‘I don’t know, I – yes, I do know. I’m not cold.’ She shivered again. ‘It’s – it’s you. You’re too inhuman. I’m afraid of people who are inhuman.’
‘Afraid of me?’ Reynolds sounded incredulous and felt that way. ‘My dear child, I wouldn’t harm a hair of your head.’
‘Don’t you “child” me!’ A sudden flash of spirit, then a quiet, small voice, ‘I know you wouldn’t.’
‘Then what the devil am I supposed to have done?’
‘Nothing. That’s the whole point. It’s not what you do, it’s what you don’t do, it’s what you don’t show. You show no feelings, no emotions, no interest or concern in anything. Oh, yes, you’re interested enough in the job to be done, but the method, the how of it is a matter of absolute indifference, just as long as the job is done.
‘The Count says you’re only a machine, a mechanism designed to carry out a certain piece of work, but without any life or existence as an individual. He says you’re about the only person he knows who cannot be afraid, and he is afraid of people who cannot be afraid. Imagine! The Count afraid!’
‘Imagine,’ Reynolds murmured politely.
‘Jansci says the same. He says you’re neither moral nor immoral, just amoral, with certain conditioned pro-British, anti-Communist reactions that are valueless in themselves. He says whether you kill or not is decided not on a basis of wrong or right but simply of expediency. He says that you are the same as hundreds of young men he has met in the NKVD, the Waffen SS and other such organizations, men who obey blindly and kill blindly without ever asking themselves whether it is right or wrong. The only difference, my father says, is that you would never kill wantonly. But that is the only difference.’
‘I make friends wherever I go,’ Reynolds murmured.
‘There! You see what I mean? One cannot touch you. And now tonight. You bundle a man into a hotel cupboard, bound and gagged, and let him suffocate – he probably did. You hit another and leave him to freeze to death in the snow – he won’t last twenty minutes in this. You –’
‘I could have shot the first man,’ Reynolds said quietly. ‘I have a silencer, you know. And do you think that lad with the blackjack wouldn’t have left me to freeze to death if he’d got in first?’
‘You’re just quibbling … And, worst of all, that poor old man. You don’t care what you do as long as he goes back to Britain, do you? He thinks his wife is dying, and yet you’d torture him till he must be almost insane with worry and grief. You encourage him to believe, you make him believe that if she goes he’ll be her murderer. Why, Mr Reynolds, why?’
‘You know why. Because I’m a nasty, amoral, emotionless machine of a Chicago gangster just doing what I’m told. You just said so, didn’t you?’
‘I’m just wasting my breath, am I not, Mr Reynolds?’ The tone was flat and dull.
‘By no means.’ Reynolds grinned in the darkness. ‘I could listen all night to your voice, and I’m sure you wouldn’t preach so earnestly unless you thought there was some hope of conversion.’
‘You’re laughing at me, aren’t you?’
‘A nasty, superior sort of smirk,’ Reynolds admitted. Suddenly he caught her hand and lowered his voice. ‘Keep quiet – and keep still!’
‘What –’ Only the one word had escaped before Reynolds clamped a hand tightly over her mouth. She started to struggle, then relaxed almost immediately. She, too, had heard it – the crunch of footsteps in the snow. They sat without moving, hardly daring to breathe while three policemen walked slowly past them, past the abandoned café terraces farther on and disappeared along a winding path beneath the bare, snow-laden beeches, planes and oaks that lined the perimeter of a great lawn.
‘I thought you told me this part of Margit Island was always deserted?’ His voice was a savage whisper. ‘That no one ever came here in the winter?’
‘It always has been before,’ she murmured. ‘I knew the policemen made a round, but I didn’t know they came that way. But they won’t be back for another hour, I’m sure of that. The Margitsziget is big, and they will take time to go round.’
It had been Julia, teeth chattering with the cold and desperate for a place where they could talk in privacy – the White Angel had been the only café in the area which was open – who, after a fruitless search elsewhere, had suggested Margit Island. Parts of it, she had said, were banned and under curfew after a certain hour, but the curfew wasn’t treated too seriously. The patrolling guards were members of the ordinary police forces, not the secret police, and were as different from the AVO as chalk from cheese. Reynolds, himself almost as cold as the girl, had readily agreed and the watchman’s hut, surrounded by the granite setts, chips and tar barrels of road repairers who had vanished with the onset of the cold weather, had seemed an ideal place.
There Julia had told of the latest happenings at Jansci’s house. The two men who had been watching the house so assiduously had made an error – only one, admittedly, but their last. They had grown overconfident and had taken to walking past on the same side of the street as the garage instead of the opposite side, and, on one occasion, finding the garage door open had gone so far as to let their curiosity get the better of them and peer in, which was a mistake, as Sandor had been waiting for them. Whether they had been informers or AVO men was not known, as Sandor had cracked their heads together rather harder than was necessary. All that mattered was that they were under lock and key and that it would now be safe for Reynolds to visit the house to make final plans for the abduction of the professor. But not before midnight, Jansci had insisted on that.
Reynolds in his turn had told her of what had happened to him, and now, just after the departure of the three policemen, he looked at her in the gloom of the shelter. Her hand was still in his, she was quite unaware of it: and her hand was tense and rigid and unyielding.
‘You’re not really cut out for this sort of thing, Miss Illyurin,’ he said quietly. ‘Very few people are. You don’t stay here and lead this life because you like it?’
‘Like it! Dear God, how could anyone ever like this life? Nothing but fear and hunger and repression, and, for us, always moving from place to place, always looking over our shoulders to see if someone is there, afraid to look over our shoulder in case someone is there. To speak in the wrong place, to smile at the wrong time –’
‘You’d go over to the west tomorrow, wouldn’t you?’
‘Yes. No, no, I can’t. I can’t. You see –’
‘Your mother, isn’t that it?’
‘My mother!’ He could feel her shift against him as she turned to stare in the darkness. ‘My mother is dead, Mr Reynolds.’
‘Dead?’ His voice inflected in surprise. ‘That’s not what your father says.’
‘I know it’s not.’ Her voice softened. ‘Poor, dear Jansci, he’ll never believe that Mother is dead. She was dying when they took her away, one lung was almost gone, she couldn’t have lived a couple of days. But Jansci will never believe it. He’ll stop hoping when he stops breathing.’
‘But you tell him you believe it too?’
‘Yes. I wait here because I am all Jansci has left in the world and cannot leave him. But if I told him that, he would have me across the Austrian frontier tomorrow – he would never have me risk my life for him. And so I tell him I wait for Mother.’
‘I see.’ Reynolds could think of nothing else to say, wondered if he himself could have done what this girl was doing if he felt as she did. He remembered something, his impression that Jansci had seemed indifferent to the fate of his wife. ‘Your father – he has looked for your mother, searched for her, I mean?’
‘You don’t think so, do you? He always gives that impression, I don’t know why.’ She paused for a moment, then went on, ‘You will not believe this, no one believes this, but it is true: there are nine concentration camps in Hungary, and, in the past eighteen months, Jansci has been inside five of them, just looking for Mother. Inside, and, as you see, out again.
It’s just not possible, is it?’
‘It’s just not possible,’ Reynolds echoed slowly.
‘And he’s combed a thousand, over a thousand collective farms – or what used to be collective farms before the October Rising. He has not found her, he never will find her. But always he looks, always he will keep on looking and he will never find her.’
Something in her voice caught Reynolds’ attention. He reached up a gentle hand and touched her face: her cheeks were wet, but she did not turn away, she didn’t resent the touch.
‘I told you this wasn’t for you, Miss Illyurin.’
‘Julia, always Julia. You mustn’t say that name, you mustn’t even think that name … Why am I telling you all these things?’
‘Who knows? But tell me more – tell me about Jansci. I have heard a little, but only a little.’
‘What can I tell you? “A little,” you say, but that’s all I, too, know about my father. He will never talk about what is gone, he will not even say why he will not talk. I think it is because he lives now only for peace and the making of peace, to help all those who cannot help themselves. That is what I heard him say once. I think his memory tortures him. He has lost so much, and he has killed so many.’
Reynolds said nothing, and after a time the girl went on, ‘Jansci’s father was a Communist leader in the Ukraine. He was a good Communist and he was also a good man – you can be both at the same time, Mr Reynolds. In 1938 he – and practically every leading Communist in the Ukraine – died in the secret police torture cellars in Kiev. That was when it all started. Jansci executed the executioners, and some of the judges, but too many hands were against him. He was taken to Siberia and spent six months in an underground cell in the Vladivostock transit camp waiting for ice to melt and the steamer to come to take them away. He saw no daylight for six months, he didn’t see another human being for six months – his crusts and the slops that passed for food were lowered through a hatch. They all knew who he was and he was to take a long time dying. He had no blankets, no bed, and the temperature was far below zero. For the last month they stopped all supplies of water also, but Jansci survived by licking the hoar frost off the iron door of his cell. They were beginning to learn that Jansci was indestructible.’
‘Go on, go on.’ Reynolds still held the girl’s hand tightly in his own, but neither of them was aware if it. ‘And after that?’
‘After that the freighter came and took him away, to the Kolyma Mountains. No one ever comes back from the Kolyma Mountains – but Jansci came back.’ He could hear the awe in the girl’s voice even as she spoke, even as she repeated something she must have said or thought a thousand times. ‘These were the worst months of his life. I don’t know what happened in those days, I don’t think there is anyone still alive who knows what happened then. All I know is that he sometimes still wakes up from his sleep, his face grey, whispering, “Davai, davai!” – get going, get going! – and “Bystrey, bystrey” – faster, faster! It’s something to do with driving or pulling sledges, I don’t know what. I know too, that even to this day, he cannot bear to hear the sound of sleigh bells. You’ve seen the missing fingers on his hands – it was a favourite sport to drag prisoners along behind the NKVD’s – or OGPU’s, as it was then – propeller-driven sledges, and see how close they could be brought to the propeller … Sometimes they were jerked too close, and their faces …’ She was silent for a moment, then went on, her voice unsteady. ‘I suppose you could say Jansci was lucky. His fingers, only his fingers … and his hands, these scars on his hands. Do you know how he came by these, Mr Reynolds?’
He shook his head in the darkness, and she seemed to sense the movement.
‘Wolves, Mr Reynolds. Wolves mad with hunger. The guards trapped them, starved them and then flung a man and a wolf into the same pit. The man would have only his hands: Jansci had only his hands. His arms, his entire body is a mass of these scars.’
‘It’s not possible, all this is not possible.’ Reynolds’ low-pitched mutter was that of a man trying to convince himself of something which must be true.
‘In the Kolyma Mountains all things are possible. That wasn’t the worst, that was nothing. Other things happened to him there, degrading, horrible, bestial things, but he has never spoken of them to me.’
‘And the palms of his hands, the crucifixion marks on his hands?’
‘These aren’t crucifixion marks, all the Biblical pictures are wrong, you can’t crucify a man by the palms of his hands … Jansci had done something terrible, I don’t know what it was, so they took him out to the taiga, the deep forest, in the middle of winter, stripped him of all his clothes, nailed him to two trees that grew close together and left him. They knew it would be only a few minutes, the fearful cold or the wolves … He escaped, God knows how he escaped, Jansci doesn’t, but he escaped, found his clothes where they had thrown them away and left the Kolyma Mountains. That was when all his fingers, his fingertips and nails went, that’s when he lost all his toes … You have seen the way he walks?’
‘Yes.’ Reynolds remembered the strange, stiff-legged gait. He thought of Jansci’s face, its kindness and its infinite gentleness, and tried to see that face against the background of its history, but the gap was too great, his imagination baulked at the attempt. ‘I would not have believed this of any man, Julia. To survive so much … He must be indestructible.’
‘I think so too … It took him four months to arrive at the Trans-Siberian Railway where it crosses the Lena, and when he stopped a train he was quite insane. He was out of his mind for a long time, but he finally recovered and made his way back to the Ukraine.
‘That was in 1941. He joind the army, and became a major inside a year. Jansci joined for the reason that most Ukrainians joined – to wait his chance, as they are still waiting their chance, to turn their regiments against the Red Army. And the chance came soon, when Germany attacked.’
There was a long pause, then she went on quietly.
‘We know now, but we didn’t know then, what the Russians told the world. We know what they told of the long, bloody battle as we fell back on the Dnieper, the scorched earth, the desperate defence of Kiev. Lies, lies, all lies – and still most of the world doesn’t know it.’ He could hear her voice softening in memory. ‘We welcomed the Germans with open arms. We gave them the most wonderful welcome any army has ever had. We gave them food and wine, we decorated our streets, we garlanded the storm-troopers with flowers. Not one shot was fired in defence of Kiev. Ukrainian regiments, Ukrainian divisions deserted en masse to the Germans, Jansci said there’s never been anything like it in history, and soon the Germans had an army of a million Russians fighting for them, under the command of the Soviet General Andrei Vlassov. Jansci was with this army, he rose to be Major-General and one of Vlassov’s right-hand men, and fought with this army, until the Germans fell back on his home town of Vinnitsa in 1943.’ Her voice tailed away, came again after a long silence. ‘It was after Vinnitsa that Jansci changed. He swore he would never fight again, he swore he would never kill again. He has kept his promise.’
‘Vinnitsa?’ Reynolds’ curiosity was roused. ‘What happened at Vinnitsa?’
‘You – you’ve never heard of Vinnitsa?’
‘Never.’
‘Dear God,’ she whispered. ‘I thought the whole world had heard of Vinnitsa.’
‘Sorry, no. What happened there?’
‘Don’t ask me, don’t ask me!’ Reynolds heard the long, quivering sigh. ‘Someone else, but please don’t ask me.’
‘Okay, okay.’ Reynolds’ voice was quick, surprised. He could feel her whole body shaking with silent sobs, and he patted her shoulder awkwardly. ‘Skip it. It doesn’t matter.’
‘Thank you.’ Her voice was muffled. ‘That’s just about all, Mr Reynolds. Jansci went to visit his old home in Vinnitsa, and the Russians were waiting for him – they had been waiting a long time. He was put in command of a Ukrainian regiment – all deserters who had been
recaptured – given obsolete weapons and no uniforms at all and forced into a suicide position against the Germans. That happened to tens of thousands of Ukrainians. He was captured by the Germans – he had thrown away his weapons and walked across to their lines, was recognised and spent the rest of the war with General Vlassov. After the war the Ukrainian Liberation Army broke up into sections – some of them, believe it or not, are still operating – and it was there that he met the Count. They have never parted since.’
‘He is a Pole, isn’t he – the Count, I mean?’
‘Yes, that’s where they met – in Poland.’
‘And who is he really? Do you know?’
He sensed rather than saw the shake of the head in the darkness.
‘Jansci knows, but only Jansci. I only know that next only to my father, he is the most wonderful person I have ever known. And there’s some strange bond between them. I think it’s because they both have so much blood on their hands, and because neither of them has killed for years. They are dedicated men, Mr Reynolds.’
‘Is he really a Count?’
‘He is indeed. So much I know. He owned huge estates, lakes and forests and great pastures at a place called Augustow, up near the borders of East Prussia and Lithuania – or what used to be the borders. He fought the Germans in 1939, then took to the underground. After a long time he was captured and the Germans thought that it would be very amusing to make a Polish aristocrat earn his living by forced labour. You know the kind of labour, Mr Reynolds – clearing the thousands of corpses out of the Warsaw ghetto after the Stukas and the tanks had finished with it. He and a band of others killed their gaolers and joined General Bor’s Polish Resistance Army. You will remember what happened – Marshal Rossokovsky halted his Russian armies outside Warsaw and let the Germans and the Polish resistance fight it out to the death in the sewers of Warsaw.’
‘I remember. People speak of it as the bitterest battle of the war. The Poles were massacred, of course.’
The Last Frontier Page 12