Tin Sky

by Ben Pastor

  “Did he have his luggage with him?”

  “He did.”

  A distant train whistle from the south-west came in the wind, trembling with its remoteness. Bora glanced at the wall clock behind the non-com. 12.46 p.m. Was the late transport from Vinnitsa arriving already? There was nothing else he could do here, so he said, “Should Weller come back for any reason, keep him here, call the Hotel Europa immediately, and ask for Major Martin Bora.”

  The troop transport pulled in slightly ahead of schedule at 12.52 p.m., when Bora was back at his place of observation on the platform. The streets outside and all entrances had someone keeping an eye on them. Still no sign of Weller. With orders not to let any of those on board off, Gestapo and military police cordoned the side of the braking train by doing their usual overbearing act, gesticulating and shouting when the travellers, overheated and anxious to stretch their legs after the long journey, protested from the lowered windows. The occasional officer shouldered his way among them to voice his anger. But there were military police aboard the cars as well, so the grumbling eventually simmered down. Faces of men headed for the coming battle and probable death (Bora knew: it was an officer’s lot to know these things and keep stern control) crowded to look out at the unattainable platform. It was a long convoy of cars: one could only hope the air force would look after it between here and Konotop, and then watch over those going from Konotop to the German border.

  On the platform, dogs barked, snarled and pulled the leashes; their handlers quickly strode back and forth behind them. When Ukrainian girls fluttered in to sell bliny, doughnuts and cornets of cherries, the soldiers in the train whistled and called out to them: arms, hands, banknotes stretched out of the windows. The moment the train had appeared on the tracks, the thirty or so servicemen being repatriated – most of them permanently injured – pressed out of the waiting room, and now stood where the Gestapo had corralled them, waiting for the only door into their car to open. Then, one by one, they filed by the military policemen checking their papers and climbed on board. Supposing Weller might try to rush in at the last moment, Bora stood a step away, watching with his arms crossed, ready to take out his pistol in seconds flat. However, Weller was nowhere; no one resembling Weller came running in the nick of time. At 1.36 p.m., following Bora’s nod, the door closed, and after the customary whistle-blowing the train slowly moved out of the station.

  The thing that most angered Bora in his disappointment was that, with no more than a cup of coffee in his system since the morning, he was famished. The physical reaction irritated him, as if its presence fouled the unalloyed nature of his displeasure. Anyhow, there would be no more trains for the day, and no more Germany-bound transports for two weeks. He left word with those providing security to the station to control all passes and keep on the lookout for Arnim Weller. Staying here would be no use. At this point the possibilities multiplied instead of diminishing: Weller could have somehow left Kiev (how? from where?) and might try to get on the troop transport at one of its next stops – a dim possibility given the frequent controls and the distance between stations. Alternatively, he’d smelt a trap after being bumped off the Sunday train; he might seek a hideout in this large, partly ruined city in hopes of weathering the storm, but in view of what? Or, again, he’d attempt against all hope to catch another – any – means of transportation out of Ukraine. He’s not armed, as far as I know. But he’s a deserter now, and can be shot on sight.

  The idea that Arnim Weller might be hiding out in Kiev was the most likely. From the stationmaster’s office, Bora telephoned Major Stunde and Captain Pfahl to alert the German and Ukrainian police of his dilemma. Not that he hoped they could actually solve it: he received confirmation that, given the amount of destroyed and semi-destroyed buildings in Kiev, the possibility of keeping out of sight was immense. The abandoned Central Department Store on Eichhornstrasse, the shell of the old Ginzburg House near Institute Street, the Gorodetsky House on Bismarckstrasse, imperial era flats and Soviet tenements… all places that had to be routinely checked because they attracted “stragglers, undesirables and even leftover Yids”. Still, unlike Bora, Stunde and Pfahl were optimistic: they would pass the word on, interact and keep an eye on public transportation.

  Bora left the station. Outside, at least the SS had the common sense of not parading their vehicles and alarming anyone on the lookout for them. Too late, in any case. It was hot, late, and he was hungry. So, the Gestapo had lost their man after all. Sure, Weller could have resorted to any one of several things, including hiding under a different name. Unless of course he’d chosen the ultimate and most successful form of escape: doing away with himself, spontaneously or with someone else’s encouragement. Bora would rather not think of it. From their point of view, Stunde and Pfahl had reason for optimism: after all, this was the town where thirty-five thousand would receive the special treatment in two days’ time. What was one deserter to the system?

  From the station, the sweets-and-cherries girls came out counting money, chattering like swallows. On the sidewalk where Bora stood, a newspaper and magazine kiosk featured papers in Cyrillic, Hungarian, German, pencil portraits and caricatures commissioned by soldiers from local street artists, and a healthy choice of pornographic material. The odour of boiled sausage rode the warm breeze from an eating place on Stepankovskaya, or from the old Ukrainian Police Command beyond. Sealing Weller out of his mind for the time being, and for the rest of the day, was a chore that had to be accomplished. Bora shook the dozing driver of the GAZ-03, and had him drive back to the Europa.

  1 p.m. Von Salomon and the other award recipients were lingering around the lunch table in the dining room. General Kempf had come in, and so had Captain Peter Sickingen, who was waiting for Bora in the lobby. The brothers exchanged a smiling military salute and a handshake.

  “Sorry about keeping you waiting, Peter.”

  “You didn’t; I just came back myself. Had to run to the edge of town and see the street named after the Heroes of the Stratosphere, those of the 1934 balloon disaster: Russians, but pilots all the same.” Peter beamed. “Good thing you’re here, though: I’m starving. Look, I brought my brand-new film camera: I’m recording the ceremony for our parents and the girls. I bought it to film Duckie’s baby after it’s born, but it’s worth inaugurating it today.”

  Bora did not comment on the fact that the street mentioned by Peter bordered Solomenka, and they’d risked running into each other. “Nonsense. You should save the camera for Margaretha and the baby.”

  “No, no. I’m filming the ceremony, and that’s that. I shall label the reel ‘My Brother, the Bearer of the Knight’s Cross.’”

  Save for Peter’s hazel eyes and auburn hair, they’d always resembled one another; now for both of them it was almost like looking at oneself in a different uniform. Their size and demeanour were the same, with all that Bora was slightly less amiable and more introverted. They were calm, with the steadiness of the first-line officer and squadron commander; the four and a half years between them made a difference, though, in that Bora was morally highly strung, and Peter as doubt-free as Bora had been in 1939.

  Having excused themselves from Kempf and the rest of the group, the brothers lunched together in the park-view room they would share overnight.

  Had they known that Peter had less than two weeks to live, they wouldn’t have spent time chatting about light-hearted things; or perhaps they would have. Bora was anxious for his younger brother as he’d never been for himself, which meant he had to go out of his way to hide his concern. He gave Peter rope because Peter was the picture of confidence, and little by little he began to feel hopeful, too. One of the two will make it back, of this much I’m sure. It has to be Peter, so all is well.

  “Neinz,” (it was Bora’s seldom-used nickname, given him by Peter when as a child he hadn’t been able to pronounce Martin Heinz) “remember when we were boys and got drunk at Trakhenen? I never had such fun.”

  “You didn
’t? We fell off our bikes and the farmers found us passed out at the side of the road.”

  “Good thing they did, too, and kept us with them until we were presentable.”

  “Well, we’d drained half a bottle of their home-made Bärenfang. You were eight, I twelve, and the honey brandy 90-proof.”

  “Glorious, wasn’t it? Man, how we sang The Watch on the Rhine at the top of our voices while zigzagging towards Gumbinnen! You took the blame then, and also when I wrote to Air Marshal Balbo.”

  Bora grinned. “I had to. You didn’t speak Italian.” From the room’s French window, beyond the ornate, narrow railing, the wild treetops in the park quivered in the breeze. There, as in other Kiev gardens where girls strolled in cork-soled sandals, rows of German soldiers lay buried. It surprised him to think of it. But then, seen from the air, the ravine by the deserted Jewish cemetery was as tenderly green as those treetops, with its overgrown but detectable long furrow at the bottom, ploughed over, pale with fat tufts of grass. Old Woman’s Gorge was its name, a monument to special treatment. Bora kept smiling out of courtesy. Like all euphemisms, special treatment jarred; it was empty words. Or words too full. Being more informed than most weighed on him and ached at times like this. The wedding band on his brother’s right hand and his incipient fatherhood were another cause of surprise, as though they were out of place here and now in their lives: they had nothing to do with the green park, or the ravine north of Kiev, or the childhood they spoke of. “I had to,” Bora repeated. “I’d been the translator who sent the letter to him, after all.”

  “But it’d been I who came up with the ‘Excellency! As a young German enthusiast of transoceanic flight and fervid admirer of yours,’ never thinking Balbo would answer and invite me to Rome. Father nearly tanned your hide that time, figuratively speaking.”

  “I could take it; I was out of his reach in Cavalry School.” It wasn’t like Peter to reminisce about the old days. That Bora had been listed as missing in action and presumed dead at Stalingrad might have made a difference, or else – as was expected – the start of a new family played a part in it. Bora touched his wine glass to Peter’s. “Here’s to your family, Squadron Commander Sickingen.”

  “And to the one you’ll have. You’re a swell brother, Martin.”

  “So are you.”

  And then they ate in silence, having come as close as they would to admitting that they worried about each other.

  The award ceremony went without a hitch at Von Schleifer Square. The choice of location was a curious, if symbolic one: the former Spartacus Square, where streets named after Marx and Engels had converged until the war. Cobblestoned, faced by respectable buildings with ornate balconies, it was also easy to watch over. Bora went through the motions with the expected aplomb and mixed feelings of pride and melancholy. This was the tail end of Stalingrad for the survivors of the great and annihilated Sixth Army: handshakes, red leather folders, finely tooled black boxes for coveted metal trinkets. Among the others, behind his camera-wielding brother and a dark-clad handful of Panzer Corps officers in the first row, who should be unostentatiously attending but Heeresrichter Kaspar Bernoulli. Bora felt a renewed tinge of unease at his ubiquitous presence. The judge made no effort to approach Bora afterwards, although they eventually happened to come face to face during the expected socializing time.

  Bernoulli nodded a greeting. “Congratulations, Major Bora.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Quite an accomplishment. The Air Force captain I was standing behind must be your brother. He’s my old Freikorps colleague Sickingen’s son, isn’t he? Looks very much like you.”

  “Yes, we take after our mother.” The day, with its tensions and sense of unfinished business, was taking on a stranger and stranger form. Bora stated the obvious, something he did only when he felt insecure. “It’s quite a coincidence meeting you, Dr Bernoulli.”

  Arms relaxed, the military judge kept his hands clasped before his person – a professorial or priestly stance. “Less than it seems. You were in Kiev before; you should know I have some errands here.” (The green ravine by the cemetery, like a scar in the land.) “Veritas liberabit vos.”

  Einsatzgruppe C, Sonderkommando 4a. End of September 1941. Bora looked beyond the judge to the spot where his brother stood full of laughter among colleagues like his own positive, sunny double. “Truth doesn’t set us free at all.”

  “Quite the contrary, in fact. But we can’t ignore it.” In his unadorned field uniform, Bernoulli cut an ordinary figure compared with his highly decorated equals in rank. “It goes without saying that I’m not broadcasting that the ravine at Babi Yar, so visible from the air, is the reason for my presence in Kiev. Let’s say I love award ceremonies.”

  Did it mean the judge had completed his investigation in Kharkov, and was backtracking towards Germany after the scent of other reports? His evasiveness did not invite questions about future plans, so Bora refrained from enquiries. He did say, however, “Notwithstanding a serious setback, I hope to be able to report to Colonel Bentivegni my preliminary findings about the matter which, in your words, I was ‘encouraged to look into’.”

  Lieutenant Colonel von Salomon was approaching with an army photographer, no doubt to have his picture taken alongside Bora. After all, the 161st ID was Regiment Gothland’s parent unit. With an indifferent air Bernoulli made a sidestepping move, but not before a last quick exchange. “Does it mean you’ve discovered who killed Tibyetsky?”

  “And Platonov.”

  “And can you prove it?”

  “No.”

  That evening there was no avoiding an official dinner, after which Bora closeted himself to phone the chiefs of German and Ukrainian police. Not altogether a waste of time, as Major Stunde had a German witness who’d seen Arnim Weller heading away from the train station shortly after 8 a.m. Lattmann’s “man in Kiev”, on the other hand, called at the Europa and sat with him until late.

  Close to midnight, climbing the stairs to retire, Bora felt slightly less pessimistic about the chances of securing the army medic for interrogation.

  As for Peter, he’d brought along a book of French poetry, Duckie’s gift, and was reading in bed when his brother joined him.

  “I’d never read this fellow Villon before,” he said. “He’s not bad at all.”

  Bora removed the Knight’s Cross from around his neck and draped it by its ribbon across the dresser’s mirror. He started taking off his uniform. “Is it ‘The Ballad of the Hanged Men’, or ‘The Ladies of Yesteryear’?”

  “Don’t know: this one’s called ‘The Regrets of the Pretty Armour-Maker’.” Peter reading poetry was as novel as Peter putting a cigar in his mouth. “Do you mind if I smoke? I know you quit.”

  “Go ahead.” While his brother lit the cigar (the seasoned pilot’s trademark), Bora glanced at the poem, which he’d read years before. “Les regrets de la belle Heaulmière” bemoaned the loss of youth and beauty, and the poet’s final comment was, “That’s how we do regret the good old days, / Among us fools… ” Four hundred years hadn’t made much difference to regret, apparently, or to the objective foolishness of regretting.

  After a shower and a shave, Bora prepared to go to bed. Sitting up with the book in his lap, Peter smoked – Russian brand, Khan’s aromatic tobacco! – and watched him slip under the sheet in his underwear. “What happened to your knees and elbow?”

  “Nothing: a mishap with the car. Don’t tell our mother.”

  “I won’t. Remember when we swore we’d never wear pyjamas?”

  “As you see, I still don’t. Do you?”

  “Well, Duckie asked that I wear them at home. I suppose Benedikta lets you do without altogether, lucky dog. She’ll change as soon as she’s expecting.” Peter put out the cigar, laid the book on the bedside table and waited until Bora turned the light off. After a moment, he added, “Duckie and I mean to start working on the next one come Christmas. We plan on five, like her family.”

&
nbsp; Bora smiled in the dark. “Well, you’re on your way. Dikta and I will have some catching up to do.”

  “It’ll be fun.”

  “It’ll be fun.”

  “You can probably imagine it all already. Grandmother Ashworth-Douglas says you’ve got the second sight, that it’s the Scots in you.”

  “I thought the Scots in me only made me hold my drink well.”

  This wing of the hotel was taken over by the award recipients and others who’d participated in the ceremony. Some of them were retiring now: there followed the footfall of boots on runners, the opening and closing of doors. They were talking loudly after the many toasts and after-dinner drinks. At one point Kempf must have made his appearance, because they went suddenly quiet, and then it was a sequence of moderate Gute Nacht, Herr Generals up and down the corridor.

  Bora had nearly finished constructing an elaborate set of reasons why he could share Stunde and Pfahl’s trust that they would catch Weller, when Peter, whom he thought fast asleep, broke the silence from across the room.

  “It’ll be all right, won’t it? For you and me and the girls, I mean.”

  Bora’s heart shrank at the words. It felt suddenly small and hard like a marble in his chest, just as easy to toss and play with, or to lose. “What are you talking about, knucklehead? Of course it will.” Behind the cheerful reply, he realized he’d seldom felt so sad. All evening he’d fought against the feeling, telling himself it was the let-down of losing Weller, or the anticlimax after the ceremony, or the coming of fever. It was not. It was not, and he wasn’t about to look into it, because he had no second sight and because he was afraid. “It’ll be all right for all of us, Peter.”

  “Good night, then.”

  “Good night.”

  FRIDAY 28 MAY

  In the morning, with General Kempf, who wanted to fly back immediately to Poltava, the brothers said a hurried goodbye on the hotel steps.