by Steven Conte
Gulag Hozzi was a hard place, as all the camps were. We cut peat, retrieved logs from the Msta River, and when the river was frozen we processed those logs at the local paper mill. Many of us died. That first year I caught typhus and nearly died myself, and it was during my time at Gulag Hozzi that I lost those fingers – not to frostbite but to an accident on the river, when my hand was crushed between logs. As Irina noticed, it was my right hand, and I have never held a scalpel again. At first I despaired about this, though not for long, since in the gulag my medical skills were in high demand. In reality I was more like an apothecary than a doctor, dispensing medications such as lichen and charcoal, caraway and yarrow, and in this I was helped by a fellow officer you might remember: Fabian Drexel, our pharmacist. At Yasnaya Polyana I disliked Drexel, and while I can’t say we became friendly at Gulag Hozzi, I certainly came to see him in a new light. Being younger than me, Drexel had been exposed to Nazi propaganda earlier in his life, and as a result he experienced Germany’s defeat as a profoundly personal (indeed, metaphysical) crisis, demanding nothing less than a reformation of the soul. In his case this took the form of a conversion to Christianity, a creed he’d previously reviled for its pacifism (however notional), and probably also for its association with Jewishness. In Gulag Hozzi he became a vocal anti-Nazi, and on one occasion had his nose broken by a former SS man who was still in possession of an Iron Cross presented to him in person by Heinrich Himmler. Drexel dreamed of returning to Germany and becoming a pastor, but after Gulag Hozzi we were sent to different camps and I never heard from him again.
I should concede that Stalin made two contributions to my welfare: the first by encouraging me to give up smoking, cigarettes being a form of currency in the gulag which I couldn’t see the logic of burning; and the second by curing me of insomnia, which vanished – overnight, you might say – around the time of my capture, one of those developments that I dare say your ‘dear old Dr Freud’ could explain.
The final point I would like to make about my captivity is that you helped me through it. Again, this wasn’t due to some romantic delusion that I would somehow walk free into your arms, but rather to my then recent reading of War and Peace. The copy you gave me I had wisely left in Nuremberg on what turned out to be my final furlough home, but in the camps I made a mental project of recalling as much as I could of the novel, which turned out to be a surprisingly large amount, no doubt thanks to the intensity with which I had read the book at Yasnaya Polyana (with the additional benefit that events in the novel in turn reminded me of interactions with you). In particular I often thought of Pierre’s ordeal as a prisoner during Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow, and whenever I was gnawing some revolting morsel which in the gulag counted as a treat – the leg of a nutria, say – I would think of Pierre reflecting on how deprivation sharpens pleasure as he devours horse meat seasoned with gunpowder. This consoled me; I was the sort of fellow who knew what style of rat he was eating and who, furthermore, was able to philosophise about it.
It was in the camps that I learned to speak fluent Russian, albeit of a very slangy kind, and in Gulag Gagri, near Gagrilovo, my final camp, I convinced the commandant to let me read Das Kapital in Russian. For all I know this may have hastened my release, though I didn’t plan it that way and the opposite might just as easily have happened, as POWs were granted freedom in a very haphazard fashion until as late as 1955. I was lucky. On 23 May 1950 I left Gulag Gagri with about a hundred others and was taken by train on a journey of several days to Leipzig, where those with homes in what had become East Germany were released (and where, incidentally, guards discovered the Iron Cross of the SS man who’d punched Fabian Drexel, and sent him straight back to the camps). From Leipzig the train continued to Fulda in West Germany, where the authorities gave us food and coffee, and there it began to dawn on us that we had not only travelled in space but in time, a thousand changes, stupendous to small, having turned us into foreigners in the country of our birth. We stood in line and took orders like awed little boys, and although grateful to be fed we gradually realised that strenuous efforts were being made to keep us apart from other travellers, our rag-tag group being an embarrassment, a troubling reminder of the war. When we were transferred onto a passenger train for Frankfurt the stationmaster insisted on cramming all ‘homecomers’, as he called us, into the rear carriage, though the train was half empty and its seats unticketed. It was at this point I committed what I later came to see as my first overtly political act, leading a contingent of the men into the other carriages, where we proceeded to sit where we liked. This earned us a good deal of hectoring from the conductors, but apart from a few furloughs during the war, I had been out of the country for over fifteen years and had lost certain habits of obedience, and when we refused to budge, the conductors were forced to back down.
This is already a long letter, I see, and so you will be pleased to know that the eighteen years since 1950 have been less eventful than the preceding nine. Yes, I did go home to Nuremberg, and while my hand prevented me from practising as a surgeon, I was able to return to medicine as a hospital physician. This involved a great deal of administration, and early on I realised that the only way to reform inefficient or outmoded procedures was to engage in some practical politicking. This in turn led to an invitation from the Social Democratic Party to stand as a candidate in local government elections, and in 1954 I became a councillor for the City of Nuremberg. Four years later I was elected mayor, a post I held until two years ago, when I opted to stand down, making way for my deputy.
You asked about children, and the answer is no, I have none. I was forty-nine when I returned to Germany but looked and frequently felt much older, and certainly no women of child-bearing age expressed an interest in me. Perhaps I could have tried harder (or married a woman my own age), but my professional life was exceptionally busy, because even when I entered politics I continued to work at the hospital, though in a part-time capacity. Of course now that I have retired from both medicine and politics I occasionally wish I had a family of my own, but at these times I remind myself that the war deprived millions of people of their lives, while I merely lost a few years and some fingers.
Having personally experienced some of the ‘constraints’ of the Soviet system I do understand your caution in writing to me, yet the prospect of having to wait such a long time for a letter from you is, I confess, rather dismal. Are you sure we couldn’t write openly to one another? What about that blat of yours? A few minutes’ research at the Nuremberg city library showed me that you have acquired a considerable international reputation as a scholar – might that grant you a type of immunity? Also, when you are abroad, could we speak by telephone, or even meet in person? I have considered travelling to Australia in the hope of meeting you there, but being unable to consult you about it I’ve reluctantly given up on this idea. Do you know when and where your subsequent conference will be? By definition, it can’t be as far away as Australia!
One last question. How is Marlen? In your letter you don’t mention him, and this omission makes me uneasy, as I know very well what horrendous losses the Red Army suffered during the war. Perhaps the ‘certain others’ for whom you bring gifts from abroad are relatives of his, a sign he survived the war? I hope so. Please write back and tell me your son is safe and flourishing. Tell me everything, in fact – including, if you wish, more about Viktor. At Yasnaya Polyana national loyalties drove a wedge between us, but having both suffered from Nazism and Stalinism, it occurs to me we now have much in common. So hold nothing back. Like you I find myself craving openness and truth (which the young, especially, seem to think I can’t handle – by far the worst indignity inflicted on the aged).
Yours candidly,
Paul
P.S. Please send me copies of your novels. I mean this.
Don’t let me down!
P.P.S. Can you be entirely sure that this Professor Fleet of yours is trustworthy? As our only way of communicating with one another I ce
rtainly hope so, but for your sake I thought I should ask.
THIRTEEN
Two days later, Thursday, 20 November, Bauer and his team left Yasnaya Polyana in a pair of lorries, himself and Demchak in the lead vehicle, Winkel and Pflieger behind. Bauer’s mood was dark, much like his eye where Katerina had struck it with her head.
He had not expected praise for working the lengthiest shift of his life, but neither had he anticipated being sent to the front. Even allowing for the normal arbitrariness of military life, the redeployment made little sense. Operational reasons, Metz had said when Bauer had asked for an explanation. It was time to ‘revitalise’ the battalion. Whatever the real reason, Bauer felt for his men. In his operating team the only man spared had been Hirsch, retained at the hospital as the unit’s only dentist.
Privately he wondered if Metz was punishing him, but if so for what? It was Molineux who had violated the race laws, to say nothing of what he’d done to Daria Grigorievna. Of course Molineux was Metz’s anaesthetist, as well as a rogue with a knack for a making a crime look like misconduct, and misconduct a character quirk. Liking him was probably a personal failing, Bauer thought. A better man would have preferred the company of Hans Zöllner; but Zöllner’s style of goodness was irredeemably dull, his character a whitewashed room in comparison to Molineux’s dim and damasked persona, the shadowy corners of which were best ignored but whose surfaces were choked with curios and books and evocative droppings of wax.
Not that he would be seeing either man for some time, he supposed, as he gazed through the windscreen at the snowy plain. Or Katerina, for that matter, who he might never meet again, and who in any case now clearly despised him. The region of impact around his eye still pulsated, a nasty reminder of their parting. Better not to look back, he thought. This was a mobile war, and he would do better to focus on what lay ahead.
The afternoon was clear, or what passed for it in the Soviet Union at this time of year, the sky a duck-egg blue that faded lower down into folds of mist on broad, snowy fields, stands of pine appearing in the distance like formations of Napoleonic soldiery. The temperature was minus eighteen degrees. Ever since the arrival of the frost he had wondered how fighting could be sustained in such weather, and the prospect of returning to the field brought home the lunacy of it. Combat? What about eating, shitting, sleeping? How was it possible for men to go on fighting in temperatures that made the basic functions of life if not impossible then prodigiously difficult? The prospect of winning the war and going home might have helped, but the recent offensive against Tula had by all accounts failed, and Bauer’s despondency about this revealed to him that he had become as hooked as anyone on the stimulant of victory. He glanced at Demchak, wondering how the Hiwi regarded their changed circumstances, but as usual the young man’s chiselled face was unreadable, his eyebrows too blond, apparently, to register lesser fluctuations of emotion. Was Demchak sorry to have thrown in his lot with the Wehrmacht? To ask him directly was out of the question, but it was rare for them to be alone together and so, seizing the moment, Bauer asked why he had chosen to join them in the first place. The Ukrainian’s expression didn’t alter. ‘To crush the Reds.’
‘I see. And to what end? An independent Ukraine?’
‘No end. To destroy them. To scrub them off the face of the earth.’
‘You hate them, then.’
‘Of course. Don’t you?’
The question sounded sincere, unpremeditated, and yet Bauer hesitated, unsure if his loyalty was being tested. ‘By the sound of it, not as strongly as you.’
‘Stalin starved Ukraine,’ Demchak said. ‘This was 1933. My mother died, and my younger brother. I was fourteen years old. I boiled and ate my belt. Not all at once, understand. I rationed it out. Ate slowly. You can’t imagine.’
As a widower Bauer sometimes felt sorry for himself, and yet he kept finding people whom life had treated more harshly. ‘I don’t suppose I can,’ he said.
‘The famine killed millions,’ Demchak said, ‘millions. Stalin wanted to kill us off and make way for Russian settlers.’
‘And you think it was a policy, not a policy failure?’
‘It was deliberate. The Bolsheviks stole our land, our crops. Imposed grain quotas they knew we couldn’t meet. There were even laws against gleaning. So now I hate them, their system, their leader, their language. Want to know how to tell if you’re free or unfree?’
‘Go ahead, tell me.’
‘When you’re unfree you can’t take your goods to market. Can’t negotiate a price. At least not in public.’
Bauer mulled this over then said, ‘That seems true to me. But incomplete? I can think of other symptoms.’
‘That’s the fundamental one. If you can’t buy or sell you’re no better than a slave.’
It occurred to Bauer that, except in the case of the Jews, National Socialism had largely left commerce alone. In fact to Demchak this was probably part of its attraction.
‘May I speak plainly, Captain?’
‘I’d say you have already.’
‘These losses we’re taking. Do you think the army will let us take on Ivan – we Hiwis, I mean? Give us weapons, training?’
‘It’s not something I’ve thought about,’ Bauer said.
‘But with such heavy losses. Someone like me who really hates the Reds, it can’t be long before they let me go to the front.’
‘We’re going there now.’
‘Sir, I don’t want to seem ungrateful. To you, to the battalion. But I joined up to fight the Bolsheviks, to really hurt them, not to patch up the damage they’re doing to us.’
‘I’d be sorry to lose you.’
‘You won’t let me go?’
‘I’d have to discuss it with Metz.’
‘It’s not as if the work is difficult,’ Demchak said. ‘There are others who could do it.’
‘Probably. But don’t underestimate yourself. You’re more intelligent than most.’
‘All the more reason to be in combat.’
Bauer glanced at him, at his outlandishly Aryan looks, the scarred upper lip. His fighting spirit was in some ways commendable. In fact it was not so different from Katerina’s, and it hardly made sense to admire her zeal while finding fault with Demchak’s. They both believed, and with a strength Bauer himself had never mustered.
Ahead the road fell gently down to a causeway that ran about two hundred metres across a frozen lake. The ice was windswept, blue. To either side marshland, stubbled under snow. The causeway was narrow, not much wider than a lorry, and crossing it from the opposite side was a column of troops – prisoners of war, Bauer realised, a great brown millipede of men escorted by a handful of guards on motorcycles. Demchak pulled over beside a burned-out panzer, and behind them Winkel did the same. With both lorries’ engines off, the silence seemed profound, all the deeper for the distant buzzing of the motorcycles. Snow lay on the marsh, on the fields, on the slopes and on the ravaged tank, bandaging its burns. There was snow on its turret and its cannon, which were pointed to one side. ‘We probably treated some of the crew,’ Bauer said.
‘Probably,’ Demchak said.
Perched on the cannon’s muzzle was a solitary crow, an avatar of blackness in the white. It cawed and Demchak seized the handle of his door. ‘Permission to get out, sir?’
‘Granted. Just shut the door.’
Demchak got out – to urinate, Bauer presumed, but in the driver’s side mirror he glimpsed him pivot on his heel and methodically spit three times across his shoulder. ‘Troublemaker,’ Bauer said to the crow, which can’t have heard him through the glass but nonetheless tilted its head. A lip-reader perhaps.
Demchak clambered back into the cabin, and Bauer offered him a cigarette. They both lit up. Four of the advance motorcyclists were coming off the causeway. Two immediately peeled off on either side, while the other pair roared further up the slope. Both of the riders who had stopped were wearing bits of Soviet kit: boots and gloves, an ushanka,
the risk of being shot by a comrade regarded as lower, evidently, than that of freezing to death.
The cabin was filling with cigarette smoke, making Bauer’s eyes sting, though this was marginally preferable to opening a window and getting flayed by the cold. How he hated cigarettes really – the stink, the cough, the staining of his fingers – and yet, Christ, how he adored the silken hit of nicotine. On no account, he decided, could he let himself be captured and, like these poor devils on the causeway, have to go without.
The column was about five or six men wide, the faces at the front of it now near enough to read. Some looked resentful, others indifferent or resigned. This wasn’t a body of men but a shambling mass, each man responsible now for his own salvation. Demchak pointed at a group with Asiatic features. ‘Fucking Tartars,’ he said. ‘Sorry for my language, sir, but I can’t stand their slanty eyes. Millions of them, the Reds have – an endless supply.’
Bauer had heard rumours of so-called ‘Siberian’ troops arriving from the east: well armed, well clothed and better organised than the Soviet soldiers they had faced in the first phase of the invasion. The men so violently reviled by Demchak looked to Bauer as pitiful as the rest, but he could see Demchak’s point about numbers. As individuals the prisoners looked beaten and demoralised, but as they came off the causeway and began to stream past the lorry they became, by dint of numbers, an impressive, even intimidating sight. Yes, their capture represented a triumph of German arms, but the ongoing resistance at Tula rather supported Demchak’s claim that the Soviet Union’s supply of manpower was effectively endless. Bauer recalled Katerina’s taunt the day she’d shown them around the estate: that hurled hats alone could halt the German advance. Hyperbole, yes, but by a similar logic was it possible for the Soviet troops to give up in such numbers that the Wehrmacht would run short of men to escort them to the rear? And how were they to be fed? Could an army surrender its way to victory? Bauer smiled at the notion – one for Molineux – then grew pensive again at the sight of a wounded prisoner limping past with the aid of a stick. Would there be medics among them, or doctors? He hoped so. In fact hoping was all he could do. Hope as evasion. As neglect. Hope as cowardice.