The Tolstoy Estate

by Steven Conte

  ‘Go back? We’re more than halfway there.’

  ‘There’s a staff car. Some lieutenant general on board. It’s urgent. We have to go back.’

  ‘Is that what the captain said?’

  ‘The captain is angry about it,’ Demchak said, ‘but there’s nothing he can do. It’s an order.’

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ Bauer said. He considered going forward himself and arguing the point as a doctor, but having issued an order this lieutenant general, whoever he was, was unlikely to back down. Hell, it was even possible he was justified: that what he hoped to achieve at the front was more significant, more pressing, than the evacuation of a handful of wounded men.

  ‘All right then,’ Bauer said, ‘we’d better back up.’

  Demchak nodded and changed gears, looked over his shoulder and, with one hand on the back of Bauer’s seat, reversed – recklessly, Bauer thought, given the ice on the road – so that they were already a good way off when the T-34 belched exhaust and began trundling backwards. At first the manoeuvre appeared to go well – Bauer could see von Rauschenberg on the turret, yelling instructions through the hatch – but Winkel’s line was subtly wrong, bringing the tank’s left track to the edge of the road. Someone noticed, thank God, and Winkel braked, then a series of small adjustments followed: a little forward, a little right, a little left again. Demchak had by now reversed the Kübelwagen off the causeway, and at this distance the tank appeared small, a beetle fretting on a twig. Then it swivelled once more and, to Bauer’s horror, began skating to one side, the slowness of the motion revealing its true weight and bulk as, shedding men, its engine howling, it tipped and fell, smashed the ice and dropped into the lake.

  * * *

  ‘Bauer, welcome!’ Metz cried from behind his desk. He laughed.

  ‘My God, you look a wreck. What’s the matter with you?’

  ‘I’m ill,’ he answered then stopped, stunned by the sight of Katerina seated next to Metz’s desk, and even more so by presence of the old woman, Daria Grigorievna’s mother, who was standing by the fire.

  ‘Captain,’ Katerina said, and his heart went haywire.

  ‘Katerina Dmitrievna,’ he replied.

  ‘You remember Agrafena Viktorovna?’ she asked, her voice neutral, controlled.

  ‘Of course,’ he said, and greeted the old woman in Russian. Katerina’s face, like her voice, was impassive, though when he tried to meet her eye she looked hastily away.

  ‘You should have telephoned me,’ Metz cried cheerily, making Bauer suspect that Drexel must have recently visited. ‘If I’d known you were sick I wouldn’t have left you with those surgeries.’

  ‘I managed,’ Bauer said, though in fact several times he had come close to weeping as he and Molineux had operated, first on the survivors from the causeway, then on the two patients Metz had left him, both of whom had required long and intricate procedures.

  ‘In any case, welcome back,’ Metz said.

  ‘I should warn you, sir, I’m unwell. I’m going to need some rest.’

  ‘Really? How annoying. Your replacement was useless.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that. Will the lieutenant be all right?’

  ‘I doubt it. Not from what I observed.’

  Bauer felt a pressure in his gut, a need to vomit that could be deferred but not indefinitely. ‘Sir, I have bad news. I ought to brief you about it.’

  ‘Well, as you can see, I have guests.’

  ‘I’m afraid it can’t wait,’ he replied, and glanced at Katerina, torn between wanting her to stay and the urgency of his need to brief Metz.

  ‘Well, all right then,’ Metz said, ‘if it’s so pressing, go ahead.’ Again Bauer glanced at Katerina, and following his gaze Metz added, ‘Don’t mind Frau Trubetzkaya. We’re all friends here now.’

  ‘We are?’ Bauer asked, inwardly focused on his gut.

  ‘It looks as though the captain might need to sit down,’ Katerina said, looking at him firmly now and with obvious concern, so that yet again that day Bauer felt in danger of crying.

  ‘Really?’ Metz said. ‘Then go ahead, Bauer, take a seat. Bad news, you said.’

  Bauer eased himself onto a chair, took a careful breath and then in a toneless voice gave an account of the accident on the causeway. Of the fifteen men who had been travelling in or on the T-34, only three had survived, Sepp Winkel, Karl Pflieger and Gerd von Rauschenberg not among them.

  Metz heard him out with a grave expression, looked up and replied that he was very sorry to hear it. ‘Corporal Winkel in particular will be sorely missed. You’ll write to their families, I suppose?’

  ‘Yes, as soon as I’m able.’

  ‘Able?’

  ‘Over this sickness.’

  ‘How annoying. What’s wrong with you anyway? Typhus?’

  ‘I doubt it. A virus probably. I just need some rest.’

  ‘You don’t have to take yourself off to bed straight away, I hope? Frau Trubetzkaya says that the old woman here not only knew Count Tolstoy personally but has seen and even spoken with his ghost. What do you think of that?’

  ‘Incredible.’

  ‘Yes, isn’t it.’

  Despite his nausea, Bauer felt a twinge of hurt that Katerina had shared with Metz and not himself the revelation that Daria’s mother had once known Tolstoy. Though he supposed it was also possible that one or even both of the women were lying.

  ‘Sir, before you go on I should mention something else. I’ve brought in a casualty I treated at the front for a gunshot wound to the lung.’

  ‘What of it?’

  ‘It’s a Soviet casualty, sir. Major Weidemann is refusing to admit him without your approval.’

  ‘An Ivan? Who is he? An officer?’

  ‘He’s no one. A private.’

  ‘Then why bring him in?’

  ‘He was wounded very near the dressing station, sir. I felt responsible. As a doctor I felt responsible.’

  ‘You felt?’

  ‘And thought, sir. He would have died if I hadn’t operated. He will die if you don’t agree to admit him.’

  Metz laughed. ‘My God, Bauer, you’re as wilful as ever. I thought a trip to the front would teach you a lesson; but no, it seems you haven’t learned a thing.’

  ‘I wasn’t aware I was meant to be learning a lesson.’

  Metz chuckled and turned to Katerina. ‘You charge us with cruelty, gnädige Frau, and yet look at what humanitarians I have under my command. If Captain Bauer were to have his way he would – I don’t know – tenderly see to your countryman’s corns. I suppose you’re touched.’

  ‘It’s no concern of mine.’

  Metz laughed again. ‘There you go, Bauer, she’s tougher than you are. No quarter given, that’s the spirit. But I suppose I could bend a little, just this once. Exercise some mercy. Frau Trubetzkaya, what do you think?’

  ‘As I said, it’s up to you.’

  ‘As a favour to yourself? Do we understand one another?’

  ‘I find that doubtful, Herr Oberstleutnant.’

  Metz guffawed. He was surely under the influence of something. ‘So you’ll telephone the major?’ Bauer asked.

  ‘Of course, of course.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Dear God, Bauer, what a scold you are. All right, all right,’ he said, and reached for the field telephone on his desk, ‘I’ll do it now.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  Metz put in a call to the hospital, and while someone at the other end went to fetch Weidemann a silence fell over the room. Bauer gazed at Katerina, and again she met his eye, only this time with a Mona Lisa smile, so that involuntarily he had to clutch his chest, his heart stomping, his grief for Pflieger and Winkel battling with the joy of seeing her again. Then Metz was speaking with Weidemann, instructing him to find the Soviet soldier a bed.

  ‘Happy now?’ Metz asked him when he put down the phone.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Bauer said.

  ‘Good. So we can get down to the main
business of the evening. Frau Trubetzkaya, how are we to begin?’

  ‘I’m not sure we should. Not with the Captain so unwell.’

  ‘Nonsense. He’ll do his duty. Particularly when he comprehends what’s at stake.’

  ‘Very well,’ Katerina said. ‘You’ve brought a candle?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And something to put it on?’

  ‘An ammunition case, yes,’ Metz said.

  ‘Empty, I hope?’

  ‘What sort of fool do you take me for? I want to speak with the dead, not join them.’

  ‘Glad to hear it,’ she said.

  Metz chuckled. ‘I think you’ll find the encounter explosive enough. If my adversary shows himself, that is.’

  ‘You’re holding a seance?’ Bauer asked.

  ‘Of sorts,’ Metz said. ‘Personally I dislike the term. After the last war too many charlatans swindled the bereaved by simulating contact with the dead.’

  ‘But this is different?’ Bauer asked, wary of scoffing and getting himself ejected as he had two weeks ago. As it was he would be forced to leave soon enough.

  ‘For several reasons,’ Metz replied. ‘Firstly, no money will change hands. Secondly, the old woman communicated with Tolstoy’s spirit long before we appeared. Thirdly – and this is by far the most significant factor – you and I are here tonight not from need but from a will to conquer.’

  Bauer nodded, his face pained in a way that he hoped looked like thoughtfulness. The true mystery, as far as he was concerned, was how he and Metz had emerged from similar medical and scientific training with such wildly divergent understandings of reality.

  A minute later they were seated around the ammunition case, their faces lit by a solitary candle. To Bauer’s left was Katerina, to his right Agrafena, opposite him Metz. Katerina instructed them to hold hands, and Bauer hesitated. ‘I wouldn’t want to infect you. I’ve washed my hands, but —’

  ‘Don’t worry. I don’t get sick. And Agrafena is as hardy as they come.’

  They linked hands, the four of them. Agrafena’s palm was callused, the back of her hand papery and dry. Katerina’s grip was softer but also cooler than he’d imagined. Even so he felt fiercely moved, as well as indignant that her other hand was being held by Metz.

  ‘Doesn’t this one speak Russian?’ the old woman asked Katerina, raising Bauer’s hand.

  ‘It’s all right, he’s on our side.’

  ‘He is?’

  ‘We’ll know for sure soon enough. Just go ahead as planned.’

  All this was said without once meeting his eye, and despite his nausea Bauer was left feeling insubstantial, a mind afloat on a roiling gut.

  ‘Courage, Captain,’ Metz said, the candlelight making a cavern of the cleft in his chin. ‘Leo Tolstoy might have passed to the other side but there’s no need to be afraid.’

  ‘I’m not afraid, I’m sick.’

  ‘Being dead makes a man no more formidable than he was in life, and when he was alive what was Tolstoy? A writer. There are two types of men in this world: those who live an attenuated life of the mind, and those who choose reality and act. Tolstoy was one of the former, so we needn’t be concerned.’

  ‘Shall we commence?’ Katerina asked.

  ‘By all means,’ Metz said. ‘Should we close our eyes?’

  ‘That’s up to you.’

  ‘Good. I’ll leave them open.’

  For a time no one said anything. The fire crackled and the chimney moaned. To lessen his discomfort Bauer shifted on his chair, loudly creaking its joints, then abruptly the pressure in his stomach rose, so that for a moment he feared he would have to stand up and leave. He resisted, gulped, forced the pressure down; he was determined to stay and witness these proceedings, however bogus they might be. The crisis passed.

  Metz and Katerina were both looking at Agrafena, whose own eyes were closed. Then softly she began to hum, a monotone, long and low, pausing from time to time to draw breath. Tolstoy had returned as a bee, Bauer thought to say but didn’t. It was a calming sound and Bauer let his own eyes close, until in a voice that was undeniably spooky the old woman cried out, ‘Graf Tolstoy? Eto ty?’

  ‘Count Tolstoy? Is that you?’ Katerina translated.

  Agrafena cocked an ear and then nodded, as if acknowledging a reply. ‘Eto on,’ she said, turning to them.

  ‘It’s him,’ Katerina told Metz.

  ‘Just as I thought!’ Metz cried.

  ‘What would you like to say to him?’ Katerina asked.

  ‘I want to know what he’s doing here.’

  ‘I dare say he wants to know what you’re doing here.’

  ‘Just ask the question,’ Metz said.

  Katerina relayed the question to Agrafena, who in turn spoke to the ceiling in Russian. She made another ostentatious show of listening then said, ‘We’re his people. He’s watching over us.’

  ‘He’s guarding us,’ Katerina paraphrased in German. ‘He’s the protector of Yasnaya Polyana.’

  Even knowing the whole exchange was a sham, Bauer felt a twinge of awe. He was holding a hand which, for all he knew, had once touched Tolstoy’s, even as he sat in the great man’s study in a house whose presiding spirit was incontestably the Count’s.

  ‘Is that why he’s resisting us?’ Metz asked.

  Again the rigmarole of translation, real and ectoplasmic, before Katerina replied, ‘You’re trespassing. He’ll do all he can to drive you out.’

  ‘I knew it,’ Metz said. ‘Well, tell him he’s wasting his time. I’m not afraid of his antics. He’s nothing special. We all get to be dead. This land and what’s on it now belongs to the Reich. What does he think about that?’

  As Katerina again went through the motions of consultation, Bauer battled another wave of nausea. His whole body ached. His mind was foggy, confused. He needed to leave but the women’s hands locked him in place.

  ‘Like their forebears the Soviet people won’t rest until Mother Russia is rid of the invader,’ Katerina said.

  ‘Ha!’ Metz countered. He assumed a sly expression. ‘Isn’t he a pacifist? Ask him that.’

  ‘I don’t need to,’ Katerina said. ‘The count hates war, that’s understood, but there is a war and Lev Nikolayevich has seen how it ends.’

  Metz crossed his arms. ‘Oh really? And how does it end?’

  ‘With the annihilation of the German Reich.’

  ‘He’s said this to you?’

  ‘To Agrafena Viktorovna.’

  For the first time Metz looked unsure of himself. ‘I don’t believe it,’ he said. It’s a trick, a typical Slavic ploy. Ask him how he can pretend such confidence when, even as we speak, the Wehrmacht is hammering on the gates of Moscow.’

  Katerina conveyed the essence of this to Agrafena, and between them they set about cooking up a reply, the details of which Bauer felt too ill to follow. When they were finished conferring, Katerina said in German, ‘Lev Nikolaevich concedes that the Soviet Union is on the edge of a precipice —’

  ‘Hear that, Bauer! They’re teetering, they’re on the edge. One more push and they’re over!’

  But this was all Bauer could stand. His thorax was jerking. He lurched to his feet, letting go of the women’s hands, ran to the door, wrenched it open and, ignoring Metz’s protests, stumbled to the vestibule and onto the porch, and from there vomited into the snow.

  SEVENTEEN

  Sydney 4

  March 1968

  Dear Paul,

  Mayor of Nuremberg! I had no idea I was corresponding with such an eminent man. Treating the topic so scantily counts as evasion, I’m afraid – you must send me news clippings, photographs and any other information you have about your political career. In return (and because so far you haven’t set the secret services onto me) I will arrange for Professor Fleet to post you copies of Three Women and Europa, 1975. Bear in mind that these museum pieces are the work of a young woman who is long gone – who had been long gone even when you and I firs
t met. (I’m as sure as I can be, by the way, that Simon Fleet is not spying for anyone; he flirts with me too blatantly, in the belief that I’m too old to take him seriously. The only person he ever questions me about is Lev Nikolayevich.)

  What twists and swerves your life has taken! In comparison, my own life seems uneventful and, since we parted, considerably easier. You describe Yasnaya Polyana as the fulcrum of your life, and in dramatic terms it strikes me that you and I rather see-sawed at that moment, the big events of my life all occurring before it, while in your case they all came afterwards (in fine academic style I am overlooking the death of your wife, which obstinately refuses to fit this tidy little schema).

  Your letter stirred up so many thoughts and feelings, memories and questions. For instance, it has occurred to me that on a trip I made to Leningrad in March 1946 I must have passed within thirty kilometres of your place of internment near Borovichi. I had no idea there was a German POW camp nearby, let alone that you were in it. The thought of your long detention fills me with indignation, so much so that I’ve even managed to spare a thought for your countrymen who suffered the same fate (though not, of course, for the one who took his Iron Cross into captivity). In turn this makes me wonder what happened to the comrades of yours I knew at Yasnaya Polyana? To Metz, in particular; and to that other fellow, the buffoon – Molineux, wasn’t it? – who I confess to thinking of now with amusement. Perhaps I am a little like those veteran soldiers you mentioned who grow fond of their former enemies (though in my case only a very little). If nothing else, we were contemporaries, I suppose – were all children, equally innocent and vicious, before jointly taking our generation’s turn on the stage. And now those of us who survived the war are willy-nilly lining up for death.