The Tolstoy Estate

by Steven Conte

  ‘For Christ’s sake,’ Bauer said, ‘don’t mention that last detail to anyone around here.’

  Molineux looked hurt. ‘Of course not. What do you take me for?’

  ‘An incurable gossip.’

  ‘You make it sound terminal,’ Molineux said.

  ‘If only. What bothers me is the risk of contagion.’

  He thought repeatedly of Katerina and burned to know how she was, what was in her mind, in her heart. He longed to discuss with her what was happening at the front and what it meant for them, even knowing that for Katerina a German withdrawal would be a cause for celebration.

  At dinner – pressed meat pimped with pickles, complained Molineux – Metz was tetchy and monosyllabic, and because the subject on everyone’s minds was forbidden, the conversation around the table was scant.

  After dinner the mood was less subdued. ‘Cards!’ Molineux cried, wielding a pair of bottles like alpenstocks as he strode along the upstairs corridor, trailing Zöllner and Drexel and Ehrlich. ‘Come, come,’ he said, hooking Bauer by the arm.

  ‘More gambling?’ Bauer asked.

  ‘Life’s a gamble. Gambling is life.’

  ‘I’d prefer to read.’

  ‘Don’t be such a philistine, Bauer. Carpe noctem! as the Romans used to say. We won’t see its like again, you know.’

  Bauer disentangled his arm. ‘We saw it last night, and the night before that.’ Molineux handed over one of his bottles to Ehrlich and, with a stub of chalk, emblazoned the word Kasino on the common room door.

  ‘Katerina Dmitrievna won’t like that,’ Bauer said.

  ‘Fuck her,’ Molineux said, then stopped and turned around. ‘If you haven’t already, that is.’

  ‘Hermann, don’t be ridiculous.’

  ‘Well, that’s a crying shame,’ Molineux said, and pushed open the door, ‘a copper-bottomed tragedy. If ever there were two people who were meant to be together, it’s you and Katerina Dmitrievna. And Ehrlich, don’t even think of invoking the race laws – the bond between the captain and Katerina Dmitrievna transcends race, it transcends law.’

  ‘You’ve been drinking already, I take it?’ Bauer said.

  ‘Not at all. Sober and sincere is what I am. And don’t tell me you haven’t thought about romancing Katerina.’

  ‘No point.’ Bauer said. ‘Pretty soon we’ll be gone.’

  ‘Listen to yourself!’ Molineux said. ‘I mean it. Listen. Get out your stethoscope, put it over your heart and tell me you’re not in love with her.’ He uncorked one of the bottles. ‘Sure you won’t join us for a drink?’

  ‘Thank you, but no. Not tonight.’

  Molineux shrugged. ‘Then damn you to hell.’

  ‘Likewise,’ Bauer said, and made his way to their room, took off his boots and lay down in bed with War and Peace, hoping to distract himself from thoughts of Katerina. Pierre Bezukhov had just narrowly avoided being executed by the French and, as their prisoner, was now being forced to retreat with them from Moscow through the snow. The similarity between these events and what was unfolding three hundred kilometres to the north wasn’t lost on Bauer, and though magical explanations held no attraction for him – how surprising was it, really, that an army should be forced to retreat? – the historical parallels sharpened his sense that there was something unrepeatable about his reading of the book, something orchestrated, or at least made possible, by Katerina. God, how he missed her. If she didn’t appear by the following morning he would slip out somehow, he decided, on foot if necessary, and search for her in the village.

  Around midnight Molineux made his way drunkenly to bed and instantly fell asleep, and though Bauer knew he should try to do the same he kept reading, borne along, as he often was towards the end of a novel, by the gathering momentum of the plot. A long time later he heard a faraway bombardment commence, looked at his watch and cursed. Four o’clock. He had to get to sleep straight away, but before that he needed to urinate. He got out of bed and padded down the corridor towards the lavatory, only to be brought up short by the sight through a window of flashes on the horizon, not to the north around Tula but to the east, a sector that until now had been quiet. The barrage sounded broad, its accent unmistakably foreign.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  ‘Our forces around Tula are straightening the front,’ Metz said.

  ‘Meaning falling back?’ Weidemann asked.

  ‘Meaning concentrating their strength,’ Metz replied. He looked unwell, Bauer thought, like a man who hadn’t slept for days. ‘B Company is redeploying along with the rest.’ He tapped a divisional dispatch edgewise on his desk, asked if there were any further questions, and without waiting for a response began to stand.

  ‘Sir, I have a question,’ Zöllner said.

  Metz paused halfway between sitting and standing, then slumped back onto his chair. ‘What?’

  ‘Is there any question of us having to retreat? I only ask because the men will want to know. The patients too. They can hear the artillery.’

  ‘Of course there isn’t.’

  ‘So what do we tell them?’

  ‘What I’ve just told you: that the front is being straightened prior to our next attack.’

  ‘Jesus, Joseph and Mary,’ said Molineux under his breath.

  ‘You have something to say, Captain? If so, kindly have the courtesy to share it with the rest of us.’

  ‘It’s nothing, sir. I was just wondering if, when they’ve finished straightening the front, someone could get to work on my back – my bed is killing me.’

  Metz stood up, tucked the dispatch beneath one arm and rounded his desk. ‘I know how that feels,’ he said, and left the room.

  They all looked at one another. Metz had never left a briefing without announcing it was over. ‘Was that sympathy or a joke?’ Molineux asked, turning at random to Drexel, who was gulping saliva and could only respond with a shrug.

  ‘I think we should go,’ Weidemann said.

  They all rose, put on their caps and scarves and coats and made their way in a loose column to the hospital. The weather was relatively kind: overcast, minus fourteen degrees. If it stayed that way until evening, Bauer thought, there would be no better time to go looking for Katerina. From the north and east came the kettle drumming of Soviet guns. Tchaikovsky, 1812.

  At the hospital they learned that more casualties were due at any time. Worse, a report had come in that one of C Company’s ambulances had been ambushed by partisans en route to Yasnaya Polyana from Chern, leaving both the driver and his offsider dead, the supplies they had been carrying ransacked and the vehicle destroyed. From a coldly rational perspective, the loss of an ambulance was at least as bad as the deaths; certainly Metz saw it this way, and his already brittle mood worsened. When the casualties arrived he was thus ill prepared for wounds of a type none of them had ever seen before: in one case an ugly but non life-threatening slash across the face, in the other a laceration that had penetrated the abdomen through the back.

  ‘Sabres?’ Metz shrieked when a corpsman told him the cause. The rapidly filling reception room quietened, with only the grossly wounded not focused on Metz. If here a surgeon was a god, this was a troubling deity: pale, shivering, neurasthenic, wild. ‘Sabres?’ he repeated, his voice only slightly less hysterical.

  ‘Cossack attack,’ the corpsman replied. ‘I didn’t see it myself, sir, but someone who was there told me about it. They were mounted troops. On horseback,’ he added helpfully when Metz kept staring at him. ‘Rode out of nowhere, laid about them, killed several, wounded these two lads and disappeared.’

  Metz was still staring – not quite at the corpsman but past him. Lightly Bauer touched his hand and calmly asked his opinion about the order of triage. Metz shivered a little but answered nonetheless, not as firmly as usual but at least cogently, setting the room in motion again. For the next several hours he and Metz operated as normal, though due to Hirsch’s death Bauer had got his way at last and had an enlisted man performing anaesth
esia – Yuri Demchak, in fact, whose technical judgement and presence of mind Bauer continued to trust, even as his dislike for him had risen. Metz barely seemed to notice the Hiwi’s changed role, much less care about it.

  Early in the afternoon the second dispatch of the day arrived from divisional headquarters. Metz read it, asked Ehrlich to fetch Weidemann and announced the suspension of surgery. Ten minutes later he dismissed the operating assistants, leaving only officers present. ‘We’re going,’ he said.

  There was a pause while they took this in. The first to speak was Weidemann. ‘How long do we have?’

  ‘Until tomorrow. It can’t be done, of course.’

  Weidemann looked thoughtful. ‘I agree it will be hard.’

  ‘Impossible,’ Metz said.

  ‘But we have to try.’

  In a trance Bauer heard them debate the viability of moving an entire field hospital and two hundred patients in less than twenty-four hours. He had waited too long, Bauer thought, would never see her again.

  ‘The X-ray machine?’ Metz was saying. ‘The generator? The laundry? Beds? Impossible! The kitchens? The incinerator?’

  ‘We’ve moved before,’ Weidemann said. ‘We all know what to do.’

  ‘In two days, not twelve hours.’

  ‘Sixteen hours. Maybe more. If equipment has to be left behind, so be it.’

  ‘A fantasy,’ Metz said.

  A fantasy, a fever, Bauer thought – was this what Yasnaya Polyana was to be for him? Including time spent at the front he had been here barely six weeks.

  Weidemann was growing impatient. ‘Sir, if we don’t start right away we certainly won’t make it.’

  ‘Very well,’ Metz said, ‘but we’ll have to prioritise. I will draw up a plan.’ He walked over to his operating notes and, incredibly, tore out a page. Taking up a pencil he started to write.

  ‘While the lieutenant colonel is working on that,’ Weidemann said, ‘let’s make a start. Zöllner, liaise with Bauer about getting the most serious cases to Chern. The rest of you, you know what to do.’

  ‘I’m finished,’ Metz called. They all stared at him. He got up and came over, waving his torn-out page. ‘Here,’ he said, passing it to Weidemann, who put on his glasses and examined the list, which Bauer could see consisted of only five or six lines.

  ‘All right,’ Weidemann said guardedly. ‘In a worst case, yes.’ He tapped the topmost line. ‘But “Leo Tolstoy”? What do you mean by that?’

  ‘Exhuming him. That comes before everything else.’

  ‘I’m not sure . . .’ Weidemann said.

  ‘Don’t worry, Major, I’ll handle it myself. I’ll need a work party of course. Four men ought to do. Of course the ground is frozen, so it might take a while.’

  ‘What I meant to say is I don’t know why you’d want to exhume him.’

  ‘Major, I’m disappointed in you. Isn’t it obvious?’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘I’m taking him hostage.’

  Molineux tittered. ‘That’ll show him.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Metz said. ‘Thank you, Hermann. We thought we could beat the Soviets in months. We were wrong. This is destined to be a drawn-out conflict, and we have to think strategically. By seizing Tolstoy we retain the initiative, our spiritual ascendency over the enemy.’

  ‘I see,’ Weidemann said.

  ‘Hermann understands. And Drexel here will also back me up – in fact he deserves some of the credit for the idea. Weeks ago it was he who raised the idea of establishing, in Berlin, a Museum of Superseded Cultures – an ethnographic cabinet of curiosities, if you like. What finer item to put in it than the bones of Leo Tolstoy?’

  Nodding gravely, Weidemann said. ‘I see your point, sir. Brilliant. Quite brilliant. You too, Drexel – well done.’ In response Drexel nodded and gulped.

  Metz looked pleased. ‘Splendid. Then I’ll go straight away.’

  ‘Forgive me, sir,’ Weidemann said, ‘but why not leave the digging to others? It’s just a labouring job. You’re needed elsewhere.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘In Chern. Or even Oryol. We don’t know yet how far we’ll have to pull back, but wherever it is your leadership will be crucial.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Metz said. ‘I feel my place is here.’

  ‘You’ve always led from the front, sir, and we’re going to Chern.’

  ‘I don’t know. I’d prefer to escort Tolstoy’s remains in person.’

  ‘There are only two more hours of daylight,’ Weidemann said, ‘and we’ve seen what can happen on that road in the dark. Take your limousine and you’ll get there by dusk. Leave the digging to us.’

  Metz pondered this then said, ‘I suppose that’s logical enough.’

  Bauer stared at him, amazed he couldn’t recognise such a blatant untruth. No one wanted to meet his neighbour’s eye.

  ‘I’ll order Ehrlich to fetch your kit from the main house,’ Weidemann said. ‘Drexel?’

  ‘Yes, sir?’

  ‘Medical crates. I’m sure the lieutenant colonel won’t object to transporting a few. Put Ritter onto it.’

  ‘Right away, sir.’

  Swiftly they dispersed, each to his allotted task, though Bauer’s attention was bifurcated: half of it on triage, half on ways of getting a message to Katerina. He had little time to work on either problem, however, before being called away with the other officers, this time to the hospital vestibule. There Metz was waiting with his helmet on, evidently ready to go, Egon Ehrlich at his side. Parked directly outside was the ZIS.

  ‘Farewell, gentlemen, and good luck,’ Metz said when all of them had assembled. ‘Remember, on the road keep your helmets on and ensure that the men do the same.’ To Weidemann, he said, ‘The Tolstoy matter? It’s in hand?’

  Weidemann nodded and said yes – a soothing, minimal reply.

  ‘Good. Then I’ll take my leave. Courage, gentlemen, we’ll be back. Sieg heil.’ He turned around, went though the doors and out to the car, closely trailed by Ehrlich. It struck Bauer that by rights Katerina should have been there to see Metz off with some stinging remark, but that was not to be.

  ‘So much for our gallant commander,’ Molineux said.

  Weidemann turned to him. ‘If the lieutenant colonel isn’t at his finest right now it’s not for want of courage, Captain. Or a lack of heart, for that matter. Rather the reverse, I’d say.’

  ‘Amen,’ said Zöllner earnestly.

  Weidemann dismissed them and the group broke up.

  ‘Happy now?’ Bauer asked Drexel as they walked away, a childish question but one he couldn’t resist.

  ‘You mean, do I regret giving the lieutenant colonel some pharmacological help? No, I don’t.’

  ‘What, what, what?’ Molineux asked, stopping and waiting for them.

  ‘I’ll tell you later,’ Bauer said.

  ‘Any great endeavour involves a quotient of risk,’ Drexel said.

  ‘There’s a quotient of risk in surgery, but we don’t do it needlessly or for self-glorification.’

  ‘You’re critical, I know that,’ Drexel said. ‘But actually I don’t concede I’m responsible for the lieutenant colonel’s state of mind. Not at all. In fact, without me his condition might be a lot worse.’

  ‘Without you?’ Molineux asked.

  Ignoring him Bauer said, ‘But you’ll stop now, yes?’

  ‘Now that would be irresponsible,’ Drexel said. ‘Not wise at all. No, for the lieutenant colonel’s sake you’d better hope I make it alive to Chern.’

  * * *

  For the rest of the afternoon, the evening and throughout the night Bauer worked furiously, as they all did, to get ready to leave, spurred on by the noise of artillery and, towards morning, distant bursts of machine-gun fire. Two-way radio reports gave a confused impression of the fighting, though it was clear enough that the Soviets were advancing, and fast. Searching for Katerina was out of the question, and the only way to keep anguish at bay was to launch himself
at each task in turn.

  The evacuation was to start at dawn, and in the hospital’s forecourt ambulances and lorries were assembling, though too few to move the patients in a single convoy. As if by osmosis, the men lined up on stretchers in the entrance hall and corridors were reaching the same conclusion, making an already anxious mood fearful. As Zöllner had pointed out, they could all hear the guns. In an emptying ward a patient in traction seized Bauer by the sleeve and begged not to be left behind. ‘Swear,’ he said, ‘swear on all you hold sacred.’ What Bauer thought of was Katerina. He assured the man he had nothing to fear.

  Around 05:30 hours the generator was disconnected, forcing work to go on by the light of lamps and electric torches. Half an hour later Weidemann called for the officers and NCOs to assemble in what had been the reception room. In the strangely emptied-out space their torch beams duelled, an annoyance that Corporal Knoll ended by placing a single lamp on the floor, though this made the faces of the gathered men ghoulish.

  ‘Well, well,’ Molineux said as Drexel entered the room, ‘if it isn’t Fabian, our pharmaceutical Svengali. I’ve a bone to pick with you.’ Drexel gave him the look of a man too tired to care. ‘What I want to know,’ Molineux went on, ‘is why you haven’t tried your dark arts on me. I’m as perfectible as the next man.’

  Before Drexel could respond, Weidemann brought the gathering to order. Metz had reached Chern safely, he reported, but was continuing on to Oryol. In the meantime, Major-General Oeding had appointed him, Weidemann, battalion acting commander. A round of subdued congratulations followed.