by Ben Pastor
“So, if our soldiers were executed around 8 March, the lower estimate given by your divisional medical chief for the civilians’ deaths gives us a date around 1 February. The higher estimate would go back one week, to 24 January or thereabouts.”
Bora refolded the map. “It must be said that in the first three months of the year units of all kinds were roaming this countryside, both ours and theirs.”
Lost in thought at his side, Bernoulli stood with his face low, pinching the bridge of his nose with thumb and forefinger. “Are you aware of any special units attached to Hausser’s battle group?”
“Not directly.” As he said the words, raising his eyes to the window, Bora watched his orderly vigorously brushing the horses by the water. Suddenly he realized he’d forgotten all about the anti-personnel mine on the canal bank. The thought went through him like whiplash. From here he was unable to tell whether Kostya was drawing close to the explosive charge or not. The doubt split his attention between here and there, indoors and outside. As if someone else were speaking in his place, he heard himself say, “SS Einsatzkommandos are constantly being created and disbanded ad hoc, Dr Bernoulli. Informants told me a patrol took time in mid-March to search this area for the last Dorfjuden, but I have no confirmation whatever.”
“‘Village Jews’? I thought they were long since disposed of.”
“Right.” It was curious how he could make sense when he was no longer paying attention to the conversation. Bora couldn’t turn his eyes away from the window. Alertness bordering on panic, and an odd, sluggish inability to turn it into action nailed him where he was, fascinated by the sight of man and animals in harm’s way. Where did I see the mine? Where was it? He felt as at times he did in dreams, rooted to the spot despite his anguished need to move. “All I can say is that hereabouts they don’t care for Jews much, and, if anything, they’d help search for them. It could be true, or not.”
“Is this informant available for further questioning?”
“Yes.”
The mine was more to the right of where he’s standing. Or maybe not. If Kostya leads the roan down that way, where the young tree bends to touch the water… That’s where I saw the mine, less than a foot down the bank.
“Major, is there something of interest outside?”
It took a direct question for Bora to snap out of his entrancement, sprint to the windowsill and call back the oblivious orderly along with the horses. “There are unexploded charges still lying around,” he said to justify himself, summarizing things to a puzzled Bernoulli. (Why didn’t I move right away? How could I even think the mine “belonged there”?) “I can’t afford losses.”
“Yes, of course,” the judge agreed. “If I am not mistaken, you were speaking of paper items from the civilian layers…”
Bora was eager to dispel any notion of negligence on his part. “I was.” From the desk drawer he promptly took out a battered tin box. Inside he’d collected blackened, rotted bits of printed paper, which he carefully laid out on the wooden surface. “The shreds definitely belong to a Protestant Bible, and this scrap – I believe it’s relevant. Someone had time to pencil on it a few words in Plaudietsch. It’s a Low Saxon dialect, and all I could make out is lot dien Rikjdom kome, ‘Thy Kingdom come’. Perhaps Janzen and the Mennonites were rounded up and killed to keep them from being transferred to Germany.”
“By whom?”
“That, sir, depends on whether it happened while the Red Army had Merefa or not. I do not possess that information.”
Frowning, Bernoulli studied the remnants of soiled paper. “But we’re not talking about Dorfjuden here: it’s ethnic Germans, our own people. You say the Mennonite community disappeared at the end of January: Kharkov was ours then. For all your Abwehr methods of relating data without interpreting it, Major Bora, you’re suggesting the possibility that the Soviets shot and buried our soldiers in a grave dug for ethnic Germans executed by German troops! Why would German troops —”
“As the teacher’s medals suggest, the Mennonites’ Russification comes to mind as a reason, but it’s guesswork. I gave you the evidence I have, sir.” A pause between them, where flies slowly circling in the room could be heard, threatened to become an uncomfortable silence. Bora would not allow it. Out of the same tin box, he retrieved two cases of film roll. “Taken near the gully known as Drobytsky Yar, and in the Pyatikhatky woods, north of Kharkov. It’s best if I don’t keep them here.”
Bernoulli seemed to slump a little. “I see.” He sat down in the only chair, looking at the metal cylinders on the palm of Bora’s hand. “And why did you photograph those two places?”
For the next ten minutes or so, he listened without interrupting to what Bora had to say, running his eyes across the thickly written notebook pages laid one by one in front of him. His long-fingered, nervous hands, joined in concentration, reminded Bora of priests who’d heard his confession through the years. He leant across from the judge with his elbows on the desk, so as not to have to raise his voice to be heard. And although there was no penance given, a formula was followed when their conversation was through.
“Major,” Bernoulli told him, “there’s no time now to take a detailed, extensive deposition from you. Technically, I should not administer the oath until our written protocol is signed, but the instances you relate are potentially very serious, and – although I in no way doubt your sincerity – I wish to warn you about the consequences of perjury.” He rose to his feet. “You will please raise the three oath fingers of your right hand and repeat after me: I swear by God the Almighty and All-knowing, that I have spoken the pure truth and withheld nothing. So help me God.”
“I swear by God the Almighty and All-knowing that I have spoken the pure truth and withheld nothing. So help me God.”
“Very well.” The visit seemed about to end, judging by the snap of locks as Bernoulli opened his briefcase and placed a selection of Bora’s evidence inside the folders he’d brought along. “Anything else, Major?”
Until now, Bora had wondered whether he should add Krasny Yar to the load already placed on the judge’s shoulders. He made up his mind because he had the impression he might not have a chance to see Bernoulli in person again, and he might as well say it all. From his trunk, he retrieved his handwritten notes about the dead in the woods, duly carbon-copied. “It probably has nothing to do with war crimes, sir, but I am bringing this incident to your attention as well.”
Bernoulli glanced at the papers. “Fine,” he said with a patient expression, on this side of weariness. “Fine. We’ll take a look at this as well. And now, Major, if you don’t mind, treat me to a cup of coffee.”
Kostya always had a pot ready on the stove. Bernoulli could have had his cup of coffee straight away, but the judge gently refused Bora’s offer to drink it there.
“Do you own a Thermos?” he asked, and when Bora said yes, he added, “Let’s take your vehicle and have coffee on the road. First, however, you had better instruct your Russian orderly more thoroughly where he shouldn’t tread.”
So Bernoulli was aware of how imminent the danger had been. Did he speak Russian? It was more than probable, given his profession and with the majority of violations having been committed on this front.
Bora went to speak to Kostya at the edge of the dirt road skirting the schoolhouse, where he’d gone to stand with the horses, a safe area gone over for mines with a fine-tooth comb. When he returned, the judge had already taken his place in the personnel carrier. Bora started the engine and began to ask, “Where would you like —?” when Bernoulli interrupted him.
“I cannot hide from you, Major, that the obstacles to this enquiry – or enquiries, I should say – will be many. For the sake of simplicity, I am asking you to refrain from disclosing my presence here to your colleagues and superiors. There’s enough for me to follow up in this area without further interference. I’ll come and go as required by my investigation, which means you will not necessarily be informed of my arrival
ahead of time.”
“As the Judge wishes.”
“I’m ready for my coffee now; and if it’s not too far, let us drive to the lost Mennonite colony of Alexandrovka.”
In the afternoon, Bora was still overwhelmed by the outcome of his meeting with Bernoulli. He’d all but given up hope that his reports would be followed up on, and now this positive sign of attention had come. He hadn’t felt so encouraged in at least six months. Stalingrad might finally become a ferocious parenthesis between times of war; a parenthesis where some rules still applied.
Bora’s good mood reached such an extent that he walked to the canal and dug out the Russian mine himself. He light-heartedly handled the flat-topped wooden case to expose it, and followed the tripwire to its anchor deep inside the dirt bank. Keeping it slack, he fingered it without feeling the slightest rancour against those who had laid it across his path. It never crossed his mind that it might go off and blast his arms, or kill him outright. Once he had inserted a makeshift pin in the fuse and cut the wire, his satisfaction ran close to a sense of invincibility, although it was no more than a single mine out of millions laid by the enemy.
Seeing Father Victor in the distance heading a procession of old parishioners singing and bearing icons – it was Sunday, after all – failed to annoy him, even though they were probably heading to some harebrained exorcism, the priest’s speciality.
In the middle of a sterile field lying between the canal and the dirt road, where a pile of rubble marked the last remnants of a small shed ruined by war, Bora found a surface upon which to rest the explosive device to defuse it. One of Kostya’s hens must have used the debris as a nest, because there was an orphaned egg still lying on the ground. Whether edible or not, it had kept its intact fragility, surviving the creature that had produced it. Bora crouched to pick it up, with the same controlled reach of fingers he’d used to raise the landmine. A pointer to what, this solitary egg? The children in the fairy tale had had crumbs to mark their way home through the deadly woods. If somebody ever asks me what I learnt in Stalingrad – were he even Ernst Jünger, who’s likely to do so and expect a sophisticated, abstract answer – I’ll answer: the value of crumbs. The crumbs we gathered up with our fingers after eating, so that we’d leave nothing unconsumed, and those I scattered for the sparrows in the snow, simply to avoid feeling so miserable and beyond salvation that I couldn’t afford to spare any crumbs. We were crumbs ourselves, left over from the bloody table of war: never mind that we started it all. Should Jünger insist on a more elaborate synthesis, I’ll say: Chronos devoured his children there.
From the road across the field Father Victor’s deep basso drew closer as he led his followers’ untrained, tense voices in a prayer where the words “unclean force” and koldun – sorcerer – were repeated like a litany. His invention, no doubt (twenty-five years of materialism notwithstanding); and if a German patrol didn’t stop him first, he might be intending to walk the kilometres to Krasny Yar from here. Some of the elders in tow carried accordions strapped across their chests, ready to accompany the march or to celebrate the success of whatever propitiatory rite would be performed later on. Bora, whose love of music excluded bellows-based instruments, changed his mind about finishing work on the landmine. He headed back towards the schoolyard, and went indoors to avoid the risk of hearing them play.
An hour later, having secured a dinner appointment with Lieutenant Colonel von Salomon at divisional headquarters in Kharkov, Bora was preparing to spend the night in town and perhaps take in a concert as well. He needed the diversion after an intense week. Where Judge Bernoulli might be quartering, he hadn’t said, although it was possible he’d chosen Kharkov as well, given its centrality to the cases he’d flown in to investigate. A man strictly there on business, Bernoulli, whose only reference to anything personal had been a mention of his days in a Freikorps. Whether he was of Swiss origin – as his last name suggested, or even related to the family of eighteenth-century mathematicians – he hadn’t specified, and Bora had not enquired. The latter could be the case, since at one point, while visiting the demolished farms of the Alexandrovka Mennonites, the judge had turned to Bora and – apparently out of context – asked him, “Are you familiar with the St Petersburg Paradox?”
As he drove to Kharkov, Bora remembered quoting from memory something about the value of an object: how it should be determined not by its price, but by its utility. Bernoulli had said yes, and dropped the subject. In fact, Bora was thinking now, the mathematical principle also dealt with risk-taking. Risk-averse, risk-neutral, risk-loving: those were the categories deriving from the discourse about value. Was Bernoulli giving him hints, warning him, or did he simply refer to a judge’s moral task in times of war?
It was odd how, despite its sombre reason, Bernoulli’s visit had had a calming effect. Most of what they’d discussed was more dangerous than any explosive device; but for Bora, speaking about what he’d witnessed or gathered information about had truly acted as a confession of sorts, whatever might come of it.
The hour before sunset was especially sweet in this season: still bright but already combing the land with longer shadows. Ditches and ravines, long straight balkas wide enough to contain villages like separate worlds below, broke the greenness with the rhythm of waves and undertow.
At the pleasant turn-off that led to Babai and other villages south of Kharkov, Bora’s personnel carrier was overtaken by a staff car, an unusual event in itself given the lack of traffic. Not so unusual that it should be Mantau’s Opel, whose driver pulled over a few metres ahead, next to a low retaining wall at the side of the road. From the lowered window of the back seat, a gloved hand emerged, signalling for Bora to halt. He slowed down and came to a stop, careful to remain in idle behind the other vehicle, so he had some control over what might happen next.
For a change, Odilo Mantau was in uniform; a walking-out uniform too, a rare sight in Russia. When he exited the car on the shoulder of the road, Bora turned off the engine and also got out. Given that Mantau did not draw closer, and waited there, pulling off his gloves, Bora decided to approach him. Is this risk-averse or risk-neutral? Neither of them greeted the other. A glance inside the car revealed an SD private at the wheel, and in the back, on the passenger’s side, a box tied with a garish red ribbon, as out of place as the spruce outfit Mantau had on. Unlikely that it was a present for the Russian beautician he was bedding. Bora judged it to be either for the girls of the popular Dutch brothel in town or for one of the Ukrainian dancers due to perform that night in Kharkov.
“Hello, Hauptsturmführer,” he said. He fully expected the story of the misplaced T-34 to come out, but Mantau had something else in mind.
As was his habit, Odilo Mantau started in the middle. “Didn’t I warn you?” He wagged his finger in metronome fashion. “A little squeezing of her girlfriends, and I find out that one of your babushkas – Agrafena whatever her last name is, the first bitch I hanged – was a nurse, fully qualified to handle poison. Now tell me you’re not behind it, and that mine was a knee-jerk response.”
Bora was only mildly surprised. After all, forced labour came from all walks of life, as Platonov’s wife went to prove. Mostly, he didn’t want to give Mantau the satisfaction of scoring a point. “I’m not behind it, but won’t argue that now. Did they identify the alkaloid?”
“Nicotine: enough to kill a horse.”
Standing by the car a step away from Mantau, Bora carelessly ran his forefinger along the edge of the Opel’s door, where a scrape of the paint betrayed the slam against his vehicle in the Kombinat parking lot. “There’s certainly enough tobacco grown around here. All you need now is for the NKVD to claim they ordered Khan Tibyetsky’s execution. Unless it was the Ukrainian Insurgent Army: they detest Soviet officers more than they do us.”
Edgily, Mantau looked away. He was of medium height, and facing Bora accentuated the difference in size between them. A sidestep reduced the contrast. “You know, there’s nothing
whatsoever to smile about, Major.”
“I’m not smiling.”
In the setting sun contours and shapes were particularly crisp. When he turned, Mantau’s pupils shrank to pinholes in the light, so that his grey eyes had a flat sheen, singularly animalistic. “On the contrary: you look like you’re having fun with this.”
“I assure you I am not.”
A few irritated steps around the car took the captain to the middle of the lonely road and back. His well-manicured hands on his hips, he seemed to be measuring the space at his disposal, all the while glancing over his shoulder. Three times he walked to and fro before stopping halfway through an about-face and darting a spiteful glare in Bora’s direction.
“Try this one for size: my sources report that in ’41 at Gomel you bartered a Jew for a grand piano.”
Now what? I knew Mantau didn’t stop me to talk about Soviet nurses. He’s looking for a confrontation, or he’s just frustrated and doesn’t know what to do with his impotence. Bora savoured the small gathering of saliva in his mouth that meant physical readiness for anything, from a fistfight to the disarming of a landmine. Risk-loving, definitely. “Actually, it’s the other way around; I bartered a grand piano for a Jew. My counterpart profited on the deal: the piano was a prize concert Petrov.”
“They say the Jew was your old piano teacher.”
“Do they? I think it’d be foolish to pick up a piano teacher and get rid of a piano.”