Tin Sky

by Ben Pastor

  Past the old Soviet Army burial ground, Kharkov’s darkened, war-torn city streets eventually clustered around Bora’s vehicle. Curfew had depopulated them. Less than ten years earlier, the NKVD purge had decimated the undesirable – from intellectuals to beggars – in a city swollen with peasants escaping the great famine. Grass, dirt and manure had become food for thousands in those days. Orphans had roamed, and bands of famished dogs had reverted to a feral state throughout the once-prosperous region. And then we came, Bora thought. It’s partly our fault that they turned on us. We could have played Ukrainian nationalism to our advantage; some of us were successfully working to that end when political orders to the contrary broke the eggs in our basket. He found that he resented SS interference even more than the fact of it per se. Past the Donbas Station Bridge, he travelled the last kilometre in the curdling, wet dusk, rounding the corner to Hospital 169 using the map he had memorized.

  “I tried to reach you to say the post-mortem has been completed,” Dr Mayr told him, “but didn’t find you. Do you have a Russian answering your telephone?”

  “My Hiwi orderly. Why?”

  “Russians should not be allowed to do such things as answering our telephones.”

  “Don’t house servants answer telephones, Herr Oberstarzt? A phone is the only luxury I have there. Besides, Kostya is a Volga German.” Kostya was in fact a full-blooded Ukrainian. Bora, raised in a class-bound family where no one showed disrespect to, or used the familiar form of address with subordinates, never ceased to wonder at how humanity stops at certain boundaries, even among those supposed to look beyond differences. But maybe the surgeon was only making a point, or using him as a sounding board. “I’d be grateful for the results.”

  “Well, Major, the findings are wholly consistent with my initial diagnosis: the man died of a myocardial infarction. I detected extensive scarring in the myocardium, and a ventricular aneurysm that only hadn’t ruptured because it was lined with scar tissue. There is evidence of prior inflammatory processes; in my estimation he had suffered an acute cardiac episode at least once before. As for anything else, and keeping in mind I’m no medical examiner, there were no wounds, no internal trauma, no traces of poison in the system, and the stomach was empty.”

  The autopsy was a formality, Bora knew. Still, he couldn’t tell if he was relieved or not by what he heard. “Very well. Thank you.”

  “If the family would care to view the body, I suggest they do it as soon as it’s feasible. I haven’t got first-class facilities here, let alone refrigeration.”

  The light was dim in the corridor where they stood. Behind a closed door, planks were being sawn to repair something or other, and the freshly cleaned wards gave out an acute odour of disinfectant. Bora breathed it in. The bottled sulphur dioxide; I nearly forgot. Tomorrow is Friday; it ought to be picked up at Stark’s office. “I’ll see that they are accompanied to the hospital,” he answered. He didn’t want to sound overly disposed to escort the Platonov women himself, although he had that in mind.

  “When? I’m a responsible man, Major, but I need a night’s rest like everyone else.”

  They stared at each other with intense dislike, the weary-faced physician and the straight-shouldered, frowning, impeccable officer. Bora felt a need to be aggressive, although the man in front of him was hardly the appropriate target. He pulled back his left cuff to read the time to conceal his belligerence and create a small break in the tension. Does he think I’m less under stress than he is, less tired than he is? It doesn’t show on me as it does on him, that’s all.

  “They’ll be here in an hour, Herr Oberstarzt.” Bora was on the point of adding Is that soon enough for you? as the surgeon had done with him after Platonov’s death, but he bit his tongue for the sake of civility.

  “You know,” Mayr charged, “you should have opposed Sanitätsoberfeldwebel Weller’s transfer. He deserves better, and has already seen his share of human suffering in this war.”

  Ah, here we are. Kostya had nothing to do with any of this. Bora felt his resentment peak. “Well, Herr Oberstarzt, haven’t we all.” He saluted and smartly turned on his heel, knowing how headquarters etiquette galled the less martial officers. “If he’s lucky, he’s been repatriated.”

  Outside, it was raining less. Where paving stones had been removed to build barricades in the last battle, the garden floor had become a giant puddle. Taking the car keys out of his pocket, Bora’s fingers grazed the wooden button from Krasny Yar, and in his mind’s eye the thick undergrowth rose up to hem him in, with its secrets and dismembered bodies. It troubled him considerably, the power of suggestion that little hand-carved disk had. It’s what, contact magic? Why do I even keep carrying it around? That spooky Nitichenko: when I get back I’m tossing the damn button inside my trunk. No, I have Dikta’s letters there. I don’t want it anywhere around her letters.

  Suddenly, it started coming down in sheets again. Once in Merefa, the track became impassable after he left the main road to reach the few homes towards Oseryanka, where the priest’s mother lived. An army patrol redirected him, and even escorted him for a brief stretch that was like a torrent bed.

  Wicker fences, woven horizontally like baskets, with jars and broken cups capping their stubby posts, appeared in front of the screened headlights when he turned into the grassy lane leading to the house. Platonov’s daughter must have been standing at the window and seen the military vehicle braking in the mud. She came to open the door, and stepped back so that Bora could stand on the threshold and make himself heard in the rush of falling water. A candle was all that mitigated darkness in the room, enough for them to see each other. She said, in a hard voice, “Mother has fallen asleep for the first time since we left Poltava. She would want to come and will be angry that I didn’t wake her, but it’s better if I do this in her place. Unless there’s an order that we both be there.”

  “There isn’t.”

  Bora couldn’t bear to look at her, but not – as she might think – because he felt shame, much less guilt, but because it was like standing before his wife: in the twilight the resemblance was uncanny, confusing, physically painful to him.

  “Let’s go, then.” Wearing the same cotton dress she’d arrived in, Avrora Glebovna had nothing to protect herself from the rain. Cans and pails left outside to gather rainwater had prevented Bora from parking close to the house, and she’d get soaked even in the brief distance between the door and the vehicle. Giving him no time to think of a solution, she squelched barelegged, in open shoes and light clothes, towards the car. Bora made her sit in the back, because he didn’t want to have her next to him with the flimsy fabric clinging to her body.

  During the trip, he told her the minimum necessary: her father had died of natural causes; he would be buried in his uniform, with full military honours; she and her mother would be escorted back to Poltava on Sunday at the latest. The girl’s silence forced him to assume she was listening. Midway through, unexpectedly, she said, “It doesn’t look like it now, but Selina Nikolayevna is worth more than the job you Germans have her doing. She has an engineering degree from the Technical Institute of Engineering in Moscow; she used to earn 600 roubles a month. Why don’t you put her to better use?”

  Thank God her voice was nothing like Dikta’s. Yet. It was slightly unripe, and Dikta spoke more from her throat, a voice irresistible to him. “We’ll see.” Bora gave a concise, almost brusque answer. “What about yourself?”

  “I’m ignorant. I know nothing, and can keep on shovelling cow dung, Major.”

  Of course; how could he ask? She must have been made to leave school at eleven or twelve. No, surely before twelve, which was the age limit beyond which the children of the accused could be shot. The temptation to find her an occupation in Kharkov was so strong and ignoble to his own eyes that Bora blushed in the dark as he decided against it.

  In the hospital’s dimly lit corridor, Dr Mayr began by darting him a reproachful look, no doubt to reprehend him for
the girl’s wretched, sodden looks. He accompanied her inside the room where Platonov lay, with a shake of the head to Bora so that he wouldn’t follow. They walked out less than five minutes later. If Avrora Glebovna was weeping, it did not show on her rain-wet face. Her eyes were narrow under the blonde brows, Dikta’s angry look. Bora felt unspeakably unhappy.

  “I’ll give her something dry to wear,” Mayr said meaningfully, “and she can also take my trench coat for tonight. Just send it back when the young lady has no more use for it.”

  Avrora Glebovna sat in complete silence during the return trip, wrapped in the hospital gown and waterproof cloth. At one point, Bora cut short what he thought to be a checkpoint patrolman’s insistent look at his passenger (“Mind your duty, Private”), and pushed aside the probing torchlight. For the rest of the drive, he could have broken the silence, but chose not to. I already told her mother I regret Platonov’s death, which isn’t even true. I don’t want to sound like I’m interested.

  In front of the priest’s house she left the trench coat in the back seat. A stumbling dash through the mud took her to the doorstep, and moments later – Bora was trying to leave the yard in reverse gear, laboriously – the old Nitichenko woman slogged out with the hospital gown in her arms. “Here you go, barin,” she said obsequiously as she gave it back, but Bora didn’t like the suggestive echo at all, like a wink accompanying the words. Old hag, let me catch you doing something amiss and I’ll teach you to wink.

  As he drove to Merefa, Bora resented the surgeon claiming a higher exposure to suffering. Yes, maybe in volunteering for Spain he had left nothing of himself behind, except his impatience to confront himself with life. In Poland, in the assignments between then and the invasion of Russia, there had been a young wife and some worries, some misgivings. Whenever he might leave Ukraine, however the upcoming battle turned out, grief – personal and impersonal – made up most of the baggage he didn’t have the luxury of letting go of. Forgetting had always come hard to him. For some time now, the past had taken a quality of adherence; it stuck to him. Bora could remember moments and places with such intensity that changing parts of the past seemed possible. The rational awareness that it would not be – that things could not be – undone, renewed his grief and regret with the pain of a fresh wound. What could Mayr understand? Keeping Stalingrad out of his thoughts was a necessity: a magic circle had to be drawn within which he could be safe.

  It was all the more remarkable that his men and superiors did not notice. The fact that his composure did not falter partly accounted for their lack of perception; the rest was due to self-absorption on their part, or obtuse or uninterested callousness in the ranks.

  At the schoolhouse, Kostya – God knows how – had managed to prepare a good warm meal of barley and meat, for which Bora was very grateful. “Have some too,” he said, “and bring a tin to the sentry.” He ate sitting at the teacher’s desk, while the young Russian stood in the other room feeding quietly, like a mouse.

  Merefa outpost, 10.05 p.m.

  Kostya at times reminds me of the Good Soldier Schwejk. He’s by no means stupid, and always full of good intentions. But he does certain odd things! Today before the storm he walked all around the building saying, “May luck stick to you, may bad luck fall off you,” a blessing of sorts as far as I can tell. The first thing I had to do with him was get him out of the habit of blaspheming the Mother of God, something Reds his age do without even thinking, while their fathers added political vim to it during the Revolution. I told him I’d kill him if I heard him one more time, and I meant it. Now when he answers me, he adds an S to his “yes” or “no”, (da-s and nyet-s) in the old-fashioned way, the S standing for sudar, sir. The other day he showed up with a pocketful of Makhorka, the rough local tobacco, and told me I should chew on it to chase the fever. How does he know I’m running a fever? He’s seen the quinine, codeine, bromide and other Russian booty concoctions they gave me at the hospital in Prague, most of which I meant to bestow on the army surgeon today, and forgot.

  Simple soul that he is, Kostya cut out and carries around a photograph of the Soviet movie star and songstress Lyubov Orlova, a pleasant blonde with a penchant for pantaloons and cigarettes: vices, he admits, he’d never allow his wife to cultivate. If he only knew what pleasure it is to pull Dikta’s riding breeches down: so fitted at the waist, her underthings come down too. In his artlessness he calls his wife “sweet”, and I’m sure she is, the dear girl. Dikta on the other hand is anything but sweet. She’s smart, inside and out, strong-willed, passionate, impatient. I’m all those things too, or so she says.

  Poor Kostya, he’s given plenty to this war: he’s a prisoner; his two brothers serve in the Tank Corps, his sister is a pilot; his father, a common Krasnoarmeyets of the 29th Infantry Division, died at Stalingrad (I should think so: we bombarded them with all we had). Kostya was a plumber’s apprentice when he was drafted, and his dream is to have his own shop one day. I told him that if he manages to install me a shower in this building I’ll write to Stalin personally to recommend him. In all seriousness, he replied that he doesn’t think Stalin will listen to a German officer’s recommendation, and that in fact it might even be counterproductive. I was joking, but if he does make it possible for me to wash in the sink or take a shower, I may really be tempted to wire Iosif Vissarionovitch the line you read on the walls of public buildings everywhere: Spasibo, tovarishch Stalin. Thanks, Comrade Stalin.

  Now for the serious things. To my great delight, my old friends Hara Bauml and Alfred von Lippe, who were in Stalingrad with the 24th Armoured Division, are asking to join Regiment Gothland. Quite a shock: Bauml is unrecognizable. Lippe tells me Bauml’s brother Paul was severely wounded during the house-to-house fighting at the beginning of January, when none of us expected to come out of the city alive. He was left behind to die with hundreds of others who could not be transported, packed in their own filth on the floor of a basement once used as a hospital ward. Bauml can’t speak of it to this day; it was Lippe who told me.

  Regarding the regiment, their immediate concern is whether we can trust the locals who are to fill scout and interpreter positions. They all claim to be anti-Bolsheviks, and if one listened to them, one wouldn’t understand how the Revolution ever succeeded. I told my two colleagues that experience as an interrogator thankfully helps during interviews. I am familiar enough with Russian mimicry and body language to know when they’re telling me an untruth. Some I already turned down when I asked whether they recognized the (invented) names of pro-German leaders in Ukraine, and they answered yes. Even though it might be they lied because they’re anxious to join us, I wouldn’t bet my life – much less my men’s lives – on it.

  FRIDAY 7 MAY, MEREFA KOMBINAT

  Rain came and went the following morning; it was unseasonably warm and still stormy down Kiev’s way. Bora hadn’t confirmed his appointment with Geko Stark; even so, there was the bottled sulphur dioxide to collect, and he might drop by the district office at seven, in case the commissioner was free to see him. The Kharkov Aerodrome, closer than Rogany, could easily be reached from there.

  He arrived at the Kombinat a few minutes early. The lights were on inside but the doors remained locked, so he sat in his vehicle rereading his last revision of the Partisan Warfare Handbook. Engrossed in the subject, he paid no attention to the staff car pulling in alongside him. The last thing he expected was the slam of the sturdy-framed Opel door on the driver’s side, an impact that jarred the light personnel carrier. The car, civilian suit and the greatly altered face looking in belonged to Odilo Mantau, who was shouting brokenly, “So you’ve done it, eh? It didn’t end there, eh? Your Russki underling told me I’d find you here!” and other such nonsense.

  Bora found that he couldn’t leave the vehicle, because Mantau leant on the car door with all his weight as he kept vomiting insults. “Are you out of your mind?” he shouted back, extricating himself from behind the wheel to exit from the passenger’s side.

&
nbsp; “You and your cohorts, I’ll have your heads for not letting us keep him!”

  Angry as he himself was becoming, Bora tried to decipher Mantau’s rant in order to piece together the message. Not letting us keep him was the phrase that stood out of the jumble enough for him to grasp it had something to do with Khan Tibyetsky; his next thought was that Bentivegni had ordered, unbeknownst to him, a retaliatory raid to get the defector back into Abwehr custody. The barely formed theory collapsed under Mantau’s next charge, sputtered at him face-to-face. “We could have all been poisoned, do you realize? Every man jack of us! Good thing the candy bars were left untouched —”

  Bora was one to keep his distance. An energetic shove on his part sent Mantau reeling back a full step. “Are you telling me Tibyetsky was poisoned?”

  “He was killed, damn you!”

  They came close to blows in the following frantic moments, during which Mantau accused the Abwehr of murdering its own defector. “The Russian workers are those you called for and then diverted to us two days ago. I threw Stark out of bed at six this morning to have a confirmation; it’s no point in your denying it!”

  The struggle to make sense of the disconnected pieces started again. Bora groped for an intelligible explanation. “The Russian workers? The old women? I called the Gebietskommissar to complain about their diversion elsewhere!”

  “Sure you did. You called the day after they’d already been sent to us!”

  Commissioner Stark, attracted out of his office by the commotion, divided the two of them, now on the verge of a boxing match.

  “Gentlemen, gentlemen! Transgressing this way – it’s unheard of!” (“I’ll kill him!” Mantau foamed at the mouth. “If I don’t kill you first,” was Bora’s reply.) “Major Bora, Hauptsturmführer Mantau, you are forgetting yourselves.” He held them both by the arm and apart from each other, like fractious schoolboys. “We are looking into the matter now,” he said, seeking to pacify them. “You both applied for Russian labour at the same time. But, gentlemen, there’s much confusion behind the lines these days. Our uniformed train personnel cannot be held responsible if someone gets passengers off one station early.”