by Ben Pastor
That it was a putrefying human head impaled on a stake he realized when he was still six or seven steps away from it, more than close enough to judge it had belonged to old Kalekin. Something fearfully primitive, belonging to a medieval Dance of Death: drawing nearer would be an exercise in morbidity. Bora did it only to look for evidence around the grim trophy.
What Bruno Lattmann had said, How will we go back to our families after this, held true. Bora covered his nose and mouth. Embracing his mother, lying with his wife after this, after everything, give or take, that had happened in the last four years! It’s not just what we’ve done or was done to us, but what we’ve seen others do, what we haven’t been able to keep our eyes away from. He held back his nausea, but barely. Bitter saliva came up and had to be spat out while he photographed the shreds of flesh, the chunks of hair on the pitiful remains. That’s what the axe was for, whose soggy cover I saw in the underground shelter. He turned away so as not to smell or see more than he had, and marked with an X the approximate spot on his map. To Nagel, who’d drawn closer and was frowning hard, he said, “It’s been there nearly three weeks. No point in removing it, or making the daughters-in-law see that.”
Nagel, who never spoke unless it was necessary, hinted a nod that fell short of an assent. They were now two-thirds of the way to the bends of the Udy, where the boys had got lost. False rivers and oxbows that had turned into sickle-shaped ponds hugged the rim of the wood on that side. No more than a hundred paces further, water seeped and surfaced in places, and beyond – but not much – according to Bora’s notes the Russian minefield formed a wide belt. The Red Army had laid it during their withdrawal in March, so it was as likely as not that the children had blown themselves up with anti-personnel charges, if they hadn’t been killed before.
Still looking for tracks, Bora and Nagel halted at the edge of the minefield, turned away from the sloping ground. As long as their compasses remained unreliable, they retraced their steps following the blazed trunks and the walnut growth along the ditch. As soon as the instruments agreed on where north was, they allowed themselves to deviate a hundred or so metres from the way they’d come in, covering new ground. Tension kept them spasmodically alert, although neither one of them showed more than a soldier’s watchfulness. Birches past blooming and new grass, overgrown stumps, moss: none showed the presence – much less the frequentation – of man. Yet someone had killed and beheaded old Kalekin; someone had made a warning or an altar of his severed skull.
Bora kept a close-mouthed sullenness. Attentive as he seemed to be, his thoughts were straying like restless dogs. I hope the Mahdi embalmed my great-grandfather’s head, and that it was a tidy, bony bundle his wife claimed and took away in her little Victorian trunk. Why is it that a severed limb, a gory shred is more frightful than a whole corpse? Losing a limb must be doubly awful, because a piece of the man is buried in advance of the man, or left rotting on the ground. To his right, where the uneven forest floor made him suspect the existence of earthworks similar to the one he’d investigated but smaller in size, he paused to look for holes and passageways. A grove of blooming deren not far away matched the place on his map where he’d pencilled a check and added in the margin, Here according to the priest the girl was found with her throat cut a year ago. She was deaf mute, a refugee living near Schubino at the time.
Finally, at the foot of a sprawling bush, the sergeant pointed out human waste, a fly-ridden handful studded with undigested berries and small feathers, as if the diet included raw bird meat and small fruit gobbled whole. Poking it with a stick he’d broken off the shrub, he seemed overly thoughtful. “It does make you think it could be a crackpot from the old days, Herr Major.”
Bora kept from nodding, and from saying no. Flies everywhere, he was thinking. The men, the mounts resent them, biblical plague that they are. Skin food excrement wounds rubbish are to them all the same, all appetizing. Chasing them makes no difference: they’re like a noxious thought you can wave off but not eliminate. Not even cleanliness keeps them away, just like virtue isn’t enough to keep away evil thoughts. I can see why Satan is called Lord of the Flies. This is, and always was, war. We are, in the year of Our Lord 1943, like our counterparts in the year 1943 before Christ was born, in Sumer or Egypt, chasing flies and killing lice.
“What do you think, Herr Major?”
“Nothing worthwhile. Let’s get out.”
They had returned within sight of the sombre fir line (the wind bellowed in that direction, still raging over the woods) and were negotiating a rough escarpment when the sergeant tripped on a root and lost his balance.
“Everything all right, Nagel?” Bora called out.
“Everything all right, sir.” In a half-crouch among the leaves he’d discomposed by stumbling and steadying himself, Nagel searched around with his hand. “Wait. I thought I saw something: a shoe or a belt or something.”
Bora joined him. He stood keeping an eye on the surroundings while Nagel combed the bed of leaves with a pronged stick, back and forth until he picked up by its frayed strap a small broken sandal, hand-stitched. “I’m afraid the boys were done in too, Herr Major.”
They emerged from Krasny Yar not far from where they’d entered it, at the edge of the “Friendship of Peoples” communal farm. The sun was high, and gusts of rabid breeze alternated with absolute calm. To Bora the tumbledown view of sheds and empty barns seemed novel, as though centuries had gone by since he’d turned his back to them to enter the woods. It had been two hours by his watch, but he wondered if at times watches lie.
Nagel, experienced soldier that he was, walked casually with the sub-machine gun always at the ready. “Did you smell a fire in the woods, Herr Major? There was definitely an odour of smoke drifting through the woods.”
“I smelt it. God willing, we’ll go back in with the regiment as soon we are fully mounted.”
They went to untie their mounts, Frohsinn and Totila, grazing on dandelions behind the old Kalekina homestead. As they did, the farm women anxiously peered out through a crack in the door. Nagel glanced at Bora, wondering whether he’d say anything about the small sandal or the old man’s head, but Bora was tight-lipped, looking elsewhere as he became smoothly, impeccably saddled.
***
Thursday 20 May, 5 a.m., Bespalovka.
The topographic map I have, 1:25,000 in scale, does not show Krasny Yar as featuring a ravine, despite its name. This I already observed. The legend does indicate the moderate height within it as mogila, which our cartographers translate as “hillock”. It is the rise with the lightning-blasted tree on it and the hideout below ground. However, I’m wondering whether the correct term on the Russian map should be kurgan, and on ours “burial mound”. It is true that, as far as I know, these ancient earthworks are more typical of southern Ukraine, but not exclusive to that area. In Stalingrad, the day after our division reached the city centre, other comrades fought tooth and nail to take Height 102.0, which according to the Russians was and is a large burial mound, Mamayev Kurgan.
Does it make a difference? It might. The “hollow” by the blasted tree the men of the 241st spoke of is in fact man-made. It could be the partly collapsed entrance to an inner chamber (the cave-in has been there a very long time), perhaps enlarged by those who God knows when entered it to steal. You’d need equipment to remove the fallen beams and earth, and a stronger torchlight than the one I took along to look into the jumble.
Burial mounds of the ancient steppe peoples are rumoured to contain precious objects, mostly gold. It could have been the reason behind Makhno’s choice to set up his command at Krasny Yar. Chased out of there in 1920, he could have been forced to abandon the goods to the Bolsheviks. I don’t want to go off at a tangent. Still, the presence of valuables – of any sort, important documents included – would justify Platonov and Khan’s trips to the woods, together and separately (and at least on one occasion with an unidentified outsider). Were they hauling out things? Neither Tarasov nor Larisa m
entioned that, and someone has definitely been guarding the Yar, discouraging access to it before and since. It could have been over the destination and use of those valuables that Khan and Platonov had argued. The Bolshevik revolution is full of such tales: witness the fable that Admiral Kolchak sank or lost Tsar Nicholas’ tons of gold bullion in a Siberian lake!
Question (I’m back to it, with variations): whatever it is that attracted the generals to Krasny Yar, was it removed entirely or just in part? Did it play any role in Khan’s death? I hypothesized a lone assassin, when in fact the tank commander’s presence here as a defector could have alarmed those who knew about Krasny Yar. If only I’d let Platonov tell me what it was he wanted to offer!
As for the broken sandal Nagel found, it’s either a woman’s or a boy’s, and looks as though it’s been there longer than a couple of months. Be that as it may, Nagel deduces from it that the Kalekin boys were killed in the Yar. I’m starting to form a rather different idea.
Things are coming together slowly, although I could be completely off course. Being nothing but a self-made investigator, I tend to draw conclusions from very disparate clues by intuition rather than logic. Uncle Terry would have saved me lots of trouble if he’d only trusted me, left me a message and let me understand whom he feared on this side of the Donets.
I’m readying to leave Bespalovka. Before I return to Merefa I will stop at Borovoye to retrieve my vehicle, seek Bruno Lattmann’s advice on something and see if he’s got any more news for me; depending on what I learn from him, it’s off to Kharkov then, and/or to Gebietskommissar Stark’s to procure butter for my next errand.
20 MAY, 7.15 A.M., BOROVOYE
Bruno Lattmann’s success in securing – among other things – a phone number at Odilo Mantau’s new assignment (an unglamorous, inconvenient task with Sonderkommando 4a in the boonies due south of Kharkov) was a welcome surprise. Bora made the most of it at once, taking advantage of his colleague’s spartan but well-equipped facilities.
Soon enough, Mantau’s tone came grudgingly through the receiver. “I know it’s you: I recognized your voice. What do you want, Major?”
“Only to be useful.”
“I don’t need your usefulness.”
“Look, I have nothing to do with your transfer. I couldn’t have had even if I’d wanted to.”
“I don’t feel like talking to you. And how did you find me here, anyway?”
It was sweltering in the hut, and Bora was grateful when Lattmann handed him a canteen.
“We’re in the same line of business, Hauptsturmführer. And we could both use a solution to Khan’s death. Give me a hand, I’ll give you the whole arm.”
A mumbled “Go to hell” did not discourage Bora, who held the line while counting to himself the seconds that would pass before Mantau asked for details.
“Give me the arm first, Bora.”
“I can’t do it without getting a hand from you – it’s physiological. Are you there?”
“I’m here.”
“I need to know whether you were present when Khan’s blood pressure was taken after his tantrum, the evening before he died. You were: good. Did they come from the Sumskaya first-aid station? Yes? That’s odd; at Sumskaya they deny it. Well, Hauptsturmführer, I don’t know if they’ll oblige you and go and get fucked, but they deny it. You suspected the Soviets sent a babushka; but what if they sent someone else? It seems someone is playing with our medics: I lost one over a prisoner’s death; you might have been given one you didn’t ask for. I’m looking for mine. Maybe you ought to be looking for yours. Do you have his name?”
“Not here. It’s not like I took along the jail passes and other papers when I left Kharkov.”
“In your place I’d make an effort to at least retrieve the man’s name.”
More grumbling, followed by “Contact me on Saturday. I might have the information.”
Bora put down the receiver. “That jackass,” he told Lattmann. “There are more grey cells in his buffed fingernails than in his head. How did somebody so dense get a commission?”
His friend, who’d listened while chewing for a change on something edible, unsuccessfully offered Bora a handful of sunflower seeds. Before answering, he crossed the small floor space to turn the radio on. Tuning it in to a music station to increase their privacy, he said contemptuously, “For what the shithead has to do in his present job, all he needs is a lack of conscience.”
“Well, monitored as these calls are likely to be, Mantau won’t look too sharp even to his boss Theodor Christensen.” Bora uncorked the canteen and avidly drank from it. The old song that came from the radio warbled It happens only once / It will not come again… “Speaking of conscience and lack thereof,” he added, “if you’re wondering about the little accountant who had a rendezvous with the firing squad, he beat me to it by dying first. I got there just as the local priest’s mother was preparing him for burial.”
“Good: it spared you a hard choice.”
“But you understand I had to teach the village some lesson, so I ordered that his house be burnt down. And then I heard the hag had stolen a suitcase from the dead man as recompense for her Christian duty, so I requisitioned it. Nothing of interest inside, only old ledgers from Tarasov’s days at the FED camera factory and Kharkov Factory No. 183: political commissar and accountant to the last. Say, Bruno, where can I find hens around here? I need a dozen chicks for my Russian orderly.”
Lattmann choked on his sunflower seeds, laughing. “What are you setting up, a farmstead over at Merefa?”
“I could answer that we have to pretend we’ll be here forever, but in fact I just want to be nice to the poor fellow. Leibstandarte shot his last batch.”
The statement sobered Bora’s colleague considerably. The radio went It happens only once / It will not come again… Taking back the canteen Bora handed him, he washed down the seeds with lukewarm water. “Dead chickens, a marksman’s bullet on your windshield: Martin, we’re down to gangster methods. Do you think it’s wise to report to Dr Mayr what information you now have? After all, what I could pick up about him and the Sumskaya SS surgeon is fragmentary, the best I could do.”
“I’ll report at the hospital as soon as it’s practical, and to the devil with the rest. They can’t do worse than take potshots at me.”
“No?”
“Not at this time.”
It will not come again / It’s too grand to be true sang Lilian Harvey. Lattmann turned the radio off. “Hope I don’t have to tell Benedikta they were your famous last words. How did it go with Larisa?”
“She’s a formidable old woman; I wouldn’t be surprised if she had hexed my inconstant father so he’d die.”
20 MAY, 11.49 A.M., MEREFA KOMBINAT
“It’s a joke, right?” Geko Stark spoke sitting back in his chair, hands on its armrests, spectacles across his smooth forehead. “Throwing a party, or is it for a lady friend?”
“I simply need it, Herr Gebietskommissar.”
“A kilo of butter?”
“Yes. I’m willing to give all these ration cards for it, pay in occupation money or Reichsmarks.”
“You’re serious, aren’t you?” Behind Stark, the wall map of the Reichskommissariat Ukraine, conveniently without glass in its frame, showed an update. The addition of the Kharkov region with a dotted line had been coloured in pale orange, and the location of the Kombinat marked with a small paper flag. “Why, it is a woman!” he added with a mock frown. “I took you to be one of those married fellows who keep abstinence in venere while away from home. See, I do know some Latin! What will Standartenführer Schallenberg say?”
“Neither he nor my wife would have anything to say about it.”
“It won’t be easy – it’s an inordinate amount. We have rules.” Stark tapped his fingers on the armrests, pursing his lips. “She must be very special. Not a Russki, either. It’s not allowed to give prized foodstuff to Russkis.”
Bora took the ration cards back.
“Never mind, Herr Gebietskommissar. I’ll see to it some other way.”
“There is no other way in this district. So, she’s Russian to boot. Fascinating. Fascinating.” From the upper floor, where one by one offices were being filled, there came frantic clicking and the ding of carriage bells, a duel between typewriters. “I suppose an exception could be made, since you’re taking the Karabakh off my hands and out of the stew pot.” He took out a sheet of letterhead and uncapped his fountain pen.
Bora’s hopes were up. “She’s older than my mother, if you must know.”
Stark began to write, smirking. “And has ten children to feed?”
“She eats butter by the mouthful.”
A pause in the writing gave way to a loud burst of laughter. Stark wheeled around in his swivel chair, guffawing with his back to the desk and to the annoyed visitor. He had to wipe the nib and start again on a fresh sheet to continue. “You horse fellows are priceless! Next time you hear from Standartenführer Schallenberg, magnify my generosity to him: he has Bormann’s ear. Your ration cards stay here, along with one thousand karbovanets. And no fuel allowance for a month. Turn those ration cards in, as well.”
It was exorbitant, but Bora did as he was told. Thank God I have Bentivegni’s special signed permit for extra fuel.
“Keep in mind you cannot collect a kilo all in one place, Major. My power doesn’t extend from army stores to divisional commands, which is where there’s a small chance you might find that amount. It’s up to you to figure out how.”
After two disappointing stops at the same number of Kharkov army exchanges, Bora tried his luck with the 161st Division quartermaster, where a long negotiation obtained him the butter. Also, having refused to part with his Ray-Ban sunglasses, he had to swap his smart British-made cigarette lighter to obtain half a kilo of refined white sugar.
3 P.M., POMORKI
Since his last visit, pomegranate trees had blossomed in Larisa’s overgrown garden. The scarlet buds were unmistakable against the enamelled greenness of their shiny leaves. Trees and fruit of the dead according to myth, notwithstanding their merry colour. Bora acknowledged Nyusha’s greeting (Another young widow – do I meet anyone but widows in this country?) and gave her the box of food he’d brought, instructing her to take it at once to Larisa Vasilievna. He’d already put out of his mind that he’d paid the German currency equivalent of a labourer’s monthly pay for it in karbovanets.
