The Tolstoy Estate

  Exit Metz, Bauer thought. It was hard to imagine the battalion without him, but there was no time to reflect on their eighteen months of service together. Patients and personnel, announced Weidemann, would withdraw to Chern in two stages, using the same vehicles twice. Most of the patients, half the men and any essential equipment would leave in the first convoy. The second would evacuate whoever and whatever else remained. He asked if there were questions.

  Drexel raised a hand. ‘Will the convoy have time to come back, sir? Even heading south there’ll be delays. Coming back against the traffic . . . well, that won’t be easy.’

  Bauer looked at Weidemann, who ran the hospital in a rule-bound if unobtrusive way and had never commanded the battalion, let alone in a crisis.

  ‘It’s a journey of eighty-five kilometres,’ Weidemann said. ‘Of the three legs, only one will be against the flow of traffic. But you’re right: the Soviets could get here before our vehicles return, and for that reason I propose to remain until the evacuation is complete.’

  There was a pause then Zöllner said, ‘Sir, let me stay instead. You’ll be needed in Chern.’

  ‘A gallant suggestion, Lieutenant, but I can’t leave our most junior officer in charge.’

  ‘Then leave me in charge, sir,’ Bauer said. ‘Lieutenant Zöllner can act as my second in command.’ Weidemann looked searchingly at him, and Bauer went on, ‘As our ranking officer, you shouldn’t risk capture.’

  ‘I could say the same of our only fit surgeon.’

  ‘No one doubts your courage, sir, but I’m twenty years younger than you – if necessary, I could lead an evacuation on foot.’

  Weidemann hesitated for a moment. ‘Well, I can’t fault your logic. Very well then, Bauer, I accept your offer. I’ll lead the first convoy, you the second.’

  Bauer wondered if he had just got himself killed for love – if Katerina failed to appear, the mere idea of love – because however sound his arguments for volunteering to stay, he couldn’t hide from himself his true motives. How selfish these were became clear moments later when Weidemann specified who else was to stay: Bauer’s men, Zöllner’s likewise, as well as Ritter and his security detail. Dying for love might be romantic; getting others killed for it was not.

  The briefing ended and the loading of patients began. It was still dark outside and very cold, and those not engaged as stretcher bearers gathered in the entrance hall. Low conversation. The clatter on floorboards of webbing, weapons and kit.

  ‘I can’t say I envy you,’ Molineux said when Bauer went over to wish him luck. ‘In fact, I think you’re insane.’

  Truth seemed to be called for. ‘I’m hoping to see Katerina Dmitrievna.’

  Molineux clapped his hands together. ‘I knew it!’

  ‘Keep your voice down, for Christ’s sake.’

  ‘Is it . . . love?’

  ‘On my side, yes,’ Bauer said.

  ‘On hers, not?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he admitted.

  ‘But you’ve tupped her?’

  Bauer squinted at him, and Molineux held up his palms. ‘All right, all right. I take that as a no, or you wouldn’t be risking your life to stay.’

  ‘I haven’t seen her for three and a half days.’

  ‘Do you know where she’s living?’

  ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘Daybreak’s coming. How about I stop at the village and make some enquiries? Find out where she lives. Let her know you’re still here.’

  ‘Thanks but no,’ he replied. ‘It would look bad for her.’

  ‘Then you’ll just have to leave it to fate,’ Molineux said.

  ‘In other words, forget about it.’

  ‘You know, sometimes I think Metz is right about you: you’re a lugubrious soul. But buck up. Tonight in Chern we’ll drown our sorrows together. By tomorrow morning Katerina Dmitrievna will be just a hazy memory.’

  ‘Thank you, Hermann, I’m touched by your concern.’

  The last patient carried out was the man who’d been in traction. Bauer met his eye and nodded as he passed. Then a sergeant came in and barked the order to leave, and the men who were due to depart hefted their kits and made for the door. Weidemann came over, shook Bauer by the hand, wished him luck and promised to stay in radio contact. Bauer thanked him. Weidemann went outside and the convoy got underway. Despite himself, Bauer felt a pang of abandonment. Spread about the ill-lit hall were the fifty-three patients who remained in his care, including twenty-two who could walk (two of whom had been blinded) and thirty-one stretcher cases. To care for them he had forty-four corpsmen and NCOs, plus one fellow officer in Zöllner.

  From the direction of the storeroom, Ritter arrived with his security detail and several of the other men under his command, all of them heavily armed. Bauer asked him where they were going, and Ritter replied they were taking up defensive positions. Bauer wondered if the sergeant major was high enough on Drexel’s dope to believe that he could hold off the entire Soviet advance, and carefully he ordered him to send most of his men to flag down passing vehicles, including wagons, which had space on board for the wounded. ‘Commandeer them if you have to. Tell anyone who’s fit they’ll have to walk.’

  Ritter looked displeased by this but saluted and took his men away. When they were gone Bauer had Zöllner draw up an order of evacuation, and in case not enough vehicles were forthcoming he sent several men to gather all the available sleds. This left him free to concentrate on the patients, since some were at risk of deteriorating, and all were in pain.

  In the hour after daybreak Ritter’s men brought in a lorry and two wagons, permitting the evacuation of eighteen of the thirty-one stretcher cases, nine of the walking wounded and six nursing attendants. There was still no clear information about how close the Soviets were, but at 09:33 hours the radio operator reported that the main convoy had arrived at Chern and that several of the lorries were already heading back to Yasnaya Polyana. The journey to Chern had taken almost two hours, and Bauer calculated that, travelling contrariwise, the vehicles wouldn’t reach Yasnaya Polyana much before midday, and possibly later.

  Half an hour later a second commandeered lorry arrived, its driver a visibly shaken Waldo Pabst. There had been an incident, Pabst explained, a confrontation between Ritter and a sergeant who had been driving the lorry, who had refused to get out. Words had been exchanged, then bullets, and the sergeant had been killed.

  ‘Ritter shot him?’ Bauer asked.

  Pabst nodded, looking miserable. He plucked at a dark patch on the seat of his trousers. ‘His blood.’

  There had been passengers in the lorry, Pabst went on, men of the Grossdeutschland division who, though armed, had been in no condition to retaliate for the killing of one of their own. The Soviets were less than five kilometres away, they’d said, and immediately made off on foot. ‘We should go as well, sir, don’t you think?’

  ‘Yes, and it’s being organised. But first I want you to go back to the road and tell Ritter to report to me immediately.’

  ‘I can’t, sir. He left.’

  ‘Left where?’

  ‘I didn’t see. He sort of slipped away.’

  Good riddance, Bauer wanted to say. If Ritter showed himself again there would be consequences, but now there were more pressing concerns. Quickly he summoned Zöllner and the remaining NCOs and ordered them to get ready to leave straight away. The lorry that Ritter had killed for was being loaded with patients, leaving only five stretcher cases to be moved by sled, plus a total of thirteen walking wounded and a platoon’s worth of corpsmen to help with stretchers or to carry and sled equipment and food. Personal belongings would have to be left behind. With a pang Bauer thought of his copy of War and Peace, which he had come within seventy pages of completing.

  Then in walked Katerina.

  My God, he thought, my God, the need to keep his composure in front of patients and corpsmen at odds with a berserk inner joy. Alongside her was one of the sentries Ritter had posted outside;
Bauer dismissed him and turned back to Katerina. She looked solemn, though at the edges of her eyes other emotions were at play.

  ‘Katerina,’ he said.

  ‘Paul.’

  She had on the same heavy skirt and quilted jacket she’d had on the night they’d first met, as well as a humble headscarf he’d never seen her wearing before. Her cheeks were reddened with cold.

  He said, ‘I didn’t think I’d see you.’

  ‘Or me you. We noticed your lorries going by.’

  ‘A first convoy. They’re coming back.’

  She said, ‘We’re here to stand guard, my staff and I.’

  ‘Then tell them to take care. There could be stragglers.’

  ‘Isn’t that what you are?’

  ‘Regular troops, I mean. They’ll be tired. Maybe scared. Likely dangerous.’

  ‘I’m going now to the main house,’ she said, and held his gaze.

  ‘Then I’ll come with you.’

  ‘You have time?’

  ‘Just,’ he replied, unsure if this was true.

  ‘Good,’ she said simply, then in Russian went on, ‘Just don’t get yourself captured. My countrymen won’t be kind.’

  He fetched his helmet, buckled it to his belt and rejoined Katerina in the entrance hall. From there they passed though the vestibule for what Bauer guessed was for him the final time. On the doorstep he crossed paths with Zöllner. ‘I have to go to the main house,’ he told him. ‘While I’m gone, take command. Get the men and the patients together and leave right away.’

  Zöllner looked alarmed. ‘What about you?’

  ‘I’ll catch up.’

  Zöllner made to speak again but Bauer cut him off, promised he’d be quick and strode outside. On the frozen forecourt were gathered about fifty corpsmen and patients, the stretcher cases heaped with blankets and secured to sleds. A short distance away stood Katerina’s staff; Bauer spotted Daria Grigorievna and also her sister. Tikhon Vassilyvich, too. However triumphant they were feeling they had the sense to disguise it. Katerina went over to them and spoke in a Russian too quick for Bauer to follow, then the group broke in pairs and made off in different directions. To Bauer’s dismay Katerina was joined by Tikhon Vassilyvich. ‘He insisted,’ Katerina said curtly in German. ‘For all I know he guesses there’s something afoot. But he means well. He’s worried for me. God knows, he’s probably right to be.’

  The three of them set out for the main house. The air was icy and still, the noise of combat unnervingly clear, a crackle of small-arms punctuated by machine-gun fire.

  ‘Are you sure about this?’ Katerina asked him in German.

  ‘No. But I couldn’t stand leaving without seeing you.’

  ‘I’m glad,’ she said, ‘but hurry.’

  ‘What about Tikhon?’ Bauer asked. Already the old man was lagging.

  ‘He knows where we’re going.’

  In fact the house was already coming into view. ‘I still love you,’ he said. Just the essentials now.

  ‘And I still know it,’ Katerina answered, her voice so warm it hardly mattered she hadn’t used the same phrase, which in any case was unworthy of a writer.

  ‘After the war I’ll come back for you,’ he said. ‘If I survive it.’

  ‘Try to,’ she said. ‘Find me. Or I’ll come looking for you.’ She asked for his address, and he gave it to her. No, she didn’t need it written down.

  The front door of the main house was flung open, and when they crossed the threshold he dashed his helmet away from where it was hanging on his thigh and they kissed – their mouths hot and sealed against the cold. A universe he could dwell in forever.

  It was Katerina who broke away first. ‘You had to do something? Get something?’

  ‘War and Peace,’ he said. ‘You were right: I couldn’t finish it in time.’

  ‘You’re here for that?’

  ‘I’m here for you,’ he said.

  Taking two steps at a time they went up to what had been his room. His and Molineux’s gear was untouched since the previous morning. Bauer shoved War and Peace into his kit bag and, with Katerina looking on, added some of Molineux’s gear to his own. He was already wearing most of his clothes. From downstairs came the sound of Tikhon coming inside. Bauer shouldered the bag and took a step towards Katerina, meaning only to embrace her but instead falling into one more kiss. As in dreams of flying he tried to make the moment last, to stay aloft in an instant he knew must die, just as downstairs a machine-pistol opened fire, jolting them apart. Katerina’s eyes were wide with fright, the first time he’d ever seen her afraid. ‘Stay here,’ he ordered, and went for the door.

  ‘No, stop!’

  ‘It’s one of ours,’ he said grimly. An MP 40. Involuntarily he had come to learn the language of guns.

  In the entrance hall he found Norbert Ritter setting fire to the stairs, behind him Tikhon Vassilyvich’s bullet-bitten body.

  ‘Put it out,’ Bauer said from the uppermost step, drawing his pistol and waving it, first at Ritter then the fire, which so far was smoky and small.

  ‘Captain,’ Ritter said, ‘I didn’t know you were here. Or her, for that matter,’ he added, nodding at Katerina. Bauer descended the stairs, keeping his pistol trained on Ritter, whose own weapon was on a strap and dangling at his hip. He seemed neither surprised nor aggrieved to have a pistol pointed at him.

  At the bottom of the stairs Bauer held out one hand. ‘Your weapon.’

  ‘The old fucker tried to kill me,’ Ritter said, jerking his head at the corpse. ‘What was I expected to do?’

  ‘Intercept lorries,’ Bauer said.

  ‘And I did that!’

  Katerina hurried down the stairs, darted to the fire and kicked it apart before smothering the embers with her jacket. She dropped to one knee next to Tikhon Vassilyvich’s body.

  ‘You told me to stop lorries,’ Ritter said. ‘I stopped them.’

  ‘Hand me the gun,’ Bauer said. ‘And, yes, that’s an order.’

  ‘More of a threat, sir, isn’t it?’

  ‘Do it,’ Bauer said, and jabbed his pistol at him.

  ‘All right, all right,’ Ritter said, unslinging his weapon.

  ‘Slowly,’ Bauer warned. ‘By its strap.’ With exaggerated slowness Ritter passed him the machine pistol. Bauer gripped it and was about to strap it across his shoulder when Katerina held out her hand.

  ‘To me. The gun. I want the gun.’

  Ritter turned to Bauer. ‘What the fuck’s going on here? Since when has that slut been giving the orders?’

  ‘Shut up,’ Bauer said, ‘or I’ll do as she asks. Get out of here and rejoin the men. We’re leaving. I’ll deal with you later.’

  Ritter gave both of them a look of contempt, turned about and, stepping over Tikhon Vassilyvich’s body, stalked out through the vestibule.

  Bauer turned back to face Katerina. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘So sorry.’

  ‘Tell that to Tikhon’s wife, to his grandchildren.’

  ‘Sorry about all of it.’

  ‘As you have been from the start. For goodness’ sake, just leave. Scram! Get out of here or else.’

  ‘Or else, what? Be captured? Isn’t that what I deserve?’

  ‘Or else I’ll cry, you dolt.’

  He smiled crookedly at her. ‘Now I’ll have to stay.’

  ‘Don’t be an idiot – you’d be killed or die in a camp. So go. Just go,’ she said, and seized him by both arms.

  Strangely it was her grip that freed him, her touch the closing of a circuit of good sense. Of course he had to leave – it was his only chance of seeing her again.

  ‘All right,’ he said, and in response she let him go. For several seconds they gazed into one another’s eyes, then he turned and strode into the vestibule, passed through the doorway, crossed the forecourt and, still holding Ritter’s gun, began jogging down the main drive, kit bag thwacking at his back and helmet bouncing on his thigh. A minute later the estate’s front entrance came i
nto view, a Napoleonic tableau of grey sky, bare trees and snowy ground, trudging over it the hunched, coated figures of medical corpsmen, some with kitbags and weapons, others hauling the wounded on sleds. He was panting, exhaling great vaporous clouds, but with the column now in sight he slowed to a walk and slung the machine pistol over his chest. When he reached Yasnaya Polyana’s ornamental gates he unhooked his helmet from his belt and shoved it onto his head, then he looked back and saw Katerina at other end of the drive, standing alone in the snow. Neither of them waved. It was not his head that needed protection, he understood, but his heart.

  TWENTY-SIX

  The heat is violent, the sun sharp, when on an afternoon in August 1975 Katerina steps out of her son’s Zhiguli into the carpark opposite the Tolstoy estate. From the passenger footwell she retrieves her handbag and a broad-brimmed hat, shoulders the bag – which is probably too heavy, she thinks – puts on her hat and sets out with Marlen across a tarmac oozing and blistering in the heat. In Moscow that morning she had refused her son’s offer to call ahead and arrange to park within the grounds; she was not so infirm that she required special treatment, she told him, and besides she meant to spend the day wallowing in nostalgia, a state of mind best achieved in anonymity.

  Neither of which had been lies, she reflects, as they skirt a crowd of Young Pioneers emerging from a bus and making their way across the road to the gates. No, she hasn’t lied to Marlen, only neglected to mention (and what business is it of his, after all?) that as well as sentiment she has a practical objective today.

  At the ticket booth the queue is long, and for a moment she questions the wisdom of her plan. The heat really is ferocious and she feels a little dizzy, but before she can even mention this to Marlen he guides her by the elbow to a shaded bench by the wall. With his usual foresight he has brought a vacuum flask of water, and after a couple of mouthfuls she begins to feel better. Good God, the Russian summer! Small wonder, she thinks, that this land of extremes should have produced a people of such intemperate passions.