A Man Without Breath (Bernie Gunther Mystery 9)

by Philip Kerr

  ‘Is there some reason why every other building has been painted green?’ I asked. ‘Camouflage, perhaps?’

  ‘I think green was the only colour available,’ said Batov. ‘This is Russia. Explanations are usually commonplace. We probably exceeded some sort of five-year plan for paint production, only no one thought to produce more than one colour. Very likely blue paint was made the previous year. Blue is the right colour for a lot of these buildings, by the way. Historically speaking.’

  Inside, the apartment was a series of rooms connected by a long corridor that ran along the wall facing onto the street. Built into this long wall was a series of bookshelves that were full of books. The apartment smelt of furniture polish and fried food and tobacco.

  ‘That’s quite a collection you have there,’ I said.

  Batov shrugged. ‘They serve a double purpose. As well as keeping me busy – I love to read – they help to insulate the corridor against the cold. It’s doubly fortunate that Russians write such thick books. Perhaps that’s why.’

  We went into a cosy little drawing room that was heated with a tall brown ceramic stove that stood in the corner like a petrified tree. While I glanced around the room, Batov pushed some wood in the brass door on the grate and closed it again. I knew his wife was dead, but there were no pictures of her to be seen, and this puzzled me, as there were many marks on the wallpaper where framed pictures had been hanging, as well as many photographs of Batov himself and a girl I presumed was his daughter.

  ‘Your wife,’ I said. ‘Was she killed in the war?’

  ‘No, she died before the war,’ he said, fetching some small glasses, some black bread and some pickles.

  ‘Do you have a picture of her?’

  ‘Somewhere,’ he said, waving a hand at the apartment and its contents. ‘In a box in the bedroom, I think. You’re wondering why I keep her hidden, perhaps? Like an old pair of gloves.’

  ‘I was rather.’

  He sat down and I poured two glasses.

  ‘Here’s to her, anyway,’ I said. ‘What was her name?’

  ‘Jelena. Yes, here’s to her. And to the memory of your own wife.’

  We threw the glasses back and then banged them down on the table. I nodded. ‘Not bad,’ I said. ‘Not bad at all. So that’s chekuschka.’

  ‘Chekuschka is really what we call the size of the bottle, not the stuff that’s in it,’ he said. ‘The vodka is cheap stuff but nowadays that’s all there is.’

  I nodded. ‘Your wife,’ I said. ‘I didn’t mean to pry. Really, it’s none of my business.’

  ‘It’s not because I didn’t love her that I keep her photographs hidden,’ explained Batov, ‘but because in 1937 she was arrested by the NKVD after she had been accused of anti-Soviet agitation and wrecking. It was a difficult time for the country. Many were arrested or simply disappeared. I don’t display her photographs because I’m afraid to do so would be to risk the same thing happening to me. I could hang them up again, of course. After all, it’s not as if the NKVD are likely to come calling while you Germans are here in Smolensk. But somehow I haven’t had the courage. Courage is another thing that’s in short supply in Smolensk these days.’

  ‘What did happen?’ I said. ‘To Jelena, I mean. After she was arrested.’

  ‘She was shot. At that particular time in Soviet history, arrest and a bullet in the back of the head were more or less synonymous. Anyway, that’s what they told me. A letter came in the post, which was thoughtful of them; so many people never learn these things for sure. No, I was lucky that way. She was Ukrainian–Polish, you see. I think I told you before – when you came to the hospital – she was from the Subcarpathian province. As a Pole she was a member of a so-called fifth-column community, and this made the authorities suspicious of her. The charge was nonsense of course. Jelena was an excellent doctor and devoted to all of her patients. But that certainly didn’t stop the authorities from alleging she had secretly poisoned many of her Russian patients. I imagine they tortured her to get her to implicate me, but as you can see I’m still here, so I don’t think she could have told them what they wanted. Now I blame myself for not leaving Russia and going to live with her in Poland. Perhaps she would be alive if we had left. But that’s true of millions, I shouldn’t wonder. Jews especially, but Poles, too. Since the war of nineteen-twenty it’s been almost as difficult to be Polish under the Bolsheviks as it is to be Jewish under the Germans. It’s an old historical scar, but as always these scars run deep. The Russians lost, you see. Soviet forces under Marshal Tukhachevsky were defeated by General Pilsudski outside Warsaw – the so-called miracle on the Vistula. Stalin always blamed Tukhachevsky, and for his part he blamed Stalin. There was no love lost between them, so really it’s amazing that Tukhachevsky lasted as long as he did. But he was arrested in 1937 and he and his wife and two brothers were shot; I believe his three sisters and a daughter were sent to penal camps. So I suppose I and my daughter can count ourselves lucky in that we’re still here to tell the tale. I told you the name of this street is Gudunow Street. It is. But before the war it used to be called Tukhachevsky Street. And just living on a street with this name was a cause for suspicion. Really, you look like you think I’m exaggerating, but I’m not. People were arrested for much less than that.’

  ‘And I thought Hitler was bad.’

  Batov smiled. ‘Hitler is just a minor demon in hell, but Stalin is the devil himself.’

  We tossed another couple of glasses back and ate the bread and pickles – Batov called these little snacks zakuski – and it wasn’t long before we had finished the first bottle, which he then placed beside the leg of the table.

  ‘In Russia an empty on the table is a bad omen,’ he said. ‘And we can’t afford any of those on Tukhachevsky Street. It’s bad enough that I have a fashisty in my apartment. The floor lady will cross herself three times if she sees a Hans in the building and think her building has been cursed. Many at the hospital feel the same way about you germanets. It’s odd but for some Russians there’s really not much difference between you Germans and the Poles. I suppose that might be because there are parts of Poland which used to be German, which became Polish, and now they’re German again.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘East Prussia.’

  ‘To a Russian that’s much too complicated. Better to hate you all. Safer, too. For us.’

  ‘You might say that it’s the Poles who have brought me back here to Smolensk,’ I said. I told Batov about Katyn Wood, and how we were waiting for a thaw to begin so we could start digging.

  Batov brushed up his thick, Stalin-sized moustache with the inside of his hand. He didn’t say anything for a moment but his dark shadowy eyes were full of questions that were mostly for himself, I think. The face was lean and the nose keen-looking, even fastidious, and the bushy-black moustache almost designed to protect his nostrils from some of the less pleasant smells that afflicted any resident of Smolensk; and probably not just the smells: the words and ideas of any governmental tyranny can stink as bad as any backed-up sewer. For a moment he hung his head almost as if he was feeling shame.

  ‘You must understand that in spite of all this I love my country, Herr Gunther,’ he said. ‘Very much. I am in love with Mother Russia. Her music, her literature, her art, the ballet – yes, I love the ballet. My daughter, too. It is still her life. There’s nothing she wishes more than to be a great ballerina like Anna Pavlova and dance The Dying Swan in Paris. But I love the truth more. Yes, even in Russia. And I hate all cruelty.’

  I sensed he was about to tell me something, so I lit two cigarettes, handed him one silently, opened the second bottle and then refilled our glasses.

  ‘When I joined my profession I took an oath to help my fellow man,’ he said. ‘But lately this is more and more difficult. The situation here in Smolensk is terrible. Of course, you know that. You have eyes and you’re not a fool. But it was no less terrible before you Germans arrived here with your new street names and your Aryan supe
riority. Wagner is a great composer, yes; but is he any greater than Tchaikovsky, or Mussorgsky? I think not. Things have been done here in Russia that no civilized country should ever have countenanced doing against another civilized country. Not just by you, but by us, the Russians, too. And one of those things was what was done to the Poles.’

  ‘If I didn’t know you were here, Doctor Batov, I’d say I was talking to myself.’

  ‘Perhaps that’s why I feel able to tell you about this,’ he said. ‘When first we met I sensed you are someone who is trying to be a good man. In spite of the uniform you are wearing. Although it’s odd – I could have sworn it was a different one the last time you were here.’

  ‘It is different,’ I said. ‘But that’s a long story. For another time.’

  ‘I don’t say that you are a good man, Captain Gunther – you are still a captain, yes?’

  I nodded.

  ‘No, you are not a good man. There are none of us can claim to be that, today. I think we must all make compromises to stay alive. When my wife was arrested, the authorities made me sign another piece of paper saying that I recognized the justice of the sentence given to her. I didn’t want to do that, but I did it all the same. I told myself Jelena would have wanted me to sign it, only the truth is that I signed it because if I hadn’t they would have arrested me. Was there any sense in us both being dead? I don’t think so. And yet—’

  He had a smile that was full of brilliantly white teeth, and it returned briefly to his thoughtful, almost preoccupied face, but only as a way of preventing the tears in his eyes from increasing in quantity; he blinked them away and tossed back the drink I had poured for him.

  I looked away out of something like decency and glanced over the books that were piled next to his chair. They all looked like they’d been read, but I wondered if just one of them contained a single truth like the one I guessed he knew as well as I did: that being dead is probably the worst thing that can happen to you – after this nothing matters very much, especially not what other people say about you. As long as you can draw breath you’ve got a chance of turning around whatever nastiness you’ve been involved in; at least that was what I was praying when I prayed at all.

  Batov wiped his moustache with the back of his hand. ‘I haven’t drunk vodka like this in a long time,’ he said. ‘Frankly I haven’t been able to afford it. Even before you Germans turned up, things were very hard. And they’re not about to get easier. For me, at any rate.’

  ‘That’s why we’re drinking, isn’t it? To forget about shit like that. Because life is shit but the alternative is always worse. At least that’s the way it looks to me. I’m in a dark place but the other side of the curtain looks even darker to me. And it frightens me.’

  ‘You sound like a Russian now. It must be the vodka, Captain Gunther. What you say is quite correct, and that’s why any Russian drinks. We pretend to live because dying is much more reality than we can cope with. Which reminds me of a story – about drinking yorsh, as a matter of fact. That stuff is lethal. Even to those who are themselves lethal. Perhaps them most of all, because they have so much more to forget. Let’s see now, yes it would have been May of 1940 when two senior NKVD officers arrived at the state hospital in a Zis driven by a blue-hat NCO. Because of who they were and the power they wield – the power of life and death – I was asked to supervise their medical treatment myself. I say asked, but it would be more accurate to say that the blue-hat NCO put a gun to my head and told me that if they died, he would come back to the hospital and personally blow my brains out. He actually took out a gun and put it to my head, just to make the point. He even made me help to carry the two officers out of the back of the truck, which I will never forget as long as I live. As I dropped the tailgate I thought the two men had been seriously injured, because the floor of the truck was covered in blood. Only the blood was not theirs. And in fact the two NKVD men were not injured at all, but blind drunk. The NCO was pretty drunk himself. They’d all been drinking yorsh for several days and the two officers were suffering from acute alcoholic poisoning. Also on the floor of the truck I saw several leather aprons and a briefcase that fell on the ground as we carried the men out and burst open: it was full of automatic pistols.’

  ‘Do you remember the names of these men?’

  ‘Yes. One was a Major Vasili Mikhailovich Blokhin, and the other was a Lieutenant Rudakov – Arkady Rudakov. But I don’t remember the NCO. And really, who they were is not important, because almost immediately I knew what they were. These people are the worst we have, you know. State-sanctioned psychopaths. Well, everyone in Russia knows this type: unlike most people this kind of NKVD man doesn’t give a damn what he says about anything or anyone. And always he is threatening to shoot you, as if it means nothing to him because he does it so often. I mean this kind of a fellow handles guns like I handle a stethoscope. When he wakes up in the morning he probably reaches for his gun before he scratches his own balls. He shoots someone with less thought than you or I would stamp on an ant.

  ‘If you were to magnify a flea several thousand times you’d have an idea of what these men are like. Ugly and bloated with blood, with thin legs and hairy fat bodies. If you squashed one of them there would be such a great quantity of blood that came bursting out of their bodies that you would see nothing but red. Then there were their uniforms: the blue hats, the double TT shoulder-holsters, and the Orders of the Badge of Honour on their gymnasterka tunics – they would have received those orders from Stalin himself for their service in 1937 and 1938. In other words, one of these men might easily have been the very man who shot my own dear wife.

  ‘For a glorious moment it seemed that fate had placed these men in my hands, and I felt my Hippocratic oath was no longer of importance besides the exciting possibility of meting out some kind of rough justice to one of them – perhaps to both. I mean I actually considered murdering these men. It would have been easy enough for a doctor like me – an injection of potassium to the heart, and no one would have been at all surprised. Indeed the lieutenant regained consciousness long enough to get up off the trolley he was on and fall down again, and when he fell he hit the back of his head on the floor and fractured his skull. I told myself I would be doing the world a favour if I killed them both. It would have been like putting down a couple of dangerous dogs. Instead I ordered fluid replacement, dextrose solutions, thiamine and oxygen and set about trying to restore them to full health.’ He paused and then frowned. ‘Why did I do that? Was it because I am a decent man? Or is morality just a form of cowardice, as Hamlet says? I don’t know the answer to that. I treated them. And I continued treating them as I would have treated any other man. Even now it seems quite perplexing to me.

  ‘Gradually I discovered more about what they had been doing. Not least because, in his delirium, one of them – the major – told me what their duties had been and why they were drunk. They’d been celebrating after carrying out a successful special operation near the station at Gnezdovo. I’m sure I don’t have to tell a German what a “special operation” amounts to. You Germans use this euphemism too, don’t you? When you want to kill thousands of people and pretend that it’s something sanitary. And this merely confirmed a local rumour that had been running for a while: the road to Vitebsk had been closed for several days, and a trainload of men had been seen in a railway siding. At the time I had no idea that these men were Poles, and it was only later I discovered that a whole trainload of Poles had been systematically liquidated.’

  ‘Did he tell you that, too?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, the major told me. The other one – the one who fractured his skull – didn’t recover from his injury. But periodically the major was talkative. Fortunately he never remembered anything he had told me, and naturally I denied that he had said anything while he’d been unconscious. It’s odd but I’ve never told anyone what he told me until now. It’s even odder that I should be telling all this to a German. After all, there’s many a mass grave in
this part of the world that’s full of Jews murdered by the SS. I assume your government now wishes to try to make anti-Soviet propaganda out of this incident.’

  ‘You assume correctly, Doctor Batov. They wish to look on in a little pantomime of horror as they find the bodies of hundreds of Polish officers while carefully sidestepping the burial pits of their own making.’

  ‘Then your Doctor Goebbels has a greater opportunity to shame us than perhaps even he suspects. You can forget there being hundreds of men. There are at least five thousand Polish officers buried in Katyn Wood. And if half of what Major Blokhin told me in his delirium is accurate, then Katyn is just the tip of the iceberg. God knows how many tens of thousands of Poles are buried in locations further afield: Kharkov. Mednoe. Kalinin.’

  ‘For God’s sake why?’ I asked. ‘All because of the defeat in 1920?’

  Batov shrugged. ‘No, not just that, I think. It was probably also because Stalin feared that Poles would behave like the Finns and join the German side. Like I said, for Russians, Poles and Germans are virtually co-terminous. It’s the same reason why as many as sixty thousand Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians were also murdered by the NKVD. Killing them was probably just seen as a simple way of making sure that eventually they didn’t kill us.’

  ‘Stalin’s maths,’ I said. ‘I never did like maths all that much. I’d forgotten how much until I came to Russia.’ I shook my head. ‘Even so, it’s hard to imagine. Even for a German. The things that men are capable of. It beggars belief.’

  ‘Perhaps it’s hard to imagine in Germany. But not in Russia. I’m afraid we Russians are rather more inclined to believe the worst of our government than you Germans are. But then, we’ve had a lot more practice. We’ve had the Bolsheviks and the Cheka since 1917. And before that we had the Tsar and the Cheka. It’s often forgotten what a bloody tyrant Nicholas the second was. Perhaps a million Russians were murdered by him, too. So, you see, we’re used to being murdered by our own government. You’ve only had Hitler and your Gestapo since 1933. Besides, it’s all easy enough to prove, isn’t it? What happened to these Poles. All you have to do is dig up Katyn Wood.’