Tin Sky

by Ben Pastor

  In Prague he’d realized how much he was loved. By his wife, his mother, his stepfather, his brother. Peter, en route to a furlough home, stopped by to ask if he wanted him to stay. Bora had said, “Are you out of your mind? Go and see Duckie, knucklehead. I’m not dying.”

  It surprised him now that he remembered the episode. Only through his diary entries had he been able to reconstruct the last days in Stalingrad, when a high fever had made him forget many details. He hazily recalled the end of the long trail out of the siege, in the winter snow, when he’d reached German lines with however many he’d managed to drag along, and a colonel in a sheepskin coat had shaken his hand, crying out, “Thank God, thank God!” But it was possible he’d forgotten it, and someone had told him afterwards. Of his stay in the infectious disease ward in Prague he remembered two or three days clearly, although it had been close to a month.

  The rumble of aeroplanes taking off from Rogany brought him back to reality. Bora wondered what he was doing half-dressed in a canal with his skin bristling when he had so many chores to attend to.

  After rubbing himself dry and changing into a clean uniform he felt worse. I hope it isn’t another bout of pneumonia, he told himself. It felt like it: fever and a sick headache. In spite of it he laid out the day’s routine, beginning with a fact-checking request to Bruno Lattmann. Lattmann had ready access to colleagues at Offices III D and III Q, and the inordinate ability to collect data at a moment’s notice. Then came three solid hours with a prospective Russian-born officer, formerly of the 5th Don Cossack Regiment. From Odilo Mantau and the Leibstandarte folks complete silence. It was possible, as Bentivegni had said, that Mantau had had to answer to RSHA Amt IV “Gestapo” Müller for losing Khan Tibyetsky, and the SS tank men might still be searching the Tractor Factory for the long-since-removed T-34.

  At midday, he was at Hospital 169. They told him Dr Mayr couldn’t leave the medication room immediately, but Bora was allowed to wait in his office.

  It was a small dark space, with a clothes stand by the door and a camp bed that looked no more comfortable than Bora’s at Merefa. A badly ironed uniform and rolls of underwear were stacked inside a cardboard box, medical equipment sat on a shelf no doubt inherited from the Soviet tenants; some of the medicines too, labelled in Cyrillic or in English, if they were lend-lease material from America. The window had been blasted and repaired, its panes replaced by sheets of waxed paper that trembled in the breeze and concealed the view. Only extreme cleanliness mitigated the impression of squalor given by this interior. Unframed family photos (a wife, a boy in uniform, a garden scene) had been tacked on to a pressed wood bulletin board, and this hung on the wall facing the desk. By habit and training Bora reviewed his surroundings, but made sure to be found standing idly in the middle of the floor when the surgeon joined him.

  “You were prescribed this medication, Major, were you not? Why are you returning it?”

  “Because I do not need painkillers any more, Herr Oberstarzt. Someone else may put them to better use.”

  Mayr brought the containers close to his face to read the contents. “I doubt you’ve come here to deliver a handful of drugs or to return my gown. Is it the body you’re after?”

  Bora was startled. He was about to say I can’t imagine how you could know, and then he realized it was Platonov’s corpse, not Khan’s, to which Mayr was referring. “Yes, it is.” He corrected himself. “I plan to see that he’s buried tomorrow.”

  “You’re late. It’s already been done. Outside, here in the park. A number was assigned to the grave; you may attach a name to it or leave it as it is. I am accustomed to running a tight ship, Major, which I assure you is anything but easy under the circumstances. Something else I can help you with? Otherwise I’ll bid you good day.”

  Already buried. One more promise to the Platonov women I won’t be able to keep. Bora made no comment. There was no time to waste, so he said what he’d really come for: access to or information about Tibyetsky’s body. When he finished the sentence, the surgeon’s faded eyebrows met at a frowning angle; surprise lent his jaundiced yellow eyes a dull, reptilian look. “Why would I do such a thing?”

  “Because you can; and because I can’t.”

  “Let me rephrase, Major Bora: why should I? I don’t even like you.”

  Bora had prepared for the likelihood of such a response. This was where his hurried checking through Lattmann’s Abwehr contacts would come in useful, and allow him to stay the course. “Herr Oberstarzt, you may be unaware that your wife’s son, Officer Cadet Karl-Philipp Neuhaus, is under surveillance. Some imprudent statements of his in the presence of the wrong army school colleagues could place him in hot water, but if he toes the line from now on, he may get away with no more than an admonition. I suggest you instruct him to toe the line.”

  An intake of air, less than a gasp, whistled in Mayr’s throat.

  “Is this blackmail?”

  “Not even close. It’d be blackmail if I had something to do with Officer Cadet Neuhaus’ troubles. I do not. And I am asking a favour, not something in exchange for the advice I just gave you.”

  The surgeon clenched his jaw. Again that dejected slope of the shoulders, surrendering to the evidence. He slowly opened the glass cabinet to store away the medicines Bora had brought. When the door yawned open, an image of the room was reflected in it, like a transitory glance at an alternative world from underwater. “You are used to people doting on you, I can tell. Your looks; your smile. It annoys me that you count on it.”

  Bora was fascinated by the reflection in the glass, where a headless copy of himself lived ephemerally. “If that’s so, it hasn’t done me a lot of good lately. The complete results of a post-mortem on the deceased in question would be greatly appreciated if available, although in a pinch I’m ready to settle for the cause of death, or even the location of the Russian officer’s body. In case it helps with identification, I can describe recognizable scars from wounds the man suffered in the Great War.”

  The cabinet door closed, shutting out the alternative world. Turning to face him, Mayr lit himself a cigarette. Repeated washing and bathing in alcohol had dried and worn out the skin on his hands until they were red-raw. The match’s small flame seemed capable of setting them on fire. “I was informed that someone had telephoned this hospital about a victim of poisoning yesterday. Was it you?”

  “It was.”

  “Since you say your advice was free and it is a favour you’re asking me, Major Bora, I feel entitled to reciprocity. I will take steps in the direction you ask; in exchange, find a way to annul Sanitätsoberfeldwebel Weller’s unjustified reassignment.”

  Thank God it’s all he’s asking, Bora thought. “I’ll do my best, Herr Oberstarzt.”

  A convoy bound for Donbas Station forced Bora to take a detour when he left the hospital. He negotiated through minor streets where bomb craters had been insufficiently filled and the removal of anti-aircraft posts had left ruts and gashes on the pavement. His headache was becoming oppressive; he should have asked the surgeon for a remedy, but after telling him he no longer needed painkillers it would not do. If only he had at least kept the Dolofin handy! Clenching his teeth relieved the ache only so much; listing what he had to do next distracted him, but not enough to lessen the discomfort. So now I have to start looking for Sanitätsoberfeldwebel Weller too, he thought. Another nuisance, even though I have Bruno Lattmann to assist me. I had to watch my tongue when the Oberstarzt gave me a song and dance about the medic being severely depressed (he simply seemed sombre to me), and how “this sudden transfer, seen as a punishment, may push him over the edge.” Bunk. Impatient as I was to enlist his help, I had to agree. I could have brought up the story of Bauml’s brother, or how in Stalingrad I saw a tank corps surgeon shoot himself in the head, or how I had looked into a packed shelter after Siberian troops simply threw in hand grenades to finish off those inside. We must keep our cool, all of us. As for the awful acts so many of us witnessed, I could
have told Officer Cadet Neuhaus’ stepfather that we committed crimes comparable to the Reds’ across Russia, not least in Kharkov. If the military judge ever comes, I have an earful for him, and that’s a fact.

  The afternoon took him eventually to Oseryanka, and to Platonov’s women. Bora’s headache worsened in the process; it was blinding by the time he rummaged through the teacher’s desk at Merefa for aspirin. The small orange tube was half-filled with tablets, and he took them all.

  Kostya, still mourning for his hens, had laundered Bora’s breeches and underwear and hung them to dry. Through the open window, in his shapeless fatigues, he cut a Petrushka-like figure while he felt for dryness and then folded the officer’s linen shorts. Kostya had asked to report to him, so Bora waited for the pain to subside enough to listen. On an empty stomach, the medicine should have some effect, especially reinforced by the swig of nameless aquavit from Lattmann’s once well-stocked supply. In Poland his friend had been able to share French cognac and American bourbon, but now he was down to what he could surreptitiously sweep up, one step away from cheap vodka or kvass.

  When he felt he might be able to stand the sound of a human voice, Bora called Kostya in.

  The orderly wiped his muddy boots before entering the classroom that served as Bora’s office. “Povazhany Major, there’s chicken for dinner.”

  “Yes, yes.” Nauseous with pain, Bora couldn’t bear the thought of food. “What else, Kostya?”

  “You wanted me to ask around about Krasny Yar, so I did.” Kostya spoke at attention, cap in hand, the way of a factory worker reporting to his superintendent. “Father Victor’s sexton, over at Ozeryanka – he has a family. Seeing that we have so much chicken meat to get rid of, early this morning I brought him two of my poor hens. My poor hens, esteemed Major! My consolation on this earth. When you open them up they’ve got a tree of eggs inside, some tiny and soft, and some almost ready to be laid.”

  “I’ll get you some more. Tell me what happened at the sexton’s.”

  “Kapitolina Nefedovna – that’s Father Victor’s mother – told the sexton’s wife, who told him. And he says the trouble in the Yar began when Makhno’s counter-revolutionary troops arrived in the Kharkov Oblast twenty-three years ago. He caused a lot of grief, Makhno did. Old Nefedovna was a matchmaker then: she told the sexton’s wife that the Whites took girls in the woods and then killed them; there’s no telling how many.”

  Plausible. Sitting on a corner of the desk, determined to conceal how under the weather he felt, Bora assented. Makhno was a bogeyman in Ukraine, but an anarchist, not a counter-revolutionary per se. Led by Frunze, Trotsky’s forces had turned against his bloody Black Army, and he’d ferociously fought back until he was beaten and driven into exile. “Were their bodies found?”

  “Most of them, later. The Bolshevik forces arrived eventually; they fought tooth and nail over the Yar, and they took it over.”

  “And did the killings stop?”

  “Yes and no.”

  “What does that mean? Did the killings stop or not?”

  “They no longer killed women, but a man was bludgeoned there in ’22.”

  “Ah. And what about the years between the civil war and now?”

  “That’s what I asked the sexton. What about those years?”

  Bora had a great desire to close his eyes to relieve the migraine. “Come, Kostya, say it all in one go.”

  The orderly relaxed his stance a little. His beardless, rosy-cheeked face had to Bora’s mind the anonymity of a hundred such faces he’d shot at, or whose owners he’d taken prisoner, interrogated, seen go to the gallows. “They were hard times, povazhany Major, no food. It must be said the Party kept its stores full of Ukrainian grain but gave none to the people. I don’t know if it was good or bad, if it had to be done or not. People starved; they ate the grass on the roofs of their houses and even clumps of dirt. And so, as they always do, they took to the woods…”

  “And Krasny Yar?”

  “It was the last piece of forest folks went foraging into, owing to what happened in Makhno’s day. Kapitolina Nefedovna told the sexton’s wife that in the ’30s, folks from nearby farms and villages slaughtered children for food in the Yar.” Kostya must have taken Bora’s physical restlessness for impatience or disbelief. “I don’t know if that’s true,” he hastened to add. “Fact is, people have kept well away from the Yar ever since the civil war. If you go there, it’s because you’re desperate. Mushrooms and berries are what you’re liable to find, but are they worth your life?”

  “Somebody must live in the woods or occasionally roam them now to have killed those who’ve died lately at Krasny Yar.”

  “The sexton sees it one way, povazhany Major, and old Nefedovna another way. The sexton says Makhno’s men never really went away, and they took to living like animals in the Yar. Kapitolina Nefedovna, who lost a niece to the Whites, says it’s a spirit, an unclean force. That’s proven, she says, by the way folks are killed, with their eyes put out and heads cut off.”

  “You don’t need to be an unclean force to behave that way.”

  “She thinks so, povazhany Major. As a matter of fact, no assassin was ever found when the farmers organized searches to look for the bodies. And since it’s not as if everyone who goes into the Yar is killed, those who come back say they haven’t met or seen anybody or anything. So that’s no help. This time around, the sexton says, the killings began again in the winter of ’41.”

  It had been a hard winter, that of the German invasion, a starvation winter. Although the presence of malignant spirits was unlikely, compasses did malfunction in the woods, as Bora had heard from those of the 241st and seen for himself. It could point to a magnetic anomaly: around Kursk the phenomenon was related to huge magnetite deposits. But magnetic fields don’t drive people to murder. Starvation on the other hand might, although none of the recent victims had been harvested for meat.

  Kostya uneasily shifted his weight from one leg to the other, because the officer was giving him no sign of appreciating or rejecting the report. “Old Nefedovna’s niece,” he added, “before the Whites killed her – this is all from the sexton, through his wife – well, Father Victor, who was then learning his trade in the Kharkov Seminary, was sweet on her. The sexton says he was crazily jealous in those days, that he’d beat her and then go and pray with his face on the floor in front of Our Lady of Oseryan. He never married after she died, and although in Merefa they say it’s because he wants to reach a high rank within the Church, the sexton says it’s because he lost his intended back then. And he dreams of the Yar, the dead in the Yar.”

  The dead girlfriend is one detail the priest never gave me. He volunteered to talk about the trouble in the woods, but kept out this titbit, along with several others. He wants Krasny Yar burned to the ground; I wonder if it’s because of the unclean spirits he and his mother believe in, or for some other reason. “Did you ask if that girl’s body was ever found, Kostya?”

  “I did, povazhany Major. Never was. If there’s anything left of it, it has to be still in the woods.”

  Yes, old matchmaking Nefedovna would never tell me any of this, and probably neither would the sexton. Kostya’s hens came in handy. Still, I can’t tell him we should be thankful they shot his pets; he’s surely nonplussed that I’m interested in Krasny Yar. Bora left the corner of the desk. “You’ve done a good job, Kostya. Keep your ears open, and if you track down somebody who survived going into the Yar, see that you bring him – or her – here for questioning.”

  There was still time before evening to receive a politically uncomfortable visit. Bora dealt with it as well as he could. His headache lasted into the night, and he was able to fall asleep only after finishing the aquavit Lattmann had given him.

  Sunday 9 May

  Jubilate Sunday at the Merefa outpost; Mothering Sunday in the Reich. If I recall well, today’s introit to the Mass reads, “Let all the Earth rejoice unto God”. Leibnizian optimism about us living “in
the best of all possible worlds”. Too sick last night to put down the day’s events, which I summarize below.

  1. Regarding Platonov’s wife and daughter, I saw no advantage in dilly-dallying or sweetening the pill, much less in blaming it on orders I’d received. The worst of it was that both of them took the news of their relative’s hasty burial and their future detention as if they expected nothing else of us. Selina Nikolayevna coldly reminded me that I had lied to them all along, first by letting them believe her husband was still alive, then by promising they would remain free. As for Avrora Glebovna, I can’t blame her for the contempt she showed towards me. Within the hour, they were both on a southbound train, under armed escort. Why is it that I get nauseous when I’m under stress? Good thing I’d skipped the midday meal, otherwise I’d have vomited it and half my stomach up as soon as I’d left Nitichenko’s shatka with the two of them.

  2. My problem then was what to do with the old biddy, the priest’s mother. I specifically asked Avrora Glebovna how much she and her mother had shared with Nefedovna concerning their relative (imprisonment, death, etc). She answered, “Nothing. Possible.” As former “enemies of the people” they must have learnt to hold their tongues with friends and foes alike. The hag, busybody and matchmaker to the end, seems to think I had a fling with Avrora, or at least tried to. Well, she looks so much like my wife that I had difficulty keeping my eyes off her, but I’m faithful to Dikta, and that’s all I have to say about it. I think I’ll let old Nefedovna be, on account of what else I might discover about the Krasny Yar mystery through her, and because I’d complicate my life even more if I had her arrested. I dislike her a great deal, though. If her house stood on chicken legs and rotated at will, I’d say she was the witch from the Russian tale.