“That bastard!” Anna muttered.
“Your husband certainly believes it. When he was shown this evidence, he was appalled. But as a German officer, there was only one course he could take.”
“And who showed him this so-called evidence, Herr Major?”
“I am afraid it was my distasteful duty to have to do so, Frau von Holzbach.”
“Your duty!” Anna sneered. “So, now I am to be divorced. Just like that. Me! Do you think I can be discarded like a worn-out glove? I am a Russian countess. I am the daughter of a prince. I will deny these charges, Herr Major. I will denounce Franz as a liar and a Peeping Tom. And in the first place, I shall return to Brest-Litovsk and confront my husband.”
“That will not be possible, Frau von Holzbach.”
“I cannot visit my husband, if I wish?”
“Brest-Litovsk is a war zone, and can only be entered with a permit. You have no permit, nor will you be granted one.”
“Well!” Anna bridled. “You persist in assuming that you can treat me like dirt, Herr Major. But as I have reminded you, I am not dirt. I shall take my case to the Fuehrer.”
Buelow gave a gentle cough. “Have you seen the Fuehrer recently, Frau von Holzbach?”
“Well...no. He is a very busy man. I understand this. What with Stalingrad, and the Americans landing in North Africa, I understand how busy he is. But he will always help me. He has said so.”
“I do not think the Fuehrer intends to receive you again, Frau von Holzbach. With your permission, I shall speak bluntly. Apart from your...peccadilloes,” Buelow went on, “I have been forced to present other information to Reichsfuehrer Himmler. These regard your racial origins.”
Anna gasped. But she was a fighter. “I am the daughter of Prince Alexei Bolugayevski of Bolugayen.”
“Your mother was Sonia Cohen. Not only was this lady a Jew, but she was a well-known Communist, the mistress of Leon Trotsky, no less. She has also recently returned to Moscow, with the agreement and indeed one might say at the invitation of the Stalinist regime. Thus she is obviously still a Communist, and therefore by definition an enemy of the Reich.”
“And she has denounced me?” Anna was aghast.
“I do not think she even knows that you are alive,” Buelow said.
“Then how...?”
“It is our duty to know all there is to know about people,” Buelow explained. “That we have not interfered before is because it was General Heydrich’s decision not to do so, and thus interfere with Colonel von Holzbach’s career. But now that General Heydrich is dead, I have felt obliged to turn over the files to Reichsfuehrer Himmler. The Reichsfuehrer is appalled. But, like General Heydrich, he is concerned with the effects on morale, and indeed, society, were this lamentable business to be made public. Thus I am empowered to make this offer to you, Frau von Holzbach. Accept the divorce and the settlement your husband is offering you. Do not contest it in any way. And then, live very quietly, and nothing more will be heard of the affair.”
Her mother, Anna recalled, had been faced with such a situation, and such an ultimatum, by her father. Mother had acquiesced. But Mother had acquiesced in so many shameful things. Anna’s chin came up. “And if I defy you?”
“Then you will be sent to a concentration camp.”
“You would not dare! Do you not suppose I will tell the world of it?”
“The world, Frau von Holzbach, does not believe much of what comes out of our concentration camps. Half of the world does not even believe they exist. I hope you will be sensible. Now I must bid you good day.” He saluted and left. The papers remained on the table where he had placed them. Anna stared at them for some seconds, then she picked them up, threw them to the floor and stamped on them.
“I do not think you will have any further trouble from the lady, Herr Colonel,” Buelow said. “I have frightened her very badly, and she must now accept her lot. If she does not, well then, her lot could be a good deal worse.”
“You said she would not be harmed,” Alexander snapped. “She has not been harmed, Herr Colonel. Nor will she be harmed, as long as she behaves herself.”
“You’ll take a glass of schnapps?”
“Thank you, Herr Colonel, that would be very nice.” Buelow watched Alexander himself go to the sideboard and pour, although there was a secretary in the room, seated primly, knees crossed, in a chair in the corner. Her name, he gathered, was Jutta. And she was obviously a good deal more than a secretary. He assumed this not only because she looked at Holzbach from behind her horn-rimmed glasses with total possession, or because she had not been told to fetch the drinks and was accepting one from her boss as if entitled to it, but also because of her bulging white shirt front, on which her tie lay like a ski jump, and her contrastingly slim hips and slender legs, accentuated by the black skirt and stockings; any man separated from his wife who employed such a woman and did not take her to bed would need his head examined, or some other portion of his anatomy. She was not terribly pretty, her features being somewhat blunt, and the glasses were off-putting, but one could always take the glasses off, and then release the crisp yellow hair from its tightly restraining bun.
“When will the divorce be final?” Alexander asked.
“It is final now, if you wish it, Herr Colonel.” There was a faint stirring from the settee. But Buelow did not suppose Holzbach was such a fool as to marry this girl. “There was a less personal matter the Reichsfuehrer wished me to discuss with you, Herr Colonel. You have heard the news?”
“It is not very good, is it,” Alexander said. He did not really wish to think about the war situation right now. He wanted to sit down and think about Anna, about all those years, about the guilt which gnawed at his mind, day and night. The fear, too. “You are quite sure my wife will not be harmed in any way?”
“You no longer have a wife, Herr Colonel. But I have said that she will not be harmed, as long as she behaves herself. The news I was talking about is this Russian claim that the so-called Group One has been reconstituted, and is again led by the woman known as the Red Maiden, Tatiana Gosykinya.”
“Pure propaganda!”
“You reported that this Gosykinya was dead.”
“Because she was. Is. I liquidated that entire group.”
“You are saying that the Russians are lying about this?”
“I am saying that it is pure propaganda.”
“There have been no incidents in this vicinity?”
“There have been incidents, Herr Major, as you well know. But they have been isolated and of very little importance. I shoot ten hostages when one of my men is murdered.”
“At that rate you will soon run out of hostages,” Buelow suggested, slyly.
“I cannot be held responsible for individual acts of madness by these sub-humans,” Alexander protested. “If, as you suggest, Herr Major, I run out of hostages, then I shall also have run out of would-be partisans. They are one and the same, at various times. Now I have a question for you to put to the Reichsfuehrer: why am I still stuck in this hole? I am a fighting soldier with a distinguished record. It seems to me, with what has happened at Stalingrad, that the Reich needs every fighting soldier it has to be at the front, fighting the Russian army, not shooting or hanging girls and boys out for a dare.”
Buelow nodded. “I will report your request for a transfer, Herr Colonel. As to whether it will be successful...there was the matter of publicly exposing the body of this Red Maiden...”
“What am I supposed to do? Produce a bag of mouldering bones?”
“That would be better than nothing,” Buelow agreed.
*
Elaine and Christina stood on the edge of the new encampment — created much farther into the swamp than the original camp, and thus more difficult of access by either friend or foe — and watched the partisans streaming through the trees. She and Christina were the only two left in the camp. Christina was regarded as too old, too weakly feminine, to take part in any raid. The
re were over a hundred of them now, men and women — or there had been more than a hundred when they had set off. Elaine found she was counting, at the same time as holding her breath. But there were at least a hundred people coming towards her. “Gregory!” She ran forward.
Gregory was starting to grow a beard now, although he too was not yet 20. He carried his weapons like the most experienced brigand. He grinned at her. “He’s back there. He’s all right.”
“Was it successful?”
“Successful? We blew two bridges, destroyed a quarter of a mile of track.”
She hugged him, looked past him, at Alex. He was clearly exhausted, but was walking quite freely. Elaine released Gregory, and ran to him. “A success!”
“Tremendous.” He hugged and kissed her. He was on a high. They all were. “But we have work to do. There are wounded.”
Several were being carried on litters. Long forgotten were the original, unacceptable requirements. Elaine led the way back into the camp, unrolled her bag, prepared her instruments. She was almost out of anaesthetic, and very short on antiseptic. But she was used to that now, to conditions she would unhesitatingly have rejected in Boston, or even in Moscow. “You should rest,” she told Alex, and he knelt beside her.
“There are a good dozen,” he said.
“She can manage,” Tatiana said. “And she is right, your hand is not steady enough while you are this tired.”
Elaine looked up. Tatiana certainly looked tired. But her face wore the savage delight of success. For her, life was the war and the blood of life was the killing of Germans. She had not ever, so far as Elaine knew, considered an end to this unearthly existence. “I believe I am to congratulate you, Comrade Commissar,” she said.
“Congratulate me when this war is won, Comrade Doctor. Attend to this wound first.”
Elaine gulped as Olga was laid on the ground before her. They had tended to avoid each other since that day by the pool of freezing water. Now Olga’s face was twisting with pain, and her trousers were soaked in blood. “How bad is it?” Elaine asked.
“We are waiting for you to tell us,” Tatiana pointed out. The partisans crowded round to watch as Elaine released Olga’s belt and pulled down her trousers. Along with her anaesthetics and antiseptics, she had long abandoned any hope of privacy, for either herself or her patient; the partisans were fascinated by her work, partly sensually, partly ghoulishly, and partly because they knew that the next time it might be themselves lying there.
“Have you nothing to give her?” Tatiana asked.
“What I give her depends on what I have to do to her,” Elaine said.
“Well, vodka, at any rate.” Tatiana snapped her fingers, and Shatrav held the flask to Olga’s lips; she gulped noisily.
Elaine removed the undergarments, and then the rough bandage which had helped to stem the bleeding, now she sighed with relief; the bullet had lodged in the fleshy part of the left thigh, but had not severed the artery. “Hold her,” she said.
Willing hands grasped Olga’s arms and legs; Tatiana herself held her thighs, her shoulder brushing Elaine’s as the bullet was extracted. Olga screamed and attempted to writhe, but was helpless. Then she screamed again as Elaine poured raw antiseptic into the wound, then slowly subsided as Elaine re-bandaged the wound and pulled her clothes into place. “Will she live?” Tatiana asked.
“Hopefully. But she must rest for several days. She has lost a lot of blood.”
“We must all rest for several days,” Tatiana said. “Now these.”
There was one other woman and eight men needing attention. Two of the men were seriously wounded. Elaine worked slowly and carefully, wondering what someone like Dr Haggard would say if he could watch her moving from patient to patient with blood-stained, unwashed hands? In fact, she wondered where Dr Haggard actually was, now? “I would like a drink of vodka,” she said, when the task was completed.
“And you shall have one,” Tatiana promised. “You are a very good surgeon, Comrade Doctor. When you have finished your work.”
“You mean there’s more?”
“A simple job.” Tatiana waved her arm, and a man wearing a German uniform was forced forward by the eager partisans. He was a young man; Elaine would have said he was not out of his teens. His hair was yellow, his face not unhandsome but rendered ugly because of his fear. But as far as she could see at a glance, he was unhurt.
“What is the matter with him?” she asked.
“Nothing. We brought him back here to amuse ourselves. To amuse yourself, Comrade Doctor. Prepare him,” Tatiana commanded.
The boy screamed in terror as he was thrown to the ground and his trousers and drawers pulled down to his knees. “Is he not well endowed?” Tatiana asked. “Now you can cut it, and them, off. Do not worry with anaesthetic. We wish to hear him scream.”
Elaine drew a sharp breath. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m here to heal, not kill.”
Tatiana smiled. “He will not die from being castrated. He will die afterwards when we hang him. Now do it.” She drew her revolver and presented the muzzle to Elaine’s temple. “Do it or die. Then I will do it for you.”
Chapter 13 – The Prisoner
Elaine knelt in the shallow water and washed her hands again and again. There was movement all around her, but she was not aware of it. At least the dreadful screaming had stopped; the mutilated body was dangling from a tree. But the screaming would never stop for her. It would ring in her ears for the rest of her life, over and over again. Just as her hands would never be clean, no matter how often she washed them. Amazingly, she had not vomited. It was as if her guts were composed of cast iron.
What would she tell her grandchildren? “What did you do in the war, Grandma?”
“Not a lot. But I cut off a man’s balls while he screamed and begged.”
The only solution was not to have any grandchildren.
“Did you enjoy it?” Elaine half turned her head, then looked into the water again. It was not very clear water, but she could make out the form of the woman standing behind her. “You are too civilised,” Tatiana said. “But I suppose that goes for all Americans. I would like to visit America, after the war.”
“You’d find it kind of dull,” Elaine muttered.
Tatiana smiled and knelt beside her. “I would never find it dull. I would visit you. Would you not have lots to show me, as I have had lots to show you, here in the swamp? And then, we would have so much to remember. Do you not suppose we might have a great deal more to remember?”
Elaine continued to stare at the water, and then felt Tatiana’s fingers on her arm. She did not turn her head. “You may be the commissar, Tatiana, but so help me God, if you lay another finger on me I am going to kill you. Remember, you’ve taught me how to do it.”
The fingers fell away and Tatiana stood up. “You are a silly woman,” she remarked. “I feel very sorry for you.”
That night Elaine slept alone; Alex had been summoned to the sleeping bag of the Commissar.
Alex panted and gasped his way to orgasm; but so did the woman. Woman! Tatiana was not yet 20, and he was all but 30. But when it came to sex, he was a child in her arms. Or, he reckoned, any other aspect of life — or death. Most importantly, death.
It was tempting to suppose that the awful events of the past two years had made her so. That she had been a sweet virgin of 18 when she had been so brutally raped by the Germans, seen her friends destroyed, and been forced to kill, herself, in order to survive. That in the process of surviving, and of being made into a national heroine by the Soviet propaganda machine, she had lost all humanity, in its higher sense, and had become nothing more than an animal, however intelligent, however ruthless, however feminine. Now she would suck him into that nether world she ruled so successfully. And there was no way he could resist her. She was his commanding officer. She was the queen, the goddess of the swamp, and of their lives. But there was no way he wanted to resist her. If he was captured by the Germans tomorr
ow, and a noose hung round his neck, he would face them with contempt, because he would think, What can you know of life and death, of love and desire, when you have never been held in Tatiana Gosykinya’s arms?
But where did that leave Elaine? Poor, helpless Elaine, who had willingly followed him — or had she not led him? — into this twilight existence, and was now as helpless as himself. His year in the swamp beside her, his understanding of her enormous depths of courage and resilience, and above all, his appreciation of the way in which she had kept herself aloof from the bestiality that had slowly overtaken all of them, had made him understand her true value. She might never have been a princess, but she was in every way worthy of being the wife of a prince. His wife. If they survived. And if she still wanted him!
So what do I do? Elaine wondered. I am sunk in the deepest pit of hell, with no way out. The next day Alex had tried to explain. “I should never have allowed you to come here,” he said, seeking her out and leading her away from the group for some privacy.
“Did you know what it would be like?” she said.
“I had an idea. You know, I don’t believe any human being is too far removed from the caveman. After all, it’s only been a few hundred generations, and when you think how little physical change mankind has undergone in those generations, it’s absurd to suppose he would have undergone a bigger mental change. So he’s accumulated a lot of knowledge which he doesn’t really know how to use, and he’s developed a lot of fine ideas, which he can only really accept in the abstract. And inside he’s still a caveman. Wars bring that out.”
“Quite the philosopher!” Elaine said. “Was she good?”
“Do you really want me to answer that?”
“Yes,” she said fiercely.
“She was...uninhibited. And hungry.”
“I would say that sums her up. So, I guess...” she gave a little shrug.
“Because I was summoned to the bed of our queen? Because she is that, you know, Elaine. That can’t make any difference to us.”
“You reckon? You could’ve said no.”
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