by Paul Grant
A buzzer sounded and the red light above the door to our left illuminated. Seconds later the door opened. A man entered, uniformed, but not important; the women didn’t stand. He shuffled, his boots scratching like broken glass on the moist floor. He put down four sets of clothes in front of us, all rough wool and worn. He picked up our German uniforms, one, two, three, four, and our identities were gone as quickly as they’d arrived. They disappeared out of the closing door, taken by the man with the shuffle.
‘Get dressed.’ The voice of the woman was mechanical and uncaring, as had been the rough search they’d previously administered. We pulled on our unloved grey uniforms at the order. It didn’t take long. The uniforms weren’t up to much; in fact, my trousers wouldn’t stay up without me holding them. The door through which we entered, this time to our right, opened, and we walked as ordered. I followed Schram, whose trousers seemed to fit better than mine, our feet slapping on the bare floor as we went.
We reached some iron steps. Not only were they cold on my feet, but the gridded metal hurt as we climbed. I wondered if they were toughening us up for what was to come. Talking probably wasn’t allowed, but we hadn’t even tried to communicate with each other; not a word, not even a look. I had no doubt the others felt like me, defeated before we’d started, only our defeat seemed to be endless, perennial. It was a collective Germanic defeat which was becoming a personal, intimate defeat; national blame on individual shoulders. My thoughts were rambling, but it gave a clear insight into my bitter, fuddled thinking.
Was it the fourth or fifth level when we stopped climbing? It was the first time I’d seen so many steps in a few years. We passed a number of cell doors, eleven or twelve. As we stopped, my heart was racing after the climb, and I could hear the others breathing heavily behind me. The guard was definitely gulping in air as she opened the door. Judging by her breathing, she didn’t visit the upper floors very often.
The cell door opened, and we were invited in with a sideways shift of her square head. The steel door slammed closed behind us and the locks slid home with a solid, impregnable clunk. This wasn’t to be a place of warm welcomes and introductions. We weren’t alone. There looked to be twelve bunks, less than half of which were occupied. Two men were facing each other at a table below the only small window. They had probably been talking, but they weren’t now; they were staring at the new arrivals.
Schram and Koegel took an empty bunk and quickly settled. Marz slumped against the wall, still broken by the morning’s events. I walked to one of the bottom bunks and sat down.
One of the two men growled something at me, I think it was Polish, but couldn’t be sure. I shrugged my shoulders to signify my lack of comprehension. Only then did he try in German.
‘That’s Andrei’s bunk.’
I looked around the cell. ‘Who’s Andrei?’ I said.
‘Andrei,’ he said, ‘has stepped out for a while.’
The other man grunted at his apparent joke. I kicked my legs up and lay out on the bunk, which protested with creaks and squeaks of rust on rust. My body complained at the beating it had taken at the hands of the NKVD. I glanced around the cell and saw that all the men, except the joker and his friend, were lying on their backs staring at the ceiling or the bunk above. Marz was lifeless, all glassy-eyed in disbelief.
I felt numb. It was impossible to fathom what had happened in the field. Why had Marz been pinpointed by the NKVD? What had triggered the officer to stop him? All sorts of things were churning around in my mind; most of all, what had Marz been up to? Had he been dealing with people he shouldn’t have? We knew he was never shy to trade and was always up to something wherever we had been. Maybe his luck had just run out and we’d been caught up in it all by association.
I knew we had to get ourselves together to deal with whatever we had to deal with. However, at that moment, I could see the fight wasn’t in Marz and it wasn’t in me either. It would have to wait. My body screamed for rest more than my mind screamed for answers and so it was the body that won out, for a while at least.
***
I was awoken when the cell door opened again. I could make out the silhouette of two heavies pulling somebody into the cell and dropping him there. I presumed it was another prisoner, but it could just as easily have been a sack of coal, because it didn’t move. Immediately after the two heavies left the cell, I heard a match strike and a small candle was lit. I could see the face of my joker friend, only he wasn’t laughing now. The harsh cynicism of before had disappeared. Now it was full of pity as he bent down over the sack of coal. He let out a sigh and got to his knees. He whispered something, Polish again. It went on for a good five minutes, all soothing and warm, a bit hypnotic. Eventually, he stopped and crossed himself.
He put the candle down, and with great difficulty began turning the man over. He looked like he was undressing him. I was about to protest, after all, it wasn’t right, but then he stood up and walked towards me. He had something in his hands, besides the candle. He was over me now. I felt vulnerable and was ready to kick out to protect myself when it landed on my chest.
I felt it with my hand, straw-like; a piece of string.
He knelt on the floor near my head. The candle shone on his face. The flame reflected in the tears pricking at the corner of his eyes.
‘That,’ he said, ‘was Andrei.’
***
When I woke up, my arms and legs ached as if weighed down by lead. I moaned in pain as I forced my feet over the side of the bed and onto the cold concrete floor. There wasn’t much activity in the cell. Thankfully, the body had been removed. Marz was curled up on his bunk, motionless. I picked up the string from my bed.
‘For your trousers.’
I looked towards the table.
‘I’m Alfons.’
It was the man who’d said the prayer for Andrei the previous evening. He was a large man, around fifty, sporting a dark beard. He started to talk, and I looked around the cell to see if anybody else was listening or if this was just for my benefit.
‘Andrei was a good man. He was a train guard in the Urals. Some thieves had stolen goods from the train. You know the thieves in Russia if you’ve been in the camps. You don’t argue with them otherwise you pay. Andrei wasn’t taking the can for them and he paid, the hard way.’
The body had lain there the whole night. I’d looked at the contorted face, changing as it got lighter. It wasn’t difficult to see the torture he’d endured; the nails on his hands and toes were missing and, judging by the blood around his mouth, teeth too. I doubt that had killed him though. A streak of blood was the only remaining sign of the pool that had been there previously. Somebody had removed one of Andrei’s testicles.
‘He wouldn’t sign the confession. Whatever you’ve done, or not done in his case, they are only interested in you signing up to their version of events,’ Alfons explained. ‘Why are you here?’
I was wary. I didn’t know this man or why he was here. I shrugged. After all, I didn’t know myself.
‘Not talking, eh? Well, you will soon enough.’
I shot him a hard stare. It was his turn to shrug. ‘Everyone talks in the end. Everyone signs in the end.’
I didn’t rise to it. Even if he’d been kind enough to give me the string, I wasn’t in the mood for talking, especially to a stranger.
During the night, my tiredness had enveloped me and not permitted me to think. It was a good thing. I would only have been thinking the worst kind of thoughts, and that wasn’t conducive to sleep. Now, those thoughts were back, griping at me like the dysentery had. I still couldn’t work out why we were here. Where were the other men that had been pulled out in the field? They’d seen the fight with the guards, we were guilty of that, so why didn't they punish us and have done with it? Why did they want Marz? What had he done? I was restless due to the uncertainty, restless to take the punishment and get back to the others. The problem was I didn’t know if I did or didn’t want the next step. Sometimes it
’s better the devil you know, and there appeared to be a lot of devils around Lubjanka.
‘So, what happens now?’ I asked the question I’d been turning over in my mind.
‘Now?’ Alfons laughed. ‘You wait.’
‘Wait for what?’
He tutted at my naivety. ‘You wait until they call you.’
‘Call us?’
‘Yes, call you,’ said Alfons. ‘Interrogation. Like Andrei.’
CHAPTER 31
AUGUST 1945, MOSCOW
I was first, no doubt singled out due to my rank. Perhaps the thinking was, if they could break the sergeant, the others would follow. Exactly why they were trying to break me, I didn’t know. It had taken a week. A week to sweat over the uncertainty, a week to watch cell mates come and go; some had returned, others not. At seven most evenings, machine gun fire filled the air of the prison grounds. Just before it started and, coincidentally, just after it ended, loud music was played; presumably so nobody out on the street could hear.
The room I was taken to was barely illuminated by a single, low wattage bulb. It hung over the table at which I was seated. Other than that, the room was empty, except for the two female guards. Water was dripping again. The floor was concrete, again sloped to a central point under my feet, where there was a drain. Somebody liked to clean up in the Lubjanka. Recalling the condition in which Andrei was returned to our cell, cleaning up would have been a necessity.
Apparently, it was one of the women guards who was adept at testicle removal. I felt that thought, but not in my head. A buzzer sounded, the door opened, and in strode the bald NKVD officer from our arrest. He didn’t have a long stride. He took off his sidearm and placed it on the table. He took off his jacket. He meant business. He sat down, took out a packet of cigarettes and lit one, exhaling a plume of blue smoke up towards the light. Then his eyes met mine through the smoke and he smiled. It was the same grin as when I was dragged away to the truck; victorious, and a little bit sadistic. I couldn’t help shifting slightly on my seat.
‘Would you like a cigarette, Sergeant Schultz?’
I shook my head.
‘Sergeant Schultz of the Sixth Army,’ he said. ‘You know how many of you are left from Stalingrad now?’
I felt myself grimace. I’d seen many die in the cattle trucks and in the camps.
‘I suppose a good joke would be, “too many”. No?’
He bellowed like he’d said something hilarious. I couldn’t join in.
I wanted to tell him to get to the point. That I didn’t have time for this, but it wasn’t true. I had all the time in the world.
‘You Germans make me smile. You’re far too sentimental. That’s why you will never understand us Russians.’
I shrugged, not sure which way this was going.
‘Take those men getting on the train in that field. They cheered as if they were going home. Fools.’ He was chuckling now, smoke floating from his nostrils.
He looked at my blank expression. ‘They were going to another camp. You don’t think we’d let them go when Russia still has to be rebuilt.’
I felt for my comrades, but figured they were still better off than me. He was still laughing as he reached across to put out his cigarette.
‘You fought well for your country, Schultz. There’s not many with an Iron Cross First and Second Class to their name.’
He waited for a reaction.
‘You’re mentioned by name in citation. You and your unit. Interesting.’
The more he spoke, the more worried I became. How much more did this man know about me. More to the point, why was he so bloody interested?
‘What do you want?’ I said. I was surprised I said it, but it was on my mind so it came out. If I was to die here there was no point in beating about the bush.
‘Not yet, Sergeant Schultz. All in good time.’
His bushel-like eyebrows twitched. It was the only thing close to hair on his head.
‘Your unit entered Russian territory late on 21st June 1941. Correct?’
I shrugged. It seemed such a long time ago. I felt like I’d lived and died as many lives as a cat since then.
‘As part of the Sixth Army, you proceeded through Belorussia in quick time. Your unit distinguished itself at Minsk. My own feeling was it didn’t take much to defeat the disorganised rabble we were back then.’ He went on, every place, every town, like he had been reading our division log. He probably had. I cannot imagine they’d destroyed all the paperwork before our division’s capture.
Of course, he didn’t mention our personal stories, our tribulations. He didn’t mention the partisans from which we’d hidden in the ravine and ambushed at Mstsislaw. We massacred every last man. He didn’t mention the time when Meissner found the hooch, or whatever the hell it was. We were drunk for three days; one of the men lost his sight temporarily.
‘And then, of course, you came to Stalingrad.’
My hand moved, a tremor, no more than that. It was like a nervous twitch, an involuntary reaction to the mention of the name. He noticed. He didn’t miss a bloody trick.
‘Ah, yes, Stalingrad, the mother of all battles. A place you entered in a blaze of glory and high hopes and a place you left ruined, like meek little lambs.’ His eyes were wide now, and I felt like he was reaching his denouement. ‘You see, I am Major Dobrovsky. You’ll not know my name, it’s not important, but I’ve not always been in the NKVD.’ He smiled that smile again. ‘I was also at Stalingrad, Sergeant Schultz.’
Somehow, he didn’t look like a fighter to me. There was something about him that told me he ordered men into battle, but didn’t do the dirty work himself. Clean hands, clean nails like Leutnant Fiebig. It was just a feeling.
‘I was a Commissar attached to the Ninth Guards,’ he said.
I was right about that one, at least, but it didn’t make me feel very good. It was one of those occasions when it’s not nice to be right. It was confirmation I was dealing with a fanatic. I’d already suspected it, mainly due to the mad smile, but now I knew for sure. We knew the Commissars, or at least we knew their handiwork. I knew a sniper from the camps. He told me they loved nothing more than to take out a Commissar. They were bastards to their own, urging them to brave and reckless deeds through bluster and threats. Unfortunately, the snipers hadn’t got to this one.
‘I saw many terrible things in Stalingrad, many things your comrades did there. I always swore, as did every man who’d served there, we’d get our revenge one day.’
I looked him directly in the eye and felt my stare get harder. I’d also seen many terrible things there. They weren’t all perpetrated by us Germans. I remembered the street urchins; the little boys and girls who lived day in, day out among the bombs and bullets. They survived by begging for food. We had a particular favourite, a boy named Georgi. We got to know Georgi. He reminded me of Ulrich. He would’ve been the same age at the time. He used to bring us fresh water and, in return, we used to give him food. It was a dangerous job, scuttling around in the ruins, dodging the bullets. Normally, anything that moved got shot. We kept Georgi alive, looked after him. At least, we did until the day we found him hanged in No Man’s land. He had a board around his neck, “I accepted food from the enemy,” it said. It was no doubt the work of a Commissar. I wondered if it was Major Dobrovsky’s doing.
He took another cigarette from the packet and tapped it on the table. Then he pointed it at me and said, ‘You know what happened one day, Sergeant?’
I shook my head slowly, like I was mesmerised. It was hard to put my finger on it exactly, but something was nagging at me, pulling at my brain. There was a vague memory of something that shouldn’t have happened, but did. I wondered if the realisation had registered on my face.
‘We found two of our infantryman, from my very own division, actually.’ He stopped, and his eyes bored into mine as he said, his voice cracking slightly, ‘They were like family to me.’ It seemed an odd thing to say. I’d never imagined Commissars
to be sentimental. He recovered his composure. ‘They were fine men in their own rights. Distinguished, decorated; well they were after that anyway. You know what we found, don’t you Sergeant Schultz?’
My chin was taut. The tension was unbearable. It felt like he was prising open my head and looking inside. By now, I knew what was coming and, it seemed, he knew I knew.
‘They’d been bound, gagged and shot. Shot in the back, no less.’
He slammed his open hand down on the table. The cigarettes jumped. So did the two guards. I didn’t, because I wasn’t surprised.
‘They were victims of your unit, Sergeant Schultz, victims of one of your men.’
***
I’d been looking at the papers in front of me rather than reading them. Dobrovsky had left them with me to “think about my position.” I’d no idea how long I had been staring at the words, dancing around on the page, preventing my comprehension of the situation. They wouldn’t sink in because I was in denial. The words were clear enough: murder, war crime, the places. The names were a mystery. In fact, we were all the great Unnamed. The unit was named, but not the people. My name wasn’t there, nor Schram’s, nor those of Koegel, Marz, Meissner, Wiebke or Scharner. I wondered why that was. I wondered if it meant the whole unit, maybe even division, could be tried for the crime if the Russians saw fit. It was harsh; after all, only one man pulled the trigger, and it wasn’t me. Ironically, it wasn’t any of the men here in Lubjanka.
I put the papers back on the table. I looked down at my feet and at the drain in between my toes. This felt like a no-win situation. Alfons had said everyone signed in the Lubjanka. Here was my confession, sitting on the table in front of me. The alternative wasn’t innocence and release. You signed, sooner or later, but in the end, you signed. I shook my head. I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I couldn’t resign my comrades to a life in a prison camp like the ones we’d been in for the last three years. If one of us signed, we were all guilty. I looked down at the drain.