiment had its barracks in town, but this man wasn’t a tankist, meaning he had to be stationed somewhere outside. The man was easily recognisable as a Russian peasant, most likely from the endles
s steppe west of the Urals.
Misha put a hand up and stopped him.
‘Excuse me, sir,’ he began, speaking German.
The Russian shook his hands in front of him, meaning both that he didn’t speak German and didn’t want to.
Misha was undeterred. Speaking in Russian now – but heavily German-accented Russian – stumbling over his words and inflections, Misha said, ‘Please. Am German businessman. Have difficulty. Need person who also German also Russian speak.’
The Russian shook his head. He wanted nothing to do with Misha’s request, but Misha persisted.
‘Please. Was once here lady, Kornikova, and—’
The Russian jerked backwards in alarm, then thrust his face, stinking of beer and onion – into Misha’s. ‘No, no. Kornikova was never here, understand? It’ll be the worse for you – for everyone – if word gets out. If that skinny witch by the canal has been telling tales, I’ll come down and cut off her nose.’ The man grabbed Misha’s lapels, but it was a gesture of fear more than threat. ‘That old hen, you tell her to keep her ears wide and her mouth closed!’
The Russian pulled his hands convulsively away, stared once more at Misha, then pulled away, walking, almost running, back to his truck.
Misha went running down to the canal. It didn’t take him long to find the only woman who lived there: a brown-haired, brown-eyed woman, Gisela. Misha introduced himself, and asked if she knew of a Soviet translator attached to the nearby Special Camp, named Kornikova.
‘Kornikova, I don’t know. I never knew her surname. She was a very nice lady, very helpful. I haven’t seen her for a while.’
‘Her first name?’
‘Antonina.’
‘Antonina!’
‘And her eyes?’
‘Green. She had lovely green eyes, slightly aslant.’
Gisela pulled Misha in through the front door into the kitchen. She pushed the door shut and said, ‘And I know who you are. You’re her friend from Berlin. She was trying to come and find you. I was going to help her hide out on a canal-barge.’
Misha felt a surge of emotion so strong that it would have taken him half a day to unpick and explore everything he felt in those few seconds. It felt as though some explosion had detonated inside, but soft, very soft, as though the shockwaves were felt through fifty feet of cotton wool. So Tonya was close! And she had been looking for him! But as well as powerful joy, Misha was overtaken by sudden anxiety.
‘You said you hadn’t seen her? Why not? Do you know?’
Gisela smiled.
‘Don’t worry. There’s some new man in charge of the camp, apparently. Things have been tightened up, so they say. I don’t think Antonina was even meant to come into town. She said once that she was supposed to be confined to the camp. I’m sure she’s still there.’
Misha breathed out. He was both relieved to have found her and tense because there were still barriers to bringing her away with him. But of the two feelings, the relief was the stronger. He was full of confidence that he’d find a way to get Tonya out. The puzzle wasn’t whether it could be done, but only how.
5
Escape had become more urgent than ever. Before, Tonya had been content to bide her time, happy to wait for an opportunity when the risk of escape would be minimal. That had made sense under the looser regime of the previous commandant, but no longer. Ever since their dinner together, Tonya knew, without being able to say exactly why, that Pavel’s presence was dangerous to her. It was more vital than ever to get away. If she took more risks than she had first intended – well, that couldn’t be helped.
She formed her plans.
The first issue was how to get out of the camp itself. Although Pavel’s arrival had caused most aspects of the regime to tighten up, the camp was there to keep the German prisoners locked up, not the Soviet staff. Every day, the camp gates were opened to allow trucks and vehicles in and out. Many of the NKVD officers liked to fraternise with the officers of the tank regiment in town. Even lower down the camp hierarchy, men like Rokossovsky liked to go into town to buy items on the black market, to chase after women, or to get hold of beer, schnapps and vodka. All the same, Tonya was forbidden to leave the camp, and under Pavel’s new regime everyone would be too scared to help her evade the rules, Rokossovsky most of all.
And yet she had to get out. She thought about simply walking out of camp one evening. It wouldn’t be easy to find a moment when the gates were unattended, but nor would it be impossible either. Beyond the gates, there was a road that led straight to Bad Freienwalde. If the road were too dangerous, then there was a low wooded hill less than a mile distant that would give her plenty of shelter for the night.
But what then? Tonya knew that Pavel would organise a search to catch any of his men who absconded. He would treat her no differently. And Tonya knew herself well enough to know that she had neither the strength nor the skill to evade any determined search.
So that left the camp’s own motor vehicles. She began to watch with intense interest the movement of every car and lorry that came into the camp.
She watched the procedures for loading and unloading. She observed what crates and boxes were piled in, took a careful note of what was heavy, what was light. One afternoon, a large consignment of timber posts arrived. When the posts were unloaded, the empty truck stood unattended while its drivers went off to complete their paperwork. Tonya could see the back of the truck empty, except for a loose canvas tarpaulin. A persistent rain fell all across the yard. There was nobody about. Tonya froze in indecision. Should she run out into the wet, jump into the truck and hide beneath the tarpaulin? She thought she stood an excellent chance, eighty per cent or better, of getting into the truck unseen. Trucks were never searched on the way out, and there was no indication that the empty truck was going to be loaded up with anything else. But suppose that she made it out of the camp in the back of the truck? What then? She didn’t even know where the truck was headed. It might end up in Berlin. Or it might draw up in some Red Army transport depot, swarming with soldiers and NKVD men. She couldn’t guess.
For sixteen minutes she froze, then decided against. Her thudding heart quietened to a soft thump. All this time, she had left her work and had been standing at the window looking out and pondering. She sat back down at her desk and the stack of documents to translate. She began typing again. After a few minutes, there was a tap at the door. It was the truck driver, come to ask some question about his fuel requisition documents. Tonya gave him the information he needed, then asked him, ‘Where are you headed for now?’
‘Me? Back to base.’
‘And the base is…?’
‘Bialystok. Poland.’
The driver nodded, as though vaguely surprised that anyone could have been so ignorant as not to know, then headed out into the rain. Tonya felt the violent chill of the fate she had just avoided. Bialystok lay close to the Polish-Soviet border, hundreds of miles to the east. If she’d jumped into the truck, she’d have taken herself closer to Siberia, not Misha. So though her commitment to escape remained red-hot, her caution increased as well. She thought of a hundred plans for getting away, and rejected every one.
In the meantime, camp life went on. Her working hours had grown longer again, but for the most part, and prisoner interrogations aside, she enjoyed the work. Most of her colleagues liked her. Besides, they knew she was the commandant’s sister and took care to treat her well.
Nor had Pavel forgotten her. Indeed, he got into the habit of inviting her around to his bungalow. ‘Invite’ wasn’t quite the right word, of course. His invitations were phrased as orders, and he hadn’t yet permitted her to call him anything other than ‘sir’. She was usually required to come around at nine or even ten o’clock at night – a late start to the evening, given that reveille was sounded at six every morning. He usually gave her dinner, irrespective of whether she’d already eaten or not. He himself always took a plate of food too, but it was one of his idiosyncrasies that
he had always eaten before her, so that he hardly put a spoon or fork to his mouth. Instead, he just drank wine from a large crystal glass – she was never offered any, and never asked for it – and plied her with questions. Sometimes his questions had to do with the present. He asked her about her translations, about the prisoner interrogations, about her observations of her fellow camp staff. At other times, he leaped back into the past, asking her about their very earliest years together, back in the years before the revolution. Or he might ask her about the Gulag: a topic he never seemingly wearied of. He wanted to know everything about it, especially her arrival there, her sensations and impressions. His questions were never orderly, but jumped around. She might have just completed an answer about an interrogation conducted that morning, only to be faced with a question about the way their mother used to bake bread, or asked to relate how cold it became during the Siberian winter.
Gradually, Tonya came to realise certain things.
Firstly, despite Pavel’s need to display his authority, she realised that her status as his older sister still carried weight. Once, seeing him bare-headed on a cold day, she chided him that evening.
‘You only started doing that during that first winter of the revolution, sir. You were copying Rodya, but you never had his constitution. You shouldn’t have done it then, and you shouldn’t do it now. It’s not just a cold you might catch. Typhus is rampant amongst the prisoners, as you perfectly well know.’
The admonishment delighted Pavel. He teased her, called attention to his lieutenant-colonel’s rank, pointed out that he could and would go bare-headed as much as he wished – but still the very next day, Tonya saw him wearing hat and scarf, even though the wind was nowhere near as cold as the day before.
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