Tin Sky

by Ben Pastor

  After leaving the T-34 safely awaiting Manstein’s visit in an underground shelter on Louis Pasteur (Lui Pastera) Street, Bora decided on a hunch not to take a shortcut to Merefa through the southern districts, in case Platonov changed his mind and wanted to see him tonight. Less than two hours had gone by, but the guards at the detention centre reported that Number Five had insistently been asking for the interrogator during the past fifty minutes. Anxious as he himself was, Bora decided to let the old man dangle a little longer, and climbed to Tibyetsky’s room instead. There, he found Khan fast asleep, so he had the guard place the trunk by his bed, and walked away without waking him up.

  Gleb Platonov looked like death. Grey-faced, haggard, he sat with the photograph of his relatives face down on the table. “Where was this taken?”

  Other than his name and identification number, it was the only sentence Bora had ever heard him speak. “I’m not required to say,” he answered dryly.

  “Who had it taken?”

  “Not required to say that, either.”

  “It shows this month’s date. Has to be your doing; German doing.”

  “Does it?”

  “I demand to know —”

  “I’m not accepting demands, General.”

  “I ask to know —”

  Bora moved his head from side to side, an indifferent sign of refusal. Platonov must be in a state of absolute turmoil at this time. Whatever Stalin’s reason for making him believe his women were dead, right now he had no way of knowing whether they were imprisoned (they weren’t); he couldn’t even be sure they were in German hands, since the calendar in the snapshot was Russian – Bora had made a point of it. For all Platonov knew – and this must be the cruellest doubt in his mind – they could have been executed in the days since the photo was taken. Keeping the image face down was meant to lessen the unavoidable pain of enquiring about them. Bora turned it face up. There was a kind of ache for him as well in seeing them: the women were beautiful, and affected him in his own way. Platonov’s love for them was legendary; he’d reportedly tried to kill himself in prison when told of their deaths. It stood to reason that if his women were now brought forward, they were alive, and in German hands. Clear-minded logic suggested it. But Platonov might be other than clear-minded this evening. After his release, he’d fought for nearly two years in the name of a system that had stripped him of all ties and shreds of hope, forging him at last into a war machine out of his utter, infinite lack of expectation. But now… Bora felt a stable lack of pity, which didn’t mean he ignored the man’s feelings. To him, it was a matter of getting what he wanted, taking care not to show that he had no intention of harming the women; if on one pan of the scales lay Platonov’s anguish for them, the other was weighed down by his stoicism in Stalin’s jail, when he thought he had nothing more to lose.

  Platonov could not bring himself to say out loud that he’d believed his family lost until today. Under his breath, he mouthed, “I thought – it’s the first time in six years I’ve seen an image of them.”

  “I can have them safely escorted here to meet you.” Bora’s only sign of familiarity (intentional, as everything was in his behaviour with prisoners) was that he stood there with his hands in the pockets of his breeches. His fingertips met the button from Krasny Yar, and for a second the dead in the woods, the cut throat, the severed head were with him in the room.

  “Swear to me it’s true, Major.” When Bora said and did nothing, the prisoner’s voice turned grave and low, like a repressed sob. “What do you want in exchange?”

  “My needs haven’t changed.” From the briefcase at his feet, Bora took out a questionnaire he’d typed in Russian, a number of sheets held together by a paper clip, which he laid on the table. Platonov ran his eyes over the first page, and pushed it back in disgust.

  “Bring my family to me.”

  Bora firmly replaced the questionnaire under Platonov’s eyes. They stared at each other across the narrow space separating them. After confronting Khan’s physical exuberance in the afternoon, this was the cut-out, the abused leftover of a man; a few hours and a single photograph had crushed what remained of one who’d withstood torture. Bora had to think of his Stalingrad days to summon bitterness and avoid all empathy.

  “No. I don’t want to wait until morning. I’ve waited long enough.”

  It was the first and only suggestion that the women were due there the following day. Platonov was visibly shaken. He might have suspected until now it was a trick, so Bora took advantage of the moment. “I can tell you they spent four years in hard labour south-west of here, at the Kremenchuk power station. We freed them in ’41. They’re quite well, as you can see from the photo. I understand your wife lost three toes of her right foot during her sentence, but given the circumstances it could have gone much worse. Your daughter Avrora Glebovna is reported to be in good health as well.” Bora did not look away even after Platonov began to tremble. “As long as they’re under my tutelage, General, I vouch for their safety. However, should I lose that oversight, believe me, anything can happen. I have a wife; I speak as a husband to a husband. The moment the ladies enter this building I’ll personally and on my honour answer for them. But I’m not inclined to endure further delays: I want guarantees, too.”

  It was strange, but it had happened other times with prisoners about to give in: that their protest suddenly became hollow, spoken in a dull tone that belied the forcefulness of the objections put forward.

  “Guarantees? I am a Soviet lieutenant general.”

  “And I’m a German interrogator. Soviet authorities didn’t even let you know your relatives survived your disgrace: we bring them to you.”

  “It could be a ruse.”

  “No, no. It’s a barter, General Platonov. And when bartering, IOUs don’t work.”

  Platonov clutched the armrests of his green velvet seat to keep from trembling. His lower jaw hung half-open like a very old man’s; a frightful weariness seemed to have overtaken him, making him come unglued. He gave the impression that he would start losing his limbs piecemeal at any time, like a broken puppet.

  The one thing that could be used against him Bora was using now. He heard himself say, “Here we go, General”, and, as if from a distance, he could almost see himself neatly squaring the pages on the table, evaluating the effect of the handsome charm that had so often got him through in his young life.

  As if looks spoke the truth. As if Stalingrad, leaving him sane, hadn’t carved out of him most of the civility he’d previously been one and the same with! This is the devil’s work, he was thinking, dismally. I’ve gone from the role of a naive Adam in Eden to playing the serpent. And yet the serpent too has his reasons. Whatever Stalin’s plan had been in making Platonov believe his women had been killed, it must be intolerable to start hoping again at this point, and at the hands of the enemy. Everything in the prisoner’s desperate posture begged for mercy; Bora had to be careful not to show a particle of the sorrow that tried to cut a rift into his firm resolve.

  “Let me go once more through what we have been through for the past several days. You have been working closely with Colonel General Konev. We know you met with Marshals Zhukov and Vasilevsky in April, and we rather think you were to help organize the front around Voronezh. I understand your reticence to speak, and more so to elaborate on details, whether or not they can be termed military secrets. So I prepared this questionnaire, which itemizes possible changes brought by your High Command to the composition of tank destroyer, armoured and rifle divisions. We wish for you to mark off the option closest to the truth. And we wish to know what the role of the general officers listed at the bottom of the questionnaire is expected to be in any upcoming operation.”

  I, we: Bora’s careful dosage of the personal pronoun drew an imaginary line between what the German Army wanted and what he, Bora, was willing to do to meet him halfway. “From the moment Selina Nikolayevna and Avrora Glebovna were brought to my attention,” he continue
d, “I have strong-armed others” (he didn’t say, but Platonov understood he meant more politically inclined colleagues, or the SS) “in order to keep them under Army care. Since we speak of guarantees, let me repeat: I cannot guarantee their permanence in Army-controlled territory, under Army custody, as time progresses, whether or not you collaborate. But if you collaborate now, I promise you the ladies will be in this building by mid-morning tomorrow, and I’ll do everything in my power to secure their future comfort. It’s true, I did argue with colleagues over them. I stuck my neck out, as they say, and all for nothing until now.”

  Platonov lowered his eyes to the sheet in front of him. He’d regained his frowning hardness through God knows what effort, but he looked so careworn and pale that Bora felt he ought to say something to be on the safe side. “Kindly do not fall ill on me, sir. I won’t accept it. Think of the matter this way: if you hadn’t succeeded in destroying the papers you carried when we captured you, we’d have the information already.”

  “Has someone new arrived this afternoon?” Taking time was an old technique: Platonov must be running out of ideas if he resorted to it. He tried to change the subject. “I heard steps. Who else is here?”

  Bora took out a pencil. “I’m sure you’d like to know, General.” He laid it on the table. “We’ll promptly and thoroughly check anything you mark off, so please do not offend us by jotting down the first thing that comes into your head.”

  “I need to think.”

  “No. You need to give me what I want. Tomorrow I’ll give you what you want.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  “If you don’t, my part of the bargain is off, and I certainly will not risk another disagreement with my colleagues on account of your relatives. I am not walking out until you start writing. I could stay in this room all night if I have to; I’m used to losing sleep. But I won’t. One hour is the time I will give myself to call about your family coming. I won’t offer twice. It’s now ten minutes to eight.”

  Most of the options on Platonov’s sheet were numbered. All the prisoner had to do was to circle the right number. With all the appearance of calm, Bora sat in front of him, right elbow on the table, resting his chin on the knuckles of the same hand. Oddly, compassion had dwindled to nothing inside him. Faster and faster, impatience rose and strained in its place.

  “You’ve seen enough of me by now, Major, to perceive that I cannot —”

  “It’s seven minutes to eight.”

  “And using this – this method…”

  Bora thought of the hours he’d spent cajoling him, reasoning with him, trying to convince him, and now that he was so near to breaking Platonov his irritation bordered on physical pain. Platonov sweated, and stared at him.

  “I cannot, Major.”

  “Six minutes to eight.”

  A cornered animal can grow stiff or collapse, bite or crawl. Desperate cleverness can be resorted to and bring success, or utter failure. Platonov’s eyes seemed to burrow into his interrogator, sounding him for heartlessness or hesitation. “But maybe I could – I could give you —”

  “What? You could give me what?”

  “I could give you” – Platonov’s face was a skull covered with sad flesh – “something else.”

  It was empty blather; Bora had heard corralled prisoners drivel on before. The attempt to divert his attention infuriated him. You will give me what I want, he was about to shout, but then he held back. A drowning man will promise anything to be saved, to be thrown a rope; and there are moments when anything may be even more than what you were looking for. “Define something else.”

  “How much does a German major earn?”

  Bora didn’t think he’d heard right. A senseless urge, like a blackout of reason, brought him to within an inch of taking out his pistol and shooting the old man in the face, seated where he was. Only the pinprick of a thought – that Platonov might be counting on such a drastic way out – stayed his hand the time needed to regain control. I kept it together when all was lost, he forced himself to think. I kept it together when all was lost. I can keep it together now.

  “General,” he spelt out, “it is now five minutes to eight. Fifty-five minutes and ninety-seven questions to go.”

  By the time Bora walked out, half of the sheets had been marked. Platonov was visibly too agitated to continue, incoherent, gasping for air, so the medic had to be summoned again. The melancholy Weller faithfully arrived, and the prisoner was reportedly tranquil and resting shortly after 9 p.m. when Bora made his call to request that Platonov’s family be sent to Kharkov. In the morning he expected to get the rest of the information out of him, before personally going to pick up the women at the Osnova train station.

  He was psychologically tired. All this trouble for information that Khan Tibyetsky might soon be voluntarily and tenfold supplying the Abwehr with. But every prisoner must be squeezed for what he knows, and the more you learn, the more you can cross-reference details.

  It was pitch dark when Bora reached Merefa. At this hour every night, fever returned like a reliable friend. It didn’t bother him much, even if in the height of summer he might end up suffering with the heat more. He took it in his stride, because they told him it would last a few more weeks, or months. There were far worse things.

  Still, he was on edge. The events of the day weighed giddily on him. What he’d finally extracted from Platonov paved the way for more results; the simultaneous arrival of a ranking defector exceeded all hope… Bora worried for the sake of worrying. As if when things coincidentally went the way they should a void of tension appeared, which had to be filled. Worry filled the gap, because there was always something to be anxious about.

  He didn’t expect to hear from the sentry that Nitichenko, the Russian priest, was waiting for him outside the schoolyard, by the row of graves. “That creep,” he grumbled. “At this hour? What for?”

  The sentry didn’t know. Bora walked into the triangle of faint light from the open door, where a picket fence beyond the graves emerged like a monstrous set of fangs from the earth.

  “Victor Panteleievich, what are you doing here?”

  “Povazhany Major, bratyetz – little brother, our Lord sends me to you.”

  “No less.” Bora breathed in the cool air of night. Two years in Russia had accustomed him to these familiar modes of address, and he no longer wondered why old women called him daddy or grandfather or a priest little brother. “I don’t believe I’m worthy.”

  “You make use of irony, bratyetz, but we are all under the Almighty’s eye and fist.”

  “Yes, some more than others. What can I do for you?”

  “You must set fire to the Krasny Yar woods.”

  These Russian baboons. Irritably Bora half-smiled in the dark. “If the Almighty wanted to see all the places razed by fire where people are killed, Victor Panteleievich —”

  “Only those where the devil’s work is done.” Left hand spread on his chest, right hand raised, in the slice of eerie kerosene light Nitichenko resembled Rasputin the Mad Monk more than a minister of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church. “From the ruins of war-ravaged villages the domovyki have been chased into the wild.”

  The devil’s work. Hadn’t he thought of his interrogator’s role in the same terms? Bora inhaled the night air as if its coolness could bring his fever down. “The domovyki? If that’s so,” he said, “it doesn’t seem to me a good idea to try to chase those house spirits from the woods too. Besides, wouldn’t they have departed as soon as communism came?”

  “This may be true, brother in Christ. And Krasny Yar has been cursed ever since.”

  “Well, Krasny Yar isn’t under my jurisdiction, Victor Panteleievich. And if your blessings didn’t get results, what do you expect fire will do? I’d rather not have the spirits getting it into their heads to come and room with you, or with me.”

  “You continue to make use of sarcasm, Major. It is a foolish thing.”

  Bora gestured fo
r the sentry to remove the priest. “Not nearly as much as believing in goblins. Go home, now, and be thankful that I’m in a good mood.”

  Inside, Kostya had laid out some dinner, canned food Bora had no desire to open or eat. The mail had come, some of it hand-delivered by colleagues, slips typed or handwritten, often devoid of envelopes. There were no letters from home, but a note bearing Stark’s signature informed him that a sealed envelope lay waiting for him at the Ministerial Director’s office in Kiev.

  Instantly Bora’s hopes were up: SS Standartenführer Schallenberg, Dikta’s mother’s new partner, had recently travelled to Kiev, so the privileged, unopened envelope might come from her. Or maybe not. He was prudent: he’d learnt to take small bites out of hope, and forbade himself to think beyond what the note said. He’d know soon, at any rate, as Geko Stark had promised to forward the mail promptly.

  Seated on his camp bed, Bora read the rest of the mail: messages of soldiers who asked to serve under him, who petitioned to be chosen for the new regiment. Many were those who’d been with him at Stalingrad, or those he’d gathered along the way escaping the mortal trap, dragging them through the Russian winter to salvation – if returning to the German lines was such.

  It troubled him that they considered him a talisman, one of those fortunate commanders under whom the enemy doesn’t kill you. The duties of his new unit not only implied danger, they were danger itself, daily, different from that of a siege only because you can move while they shoot at you. And yet they called him Unser Martin among themselves, familiarly, “our Martin”, claiming the proximity of trust. They sought recommendations from their present commander, chaplain, army surgeon: and the majority of them had never even mounted a horse. To how many of them could he say yes, granted that regulations allowed for their transfer?

  Every day, whatever Bora did, Stalingrad was there, like a droning refrain. At night, he removed Stalingrad. He did not allow anguish to cross the space, at times physically reduced, around himself. Sleep came heavy, brutal, like a seal that made his mind impermeable to memory. At times it occurred to him that criminals lead similar lives, wilfully depriving themselves of entire portions of their experience, a self-mutilation necessary to keep going. He had no indulgence towards himself, not ever. I know myself and treat myself accordingly, he reasoned. I know who I am, the choices I made. And he never went further in that scrutiny. He hadn’t gone to confession in nearly two years. He mechanically attended field Mass whenever possible, but in Russia even praying had become mechanical, a question of formulae. In Stalingrad he had not prayed, not even when the situation was that of one who has already begun sinking into the abyss. Perhaps because he feared that the Christian’s last powerful hope, that God will listen, would be disappointed. Perhaps because God had nothing to do with Stalingrad.