Kirill visited the place where the estate had been. It was a grim hilly area, where black peat streams flowed down to the sea, powering water mills, while the wind from the sea powered windmills in the opposite direction. Pagan dolmens that recalled stone knives and blood stood in the deep woods, deer drank at the springs, vultures slept in the trees, and foxes taught their young to catch mice in the yellow fields. Every village had an enormous stone barn; they could hold the entire world and still have room for the harvest. The moss-covered houses bore the year of their construction—1905, 1923, 1934 ... The abandoned old cemeteries at the crossroads of country lanes held the dead from the Franco-Prussian war, and the porcelain plates with photographs and gold Gothic inscriptions looked as if they came from family dinner services. Tall hunting blinds were scattered along the edges of the tilled fields and the oak-lined slopes of ravines to shoot deer in the seeded fields or boars digging for acorns.
On a smooth sunny day that rippled the wheat fields, Kirill felt a strange dark shadow in the air; his imagination connected the hunting towers with barbed wire stretched from pole to pole, creating a concentration camp, the concept of it, just as it had appeared in someone’s mind many years ago. He understood the nearness of evil, how it is aroused by a single thought, a leap of the imagination—the important thing was to have the intention already there. This seemed to be a way to show him Dietrich’s grim transformation into a new crusader, because Dietrich never spoke of his past.
He had no close relatives. His nieces and second cousins knew that he had been a chaplain, had been part of the expedition to the East, was captured at Stalingrad, and then returned to Germany and served the Church.
Kirill hoped he would get a detailed autobiographical narrative from Dietrich—he had sketched it out for himself: the 1920s, poverty, Catholic school, authoritarian grandfather, desire to avenge his father, the memory of exile from his family home, Horst Wessel, 1933, Mein Kampf, Lebensraum, occupation of the Rhine Demilitarized Zone; the scratchy newsreel showed the T-1 tanks, wobbling, almost toy-like machines with bulletproofing and matchstick guns, scurrying larvae of the future Panzertruppen; they would turn into General Guderian’s roaring, mobile, biting beetles, which by the end of the war had turned into the T-V and T-VI armored monsters ...
Kirill wrote this draft of Dietrich’s life from an outline of clichés, commonplace images, presupposing that another’s life was like a weathervane blown by the winds of the era; instead, he got a story that was like a thawing block of ice that dissolved into murky water, revealing a new apostle who had headed East.
***
The retirement home was next door to a laundry. Kirill looked through the windows at the washing machines tumbling the gray piles of linens: sheets, pillowcases, blanket covers, towels, and curtains. This concerted movement of dozens of drums made Kirill think not of household maintenance but the desire to whitewash, bleach life, remove its stains, and present it as innocent, white as white could be, remembering nothing.
The nurse met him on the main floor and led him to the room; “Herr Schwerdt, you have a visitor.” Kirill stared at the door, a tall white door with a decorative bronze knob; unremarkable to others, it was the door between two worlds for him.
He entered. The room was extremely white—you could go crazy in such whiteness that eliminated shadows, nuances, an emasculated whiteness, a whiteness that meant the death of all other colors.
At the window, with a view of the garden, fir branches touching the glass, an old man lay in a tall bed. Kirill recognized him from the photographs of Great-Grandfather Arseny and of Vladilen-Mikhail, the only one of Arseny’s sons to reach old age. A scar crossed the right cheek and his gray hair was thinning.
Another Vladilen was looking at him, as if by God’s grace one man was allowed to live two lives: the Nazi priest Dietrich Schwerdt and Communist officer Vladilen Ivanov.
Kirill thought about Stalingrad, where everything was mixed up, where there might be Germans in the cellars and Russians upstairs, or the reverse: a city with walls shot through completely, where enemies could meet—having entered like fleshless beings or spirits, through a ceiling or wall, an apartment where photographs of the owners hang and bomb-damaged dishes are hidden in cabinets—and not shoot, recognizing each other as if in a mirror.
The nurse warned that Herr Schwerdt could not speak for long; his health had deteriorated and he should not be upset. Kirill understood that there were only a few months or weeks left in Dietrich’s long life—he had outlived everyone in his generation on both sides—and that he would get only an hour or so of that remaining time; he would not have time to ask questions but only to hear the sudden confession of a dying man who had decided to talk to him, family and stranger at the same time.
Kirill spoke German poorly, even though he understood it well. His inability to ask questions was a kind of filter that let the past flow in only one direction: from Dietrich to him.
The old man nodded, not wasting time on extended greetings. He spoke calmly, with long pauses, as if enjoying his last conversation, because after that there would be brief chats with doctors, names of ineffective medicines, useless procedures, and then, soon after, words would be said over him.
“A soldier told me. An Austrian from the regimental intelligence,” Dietrich said, as if continuing a long conversation with himself. “They were sent to that bank of the Volga. There’s an island below Stalingrad. They went by boat. Burning spots of oil flowed down the river. Corpses were stuck in the oil, it was thick. They were burning, too. Firebrands. Behind them was a forest where wild apples had ripened. Like paradise. The Austrian said he imagined how many corpses had drowned. The river was full of them to the bottom.
“They were reliable soldiers,” he said softly. “Spies. Butchers. No one survived. The last one, the Austrian, I saw in the camp. He had become an informer for the NKVD. That’s how he described that island ... Truly like paradise. I had stopped believing in paradise.”
The nurse peeked into the room, pointed to her watch. Dietrich looked at her and shook his head; she wagged her finger at him and shut the door.
“That Austrian, yes,” Dietrich said, seeking the vanishing thread. “He came to me for confession. And then to Lieutenant Kibovsky. No,” Dietrich chuckled. “No, of course he went to Lieutenant Kibovsky first and then to me.”
Dietrich pulled out his disfigured arm, missing the hand, from under the covers, as if getting an object needed to explain the story; Kirill guessed at the frostbite and the dullness of the instrument—ax, saw, sapper shovel?—that was used hastily.
“Lieutenant Kibovsky was my God,” Dietrich said with an ironic smile. “He gave me ham. Slices thinner than cigarette paper. Nothing but the aroma. He could have sent me to clear snow in the city. Even with one hand. People did not come back from that. But he didn’t. And I told him all the confessions.” Dietrich laughed again, angrily. “And what was not in the confessions. He was tactful, Kibovsky. Put me in the isolation cell and we talked there. They trusted me, believed in me. I didn’t have faith, but they had faith in me. Kibovsky understood. In 1943 I was transferred to a different camp, in the Urals. There were confessions there, too.” Dietrich paused. “And then a miracle happened. I almost started believing in God again. I was sent home as unfit for labor. In January 1946. The others envied me, said I was lucky.”
Dietrich fell silent. Outside on an old fir, a squirrel took apart last year’s cone.
“I returned to Leipzig,” Dietrich said. “That summer I ran into an old friend. Michael. A minor party functionary. Nazi Party, naturally. He said he’d gotten a job with the Soviet administration in Germany. I wasn’t surprised. He wasn’t a Nazi. Just a clever crook. He used to have a café near our house in the 1930s. Then he got his military orders ... He said he had reopened the café. For his friends. Illegal. He had coffee and cognac. We went up to the second floor. The first room was like a café of sorts. Even with a coffee machine. Some bottles behind the
bar. Two or three tables. Tablecloths. Paper flowers. But Michael led me to the back room. There . There . ” Dietrich grew agitated, his pale face grew flushed, his Adam’s apple stuck out, and Kirill imagined women, an underground bordello, and Dietrich had recognized one of them—a sister, niece, neighbor, his teenage love ...
“And there was Kibovsky,” the old man said, lips unmoving, like a ventriloquist. “Lieutenant Colonel Kibovsky. A cup of coffee on the table in front of him.
“Kibovsky worked in Serov’s group. They were preparing for the elections on October 20. Kibovsky had my signed receipt for my work.” Dietrich laughed out loud, unfettered. “I thought it was back in Stalingrad, with my hand. Rotting in the archives. Paper grew damp very quickly in the camp. We wrote our consent declarations on the back of our staff documents. On the back of our former lives.” Dietrich’s speech slowed, as if he were going back in time. “I often dreamed that rats were gnawing on my hand. They lay like a woodpile by the hospital—arms, legs ...
“And so I began serving God again. Then they passed me over to the Stasi. That was a god no worse than others. Everything was revealed. The Gauck Commission investigating the East German secret police. They have my dossier now. ... You think you’re hearing my confession,” Dietrich concluded harshly. “Let me tell you what I understood. There is no God. But in some room on the second floor, there is always Lieutenant Colonel Kibovsky, reading your personal file. History is Lieutenant Colonel Kibovsky. That is its name. That’s what it looks like.”
Kirill wanted to laugh, but he suddenly felt the horror of the ex-priest’s words, so sure of himself.
The old man flung himself back on the pillows.
Kirill was not allowed to see him the next day; “The patient is feeling worse.” Kirill waited another ten days and then left. He couldn’t get to the funeral; he returned later, when the autumn flowers had withered on the grave. He drank heavily that night, commemorating Dietrich, whose death outlasted all expectations, left him alone with the necessity of starting the book; he drank, moving from bar to bar because he did not want to return to Moscow, Dietrich’s last words echoed in his head; he had no more days left on his visa, he had spent them all on his research in Germany; he drank until the lamps and ceiling spun.
***
Fog. Fog, as if snow had fallen and left its ghostly light in the air.
Where was he going? He had had too much to drink. Thick red wine. Now it felt as if a warm nauseating ball was rolling around inside him. Where was he going?
Houses. Houses flooded in moonlight. Intervals of dark among the reddish streetlights. A car drove next to him. Two men inside. Looking at him for some reason. His face reflected in the window. He ran his fingers through his hair. His fingertips were cold. He shut his eyes. Darkness. A glowing yellow film and scattered lemon-colored sparks.
A voice. A familiar voice. The warm ball has slipped forward—they had stopped. The doors hissed. Icy cold from the street. Steps. Someone was there.
He opened his eyes.
A dead man. Not yet corrupted. His face was powdered, as if he had been laid out in a coffin.
A dead young woman behind him. Red protruding eyes, dried blood in the corner of her mouth, bite marks on her lips.
A priest on the right. His pale hands held a wooden stake. It smelled of church. Incense. A dead pastor of dead men. They were crowded in the electric twilight of the tram, staring at him with lifeless eyes.
The Priest, he was Dietrich, the old pastor who did not believe in God. Who lost his faith in Stalingrad. But Dietrich was dead. Yes, that was right. Dietrich was dead.
The unholy horde came closer. He recognized the creatures of the abyss; they were a phantasmagorical, demonic reflection of his memory.
Glowing, phosphorescent flasks draped the master of poisons, Balthasar, wizard, murderer; the vicious killer physician in a white coat spattered with blood was Arseny; the thin drowned mermaids with wet wreaths of waterweeds were the Leningrad sisters; the rich fat man in a tuxedo and lemon-yellow face was Gustav; the wounded soldiers leaning on crutches and riddled with bullets were the brothers Gleb and Boris; the sailor with an eye hanging by a thread was Andreas, the Marinated Midshipman; the priest Dietrich was at the head of this gang and next to him stood a broad-shouldered executioner with a poleaxe and a severed head under his arm.
The head opened its eyes, blinked, trying to wake up, find its body.
That’s my head, he realized. That’s my head.
A cold hand touched his face, scratched it.
He screamed and hurried away, falling from the seat onto his back, pushing with his feet, sliding on his rear along the filthy floor.
There were explosions outside the window, and the colored lights of firecrackers flew up into the sky. The tram slowed down, and the same familiar voice said, “Next stop: S- und U-Bahnhof Alexanderplatz.”
A crowd made noise outside; the tram stopped, and the zombie girl held out her hand: get up. The company of costumed dead laughed the way drunken people laugh: hiccupping, oblivious. The executioner lifted up the fake head and showed how the machinery worked: he moved his fingers and the dead eyes blinked again.
It was Halloween.
Slightly more sober, he approached the World Clock.
It was eleven at night in Berlin. Tomorrow was the last day of his visa and he was flying back in the morning.
It was midnight in Moscow.
Kirill imagined the sound of his grandfather’s clock striking in the Moscow apartment; he saw the horn in the bronze hunter’s left hand going up, and the dead goose in his right going down.
Suddenly, as if the poles had connected, the continents joined up—the hunter in Konstantin’s clock reminded Kirill of the nocturnal guest’s half-forgotten name, the KGB general who was his grandfather’s patron. He should have recalled it sooner, while talking with Dietrich, but he had not because Dietrich’s fate existed in his mind only on the German side of world, completely separate, coming into contact only once with the fate of Vladilen-Mikhail; no matter how he had tried to place the Schwerdt history onto a single field, it turned out that the old borders of language and enmity were stronger. But as soon as the name floated up, it appeared as the final, unbelievable completion of the plot, combining the ends and the beginnings like an omen on his road to Moscow.
Kirill breathed out, expelling the syllables as if they were poison: Kibovsky.
In the distance, he saw the blinking red lights of a plane flying out of Tegel Airport.
A new day had begun in Moscow, awaiting Kirill. That day had a face—the face of the bronze hunter. Kirill took out his passport and looked at it with dumb hope, even though he knew: his visa expired today.
Sergei Lebedev was born in Moscow in 1981 and worked for seven years on geological expeditions in northern Russia and Central Asia. Lebedev is a novelist, essayist, and journalist. Oblivion, his first novel, has been translated into many languages and was named one of the ten best novels of 2016 by The Wall Street Journal. Lebedev’s second novel, The Year of the Comet, has also received considerable acclaim.
Antonina W. Bouis is one of the leading translators of Russian literature working today. She has translated over 80 works from authors such as Evgeny Yevtushenko, Mikhail Bulgakov, Andrei Sakharov, Sergei Dovlatov and Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. Bouis, previously executive director of the Soros Foundation in the former USSR, lives in New York City.
OBLIVION
BY SERGEI LEBEDEV
In one of the first 21st century Russian novels to probe the legacy of the Soviet prison camp system, a young man travels to the vast wastelands of the Far North to uncover the truth about a shadowy neighbor who saved his life, and whom he knows only as Grandfather II. Emerging from today’s Russia, where the ills of the past are being forcefully erased from public memory, this masterful novel represents an epic literary attempt to rescue history from the brink of oblivion.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/oblivion/
&
nbsp; THE YEAR OF THE COMET
BY SERGEI LEBEDEV
A story of a Russian boyhood and coming of age as the Soviet Union is on the brink of collapse. Lebedev depicts a vast empire coming apart at the seams, transforming a very public moment into something tender and personal, and writes with stunning beauty and shattering insight about childhood and the growing consciousness of a boy in the world.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/year-of-the-comet/
WHAT’S LEFT OF THE NIGHT
BY ERSI SOTIROPOULOS
Constantine Cavafy arrives in Paris in 1897 on a trip that will deeply shape his future and push him toward his poetic inclination. With this lyrical novel, tinged with an hallucinatory eroticism that unfolds over three unforgettable days, celebrated Greek author Ersi Sotiropoulos depicts Cavafy in the midst of a journey of self-discovery across a continent on the brink of massive change. A stunning portrait of a budding author—before he became C.P. Cavafy, one of the 20th century’s greatest poets—that illuminates the complex relationship of art, life, and the erotic desires that trigger creativity.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/whats-left-night/
A VERY RUSSIAN CHRISTMAS
This is Russian Christmas celebrated in supreme pleasure and pain by the greatest of writers, from Dostoevsky and Tolstoy to Chekhov and Teffi. The dozen stories in this collection will satisfy every reader, and with their wit, humor, and tenderness, packed full of sentimental songs, footmen, whirling winds, solitary nights, snow drifts, and hopeful children, the collection proves that Nobody Does Christmas Like the Russians.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/a-very-russian-christmas/
A VERY FRENCH CHRISTMAS
A continuation of the very popular Very Christmas Series, this collection brings together the best French Christmas stories of all time in an elegant and vibrant collection featuring classics by Guy de Maupassant and Alphonse Daudet, plus stories by the esteemed twentieth century author Irène Némirovsky and contemporary writers Dominique Fabre and Jean-Philippe Blondel. With a holiday spirit conveyed through sparkling Paris streets, opulent feasts, wandering orphans, flickering desire, and more than a little wine, this collection proves that the French have mastered Christmas.
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