‘You slept?’ He looked up, one finger still anchored in the paper.
‘No.’
‘You need to translate this for me. That’s your friend, am I right?’
He showed her the photo beside the article. One glance told Bella it was Larissa. The article was in Ukrainian but Bella’s Russian coped well enough. The article was a plea for the city’s Jews to do the bidding of the Military Governor. It repeated the demand to gather at the corner of Menikova and Dokterivskaya streets and suggested the possibility of a train journey. The marshalling yards were ten minutes away. The little ones and the older folk would easily cope. With the weather set fair, and each family making sensible provision – something to eat, plenty to drink – the days to come carried the promise of an extended picnic, with every Jew’s just rewards at journey’s end. Larissa had ended the article by looking forward to joining this expedition. The word she used was exodus.
‘It’s nonsense,’ Schultz grunted. ‘Kalb probably wrote it himself and put her photo at the top. He’s playing with her, just like he played with Yuri last night.’
‘So where is she?’
‘With Kalb. At the SS place. My guess is he’ll feed her into whatever he has planned at a time of his choosing. The SS put a lot of store on timing. Pain, for those bastards, is a science.’
‘What do we do?’
‘We?’
‘You, me… us. Larissa went there to save Yuri’s life. Instead, they killed him. You know what he once said to me? Yuri? He said that religion always had its uses, even for the Germans. They didn’t just kill him, remember. They crucified him.’
Schultz nodded and rubbed his big face. Bella suspected that he, too, hadn’t slept.
‘I talked to the Military Governor’s people this morning,’ he grunted. ‘They’re aware of Krulak.’
‘Meaning?’
‘They know she’s being held.’
‘By the SS? Protective custody?’
‘Both. I made a case for sparing her.’
‘How?’
‘I pointed out how useful she could be. She’s a journalist. She’s well connected. She cares about the welfare of the city, as we should. We’re on top of the mines, at last. A peaceful occupation would suit us all.’
‘And they listened?’
‘Of course. They always listen. But listening’s easy. The SS are a law unto themselves. When it comes to the Jews they insist there’ll be no exceptions. The word they use is purity. Can you believe that? Purity of the mission. Purity of the blood. All those bastards have to do is lift the phone and talk to Berlin. Himmler’s halfway up Hitler’s arse. He has the ear of the right people. At the Military Governor’s, they’re shitting their pants.’
‘So what happens?’
‘They may give us an official release demand. In which case, we have to argue with Kalb.’
‘And if there’s no release demand?’
‘You tell me.’
*
In the late morning, with no word from the Military Governor, Schultz assigned another SD escort to accompany Berndt and Bella to the Viskove Cemetery. He wanted to find out what was happening to the Jews, and whether or not there’d be enough rolling stock on the railway to take them out of the city.
The new escort was a younger man, a favourite of Schultz’s called Andreas. Bella knew from Berndt that he’d been recruited from the Berlin police after a glittering career as a young detective. Now, he slipped into the front seat alongside Berndt. He was nursing a sub-machine gun.
The Viskove Cemetery lay at the heart of one of the city’s biggest parks, and the roads around it were already impassable. After days and nights in a city that had felt abandoned, Bella had never seen such a crush of people. They were of all ages and they were mostly poor. According to Andreas, who’d taken a look for himself earlier, they’d flooded out of the Jewish sections of the city at first light, desperate to get the best places in the queue for the trains, but now – hours later – all sense of order had gone. They were still half a kilometre from the cemetery, on the main road that ran beside the railway lines, their way forward blocked by the sheer mass of people. Thousands, she thought. Probably tens of thousands.
She sat in the back of the big Mercedes, aware of the gauntness of the faces peering in. Many of these families were pulling trollies and carts piled high with possessions, grey bundles tied with string, worn-out cases made from plywood, boxes of carpenters’ tools. Mothers carried children in their arms. Older children wore strings of onions around their necks. One father had an old man folded over his shoulder, like a roll of carpet, and kept patting his thin leg, trying to reassure him. Andreas wound down the window and shouted at two men who were quarrelling over a basket of turnips. Over the stir of the crowd, Bella could hear the clank-clank of a nearby train and every whistle of a steam locomotive turned more heads in the crowd. The sunshine promised in Larissa’s newspaper article had failed to happen. Instead, it was starting to rain again.
Berndt was using the horn now to clear a passage through the teeming crowd, and Bella glimpsed the faces of German soldiers watching the Jews shuffling slowly past. Some of the prettier young girls sparked a wave, or a shouted comment, and the girls waved back. Anything, thought Bella, anything to regain a little dignity, a little hope.
The cemetery was in sight now, grey mausoleums semi-masked by dripping trees. The Germans had flung rolls of barbed wire across the street, leaving a narrow passage between two big obstacles fashioned from iron girders.
‘Anti-tank,’ Andreas shook his head. ‘Are they frightened of these people?’
Not at all. Berndt spotted the logic at once. There were rows of Germans wearing badges on their chests, and Ukrainian police with their black uniforms and grey cuffs, and between them they were funnelling the Jews through the gap between the anti-tank obstacles. The Jews were reluctant to go further. Many of them kept looking back, towards the promise of the railway line, shaking their heads, but the sheer pressure of the crowd forced them on. Bella watched them, already fearing what might lie down the road. Some mistake, they must be thinking. We came here for a picnic. And now look what’s happening.
Berndt was out of the car. A tall Ukrainian in an embroidered shirt appeared to be in charge. Berndt showed him his SD pass and gestured back at the Mercedes. The Ukrainian shook his head, but Berndt kept talking. Finally, with a volley of oaths, the Ukrainian ordered the gap to be widened.
Berndt drove on. Progress was quicker now, the crowd thinner. Some families had stopped by the side of the road to eat, or simply to stare into the distance. Their breath clouded in the cold air and some of them were looking skyward at a tiny circling aircraft, their kids pointing and dancing, and then the Ukrainian police arrived with dogs and whips and beat them until they got up and began to move again. Berndt had stopped. His head was out of the window. He seemed to be listening.
‘It’s the plane,’ Andreas said.
‘No. Listen. It’s shooting. Small arms. Just listen.’
Berndt was right. The Jews had heard it, too, but there was no turning back. Kids, sensing that something had gone wrong, were crying. Mothers and fathers stared at each other, then stumbled on, helpless, bewildered, lost. Bella turned round in the back seat. The road behind them was black with people. How would she ever find Larissa in a crowd like this? And what difference would a piece of paper make? She had no answer but as they got closer to the gunshots, the sheer scale of the nightmare began to overwhelm her. Finding Yuri last night had been bad enough. This was beyond her comprehension. Surely they couldn’t kill them all? Surely there weren’t enough bullets in the world for all these people?
Ahead was a square of flattened grass, covered with what looked like scraps of paper, but as they got closer Bella realised that they were articles of clothing: underwear, men’s boots, jackets, work trousers, even a fur coat. Ukrainian police were everywhere, forcing people to strip naked, women, men, children. Those who protested were clubbe
d to the ground by SS troopers. They ripped their clothes off and then set dogs on them. The Jews struggled to their feet, blood pouring from their wounds, trying to fight the dogs off while the soldiers looked on, jeering and laughing.
A little further on, partly hidden by the press of naked people, more soldiers and dogs had formed a narrow corridor. At one end, a huge sergeant with a whip was calling for the Jews to run. They obeyed blindly, their heads down, babies in their naked arms, mothers reaching for their children, fathers trying to ward off the dogs and the rifle butts, crazed by fear. The Jews stumbled on, some running fast, ducking and weaving, others starting to falter, while the torrent of violence rained down.
Andreas was shocked. Bella could see it in his face. A grassy knoll beyond the scatter of garments afforded a view beyond the corridor of soldiers and the hapless Jews.
‘Up there,’ Bella pointed.
‘Why?’
She didn’t answer. Instead, she got out of the car and began to run. Andreas followed, his gun cradled in his arms. From the top of the rise, the harsh patter of gunfire was suddenly louder. Bella paused, gasping for breath. She was looking into a huge hole in the earth, a quarry of some kind. The sandy banks were steep and a narrow path had been cut on both sides. On the left, as Bella watched, a line of naked Jews, men, women, children, were making their way along the path. Rain had plastered their hair and made the going slippery. They moved slowly, with great caution, some of them reaching out to steady themselves as they teetered over the drop. Already, the quarry was full of bodies. One mother paused and bent to comfort her wailing son. The boy was pointing down at the bodies, then he turned his face away, unable to look any more.
Soldiers were on the other side of the quarry. They had a path of their own and every ten metres or so they’d set up machine guns on tripods. Figures in black sat behind the machine guns and there was also a fire of some sort. Bella could see steam curling from a pot, and one of the soldiers was passing mugs down the line. Halfway along the quarry, the Jews were ordered to stop and face the soldiers. Motionless, they awaited their fate. Then, on a command from an officer, the soldiers drained the last of their tea, and the machine guns began to chatter and the Jews, in twos and threes, tumbled onto the mattress of bodies below. Dazed, Bella attempted to put a number on this slaughter but before she’d got to double figures she knew it was pointless. Already there were hundreds of bodies down there, bleeding, rained on, dead, and there were many thousands more to come.
‘Enough.’ It was Andreas. ‘We go.’
Driving back against the press of the Jews was a nightmare of its own. By now, Bella knew exactly what awaited them. Some, especially the younger ones, still had hope in their eyes. Older men, veterans of the Kyiv shtetls, knew better. For reasons they’d never understand, their time had come. All that remained was the hope that it wouldn’t take long. One man, a rabbi of uncertain age, was intoning a prayer. He had a baby cradled in the crook of his arm. The tiny face was gazing up at him and, as the crowd suddenly surged forward again, the baby kicked its legs in excitement. That was the moment, Bella later realised, when her faith in God – what little remained – guttered and died.
*
Back in the city centre, the museum was surrounded by Wehrmacht trucks. Heavily armed troops were milling around on the pavement and Bella glimpsed Schultz in conversation with an officer. The officer had a map he was trying to protect from the rain and Schultz was pointing something out with his finger. It was the first time Bella had seen Schultz wearing glasses, and they made him look suddenly old.
Still in the car, Bella wanted to know what was going on. Andreas was also watching Schultz.
‘It’s a big operation,’ he said. ‘Schultz has wanted to do it for days and now he’s been given the troops to make it happen.’
Bella wanted to know more but Andreas was already out of the car. He crossed the pavement and picked his way through the mill of soldiers until he was at Schultz’s elbow. Schultz spared him the briefest glance and he must have asked him a question because Andreas nodded, and then drew his forefinger across his throat.
Bella sat back and closed her eyes, oblivious to everything but the patter of the rain on the car roof. She could see the rabbi again, and the gurgling infant. Then, abruptly, they were gone.
24
TUESDAY 30 SEPTEMBER 1941
Moncrieff spent exactly an hour in the weights room, which occupied a corner of the house on the first floor. It was another glorious day, the merest hint of cloud over the rising ground to the south, but the wooden parquet flooring was cold underfoot and it took Moncrieff a minute or two of calisthenics in the throw of the sunshine to warm up. Overnight, he’d devoted far too much time to brooding about the presence he’d sensed in the trees across the valley. By dawn, he was convinced the watcher didn’t exist. A figment of his fevered imagination, he told himself. An aftershock on the heels of last week’s earthquake.
Last night, before turning in, Groenbaum had talked him through a programme of leg exercises. Moncrieff was still in pain from the broken rib, but his legs were undamaged apart from livid bruising and Groenbaum was keen to get him out in the hills as soon as possible. Moncrieff started with a series of thigh thrusts, glad to be left alone, and then spent the rest of the hour on the stationary bicycle. The bike was Groenbaum’s own design, based on an idea stolen from an engineer he’d known in Augsburg, and it pedalled beautifully.
Moncrieff imagined himself back in the Glebe House, setting out on a favourite circuit that took him down to the river, away from the mountains. Fifteen miles later, sweating now, he paused to swallow a mouthful of water before stripping to the waist, tightening the friction nut and tackling the long uphill slog back to the village. By the time the door opened, he was pleasantly exhausted.
It was Geraldine. Mercifully, she was offering apple juice.
‘Matheus says you loathe my tea.’
‘Loathe is a bit strong.’
‘Dislike? Might we settle for that?’ She gave him the juice and perched herself on the nearby weights bench.
‘You’ve been riding again?’ He took a long pull at the apple juice.
‘Yes.’
‘Glorious morning.’
‘Perfect. Thatch loves this time of year. Just a hint of winter first thing. Dew on the grass. We ride west as the sun comes up. I think she’s in love with her own shadow, that mare of mine. Typical woman.’ The way she watched him while she laughed touched a nerve in Moncrieff. Bella, he thought. The same playfulness. The same easy wit.
‘You remind me a little of my late husband,’ she said. ‘Do you mind me saying that?’
‘Not in the least.’ Moncrieff reached for the singlet Groenbaum had provided. ‘This wasn’t his, by any chance?’
‘You’re right. Same build as you. Tall. Fit as a butcher’s dog. You need to put on a little weight, Tam. We’ll see what we can do.’ She smiled. ‘His name was Giles, by the way. Farming stock. Welsh Borders. A lovely man. I was lucky to have him.’
‘I’m sure. You must miss him.’
‘Every day. Mornings are the worst, oddly enough. He was always so buoyant first thing. Quite wore me out but in a nice way. I expect that’s why I go riding. Poor Thatch. She deserves someone more gentle.’
She got up and stretched, hands held high, arching her back. She was wearing a cashmere sweater that smelled of fresh air, and Moncrieff glimpsed a tiny silver fish on the thin chain around her neck.
‘You like it?’ She’d sensed his interest.
‘Very much.’
‘It was a present from Giles. Our fifth wedding anniversary.’
‘You have children?’
‘Sadly not,’ she smiled again, holding his gaze. ‘Though we tried hard enough.’ She collected Moncrieff’s empty glass and made for the door. Then she paused. ‘Matheus is in the Lindau Room, by the way. Once you’ve had a douse, I think he’d like a word.’
‘The Lindau Room?’
&nbs
p; ‘His study, Tam. Nothing in Matheus’s world is simple.’ She fingered the glass for a moment, and then looked up. ‘How was the juice, by the way? Do I hear the word delicious?’
The Lindau Room turned out to be a replica of Groenbaum’s office when he was still practising in Bavaria. Glass medicine jars sat on a shelf behind the big leather-topped desk. An anatomical chart was unrolled on a wooden stand for handy reference. Rows of medical books filled an antique bookcase. Moncrieff was especially drawn to a framed sketch of a soaring church spire, wildly Gothic, meticulously rendered in black ink.
‘The Minster,’ he said. ‘In Ulm.’
‘You know it?’ Groenbaum, behind the desk, seemed surprised. He was wearing a dark blue blazer, hemmed in pink.
‘Very well,’ Moncrieff pulled a face. ‘Seven hundred and sixty-eight steps. I counted them. From the top, on a clear day, they promise you the Alps.’
‘And?’
‘It was misty. I could barely see the bloody river.’
‘Didn’t you take that into account? Before you started climbing?’
‘Of course I did. The point was getting to the top. The view was always secondary.’
‘And is that something you still believe? The effort? The lack of reward?’
Moncrieff laughed. The hour on Groenbaum’s bicycle had made him feel lighter, even cheerful.
‘You did the sketch yourself?’ he asked.
‘I did, yes.’
‘And this?’ Moncrieff’s gesture took in the entire office. ‘Another work of art?’
‘Far from it. I used to sit at this desk in Lindau, dispensing potions. It took me years to realise I was wasting my time.’
‘And you still need reminding?’
‘On the contrary, every time I open that door is a moment of celebration. It might sound perverse, but I enjoy remembering how misguided I was. Sit down, Tam. Every Jew carries his own curse. I never lived in the past, though professionally I nearly died in it. Thank God for patients like you, Tam. But you’ll still need to sit down.’
Kyiv (Spoils of War) Page 25
