The Road to Ithaca

by Ben Pastor

  Bora drained the cup, feeling foolish, but only to a point. It isn’t here that I’ve learnt to keep constantly on the alert: here I’ve perfected the lesson. Is it excessive prudence never to let my diary out of my sight, even placing it inside a waterproof bag when I shower? Staying in Moscow makes you paranoid. Again facing the window, without need of a mirror he deftly looped the silver cord aiguillette over his right shoulder, secured it to the small horn fastener under the shoulder strap, and hooked its end loops to the tunic’s second and third button. Below, Gorky Boulevard was in a suspended state between sleep and stirring to life. His late father had known it as Tverskaya, before the house fronts were moved back to double its width, when stores had rich pediments and wooden signs, and long rows of hansom cabs lined it. Today it was a channel for delivery trucks, early buses, “shared cabs”, people heading for an early work shift. Bora buckled his belt. Moscow would do without him today, and vice versa.

  On the bed, his bag contained no more than was needed for a three-day trip. Glancing at it, it was impossible not to think of his other luggage, ready and waiting in East Prussia. But Bora had learnt during this assignment to bridle these and other thoughts, so he immediately shifted the focus of his attention. He no longer surprised himself at his ability to hide his own thoughts from himself, as if people around him could read his mind. So he kept from thinking “East Prussia”, telling himself “Russia” instead of “East Prussia”, and “diplomatic service” instead of “First Cavalry Division, ready to be deployed”.

  Lavrenti Pavlovich’s note in his pocket felt like something that could spy on him just by being in contact with his body. Bora took it out and contemplated it. Dafni, Mandilaria. Cretan place names? Does the first suggest a wine with the flavour of bay leaf? Dafni means laurel in Greek. They all drink loads, these Russians, from top to bottom. What generals are left over after the Purge swim in alcohol; 35,000 officers push up daisies instead.

  Of all the mundane incumbencies typical of serving in an embassy, a round trip just short of 3,500 miles to fetch wine was nearly mortifying at this time. Manoschek had gone to Germany for a routine visit, but who knew what his true intentions were. He might be carrying documents to be removed in view of the attack against Russia. Between now and then Germans in Moscow would ride to work, buy cheese and champagne on Gorky, attend parties where refusing repeated toasts was out of the question. Bora closed the window. He was aware how, now that Krebs substituted for the ailing General Köstring, the presence of Schulenburg, Krebs and himself justified the Foreign Minister’s mocking definition of the embassy as that nest of Saxons. Not a criticism, but not a compliment, either. Bora would go out of his way not to show disappointment over this errand.

  Minutes before four o’clock he was packed and ready. He set his empty cup and tray outside his door and the overnight bag as well, unlocked. It simplified the business of the Russians looking through it, despite all passes and permits. At airports and railway stations you knew they’d already gone through your things when customs agents magnanimously let you pass without checking. Diplomatic privileges seldom applied to lesser representatives of the Reich, and least of all to their luggage. Even the Ambassador’s suitcases had been stopped once. It had taken outraged telephone calls to disentangle matters and caused a paralysis of all trains until a special convoy delivered the sequestered goods. So Bora travelled light, and readily said what he knew customs officials expected him to say.

  Surveillance he was used to. When he and his brother were growing up, their rooms had no key, because his general-rank stepfather did not allow the boys to lock themselves in.

  Truth be told, Bora secretly contrived to make a skeleton key. He never made use of it: it was enough for him to know he could lock himself in if he wanted to. There were nights when he slept on the floor so that on first inspection his stepfather would think him gone; other nights he simply sat up in bed, thinking. At twelve, thanks to the skeleton key, he’d already laid his hands on most of the forbidden books, kept in a small panelled room next to the library. He didn’t necessarily read them: he was satisfied with having bypassed prohibitions. Still, he rarely lied: asked directly, he’d answer with the truth. To his younger brother, he confided all but those things that might force him to lie as well. I am responsible for my silences and my transgressions, he told himself, and cannot involve Peter in them.

  The story of the skeleton key remained a secret to everyone. Bora even took it with him to Spain, only to lose it during the bloody siege of Belchite. That was in ’38, and ever since he had felt as though he’d lost part of his private world, as if anybody (who, in the immensity of a land torn by civil war?) could, on finding it, gain access to his most secret self. Stepping out of the hotel room, Bora had to admit how the same desire to protect himself and remain ultimately inaccessible had brought him to volunteer for counter-intelligence. Discipline, self-control, firmness – the qualities his superiors praised in him – matched the unlockable door of his childhood. Bora, however, kept an imaginary key on the side: I consider myself free to do what I must. The sole difference was that now he’d do so even at the cost of shamelessly lying.

  In the hallway, the flowery scent from the Caldwells’ room wafted to him. Bora caught sight of a forsaken, small sprig of lilac on the lift floor, a blooming tip of tender pink. He retrieved it before someone had a chance of stepping on it, careful to tuck it out of sight inside his cuff before reaching the ground floor.

  I’ll give it back to her when I see her again.

  He left the key at the desk and picked up the daily papers. The cream-coloured nude statues buttressing the archway – half demigods, half Saint Sebastian – looked down as he crossed the deserted lobby. Outside, barely short of a cold drizzle, suspended particles enveloped him as he left the multi-storey turn-of-the-century leviathan. The cab, a marshrutka limousine usually shared by several passengers but this morning reserved for him exclusively, waited along the roadside. Naturally, so did Max and Moritz, across the pavement in their black ZIS, parked toward Hunters’ Row.

  In two minutes 600 or so metres were covered. The driver – actually a low-rank NKVD operative who called himself Tribuk – turned left at City Hall and followed the back streets to the German Embassy, so he wouldn’t have to turn around to continue to the airport. Being tailed had its rules.

  Rain began to fall. Standing under what protection the balcony above the entrance afforded him, the undersecretary waited in a dark trench coat, with two brass-cornered suitcases at his feet. Bora left the car to greet him, and he drawled a lethargic reply to the military salute. “Morning, Rittmeister.”

  “Good morning, Undersecretary.”

  “What, no greatcoat?”

  “No.”

  “Sort of cold not to wear one.” Manoschek had a gift for stating the obvious. Bora was in fact uncomfortable, but it would be an encumbrance to take along extra clothing for the Mediterranean. He watched the official reach inside his breast pocket. Still bearing the marks of the pillow on his right cheek, he looked as though he could do with some more rest. “Mail flew in for you, Bora.”

  “Thank you.”

  Motionless while the driver busied himself loading the suitcases into the car, Manoschek commented, “It appears you’re friends with the Chancellor of Freiburg University.”

  “Professor Heidegger?” Indifferently, Bora reached for the envelopes. “I’m not friends with him, I took his pre-Socratics summer course back in ’32.”

  “He’s under surveillance, you’re aware.”

  “Has been for the past five years.” Bora turned his eyes to the two men inside the idling ZIS and resolved to show no haste to review the mail. “Why do you think I correspond with him?”

  It wasn’t true. Or it wasn’t true in the sense that Bora’s messages to the philosopher were part of the close observation – the Gestapo took care of that. Their last exchange had been on the scarcely seditious question of “appearance as a privative modificatio
n of phenomenon.” Seeing that Heidegger’s reply had been unsealed, Bora directly put the envelope away, and did the same with the rest of the correspondence from his family, including his brother Peter.

  Manoschek wasn’t usually aggressive. But he’d drunk too much at the reception the night before, and his sternness served as a foil to embarrassment. He had a boyish face with a button nose; only an incipient double chin lent maturity to his profile as he glanced toward the east end of the lane and the incoming car. “All right,” he said then. “My angels are here, we can go.” They climbed into the back of the cab from opposite sides, with Manoschek’s briefcase between them.

  “Care to see the newspapers, Undersecretary?”

  The dailies passed from Bora to Manoschek, who at once unfolded them so it would be clear to the driver that nothing was hidden inside the bundle. As soon as the cab moved, Max and Moritz followed, and so did the newcomers who shadowed the undersecretary. The trio of automobiles regained Gorky and made north for Pushkin Square.

  Manoschek ran his eyes across the paper spread on his knees. Was he reading, or simply avoiding the idle talk one always resorted to in the presence of Russians? That he waited at the embassy, while he roomed at the Moskva Hotel, could only mean he’d stopped by for documents to take along, certainly not Bora’s mail. When a small paper-bound book materialized in his hand – it must have been bothering him in his coat pocket as he sat – Bora succeeded in glimpsing its title before it sank out of sight inside the briefcase.

  The Dead Live! Ah, yes, Manoschek relished occult literature. What else did he read he didn’t want people to know about? Bora contemplated the string of government buildings sliding past in the rain. At the second-hand book stalls on Kuznetsky Bridge Street I bought for 30 kopecks (less than 25 pfennig) a book I never expected to find in Moscow: Joyce’s Ulysses – in the German translation no less, published when it was already banned in its homeland. Has someone from our embassy (it could be Manoschek) disposed of a supposedly obscene, uncomfortable novel with a Jewish protagonist? All I know is that two years ago Wegner, up in Hamburg, beat the Bora Verlag to it (or else Grandfather decided against acquiring it). Whatever, I couldn’t pass it up. It’s been sitting inside my overnight bag in a plain brown jacket, as I don’t care to advertise that I have it and haven’t got time to begin it. But now, as I head for the Aegean, somehow possessing a book about the ultimate Wanderer of Greek myth makes sense.

  Manoschek put away the newspaper. He asked, “Do you know by heart how to make a Beacon cocktail?”

  “I don’t. I know it’s got egg yolk and chartreuse in it.”

  “And brandy?”

  “Maybe. Question is, in what proportions?” To get back at him for the Heidegger quip, Bora observed, “I try to stay away from cocktails, especially these fly-by-night imitations of American drinks.”

  “I’d think you an expert, given your familiarity with foreign wines,” Manoschek sneered, but he wasn’t seeking a fight. Bora ignored him. He met Tribuk’s pale eyes in the rear-view mirror, and chose to wrong-foot him by staring back.

  They reached and crossed Mayakovsky Square. Trees battered by the recent hailstorm stood over carpets of shredded green leaves and branches. It was here that Bora had turned to drive past the forbidden city house of Lavrenti Pavlovich. The habit of hiding his thoughts had become second nature. He was careful not to glance left, where the Lenin Military Political Academy occupied half a city block, but in this capital of ministries and barracks you’d have to shut your eyes to remain uninvolved. From here on, especially once past the Baltic and Byelorussia Station, offices connected to commercial aviation and aeroplane factories followed one another. It would be Leningrad Boulevard by then, leading out of Moscow.

  Shortly before five o’clock they reached Tuschino. The airport, beyond a narrow canal, filled the oblong space in an oxbow of the River Skhodnya. Water fowl, haze rising from the water, seclusion – one could imagine it as the military camp it had been 400 years earlier, in the “Time of Troubles” that bloodied sixteenth-century Russia. Czar Boris Godunov had just died then, the second False Dimitri had allied himself with the Poles and Jesuits. Manoschek was no lover of Russian music; no point in Bora mentioning Mussorgsky’s opera on the subject.

  With Max, Moritz and the two angels stationed outside, the Germans walked into the terminal. Neither of them anticipated obstacles; all details of their respective destinations had been cleared beforehand. Somehow, however, even leaving Russia with the blessing of the authorities could be difficult. Bags were opened and inspected by a uniformed official (brick-red collar tabs, which meant NKVD), who stopped short of frisking them but made an issue out of an unreadable signature on the permits. It meant a round of phone calls understandably complicated by the early hour. Even on Monday, most offices in Moscow would still be closed. Within minutes, Manoschek, who relied on Bora’s knowledge of Russian for his recriminations, was visibly checking his temper to avoid incidents. Only a pink flush in his face revealed his state of mind. As a result, the sleep mark on his cheek stood out like a scar, while on the other side of the counter the Russian stayed stone-faced, with the handset glued to his ear.

  Bora refused to become emotionally involved at this early stage of his errand. He was thinking of the scene in Boris Godunov (his father, the Maestro, had directed Chaliapin in the lead role), when the enraged Czar is told Dimitri threatens Russia from the west: “Let nothing through, not even a soul from the border: not a hare from Poland, not a crow from Krakow!” How fitting, all considered. A silent consideration escaped his mental censorship: Forget hares and crows, there will be German eagles invading soon from Poland.

  Comrade “Tichomirov, Yegory Yosifomich” seemed the hardest to get on the line, being out of town – still at his country dacha, most likely. Manoschek fretted. Bora chose to walk to the window overlooking the runway. When a handsome Lisinov twin-engine came into view, leisurely taxiing as it awaited permission to take off, he inwardly lit up. A welcome sight, for a change: if authorization to leave was ever granted, the socialist version of the DC-3 promised to offer the most comfortable leg of the journey.

  It was 6.30 before the snag was resolved. On cue, the shared taxi and the two ZIS left together, and the NKVD official strode to unlock the door to the tarmac. “Dobrogo puty” was called for, but he kept from wishing the travellers a safe journey, or adding anything to that effect. Whether or not the Germans would agree to separate from their luggage, no one offered to carry it for them. Manoschek stormed out of the building ahead of Bora. “Hell,” he said through his teeth as he swung the brass-cornered suitcases, “having to sweat blood for the privilege of travelling 1,000 miles on Russian wings.”

  Bora caught up with him. “American wings, really, regrettably with a higher range than our best bomber to date.” On this side of a smile, he added, “It beats an eighteen-hour train ride to Warsaw any day.”

  On the rain-wet, silver sheen of the fuselage, elegant cursive letters spelt in red City of Moscow. Overkill though it was, the attendant at the foot of the ladder double-checked the passengers’ papers before letting them on board.

  Once up in the air, through the drizzle the spires of a large reddish church wheeled slowly below; fat green meadows, the houses of Krasnogorsk on the Moskva. A fearless climb followed, bucking and bumping through a layer of low cloud into a blinding sunbeam, only to reach the ragged vapours drifting above. Surely designed as transportation for high officials, the plane’s interior was provided with all manner of comforts, and the two Germans had it all to themselves. Drinks were made available to them – tea, mineral water, Gollansky gin in sealed bottles. Manoschek refused to touch anything; Bora, ever since the night of his errand under orders to follow prophylaxis against malaria, took Atebrin with a glass of water.

  Before long, the undersecretary was deep in his book on the occult. Too deep, maybe, because he eventually dozed off in the comfortable seat with his forefinger stuck as a bookmark between pag
es. On the opposite side of the aisle, Bora went through his correspondence and the newspapers (his hunting ground for useful titbits slipped through censorship). Heidegger had attached to his reply a recent essay on Hölderlin’s Greek poetry, and how “this essence of sea travellers, lonely and feisty” should not be confused “with every seagoing trip”. Der Nordost wehet, read the poem, “The nor’easter blows”. Relevant somehow, punctual somehow, like Joyce’s Ulysses in his bag. In the four and a half hours of flight the two men exchanged no more than a few sentences, which was just as well, since – for all they knew – official aircraft were bugged even as their hotel rooms were.

  Eventually, the immense Pripet Marshes created a broken patchwork of dark greenery and wide pools below; marking Poland’s Soviet-occupied east, water alternately dazzled as it reflected the sun or grew sombre as it became overcast, like a great musky creature whose many eyes blinked open and shut. Bora put away the papers. The view of the marshland quickened his pulse. I may soon be riding through it with my men, he thought. Smiles, diplomacy, slyly tossing alcohol in the flowerpots to avoid overdrinking, careful not to offend our hosts, meanwhile… It’s all in preparation for our real plans.

  Lublin was the first landing field over the border of the German occupation zone, on a plain dotted with round lakes. As the Lisinov drew near, two Luftwaffe fighters assigned to the airport took off to meet it. Bora had crossed the area in ’39; he recognized the winding course of the Bistritza, the city slaughterhouse on the side of the road. In those days the airfield had suffered bomb damage; repairs were proceeding at a feverish pace.