Tin Sky

by Ben Pastor

  Does it follow that if the boxes from Krasny Yar travelled to the Kombinat, Geko Stark was the “stranger” who visited the woods? No. He was in Kharkov back when the generals met in Larisa’s town house. And that’s all I actually have in hand – unless I consider his signature on the request to ship Weller to Germany to be a clue. If Khan had given me a hint… If I’d let Platonov end his goddamn sentence…

  The sole objects Bora had left from Commander Tibyetsky – having delivered his lend-lease supplies and tanker jacket to the RSHA jail – were an empty trunk and the snapshot that showed him victoriously emerging from the cupola of his T-34. Bora had already examined this to exhaustion. There were no hints to be gained from the image (why should there be?) or from the two lines pencilled on the back of it: Narodnaya Slava, New Year’s, 1943.

  Taken while we were spitting blood in Stalingrad; I recognize some of the buildings behind him. He was justified in bragging, after all.

  During their second (and final) conversation, Khan had carelessly placed the goblet full of juice on the photograph, and he, Bora, had removed it. Khan had at once put it back. Small gestures, revealing nothing but a different sense of orderliness between them. And yet it jarred that a man so proud of his achievements would risk soiling a celebratory image of himself with sticky orange juice. Unless he wanted me to pay particular attention to the photo. Bora walked to his trunk and took the snapshot in hand once more. Numbers and letters, he’d already noticed, had been written down with the same pencil on two separate occasions: the pressure of the handwriting varied slightly. Which came first, the date or the name? One is written above the other, but that alone isn’t an indication of priority. For all I know, Narodnaya Slava is what he called his tank, although he used the Baba Yaga analogy more. I wonder if he added to the original caption before he crossed the Donets, or even after – at the time I was trying to contact Zossen by radio, for example. And if he did, was it to stress the date (our end in Stalingrad), or the Red Army’s “national glory”? When I complained of not finding a message or a note of any kind in Khan’s room, Dr Bernoulli commented that the room was not Khan’s security. His tank was. What if this photo of his tank were a pointer of sorts? I don’t see how. No, I don’t see how. I wish Narodnaya Slava stood for something other than an armoured vehicle presently being dismantled or a vanished Kharkov movie house Larisa thinks was “off Voennaya”.

  To Bora’s knowledge, several alleys branched off on both sides of the avenue that derived its name – “Military” – from the barracks long standing in the district, on the left bank of the Kharkov River. It stood to reason that a theatre frequented by soldiers would bear a patriotic name of the National Glory type.

  Of the city maps he kept on hand, none marked cinemas. A folding city plan, dating back five years, actually served as an appendix to a booklet where Kharkov streets and state-run businesses were alphabetically listed. When he looked under “places of entertainment”, he saw no movie house called Narodnaya Slava existed, which meant it had either closed before 1938, or changed name. Not that it’ll get me anywhere, but the next time I’m in Kharkov, I might as well take a detour to Voennaya. After all, there’s a Wehrmacht fuel depot in the former Horse Market nearby, and I could kill two birds with one stone.

  The crickets outside were like steel nibs scratching the dark. Bora listened to them with the diary open before him, in a lonely mood somewhere between hope and agitation. Fever was setting in. From the journal’s thickness the edge of Dikta’s envelope showed, a narrow powder-blue line with the power of lifting him out of his present doubts and anxiety only to give him more doubts and a different anxiety. He wrote no entry for the night. Before retiring, he unsealed the envelope and lifted his wife’s photo from it with his thumb and forefinger tenderly, but not all the way.

  Saturday the twenty-ninth he spent at Bespalovka, interrogating the Russians captured during Operation Thermopylae. Nothing of real use could be extracted from them: the survivors were young, eager to collaborate if the alternative was the firing squad, but politically ignorant. The sophisticated lend-lease plastique and timers intended for sabotage seemed wasted on those big-limbed boys thrown together without preparation. Bora saw them as a businessman views exchange goods or heads of cattle. They supplied him with an excuse to present himself and offer Stark newly available forced labour.

  Everything was blooming early this year. In the fields around the cavalry camp, sunflowers had begun opening up nearly a month in advance, bright yellow like mass-produced stars on an assembly line. Bora – who’d grown used to seeing endless expanses of them in the East – found them newly jarring, on the threshold of disgust. It was curious how they set his teeth on edge. Closer in, on the thirsty rim of the road, crowded the pale bellflowers Russians called brother and sister or Ivan and Maria. As a child, Bora had known the plant as wolf’s tail. According to the pragmatic Kostya it was cow wheat, a weed that made dairy cattle produce more milk, but when added to food or drink intoxicated you or heightened the effect of alcohol in your body.

  The prisoners, his barter chattels, squatted or stood against the unripe yellow of the fields. Bora was staring at them when Nagel walked up to him to say something. “Yes,” he answered. “Thank you.”

  The senior master sergeant had set aside the best among the firearms captured from the Reds. Bora walked with him to view, heft and handle them. Targeting the round heads of the most distant sunflowers, they stood side by side shattering them to bits. Some rifles were definitely better than others. Experienced shooters as both were, they eventually did it with relish. Bora examined weapons and equipment to be destroyed, anti-personnel mines and timed demolition charges of the type used to blast Kiev years earlier. Before leaving for Merefa, he selected and picked up one of the SVT-40 sniper rifles, silenced and equipped with a scope.

  KHARKOV, SUNDAY 30 MAY

  Von Salomon scanned Bora’s updated notes on Partisanentaktik as he would postcards from a foreign city he’d never visit. His questions were pertinent, and he’d forward the copy as needed, of course. Had he not called him back as he was already leaving his office, Bora’s impression of him would have remained one of melancholy zeal. But he did call Bora back, and in all seriousness, he asked, “Did you know that a turtle dove will kill his rival at mating season?”

  “No, Herr Oberstleutnant.”

  “It’s a disturbing thought, in view of the opinion we generally have of Ukrainian bonhomie.”

  “I didn’t know we had such an opinion either, Herr Oberstleutnant.”

  Bora left the command building shaking his head. With the second half of the morning before him free of duties, he planned to steer clear of military bureaucracy and do some scouting of his own. His city map was duly marked, and from divisional headquarters he could walk to his destination.

  When he reached it, he saw that the narrow alley off Voennaya was maybe two hundred metres long. It ran south of the Staro–Moskovskaya barracks blocks, not unlike those in the army district of Leipzig–Gohlis, and nothing much distinguished its course. Most houses appeared abandoned, even those war had spared. The cinema Larisa had indicated stood recessed from the other façades, in a dusty little square where four linden trees cast a scented, broken shade. A dilapidated stucco building that seemed to have been out of use for years, it was unreadable style-wise but probably dated to the 1920s. The sign above the entrance had suffered from time and lack of care. The S of Slava had fallen off, and now, fittingly for the district, it read Lava – a Cossack cavalry attack formation, or, alternatively, volcanic material. In any case, the change reinforced rather than diminished the impact of the patriotic word.

  A semicircular vestibule, oddly reminiscent of a Greek temple, with man-sized chalk owls at the sides of the door, led into the kinoteatr. It looked as though the place hadn’t been frequented in years: the glass panes of the double door were intact, opaque with filth; the leaf itself, merely stuck to the sill, could be pushed open with little effort
. Bora stepped inside.

  Wartime cities were full of these buildings suspended between life and death: literally, sometimes, when one side or the other booby-trapped them against the unwary. If he was still alive, Weller might be hiding in such a place down in Kiev. I’ve come this far, Bora told himself. I’m not going to stop now. He found himself in a small foyer illuminated by two bow windows, one on top of the other, marking the façade above the entrance. Ahead, rows of spartan armchairs could be detected in the dark projection hall. From the foyer, two curving sets of stairs with ornate iron railings led to the balcony, and presumably to the projectionist’s cabin as well. Throughout, a pea-green pressed tin ceiling shed crumbling paint. This formed a pale layer on the floor, thinner and nearly transparent where footprints (left how long ago?) had last disturbed it.

  Whenever the place had been forsaken, there was no sign of haste or violence to indicate a traumatic process. What with the greenish hues and the old-fashioned intact nature of the surroundings, Bora had the impression of moving underwater, in a sea relict where noise did not travel. It was not beyond possibility that the movie house had ceased functioning well before the war started; for whatever reason (diversionism, the presence of a Jewish manager), it could have been out of commission for up to ten years.

  Upstairs, the projectionist’s cabin was dark. Bora used his torchlight to snatch glimpses of objects and examine some in detail. All machinery had been removed. A forlorn stack of old labelled reels was still there, piled on the floor. Most of them he identified as propaganda documentaries from ten or so years earlier – the right material for a military audience – although feature films from the 1920s and 1930s were not missing. Strike, The Cigarette Girl of Mosselprom, Ivan (with a Ukrainian setting if he remembered correctly), Happiness (the image of the polka dot horse on a hilltop!), And Quiet Flows the Don, among others. Some Bora had watched in his Russian-learning days.

  One item stood out from the rest. Sitting alone on the projectionist’s table, it surprised Bora to the point that he suspected German troops had at least temporarily used the theatre, even though it seemed unlikely. A boxed 8 mm reel of the Tobis–Degeto type – on which Wehrmacht war documentaries were filmed – was easily recognizable. The cardboard casing, unmarked, contained a dark brown metal reel about ten centimetres in diameter, three-quarters full. Bora shone his light all over it to look for a title, finding none. Inside the casing, however, a paper tape that had apparently come loose from the reel read “Baba Yaga”. Bora tried unsuccessfully not to let his imagination run away with him. It could be a children’s film, he reasoned, a cartoon, a short satire against the ancient regime, or whatever else. It could be whatever else. Why then was the label in Cyrillic and Latin capitals? Unless of course it contained a German newsreel on the Eastern Front, shown here to Russian-speaking volunteers at some point, possibly during the second-last occupation of the city. It was a recent film to be sure, complete with sound stripe.

  Bora’s mind churned ideas faster than he could evaluate them for their usefulness. Foremost was the question of where he could find an 8 mm projector of the right kind. He pocketed the Tobis–Degeto reel, went downstairs and for a few minutes sat in the semi-dark projection hall. He needed to gather his thoughts, calm himself. When he crossed his legs, the stitched cuts hurt and the entire row of badly anchored chairs moved with him. As his eyes became accustomed to the dimness, looking up at the tin ceiling he saw it was stamped with a geometric floral pattern. Loops, petals, leaves always repeated. He realized now it was warm here, and the place breathed that indefinite odour old movie houses have. In the heat, flecks of peeling paint slowly detached themselves from the ceiling, coming down with the lightness of moths. Outside, the anonymous alley ran into Voennaya like a dry river bed, and Voennaya’s waterless tributary into the seared lake that was the Horse Market. Kharkov, all around, waited for the next battle to shatter it.

  Bora sat in the empty projection hall with his eyes closed. The strong impression of being close to the solution made him ache. Not daring to hope that Khan Tibyetsky had reverted to being Uncle Terry (or simply to being a German officer) to the extent of directing him here, still he could not dismiss the coincidence between the words on the back of the photograph and this abandoned movie house. Hadn’t Khan spoken of himself as someone who erased his tracks, like the witch uses a broom to row through the air? Hadn’t he answered, when Bora bragged he’d seen all his propaganda films, “You haven’t seen all of them”?

  Yes, but how could he place the reel here, if he crossed over on 4 May and was under custody from that moment on?

  Viewing the reel became a physical necessity, although it was easier said than done in wartime Kharkov. Bora stood to leave. Air Force troops being usually well equipped with film, cameras and such, the closest opportunity would be with Peter’s former colleagues at Rogany. He’d need his brother’s intercession to convince them to lend him a projector, which meant radioing him at the Poltava airfield before he left for his next assignment.

  From divisional headquarters Bora was able to contact his brother, but barely. Peter was in a hurry on account of a training session. Friendly as ever, he couldn’t see any problem. “Mention my name and bring a case of beer with you, Martin: my colleagues will oblige you.”

  Finding a case of beer proved to be more complicated than getting the Luftwaffe squadron’s communications officer to say yes. It was midday before Bora could effect the barter at the airbase, and then the problem became where to view the film with a measure of privacy. There was no electricity at the Merefa schoolhouse; the divisional headquarters offices were crowded. “I wonder if you could accommodate me…” Bora asked the pilot. “My wife sent me a reel from home: is there a room where I could watch it alone?”

  The pilot snickered without malice. “I’m off to the mess-hall for lunch, Major. The building’s all yours for the next hour.”

  Khan’s broadcasts to the Sixth Army encircled at Stalingrad had become legend; in German, the general urged the “doomed fascists” to give up the fight and surrender. Over and over Bora had heard the booming words of retribution flow from loudspeakers at ghostly street corners and from the top of gutted casements. It was one of the sickening memories of those desperate weeks. And it had been a double-dealing man about to defect who thundered about Paulus’ capitulation to the Reds!

  In this reel, too, Khan Tibyetsky spoke in German, reading from a typed manuscript. The film must have been shot in a room of his residence; definitely not in his office. It went without saying that the men filming and recording his speech had no idea what was being said. More likely than not, they’d been told it was another anti-Nazi propaganda pitch. Bora wouldn’t give a penny for the amount of time Khan had allowed them to survive beyond their task.

  Standing behind a massive desk, in full uniform and an enviable set of medals, Khan opened pragmatically with, “To whom it may concern: in the event that anything befalls my person during my residence among German troops in the Kharkov Oblast, there will be no negative left of this film. My name is Ghenrikh Pavlovich Tibyetsky, and my preference is that the recipient of the following statement be Abwehr Colonel Eccard von Bentivegni, of the Office of Foreign Intelligence III. Should the reel instead be viewed by you, my former Red Army comrades, know that it barely concerns you; even if you succeeded in eliminating me before I crossed the Donets. As a matter of fact, it isn’t fear of your retaliation that prompts me to speak – you do not in the least suspect I have for years worked in the enemy’s employ – but the all but coincidental presence in the Kharkov Oblast of two men from my past: Gleb Gavrilovich Platonov and Alfred Lothar Stark. Learning of my defection, Platonov might attempt to harm my cause by distorting the truth about matters I alone should discuss. As for Stark, whose support Platonov uselessly tried to engage in 1926, he is without scruples and will succeed in assassinating me if he can lay his hands on me.”

  Bora, who’d been listening with a wary ear, became stock-sti
ll.

  “If you have come into possession of this reel, to be safely placed in Kharkov by a trusted and anonymous comrade from the glorious days, it stands to reason that you have reconstructed at least part of the story. In summary, it entails the destiny of Makhno’s Black Army war booty, which Gleb Platonov and I found in the heady days of the Revolution in Makhno’s local refuge, a kurgan in the woods of Krasny Yar near the Udy River.” Khan’s general officer gruffness, surely meant for those filming him, was belied by a certain ironic quality of his voice and by artful pauses. “The rebels’ raids against local gentry and churches yielded a significant collection of Russian and foreign currency, bank drafts, stocks, precious metals and jewels. The gold alone came to ten pud of weight, the silver to forty. Platonov and I differed on the destination the booty should have. Our arguments made me painfully aware of his truly bourgeois idea of money and its value: he was Robespierre, I was Danton.” (Pause.) “During the NEP we frequently visited the Kharkov Oblast, and at least once a year I travelled alone to the Krasny Yar woods, by my orders marked as an off-limits military area. There, in a place most people already avoided for its scary reputation, Makhno’s ill-gotten gains functioned as my carefully disguised private lending institution, in my judgement well suited to afford small frivolities and socializing for deserving comrades.