by Ben Pastor
TUESDAY 1 JUNE
In the morning he was himself again, and the image of dispassion. He waited until 9 a.m. and drove to the Kombinat. The absence of Stark’s car from the grassy front lot was a given. It was the lack of typing, the breathless silence upstairs that impressed him. Stark’s assistant rose from his chair when Bora looked in from the hallway.
“Is the commissioner in?”
“Not yet, Major.”
Difficult to judge from his expression; bureaucrats are hard to read and go haywire for any change in routine, regardless of the motive behind it; a prolonged delay is to them as upsetting as a catastrophe. Bora glanced at his saddle on the floor. “Well, I’m here for the Karabakh. If I may, I’ll begin by harnessing him.”
The assistant looked down uncomfortably. “I’m sorry, Major Bora. General District Commissioner Magunia reviewed matters yesterday and decided to keep the stallion for reproduction. It is presently travelling to the Marbach stud farm. I’m very sorry.” He tried to dress his words in empathy, but his mind was evidently elsewhere. This morning everyone at the Kombinat must be labouring under the weight of Stark’s inexplicable truancy, and possibly Magunia’s hostility as well.
Bora replied (and meant it) that he was extremely disappointed about losing Turian-Chai. “I’ll have to live with it, I suppose.” He didn’t add that as a horse lover he couldn’t wish the animal a happier future than to enjoy the good life at the head of a stud farm, away from the battlefield. Shamelessly, he added instead, “I’ll wait for the commissioner, in any case. There’s the matter of my Russian prisoners’ destination, and of a permit I need for special food supplies. Will you please look on the commissioner’s desk and see if he left any instructions for me?”
“As you know, I don’t have the commissioner’s permission to look into his desk,” the assistant replied, but walked across the hallway to Stark’s office. “I’ll see what’s in the Out box.”
For all his internal turmoil, Bora followed calmly. In appearance, he was watching the official run his eyes across the neat array of paperwork. In fact, his attention was all on Stark’s desk calendar, open on today’s date. The previous leaf, used to scribble Larisa’s address, had been hurriedly detached along the perforated line, so much so that frayed bits of paper still hung from it. No other notes or reminders in view. The desk’s right-hand drawer was ajar enough to slip something in or out, possibly as Stark had left it after picking up his pistol on his way to Larisa’s.
The assistant sounded at a loss. “I don’t know, Major. We – have no directions as to the Gebietskommissar’s appointments today. It might be better for you to stop by later, or even phone before you come.”
“Very well, then. I’ll leave him a note.” Without waiting for the assistant to agree, Bora snatched a pencil from Stark’s desk and vigorously wrote on the calendar page. Shipment of 123 Russian labourers began from Bespalovka at 04.00 on 1 June; arrival confirmed at rail station at 06.30. Please advise further. Bora (Major, Army). Whatever impression Stark’s note might have left on the paper below, it was now abundantly overwritten. “That’s that, then. Please have the saddle and harness replaced in my vehicle.”
When he left the Kombinat, Bora became aware of how his neck and shoulders ached after the effort of carrying the dead weight of a hefty man; other than that, he was a master of composure. On the highway to Kharkov he crossed SS and unmarked Gestapo vehicles in tow, travelling in the opposite direction. “What’s going on?” he indifferently enquired of the soldiers at the checkpoint. They didn’t know, but Bora had a strong impression the vehicles might belong to the search party. He stopped by divisional headquarters to have his orders updated and signed, and took the south-east road to Smijeff and Bespalovka. Halfway there he turned off towards Krasny Yar.
Peasants from Schubino and the surrounding area were still gathered in the clearing between the Kalekina farm and the woods, having come to identify and bury their dead sons and grandsons. Fresh graves dug in the thick soil, all fist-sized sods, formed a row along the leaning fence Bora had righted a few days earlier. Once he made them understand he wasn’t among those who’d carried out the operation, Bora got the reticent elders and the grieving women to talk. When he asked about the Kalekin widows, they told him the older one had hanged herself in the tractor shed. “So now her whole family is finished, and she’s done suffering.”
“The younger one?”
“The younger one moved in with the priest at Oseryanka.”
In the desolate house, open and probably already stolen from, a warm breeze made the cheap cotton draped across the window flutter as if it were alive. Bora recalled his first impression of the interior as an underwater world, where magic women noiselessly moved; now the trembling rag was like something lost, floating after a wreck. His present sadness seemed excessive, but somehow appropriate to the day.
Three of the besprizornye still lay where they’d been dragged by the SS. Grown youths machine-gunned in their tattered clothes, no one claimed them. Unclaimed and unknown, the peasants accused them of all the wrongdoing committed, from pilfering to the murder of old man Kalekin. For that reason, and because of the stench, everyone stayed away. The dead boys lay under a cloud of flies. One had unruly long hair, the other two were shaven close to the skull; all were barefooted, scrawny. Air and misery, as Roth said, was what they’d lived on for months, maybe years. Bora handed out karbovanets so the Russians would agree to dig a grave for them too. The SS did me a favour after all; otherwise I might have had to shoot them myself.
What puzzled him most was hearing that, contrary to expectations, none of the civilians had ventured into the woods in the past two days. Some of these women and older men, come on foot from a distance, were ready to go back without their children rather than daring Krasny Yar. “There could be other bodies,” Bora told them. “Don’t you want to know if other missing youngsters were left where they fell?”
They stood around him with their heads low – white kerchiefs and balding or grey brows, mulish and close-mouthed – while the unclaimed boys were shovelled into a shallow hole. Superstition is something you can’t argue against. But so are other things, much more pragmatic. Bora continued towards Bespalovka convinced of the rational explanation: it had prompted his request for orders and the stopover, after all. Once at the regimental camp, he commanded his troops to move into Krasny Yar not according to the original plan but as if against a stronghold, an encircling operation whose set-up required most of the day.
Written at Bespalovka, 3 June.
Thank God we Germans learnt our lesson about forest combat in 1941. Something told me not to trust the Yar this time. Yesterday, while committing a company to pretend a frontal advance towards the centre of the woods, I decided to send another to sweep around the northern edge, where the minefields were cleared by the SS. No sooner had they stepped into tree-covered ground than Ivan opened fire with all he had, snipers and mortar, machine guns tearing everything to shreds. It killed two of my troopers right off, and bogged the others down for a time.
In the three days since Totenkopf wiped out the besprizornye, on the mistaken principle that – like thunderbolts – the SS never strike the same place twice (or need to), Russian partisans had clearly moved into Krasny Yar. Whether they were those who’d escaped the 198th ID near the Obasnovka farm during Warm Gates, or fresh units arrived from across the Donets, it makes no difference. The confusion, wild shouting and volume of fire could have cowed us years ago, but not now. My platoon leaders kept the men from losing heart, although for a moment I think they were overwhelmed. You couldn’t see where the shots came from; broken branches rained down, charges went off right and left: Varus at Teutoburg must have faced a similar sense of dismay. Thankfully, we were better equipped and organized than he was. Calling it a fierce battle would be too much, but for a good two hours it was an inferno. It took us that long to reduce their dogged resistance, strongest around the kurgan in the middle of the Yar. I made
sure I had troopers waiting at the closest ford on the Donets, as I knew the Reds would try to get away in that direction. I positioned men at Schubino and the Kalekina farm as well. As for myself, I chose to advance with the “decoy” company, where, thanks to the experienced troopers, even greenhorns kept their wits about them under fire.
It took us until the afternoon to tighten the net, over ten hours in all. We were all justifiably provoked, and what frustrated us most was that in the end, rather than surrender, some of the partisans held grenades under their chins and made themselves explode. Others were cold-bloodedly killed by their own. We caught only a handful when it was all over, by the ditch near the walnut grove, the place called Orekhovy. Their commanding officer, an army regular gravely wounded, begged to be given his handgun. There were only Nagel and I present. Nagel frowned hard. He looked over for my assent, and because the man was too weak to hold the pistol steady, he mercifully did it for him.
So it’s done at last: the last of Krasny Yar’s ghosts have been exorcised. Even though it was worth it, it cost me fifteen casualties. After mopping up, I partly retraced the steps Nagel and I had followed when we first went into the woods together, to see what the Totenkopf engineers had been up to. Rags up in the air, where they’d blown up other caves and hideouts. Demolition charges were expertly placed in the kurgan, so that the collapsed corridor could explode without causing other cave-ins. The blast had revealed what I call an inner chamber for lack of a better expression, 3 x 3 metres in size, where the crates must have been kept these many years. A false treasure cave, as it were. Were the wild boys, the besprizornye, even dimly aware of it? It might have been with them as memories of events are handed down in all primitive societies, until they become one with fable. But taboos remain; strange pacts and unwritten laws stay inviolable. Boys little more than children killing or being killed aren’t so difficult to understand in this country: no more than a decade ago, Kostya’s sickly four-year-old sister was left to starve by his parents in order to save him and another healthy sibling, even though she wept and begged her mother for food! What do we Germans know? How can we judge? Even as a soldier I feel grief-stricken for all this, for everyone involved. As Nagel put it in his concise manner after the battle was over, “It’s a sick place where mercy means helping a man kill himself.”
Krasny Yar is definitely clear of occupants now. Engineers from the 161st are dismantling the remaining minefields in anticipation of the summer battle. Until our marching orders arrive, Gothland will camp at Bespalovka, ready to move out at any time.
KHARKOV
Debriefing with von Salomon was a concise matter. The lieutenant colonel heard Bora out without sitting for a moment at his desk. Hands behind his back, he paced a straight line between the window and the closed door of his office. The latest news about Commissioner Stark, rocking Kharkov’s administrative cadres, was foremost in his mind.
“Haven’t you seen them going by? The Gestapo has been at the Commissariat since 10.00 hours. Acting on information from the Central Security Office, its men also visited Totenkopf’s headquarters.”
Bora hinted at a nod. He’d hoped Stark’s disappearance would fuel the tension between the SA and Gestapo; that the state police would also show up on the Armed SS’ doorstep was an added bonus. He said, “I did pass staff cars heading to the Kombinat, Herr Oberstleutnant. What’s the reason? As far as I could see, the district commissioner’s car wasn’t yet parked there when I drove by.”
“Precisely.” Von Salomon made an about-face from the window. “He’s been absent without any justification since the thirty-first, do you understand? His automobile was recovered early this morning in an abandoned industrial area outside Kharkov, with his wallet and pistol inside. Gone of his own accord, it seems. No signs of violence; nothing. The city is rife with rumours. Magunia’s visit is seen as the precipitating factor. There’s wild gossip going around that a tape was found on Tuesday in Stark’s desk accusing him of illicit deals and other such things.” (Bora, who’d slipped the tape in the drawer himself, showed mild surprise: “Really?”) “And that’s not all. The Gestapo went through the District Commissariat’s storage and supply areas and supposedly discovered a number of crates – I don’t know what kind, Major, crates – filled with dirt and rocks, can you believe? Like in the film Nosferatu, eh? But the vampire only carried around soil from Transylvania! Rumour has it that the crates used to contain valuables, because bits of gold jewellery were found in the dirt after sifting… It’d be enormous! I have from a reliable source that the suspicion is that Stark kept gold extracted from the Jewish community in Kiev two years ago and plans to run off with it somewhere – some say Switzerland, others over to the Reds… Officially none of it is surfacing, of course. The story of the tape, then! Why would Stark keep a compromising tape in his desk? What do you say, Major?”
“I say we ought to keep clear-minded about hearsay, Herr Oberstleutnant. I don’t see how the commissioner could reach Switzerland from here with a load of stolen gold.”
“Right.”
“And to the Reds? Only a defector would go over to the Reds!”
“Right.”
“As for the tape in his desk, admitting that it does exist… If it’s not the only copy of whatever it is, it’d be useless for him or anyone to destroy it. Others are certainly circulating.”
“Right, right.” Von Salomon stopped his pacing. He checked the hour on his wristwatch and then cracked his knuckles. “You are clear-minded. It’s all hearsay, on the whole. They’re looking for Stark all over town. Maybe he was upset about Magunia’s visit and shot himself.”
“Not with his pistol, if – as you say – it was left inside the car.”
“Oh, well, not that it matters to us. The Army has everything to gain from staying away from it all. Back to business: when are you off to Bespalovka for good?”
“On Saturday at the latest, Herr Oberstleutnant.”
“Excellent. I’ll see you in the field, then. And would you do me a favour, Major Bora? Kindly give a ride to Heeresoberpfarrer Galette as you leave the building.”
Bora would have done so in any case, for reasons of his own. Senior Army Chaplain Father Galette stopped by divisional headquarters twice a week, Thursday and Sunday. After lunch Bora drove him to his lodgings, and since the chaplain had with him his portable altar and all he needed to say Mass, he volunteered to help him with it to his second-floor room.
It would be a good time to take advantage of the situation and have his confession heard, but Bora was not in a revelatory frame of mind at the moment. He did, however, entrust Khan’s film reel and Weller’s note to the priest. “Under the seal of the sacrament of penance,” he specified. “To be turned in on my behalf to Chief of Abwehr Central Office, Colonel Eccard von Bentivegni, when you reach Berlin.”
As Hohmann’s one-time secretary, Galette seldom enquired of the cardinals’ former students beyond the bare minimum. He did not ask why Bora chose to avoid the Abwehr chain of command on the eastern front. He safely put away what he’d been given. “His Eminence hasn’t heard from you in some time, Major,” he said, a reasonable comeback. “He wishes you to remember that for our Holy Mother Church no action is so dire that it forever changes the man who commits it, provided there’s repentance.”
Bora did not smile, but remained agreeable. “Repentance is where the rub is, Heeresoberpfarrer. I feel none whatever.”
From Galette’s downtown quarters to Pomorki the distance was less than nine kilometres; Bora doubled it by using unguarded minor roads. When he drove through the open gate Nyusha was outside the dacha, searching for eggs where the chickens laid them in the garden. She looked up in alarm before she recognized him. Bora wondered when his arrival would no longer make women react in fear. He watched her wipe her hands on her apron and start towards the door to announce his visit.
“I don’t need to come in,” he told her. He hadn’t been able to scrape up much sugar: there was less than a h
undred grams in the paper bag he handed the girl. “Give this to the most esteemed, the mnogouvazhaemaya Larisa Vasilievna, from Martyn Friderikovich and with Commander Tibyetsky’s compliments.”
“… and with Commander Tibyetsky’s compliments,” Nyusha repeated, spelling the words out. “Yes, sir.” Eggs formed little bumps in the pockets of her apron; beads of perspiration dotted the peach fuzz of her young face. Who knows, her soldier husband might have imagined her this way when he died, standing under the sun in a lush garden – minus a German officer.
Bora felt, not for the first time, that he belonged nowhere. The last image he’d somehow prearranged for his own death was Remedios’ in Spain, because Remedios stood for all women before and since, including his wife. But he no more fitted in 1937 Spain than in 1943 Ukraine: the awareness made him free, or alone, or both. He said, “Thank the esteemed Larisa Vasilievna ever so much for showing me her ‘beautiful corner’, and ask her to pray to Our Lady of Oseryan for my brother and myself.”
MEREFA
There were still a few things to do before leaving the schoolhouse to radiomen from the 7th Panzer. At 3.45 p.m. Bora called in his orderly.