The Tolstoy Estate

by Steven Conte

  ‘But what about Pilcz? He got sent home.’

  ‘Because he was inconveniencing Metz. Had Pilcz been a lieutenant colonel . . . well, that would’ve been different. Probably he would have served out the war and been decorated for it. From what I’ve observed, the higher they go the madder they get.’

  ‘And you’re exempted from that?’ Bauer asked. In response the points of Weidemann’s eyebrows rose. ‘I’m not trying to insult you, sir,’ Bauer went on, ‘just raising the possibility that in this instance I might be thinking more clearly than you are. The patients . . .’

  Weidemann nodded. ‘No doubt you’re right. About me being mad, that is, or at least madder than you are.’ As if to illustrate this point he stood up, distractedly went over to the gramophone, tried to switch it on, and, when this failed, turned around in his ponderous style and went back to his chair. ‘I suppose you remember your first day as a qualified doctor?’

  ‘Indelibly,’ Bauer replied, puzzled by this turn in the conversation.

  ‘As do I. I was twenty-three years old. The sixth of August 1904. Tübingen University Hospital, the casualty ward. I had been on duty for twelve minutes when my first patient was brought in, a railway worker with a catastrophic eye injury, one that turned out to be even worse than it looked. At the railway yards a crane hook had swung loose from its cargo, piercing the poor fellow’s eye socket and proceeding to swing him about – by the skull, as it were. Well, I did what I could, but as you can imagine the trauma to the brain was severe. I kept thinking he ought to be dead. I wanted him to die. Here I was with my first patient, on my first day as a doctor, and ardently I was wishing him dead.’

  ‘And did he die?’

  ‘Eventually. Four days it took.’

  ‘That’s one tough introduction to medicine.’

  ‘Quite. And I drew two lessons from it: firstly, that I wasn’t cut out to be a surgeon; secondly, that in order to function as any kind of doctor I would have to cultivate detachment. I couldn’t afford to feel for my patients. Not if I wanted to be of any use to them. I would have to treat patients not as people but as matter.’

  ‘There was no middle ground?’

  ‘For me, no. It was either that or admit that my training had been wasted – that I had spent six years pursuing a vocation for which I was unsuited.’ He was staring at the floor, frowning now.

  ‘And this is why you won’t intervene with Metz?’ Bauer asked, reluctant to let the matter rest. ‘You’re cultivating detachment?’

  Weidemann glanced up, his owlish eyebrows raised in surprise, though only briefly. He replied sadly. ‘You could say that. Detachment has become something of a habit, I suppose, like any other frequently repeated behaviour.’

  ‘But surely habits can be broken.’

  ‘You’re assuming this one is a problem. To me it’s a solution. Being what I am. Perhaps I was unsuited for any profession,’ he said, turning introspective again. ‘Any profession relating to my fellow man, at least. But how was I to know it? In youth we must act, but in ignorance; later comes knowledge, and with it regret.’

  Was this a quote, Bauer wondered, something he ought to recognise? ‘If you don’t mind me saying so, sir, you make it sound like your life is over. But you’re only sixty. Our young people have stumbled straight from childhood into war. You, on the other hand, have the advantage of experience and the seniority to act on it.’

  ‘The main thing experience has taught me is caution. I’ve learned not to interfere. And age is tiring, don’t you find – or are you still too young to have found that out? Morally tiring, I mean. Maybe you still think you can alter the world, but I’m past all that. I wish you luck, Bauer, and I mean that sincerely, but eventually you’ll reach the same conclusion. I guarantee it.’

  ‘If you say so.’

  ‘There’s no need to sound so bitter about it. Save that until you’re old. Now, if you’ll forgive me, I’d like some time to myself. It’s been a long day.’

  TWENTY

  At breakfast, Monday, 8 December, the officers’ mess was alive with news of a surprise attack by Japanese naval aircraft on the American fleet in Hawaii. By all accounts it had been devastating. Based on the little Bauer knew of the Pacific – coconut palms, grass skirts and outrigger canoes – the thought of war there seemed not only tragic but ludicrous. According to Molineux the thermometer in the forecourt showed a temperature of minus twenty-three degrees, making Hawaii seem a long way away. What the attack meant for the war in Europe no one knew.

  Having somehow missed her the previous day, and the day before that, Bauer was hoping see Katerina, but when he reached the hospital he was intercepted by Demchak asking to speak with him in private. The operating room was empty, and they went inside.

  ‘I have a crime to report,’ Demchak said.

  ‘What sort of crime?’

  ‘Lieutenant Hirsch, he tried to touch me. This happened in the sauna.’

  Bauer frowned. ‘Touch?’

  ‘He put his hand on my thigh. But it was my dick he was going for.’

  Bauer excused himself, went over to the door and closed it. ‘Cigarette?’ he asked as he returned to Demchak.

  ‘No thank you, sir.’

  Bauer took a cigarette from his cigarette case, lit it and inhaled. No wonder Demchak had wanted to speak with him in private. ‘You’re not mistaken?’ he said. ‘He didn’t bump you by accident?’

  ‘Sir, he put his hand on my thigh and was reaching for my dick.’

  ‘And how did you react?’

  Demchak looked incensed. ‘I knocked his hand off and got out of there. How else would I respond?’

  ‘Settle down, Private. I’m only trying to understand.’

  ‘I can’t work with him any more. I won’t. I refuse.’ Bauer hadn’t seen him so animated since his denunciation of Bolshevism on their way to Malevka. He wanted to disbelieve the accusation but found that difficult. An athletic build, snowy blond hair and, despite the cleft-lip scar, a handsome face: it was easy to see how a man inclined in that direction might find Yuri Demchak attractive. Apart from anything else, Demchak had no motive to lie; in fact, he was creating problems for himself. Indeed, as a Ukrainian making allegations against a German officer he was putting his life at risk.

  ‘Why were you alone in the sauna with him anyway?’ Bauer asked.

  ‘I wasn’t, not at first. When he arrived there were several of us. Straight away we went to go, even though it was him who wasn’t meant to be there, not us. He told us to stay, but after a while the others left anyway.’

  ‘But not you?’

  ‘He wasn’t meant to be there! I didn’t see why I should have to go. How was I to know he was a pansy?’

  ‘All right, all right, there’s no need to speak like that.’

  ‘Why not? It’s the truth.’

  ‘Look, just leave this with me. I’ll speak with him and work out what’s going on.’

  ‘He’s a pervert, that’s what’s going on.’

  ‘Just leave it with me.’

  ‘Sir, I can’t work with him,’ Demchak said, his voice rising again. ‘I won’t work with him. Not today, not ever.’

  ‘You will work with him today. I’ll need time to sort this out. You’ve made a grave accusation. If you’re disbelieved, things could go badly for you.’

  ‘I’m not making it up.’

  ‘Just work with the lieutenant as normal today, and this evening I’ll sort it out. You haven’t mentioned this to anyone else, have you?’

  ‘No, not yet,’ he said sullenly, making it sound like a threat.

  ‘Good. Then keep it that way.’

  * * *

  In surgery that day Hirsch and Demchak said even less than usual and nothing at all to each other. Still recuperating from his illness, Bauer felt weak and distracted, a tussle of hope and apprehension in his gut – about Katerina; how soon he would see her again; and, increasingly, infuriatingly, about the need to question Hirsch. What a fool t
he man had been! If Demchak had placed himself in danger then so too had Hirsch, and in another unit either man might have found himself facing a firing squad.

  Surgically speaking the shift was routine until, early in the evening, he opened up a grenadier with a suspected case of appendicitis and discovered, instead of an inflamed appendix, the livid, rubbery mass of a colon tumour. Further exploration revealed more tumours in the stomach lining, the pancreas and on the liver. Even to his operating assistants it was clear what was wrong. Bauer set about excising as much of the cancer as he could – to remove all of it was impossible – and then closed the incision. The grenadier was thirty-nine. Later Bauer would have to give him the news he was dying, a dismal duty to add to the annoying one concerning Hirsch.

  He meant to speak with the lieutenant when their shift was over, but before he could ask him to stay behind Hirsch was out of his scrubs and away. Bauer strode after him into the entrance hall, and there came face to face with Katerina. ‘Look at you,’ she said, ‘all splashed with Aryan blood.’

  For all his thinking about her, the suddenness of the reunion caught him by surprise, and at first he couldn’t speak. He looked down at his scrubs, the bloodied midriff like a child’s experiment with paint. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, and gestured at Hirsch, already in his greatcoat and heading through the vestibule. ‘I wanted a word with my anaesthetist.’

  She followed his gaze then looked back again. ‘In that case, you’d better run.’

  ‘It can wait,’ he said firmly.

  ‘Good,’ she replied. ‘Because I’m here to see you.’

  ‘You do know that the lieutenant colonel wants you to liaise only with him now?’ he asked, aching for her to stay.

  ‘I do, yes.’

  He nodded. ‘Then let me clean up.’

  He returned to the operating room, removed his scrubs and washed his hands and face. It occurred to him that she might be here about poor Pyotr Kirov, his missing eye, in which case he was about to be lambasted, though for the incorrect reason.

  ‘Is here all right?’ he asked when he got back to the entrance hall.

  ‘I think not. Is that dental room empty again?’

  ‘My anaesthetist is also the dentist, so yes.’

  He went ahead of her up the steps, frowning to mask a sudden sense of trepidation and to ward off the stares of several corpsmen who were watching.

  In the dental room he closed the door behind them, switched on the overhead bulb and was debating whether they needed the examination lamp when he became conscious of Katerina staring at him, her stance unnaturally still. Her eyes were unnerving, wet and bright, and instinctively he too went motionless, blood tunnelling in his fingertips, his throat. Then she advanced on him, so abruptly and with such purity of intent that he knew he would either be kissed or killed, and even raised an arm to fend her off, so strong was his instinct that she might have a knife. Her momentum drove him back against the wall and, yes, she was kissing him – no reconnoitring of his lips, just her invading tongue, then her fingers on his teeth, opening and claiming him; and he let her, counter-kissed and adored her, lifted and whirled her and placed her back down, and their hands opened gaps in their clothes.

  * * *

  They lay on the floor, panting, still mostly clothed but warmly and wetly joined, he on his back, she slumped on his chest, her Amazonian strength expended. He smelled her hair, the particularity of her skin, and vowed to remember it – no, to always have it near. Then he held her and lay unmoving for a time, until Katerina raised her head and fixed him with her warm brown eyes.

  ‘Well,’ he said.

  ‘Well,’ she countered.

  He was still firm in her. Between them, the savour of their scents. ‘I thought I was in trouble,’ he said.

  ‘This isn’t trouble?’

  ‘A different sort of trouble.’

  ‘Like?’

  ‘Pyotr Kirov?’ he said.

  She shook her head, still smiling. ‘You fool,’ she said, calling him du for the first time – a jolt of intimacy as thrilling, or more so, than their coupling. ‘You were the one who tried to save him.’

  He felt himself go soft. ‘It was me who shot him,’ he replied. Katerina frowned, made to speak but didn’t, and abruptly rolled off him, letting in the cold. Bauer cursed himself. Katerina propped up her head on one elbow and, in a voice that was suddenly forensic and cool, asked him what had happened. He’d presumed too much, he thought, been foolishly greedy – not for absolution, exactly (that was too much to ask), but for unrestricted communion. Resigning himself to the worst he described the morning of the failed offensive: the bombardment, the confusion at the dressing station, seeing Pyotr Kirov running by and shouting at him to stop. The boy’s reaction. Gunning him down.

  When he was finished Katerina was quiet for a time. The greed he felt now was to keep gazing at her, or with his fingertips to trace the lines on her face as year by year they deepened and branched. She said, ‘I take it you’ve killed in surgery? Inadvertently, I mean. Done something that caused or hastened a patient’s death?’

  ‘Yes, probably,’ he said. ‘In fact, certainly. Though that’s hardly the same, is it?’

  ‘It’s similar,’ she declared. ‘You didn’t plan to shoot the boy. Any sane person would have acted as you did. I would have, in your position. And I have been in your position, or something like it.’

  He doubted he deserved this forgiveness, but the allure of it was strong, her leniency a sweet benediction. He thanked her, and she hooked a thigh across his hips. Drew him closer, warming him where their bodies met. And there again were her eyes, her irises, filigreed brown, which if not for the curfew he could have studied for hours. Furtively he glanced past her shoulder at his watch, a movement she sensed and immediately deciphered. ‘How long do we have?’

  ‘About forty-five minutes,’ he replied.

  ‘Not enough,’ she said. ‘Could you hide me somewhere?’

  ‘My God, if only,’ he said, both frustrated and elated.

  ‘You’ve managed it poorly, this business of being German,’ she said.

  ‘True,’ he said. ‘Though if I wasn’t German I wouldn’t be here,’ he pointed out.

  ‘I know, and I hate you for it,’ she said, running a hand across his chest.

  He told her then of the dire conditions he’d witnessed at the front, his countrymen’s low morale and his newfound certainty that Germany would lose the war.

  ‘That’s what I’ve been telling you,’ she said.

  ‘And I should have believed you. Anyway, now I’ve seen for myself.’

  She would be unaware, he realised, of the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor, and so he told her what little about it he knew.

  ‘Hell’s bells,’ she said, ‘the Americans won’t like that.’

  ‘No, I don’t suppose they will.’

  ‘Now you’ll definitely lose the war. Is that a fascist quirk: attacking nations more populous than your own?’

  ‘I don’t speak for fascists,’ he replied.

  She prodded the eagle and swastika embroidered above the pocket of his tunic. ‘Just dress like them.’

  ‘A necessary ruse,’ he said.

  ‘Your camouflage.’

  He drew her still closer and they said nothing for a time, Bauer nuzzling her hair until she lifted her chin and they kissed again, gently this time, less urgently than before. With his lips he mapped her throat, her ears. He kissed her forehead and both her eyelids in turn. For a long time he luxuriated in not needing to speak, until, growing conscious of time passing, he pulled away from her a little. ‘Why now?’ he asked her.

  She met his eyes again and smiled. ‘Because I missed you,’ she said. ‘When you were gone I missed you. I tried not to but the feeling got worse.’

  ‘Better, surely?’

  ‘Worse,’ she said firmly, ‘because look at me now.’

  ‘I am looking.’

  ‘My arms around a man I’m going to los
e.’

  Was there a word for what he was feeling, he wondered, this polarity of exhilaration and despair? If there was he didn’t know it. He thought of asking Katerina, an expert, but that would waste what little time remained, and so instead he leaned closer and feathered his lips against hers, wanting everything: the soft, the steely, the pain, the joy – the alpha and omega of her body, heart and mind. He checked his watch and groaned. ‘You have to go!’

  ‘How soon?’

  ‘Too soon for me.’

  ‘Oh, my poor darling,’ she said and, with deftness and force, manoeuvred herself beneath him. ‘Then you’ll have to hurry. I’m not finished with you yet.’

  TWENTY-ONE

  They parted at the entrance gates under an almost full moon. Joy, he thought, his heart volcanic, pained, this is joy. He wanted to bound after her but there were sentries watching, and this alone explained the pain, he realised. He and Katerina weren’t parting, they were being parted – meaning by circumstances, by forces that were hostile or, at best, indifferent to their fates.

  The sky was clear and mercifully still, the stars like specks of ice. Katerina was clearly visible in the silvery light, a booted, quilted and hatted silhouette walking away towards the village. Both sentries were casting glances at him, a madman voluntarily lingering out of doors, and because he couldn’t bear yet to turn away he brought out a cigarette and started smoking in a ruminative style, as if he were reflecting on the glories of the stars and the moon and not of the woman disappearing down the road.

  When he could no longer see her he flicked away what was left of his cigarette, nodded to the sentries, turned and trudged back along the driveway in the dark. The artillery fire around Tula was muffled, intermittent, a giant murmuring in sleep.

  Back at the house Zöllner told him Hirsch had gone to bed, for which Bauer was greatly relieved. Tonight was not the night to be grappling with a problem of that kind. Instead he prepared for bed himself, his heart brimming with Katerina, determined for now not to think of whatever lay ahead. Reluctantly he washed his hands and face. For a change he fell quickly asleep.