Tin Sky

by Ben Pastor

  Sensing that a justification for his claim was called for, Tarasov wet his lips. “As political commissar at Kharkov Factory No. 183 and then at the FED photographic camera firm until my retirement, I have a direct ideological share in the moulding of the patriots who carried out the people’s vengeance.”

  Again, silence. The fly took off from the leaflet and landed on Tarasov’s right shoulder. Fear, yes. Bora expected that. The other emotion was – what? Not hostility, not arrogance. Not self-delusion, either. Resentment? Hopelessness? Wouldn’t Odilo Mantau give an eye tooth to be in my place. Bora savoured the strangeness of the moment, whether or not it would lead anywhere. He placidly took the fountain pen from his breast pocket and uncapped it. Holding the nib close to the blank sheet, he asked, “And who are the patriots? Names, please.”

  Tarasov swallowed the need to cough. Between fifty and sixty years of age, hard to tell on an emaciated frame, he seemed confused by this odd reception. “I do not intend to betray my fellow Russians.”

  “Ah. Not Slava Ukraini, then. Slava Rossii. The excellent Soviet partisan leaders Sydor Kovpak and Semyon Rudniev, who I understand made general a month ago.”

  “Major, I thought —”

  “Why come to me?” Ready to write, Bora’s pen stayed firm, a hair’s breadth away from the sheet. “There are other German authorities to whom you should have turned yourself in.”

  Tarasov gave him a frustrated look. “I’m a Merefa resident. You’re the German military authority in Merefa. To whom should I go? This is really – not acceptable.”

  “Not acceptable? I don’t care a fig for what is acceptable to you. I asked for information about Krasny Yar, and you strut in with claims you can’t support, presuming that a tin badge will cause a German officer to react! Didn’t you hear it’s the woods I’m seeking information about?”

  A fit of hollow coughing shook Tarasov. Disturbed, the fly left his shoulder and sought the ceiling in an undulating semicircle. “I heard.” He spoke hoarsely when he regained his breath. “That’s what prompted me to come in the first place, but – it gave me an idea to – the opportunity to —”

  “Play the braggart over Commander Tibyetsky’s death? Do not offend me, accountant.”

  Unexpectedly the little man struck the desk with his fist. “Well, do not offend me, Major! After all, I was a comrade of the traitor Tibyetsky!”

  Bora did not move a muscle. And I was just trying to save this idiot’s life. A suspended wordless pause, very different from the previous silence, went by before he capped his pen and put it away. Whatever he’s up to, whatever he’s done or not done, now we’re getting somewhere.

  The conversation with Taras Tarasov lasted over an hour and a half. Bora listened with absolute attention, jotting down a few sober, indicative notes that would become an extended memorandum as soon as the accountant left the room. He wrote furiously so as not to leave out a hint, a comment, filling out several sheets on both sides. Had he not promised to report what news he had about Sanitätsoberfeldwebel Weller to Mayr at Hospital 169, he’d have continued to ponder Tarasov’s “confession”. But first there were service errands in Kharkov and the matter of Khan Tibyetsky’s post-mortem, his exchange goods for the day.

  At the hospital, hammering, sawing and refitting continued behind closed doors. While he waited for the surgeon to finish his rounds, Bora took his diary out of the briefcase and retrieved Dikta’s letter, placed between the pages as a bookmark. Leaning with his shoulders against the wall, he opened it with trepidation. It was short, because Dikta did not indulge in effusions; she’d sooner send three short letters than a long one. And although she’d received the best in Swiss education, she seldom elaborated in her correspondence on what she certainly felt about him (or others; or the world). For a twenty-six year old, there was always something immature in her words, an adolescent impatience to be done with the writing chore.

  Past the affectionate greetings at the start, she wrote:

  We’ve become fast friends, your brother’s wife and I. The doctor told Duckie she must walk, so I take her to concerts, lectures, art exhibits, charity fairs…and shopping, because nothing fits her any more. In the evening we sit on the bed in her room to talk and we giggle like little girls, she in her nightgown and myself in a bra and frilly undies, a new set I had Mamma send me from Paris that is really quite indecent but you will love. If Papa Sickingen saw me wearing it! With three women in the house he’s exasperated; doesn’t know what to do with himself. Imagine: he who doesn’t like dogs takes Wallace every day for a constitutional in Rosenthal Park or goes to pout alone in the smoking room, under those nasty glass-eyed trophies and the balalaikas.

  It’s amazing how many things Duckie is ignorant of about her own body. She blushes, but she’s very curious about the things experienced married people can do. I think she’s a little envious of us. She asked me if any of it is a sin, the dear Duckie. I answered her that I wasn’t raised Roman Catholic but you certainly were, and that none of it seems to be a problem for you. I believe that as soon as the baby is born and she gets back in shape Peter will be quite grateful for our girlie talks.

  By the way, Mamma, your mother and I have volunteered to break horses for the Army; who better than girls like us, with our riding skills and charm that even the dear animals understand?

  I miss you – miss you – miss you! Come back soon, my darling Martin, and all in one glorious piece.

  Dikta

  P.S. Did you receive the Ziemke Studio photo? I was actually looking at a pair of your riding boots Ziemke told me to place on the carpet near me. Of course I adore the man inside those magnificent boots.

  Mayr’s voice from the end of the hallway startled him. “Major Bora, weren’t you here to see me? I haven’t got all day.”

  Bora squirrelled away the letter. Flustered as he always was after reading his wife’s messages, in the few steps separating him from the physician’s door he regained a polite aloofness, sealed over and to all appearances storm-proof.

  He shared what he’d learnt through Bruno Lattmann, which wasn’t much.

  “This is as far as I have got for now, Herr Oberstarzt. I have confirmation that Master Sergeant Weller did not ask for reassignment. It was by direct order at Army Corps level that he was transferred from this hospital on 6 May. At Army Detachment Kempf HQ in Poltava, where he was supposed to report three days later for a new assignment, they have no record of his arrival. Which doesn’t mean he wasn’t there: we know how sometimes bureaucrats bungle things the moment paperwork doesn’t fit exactly the norm they’re used to. Alternatively, he could still be in transit.”

  “It’s been a week!”

  “This is Russia. Rail transport: unreliable. Roads: worse. A flat tyre, and you’re stuck; two flat tyres, and you walk.”

  The surgeon’s white gown was missing a button. Seeing Bora’s eyes wander to the curl of thread that remained in its place, he took off the garment and tossed it onto the clothes stand by the door. “Well, I did some local checking, and Weller isn’t serving in any of the other medical units in Kharkov. My concern is why they did this to him.”

  Bora glanced around the room with non-judgemental, attentive coolness. Cover and pillow were stacked at the head of the camp bed; the glass cabinet still contained some of the painkillers he’d brought last time. From the bulletin board on the wall the surgeon’s family photo had been taken down. The four tacks that had held it in place seemed to Bora singularly forlorn, a mark of prudence or pain. He often took his time in answering, and not only because it was typical of his training. It also allowed him to take in – as now – signs of his counterpart’s level of comfort. Or lack thereof. “We don’t know that they did anything to your medic,” he observed at last, “other than reassign him. And as far as the incident you seem to entertain as a motive, if there’s one who could in any way be brought to task for a prisoner’s death it’d be myself, not Weller.”

  “You will agree it’s easier
to punish a non-com than a regimental commander.”

  Or a surgeon. A measure of sarcasm was expected, but Bora had no desire to foster an argument. Besides, at the Abwehr Branch Office in Kiev they’d taken Platonov’s death in bad humour; it was not beyond possibility that they’d sacked Weller for it. They wouldn’t necessarily tell me, either.

  “As promised, I’ll keep looking for him, Herr Oberstarzt. There are some other channels I can tap. What about you? Did you have any luck?”

  Mayr put an unlit cigarette between his lips, possibly to keep from blurting out what he had in mind. He handed over a summary of Tibyetsky’s post-mortem, copied by hand since the colleague who’d filled it out was no doubt forbidden to share it.

  Bora thanked him. “I asked for a regional casualty update,” he felt the need to volunteer. “In case Weller suffered an accident en route to Poltava. With all the mines being laid overnight, we can’t always keep up with the clearing. Not that I think…but one never knows.” The gown tossed onto the clothes stand was slowly beginning to slip off the top knob. Without looking at it directly, Bora kept it in his peripheral vision, secretly impatient for it to reach the floor. “About the autopsy: may I ask whether you detected anything out of the ordinary?”

  Facing away from the door, the surgeon could not see the lingering downward motion of the white garment behind him. The cigarette he’d put in his mouth stayed there as he spoke, an unlit paper cylinder stuck to his lower lip. “I had no access to the body, but the findings seem consistent with poisoning. Although a small part of the food ingested was regurgitated, the stomach contents revealed enough nicotine to cause death within minutes. Concentrated, it’s deadlier than strychnine, and not difficult to find. Farm women everywhere use tobacco leaf solution to kill garden parasites.”

  On the clothes stand, having silently rounded the top knob, the surgeon’s gown slid off it and came to rest on the transverse bar of a lower knob, where its downward progress began again. Bora eyed it with something beyond lack of patience, on the threshold of physical discomfort. “Does nicotine have no odour or taste?”

  “It tastes very bitter, which is why most accidental deaths are due to poisoning through the skin. It’s amazing the victim ate the whole bar. Was he a smoker?”

  “Yes.” By the door, the inanimate drama continued. The choice was between waiting for the cloth to creep down until it glided off of the support altogether or stepping in to interrupt the process. Bora kept from intervening because it would give away his impatience, but he refused to keep watching. He lowered his eyes to the handwritten notes. “Forgive one last question. What are the symptoms of this kind of poisoning?”

  “Toxicology isn’t my field, Major. Alkaloids in general – ergot, hemlock, atropine, strychnine, they’re a huge family – can cause anything from extreme agitation, even hallucinations, to a lucid and progressive paralysis, vomit, diarrhoea, convulsions. Not a good death, Socrates notwithstanding.”

  Bora nodded. When he raised his eyes, the gown had finally reached the floor, and lay in a heap at the foot of the clothes stand.

  Unaware of the distraction he’d indirectly provoked, Mayr fished out a lighter from his pocket and lit his cigarette at last. “My part of the bargain was fulfilled, Major. In these difficult times, Oberfeldwebel Weller was a caring and attentive helper, whose well-being I had at heart and for whom I hoped there’d be an opportunity to earn his medical degree. I am truly sorry he’s gone. And I hold you responsible for whatever befell him.”

  Why do I put up with him? I no longer need his help. The ungenerous thought went through Bora’s mind while he saluted. “No need to speak of him as if he’d died, Herr Oberstarzt. Weller may have arrived in Poltava as we speak.”

  His second errand in Kharkov was at divisional headquarters, where he was to pick up the authorization to collect a special shipment of fresh mounts for his unit, due to arrive by rail in Smijeff by the middle of the following week. Von Salomon, however, wasn’t at the office. Bora assumed at first the absence might be connected to the debacle in Tunisia: news of over one hundred thousand German prisoners fallen into Allied hands had caused noticeable turmoil in the building. The lieutenant who took care of the colonel’s paperwork did not confirm his suspicions either way, and provided some assistance. However, not being empowered to sign for his commander, he could only invite Bora to return in the afternoon.

  “Is there a possibility I could find the colonel at his lodgings?”

  “You could try, Herr Major.”

  Von Salomon was staying in the same large flat on Pletnevsky Lane, overlooking the river, where Bora had been a guest the night of the folk dance. Too spacious by his own admission, the colonel often had visitors, mostly colleagues in Kharkov for service-related business, and was known to do some of his work from there. Bora headed there. Here the Kharkov River flowed west, to merge not far away with the Lopany. On the other bank, beyond half-demolished buildings, the Donbas station marked the terminus of the rail line that would bring the regimental mounts from southern Ukraine. Due to the presence of German bureaus and officers’ quarters, Army police patrolled this district made up of charming houses from the turn of the century painted in warm colours with stucco festoons above their windows and classical façades. It was very warm, and felt like it would rain again.

  In von Salomon’s second-floor flat, there was music playing: a radio or a gramophone; Bora could not judge from outside the door. He had to ring twice before someone heard and came to open up. A colonel in an Organization Todt uniform, complete with armband and cuff title, stood there and frowned. Clearly not expecting a visit, he said brusquely, “Yes? Who are you?” When Bora introduced himself and gave the reason for his presence, the colonel added, “Lieutenant Colonel von Salomon was up until very late last night, Major. He’s resting at present.”

  Someone else was in the room, invisible to Bora because the OT officer held the door ajar. Behind him, on the wall, the glassed-in watercolour of von Salomon’s estate reflected the figure of a middle-aged lady in a morning suit. With more than an impression that he’d interrupted something, Bora apologized. “Forgive me for sounding insistent,” he said. “It regards an important shipment, and is somewhat urgent. I do need the colonel’s signature at his earliest convenience. Should I call again after lunch?”

  The officer glanced at his watch. “Not before 14.30.”

  Politically well-connected wives and fiancées did visit the higher ranks occasionally, and friends literally made room for those special times if they could. Von Salomon had probably left his flat to this colleague, who – Tunisian news notwithstanding – was making the most of the opportunity. After all, it was Russia; it was wartime. And honestly, even before the war, Bora had laid Dikta wherever he could. He saluted and left. But the few times I had this luck, he enviously told himself, at least I took a hotel room and did not inconvenience colleagues.

  The lunch hour dragged on. Before returning to Pletnevsky Lane at the appointed time, Bora sought the divisional office again, to no avail. “You could try again around 16.30, Herr Major.” When he rang the bell at von Salomon’s flat (he could have bet money on it, yet still it vexed him), no one answered the door. So he decided to at least get something done and drove to the Kombinat, a bit closer to Kharkov than if he had travelled back to Merefa.

  Behind closed doors, Commissioner Stark was berating somebody in Russian. Over the telephone, if one was to judge from the lack of other voices and the brief silences during which he most likely was listening to excuses being made at the other end of the wire. The words “black market”, “typewriters” and “former Starshin Infantry School” stood out from the others. A longer pause was followed by a less irate conversation in German. Bora waited, and eventually Stark’s assistant made the major’s presence known to his superior. “Well, let him in,” was Stark’s reply.

  “I can’t get any madder than I already am, Major Bora,” he added half-seriously when Bora walked in. “What wit
h getting our arses kicked in north Africa, what with nuisances here… So if you want to pester me, this is as good a time as any. These Russkis are the same as ever – they work for you but they’ll rob you blind the moment they can. And then this unseasonable warmth, this damned humidity. It’s about the cavalry mounts, right? Have you got the signed authorization?”

  Without giving details, Bora explained there had been a delay in the paperwork, which he hoped to obtain before office closing time.

  “I understand what you’re saying, Major, but we can’t make exceptions. You’ll have to come back when you have the signed authorization. While I have you here, though, let me tell you that we haven’t forgotten about your babushkas, and are looking into the confusion. Both you and Hauptsturmführer Mantau requested female personnel at the same time. Are you sure you didn’t swap lists with him?”

  “Positive. Why should I do such a thing, Commissioner? I wasn’t even aware that he’d asked for labourers until you mentioned it the day he and I had words.”

  Stark set aside a number of folders, slapping their covers closed and securing them with their elastic bands. “In that case, the mix-up must have occurred after the two requests left this office. Imagine, the women originally assigned to him arrived this morning. In light of all that happened, I believe they should by rights be turned over to your unit.” Around him, little by little as his role took shape, the accoutrements and signs of political standing coalesced. Flag, portrait of the Führer, a brand-new map on the wall. “Speaking of the devil, Major Bora, you don’t happen to know where Mantau is, do you? He isn’t returning telephone calls, and I just heard he’s been out of the office since he was summoned to Kiev on Wednesday night.”

  More likely than not, Kiev meant Gestapo Headquarters. Bora had to make an effort to resist a malicious smile at the news. “I don’t know where he is, Herr Gebietskommissar. May I take a look at the list of labourers?”