by Gary Haynes
‘Well, do you have any idea what this is about, Kazapov?’
‘Not yet, comrade general. It would be most helpful if I was allowed access to the SS colonel. I think I can help in deciphering all of this quickly.’
‘So, you don’t believe what he said to Major Volsky?’
‘With respect, comrade general, the major is used to dealing with military prisoners, and the German, whoever he is and whatever he knows, is not a military type, at least that is not the essence of the man.’
‘That smacks of insubordination, Kazapov, which is a dangerous trait in peacetime and a very dangerous one in wartime.’ He looked quizzical. ‘Where are you from?
‘I was brought up in Stalingrad. My father died there in a Stuka attack. My mother is Georgian.’
‘I see. Georgian, eh. Good. Well, I can’t see the harm in it. You are authorized to investigate such things?’
Kazapov nodded. ‘I am assigned to the ChGK.’
‘Indeed. But it will form part of my report to Commissar Beria.’ The general’s face took on a mischievous expression. ‘He might call for you.’
‘It would be an honour, comrade general.’
Kazapov saw the general look at him as if he was a maniac. He knew that most young NKVD officers did their utmost to keep their distance from the unpredictable and sadistic Beria.
‘But I must warn you that you don’t have much time. Now take the box, open it and speak with the German. Then you will report to me,’ the general said. He waved a meaty finger at the casket. ‘I don’t have to tell you to photograph the contents and document them.’
‘Shall I open it here, comrade general? It’s the reason I came to see you, after all.’
‘Here? Absolutely not. I imagine you’ll find something disgusting in it, and the benefit of being an NKVD general is that I don’t have to see disgusting things any more if I don’t choose to. Nor partake in disgusting acts. Do you understand me, Kazapov?’
Kazapov nodded once. ‘I do, comrade general.’
‘Get to the bottom of all this and you might even get transferred from the ChGK. A hideous business.’
The general’s face looked as he he’d sniffed ammonia.
Kazapov didn’t tell him that he’d volunteered for the role. He walked over to the casket and reached down for it, feeling most pleased with himself. He had the general’s consent to question Richter, which was his purpose. The casket was a sideshow, an excuse to be in his presence, even though he was desperate to examine its contents thoroughly, the film too, of course. He lifted the casket, which wasn’t heavy, and turned towards the oak double doors, with their intricate gold-leaf knobs. There was a knock at the doors.
‘Yes,’ the general said.
An NKVD captain opened the doors and peered in.
‘Fräulein Bayer, comrade general.’
The general smiled, revealing his uneven teeth.
A young woman entered, wearing high heels, sheer stockings and a long coat trimmed with fox fur. She had soft features, blonde hair that curled at the ends and a full mouth, accentuated by crimson lipstick. Kazapov was amazed. Until that moment, the Berlin women he’d seen had looked dishevelled, soot-ridden and ravaged by war. Wizened and ghostly, even.
‘I hope I’m not disturbing you, general,’ the woman said. Her Russian was passable.
‘Not at all, my dear. Lieutenant Kazapov was just leaving. With his box.’
She turned to Kazapov and smiled.
‘You. I saw you in Berlin.’
‘You did?’ Kazapov said, feeling anxious.
‘Yes. You saved an old German woman from being molested. I was driving by in a staff car.’
Kazapov saw the general glance at her.
‘On the way to visit you, my darling,’ she said to the general.
The general smiled weakly.
‘I did what I thought was right, comrade general,’ Kazapov said.
‘No doubt,’ the general said.
‘I saw some drunken men attack a woman in a headscarf, so frail she stooped. I thought it was an affront to the revolution. A disgrace to Stalin and our glorious leaders.’
The orders had come from Moscow that rape was to be frowned upon rather than encouraged. Kazapov thought that Moscow had become concerned about post-war repercussions now their revenge on the German fascists had been all but exacted.
‘Quite so. You acted correctly, young man.’
‘You are sweet,’ Fräulein Bayer said. ‘You remind me of someone I once knew.’
Trying not to stare, Kazapov told himself that even being fucked by the general had to be better than being gang-raped by stinking, drunken conscripts. He doubted she would have survived if it hadn’t been for the old man.
He brought his heels together and nodded to her, catching a whiff of her perfume as he left.
48
Kazapov had returned to his own office, with the brass casket, feeling frustrated for more than one reason. Apart from his unsettling meeting with Fräulein Bayer, he’d also been told that Lutz Richter had been taken to the infirmary with breathing problems. That worried him, but he’d been assured that they weren’t life-threatening complications.
Sitting at his desk, he considered now whether Fräulein Bayer was as charming and complex as a Saint-Saëns piano concerto. He couldn’t decide. She was just a distraction. Wasn’t she? Yes, indeed. Just a beautiful image to compete with the ugly images of war that were in danger of sending him half mad, he knew. It was imperative that he remained lucid and rational. The alternative was to do something spontaneous. But to do something spontaneous in Berlin was to end up dead or in Siberia, where a man might as well be dead. He couldn’t find out what happened to his mother and sisters then.
He sensed that he was close. He couldn’t fathom why exactly, apart from what he now knew about the religious items from Kalmykia in the bunker, and that he’d studied the typed transcripts of Major Volsky’s interrogation of the SS colonel in detail, using his ChGK credentials as a pretext. The reference to Doctor Doll had simply heightened his sense of anticipation, rather than perplex him.
He realized now that an image of Fräulein Bayer wasn’t enough. He wasn’t a rapist. He was young, and he hadn’t had sex for over six months. He’d pulled a young Jew from a cellar in a village, twenty miles south of the city of Stanisławów in western Ukraine.
Over the following three days, he’d taken her statement as he was billeted temporarily in the area. She’d been hiding from the Ordnungspolizei and her fellow Ukrainians in the auxiliary police. She’d offered herself to him. It wasn’t gratitude, she’d said. She’d just wanted to feel the warmth of human skin against hers, after living like a rat for months. She was clever and pretty and courageous and alone. She’d said she’d wait for him. Part of him had wanted to say that he would come back to her. But, how could he?
He realized he wanted Fräulein Bayer for different reasons. She’d made eyes at him, hadn’t she? She was a prostitute, wasn’t she? At least, one with a single customer. He needed to try, at least. The memory of her would be just another torment unless he did. He would have to wait until a projector could be found to view the film. Why waste time speculating? The throb in his breeches had become undeniable.
I must see her again, he thought.
He wanted to forget the war for one night.
*
Kazapov had bribed a Red Army military police sergeant to find out where Fräulein Bayer lived. The man was, he’d said, a former cook in a state-run hotel in Moscow. Now he supplied the willing German prostitutes with the legs of wild rabbits and a few potatoes. The odd duck egg for the women who were prepared to do the things the others wouldn’t. They were living in a converted mansion house on the eastern edge of the defeated city.
Kazapov stood now in front of the house, a three-storey baroque structure, built with natural stone. There were bullet holes in the brown brick around the rose window, which was above the oak-panelled door. The window was board
ed up, as were all the others. There were chunks of lime plaster lying about the uneven pavement, the result of a howitzer shell exploding on the edge of the second floor, he reasoned. But it was essentially cosmetic damage and the building looked habitable enough.
The house was situated in a street that was off-limits to the ranks. A notice had been nailed to the door, stating that the building was under the protection of Stavka, the Soviet High Command. Anyone that entered without specific authorization would be shot. Kazapov knew that this was no hollow threat.
He moved across the street and concealed himself in the remnants of a large townhouse opposite. He crouched down beside a brick wall, smirched by black smoke. He could see the darkening sky through a massive hole in the ceiling and roof. Wasn’t this a spontaneous act? No, reckless, perhaps, but not spontaneous. There was a difference.
The street had been cleared of Germans a week before and now appeared lifeless. Nothing stirred. Not even a rat. It was as if the area had been subjected to a massive deposit of lethal gas. Just then, he heard an approaching vehicle.
Twenty seconds later, he saw a black NKVD staff car travelling slowly up the street, avoiding the craters and larger pieces of broken masonry that still littered it, although it was obvious that an attempt had been made to clear a passageway through the worst of the rubble. It stopped outside the mansion and Fräulein Bayer was helped from the back seat by a fellow NKVD lieutenant, who saluted after she’d stepped onto the pavement. She pulled her fur collar up around her elegant neck. The evening air had a steely quality to it.
Kazapov held his breath.
The car drove off and he watched her open her purse and remove what he guessed was a door key. He emerged from his hiding place and walked across the street. She heard his boots on the rubble, he knew, because she hesitated as she got to the top of the cracked entrance steps but didn’t turn around.
‘Fräulein Bayer,’ he said in German.
She turned. ‘Yes. Who is it?’
‘Lieutenant Kazapov. We met in the general’s office earlier today.’
‘Oh yes,’ she said, smiling. ‘What on earth are you doing here?’
He didn’t reply. He just kept looking at her.
‘You know you shouldn’t be here,’ she said, twisting at the waist and pointing to the notice behind her before turning back. ‘But I’ll tell you a secret. No one ever comes here to check. I suppose the sign is enough of a deterrent. Except for you, that is.’
‘I needed to see you,’ Kazapov said.
She giggled. It wasn’t a nervous reaction, but rather the response of a woman that was used to such comments. He had simply validated the power she had, even in a city where German women were defenceless victims.
‘Needed?’
He nodded. ‘Yes, needed.’
‘Do you drink tea? The tea is worse than average and there is no milk.’
She turned and unlocked the door without waiting for an answer.
There was only one possible answer, after all.
49
The smoke rose sluggishly to the dull-white ceiling. No lights were allowed at this hour, the small room illuminated only by the lazy inhalations on their cigarettes. Her given name was Brigitte. She’d been a minor stage actress prior to the last months of the war, and Kazapov liked her sense of self-deprecation. When she’d taken off her navy-blue and white polka dot dress, that was worn below the knee, she wore a whalebone corset of crimson silk. She left her high heels on as she walked over to him. He’d felt as if he could’ve floated.
‘Do you know why you are lying here with me?’ she said.
He shook his head. ‘No. I don’t’
‘Remember in the general’s office I said that you reminded me of someone?’
‘I remember.’
She sighed. ‘He was called Kurt. He was a Luftwaffe pilot. He was shot down two years ago. He was my first real boyfriend. Do you know why you remind me of him?’
‘How could I?’
‘Because he would have helped that old woman too, despite the danger. And because he was the only boy who had the courage to ask me out. A bit like you. Does that upset you?’
‘Not at all.’
She inhaled deeply and exhaled the smoke audibly.
‘What will happen to us?’ she said.
Stroking her firm breast beneath the single white sheet, Kazapov said, ‘I really don’t know. The world is like a playground for madmen. And yet every cell in my body is heightened by it, as if I’m in a constant state of sexual excitement.’
Brigitte’s body stiffened, and she pushed her head back into the pillow.
‘That scares me, Joseph.’
He felt a deep guilt rise from the pit of his stomach. Why had he said such a thing, after all he had seen? The horror of it. He knew then for perhaps the first time that he was changed. Forever changed.
‘Will you act again?’ he said, wishing to change the subject.
‘Oh, no. After all that has happened, how could anyone waste their life acting? I will simply live a decent life. How could anyone want anything else after so many have suffered and perished? Just the simple things will be enough. Enough fresh food to eat. A walk in the open without wondering if you will be raped or murdered. The simple things.’
They finished their cigarettes, stubbed them out in the heavy glass ashtray between their thighs.
‘The general said you too will be a general one day. That’s if you learn to court your superiors rather than antagonize them. He sees something in you.’
‘The old man is a clown.’
She nodded, her expression wistful. ‘What part of Russia are you from?’ she said, propping herself up on the pillow, such that her breasts were visible.
He told her. He told her about his father’s death in Stalingrad and his mother and sisters too, that he suspected that they’d never left Kalmykia. His deepest fear, he said, and one that dominated his inner dialogue.
He had to tell someone, he thought, although he found it both cathartic and at odds with the reason he believed he was here in her bed.
He began to tell her something of his work, but she asked him to stop. She said she’d seen enough already. He chastised himself silently.
‘Do you have a photograph?’ he said.
‘I was an actress. I have scores of photographs. Would you like one?’
‘Thank you.’
‘But I want something from you too,’ she said. ‘Just to remind me that tenderness existed, even here.’
He nodded. He’d kept a few photographs of his time in the previous occupied territories in his wallet as solemn mementoes.
She reached over to the bedside table and, after he’d gotten out of bed and had gone to his jacket slung over a chair, they made an exchange. He returned to the warmth of the bed, of her silky body.
Her hand hovered above his bandaged shoulder. He could tell that she was resisting asking him about it. This was the nature of war, he thought. In the thick of it, you wanted to be anywhere else. When you were somewhere else, you couldn’t help returning to it in your mind. She asked him then, despite her previous statement, and he told her.
The deep wound he’d sustained by the knife-wielding Waffen-SS panzergrenadier had been exacerbated when he and a platoon of NVKD troops had first entered Berlin. They’d been ambushed by a group of Hitler Youth that had ridden around the smashed city on bicycles, hunting Soviet tanks. Each one had had a couple of panzerfausts, a recoilless metal tube used to launch a high explosive warhead, clipped to their handlebars, like outsized fishing rods. The little bastards.
The NKVD men had unleashed a volley from their small arms after a panzerfaust shell had exploded against a pitched roof, a few feet above Kazapov’s head. He’d been showered by sludge before a sharp edge from a careering piece of shattered guttering had embedded itself into his already slashed shoulder. He’d half-staggered into a ravaged house. The medic had patched him up, sewing the sutures without the benefit of an an
aesthetic. He’d been told that he would be left with an ugly and permanent scar from the end of his right shoulder to the bottom of his neck.
‘Can I see you again?’ he said.
‘You must know that if it wasn’t for the war, we would not be here together. The war makes one do extraordinary things. I’m no whore.’
‘I know that,’ he said, lying. ‘How could anyone presume you a whore?’
‘The general,’ she said, desperately.
‘You are merely saving yourself from death. I do the same. Your weapon is beauty. Mine is the NKVD uniform I wear.’
She snuggled into his chest.
‘Will you see me again?’ he said.
‘This is a dream wrapped in a nightmare and I need to wake up,’ she said.
Kazapov jerked away from her and, lifting his side of the bedsheet, stepped out of the bed again and walked towards the armchair where he’d placed his clothes.
‘I must go,’ he said.
‘If you must.’
‘You will never speak of the things we discussed to anyone.’
‘Of course, not,’ she said,
‘I can rely on you then?’
‘Really, Joseph. How could I have survived all this by repeating the things I overhear?’
Her voice betrayed her rising fear. After her easy dismissal of a relationship, however brief, he savoured it.
50
Back in his office, Kazapov had placed the brass casket onto the centre of his ink-stained desk. He’d cleaned it meticulously with methylated spirits.
He lit one of the strong cigarettes that were already starting to make him cough in the mornings, which he obstinately put down to the war’s ill effect on his health. Inhaling, he put his cigarette on the corner of an amber, art deco ashtray, and rummaged around in the left-hand drawer of the desk before laying his hand on the small magnifying glass he’d placed there when he’d first been assigned the office. He took it out, put it on the desktop.
He unlocked the replacement padlock. Opening the lid, he smelled the remnants of the exotic odours. He lifted out the scrolls and parchments within and placed them on the desk. Beneath them was the metal cylinder.