Several hours later she awoke, her head on Anastasia’s chest. “Your heart’s beating,” she whispered.
“Oh, thank goodness.” Anastasia laughed.
“I mean it’s pounding.” Katherina raised her head. “I can hear your blood flowing through your body. It makes me so grateful that we’re alive, and together. And it makes me all the more sorry for my father. I wonder if he was ever really in love.”
“He was. And this is as good a time as any for you to read about it.” Anastasia slipped out of bed and retrieved her shoulder bag. She drew out a large gray envelope with two folded packets of paper. “This is the copy of the Russian pages that you gave me.” She dropped it back into the envelope and handed over the second packet. “And this is the translation. I feel like I’ve looked into this man’s soul. Do you want to read it now, lying next to me?”
“I can’t think of a better place.” Katherina raised herself up on one elbow and withdrew the folded pages. “Is it terrible? I mean, is it full of war horrors?”
“It’s terrible and beautiful. No war horrors, just a personal tragedy. I’m surprised you couldn’t read the first lines. They were in French.”
“French? Really? Well, I was in shock when I found the journal in the first place. I only flipped through these pages and saw they were written in Cyrillic, so I never even attempted to read them.” She unfolded the packet and laid it flat between them.
“‘D’amour l’ardente flame…’” she began.
XXXV
Lacrimoso
Stalingrad, January 31, 1943
“D’amour l’ardente flame consume mes beaux jours.” The words of my favorite aria go through my head as I lie here next to him, my lover. Don’t be shocked. You, the Russian who is reading this page now, let me tell you of something precious and pure.
First, here’s the irony. I was one of Russia’s children, like you with a Russian child’s memories. My grandmother had a parrot called Zharptitsa, the firebird of our fairy tales, and in my mind I can still taste sweet samovar tea. It was your revolution that drove us out, to Germany.
But Germany sent me back, so I’m yours again, at least my frozen cadaver will be. And since I’m dead, I don’t have to see the disgust on your face when you read that I am lying here next to the man I have made love to. If you find our remains side by side in this basement, please lay us together, even in the common pit.
I never wanted to come here and fight you. We’re brothers, after all. But the Third Reich doesn’t like my sort any more than you do and so gave me an interesting choice: rot in a concentration camp or practice medicine under fire. That is, die in Buchenwald or Stalingrad. I made my choice, and with my medical kit I followed the Wehrmacht into hell.
And second, here is the lesson: that love can appear, persistently, miraculously, even here. My lover lies next to me, keeping warm against my side, and this is the third time I mention him because it thrills me to see the words as I write them. I have just sewn the wound shut where his last two fingers used to be, without anesthetic. His body shook the whole time, but he didn’t scream. It’s a clean shrapnel wound that he could survive—if this were a real field hospital instead of just a basement full of dying men, a charnel house. We have no more medical supplies, only a few bandages, some surgical thread. We can’t even wash out wounds, except with freezing-cold water. But you know that. If you’re still here in Stalingrad you’re probably not much better off.
But the first thing I see when I wake by kerosene light is his face, his fine nose, his eyelashes long as a woman’s. He has lips like a Renaissance cherub, and I have known such happiness, kissing them in the dark. I call him Zharptitsa, my miraculous bird. I forgive you for your contempt, my Russian brother, and hope that one day you too find love as pure and precious as the one that burns between Florian and me.
Katherina gasped. “Florian! That’s him. The man my father named his son after and the last word he wrote before he died. Florian was his lover. He must have died in Stalingrad, while my father made it back. No wonder he felt guilty.”
“The story’s a bit more complicated than that,” Anastasia said. “Keep reading. It’s all there.”
February 3, 1943
Yesterday General Paulus surrendered the German Sixth Army to the Russians. It’s over for us. Hitler ordered us to fight to the last man and the last cartridge, but we’re out of ammunition, food, clothing, and the will to fight. Goering’s promise to supply us by air was nothing but shit. All over the city our troops are freezing to death or dying of hunger. We’re beyond savagery and live like beasts. There are rumors of cannibalism. Some of our officers are shooting themselves, and an SS demolition team has just blown itself up. Common soldiers run out into the open and empty their magazines until they are mowed down.
This place, Collection Station N. 6, keeps operating, but the last flight out carrying wounded was a week ago, so now it’s just a place to die. The walking wounded are not even brought here but are rounded up for captivity. The only men they bring are the ones too far gone to stand up. Some of them are carried in screaming, broken bones protruding, viscera exposed, but soon the cold gets to them and they quiet down. Then they die. The stretcher-bearers carry them out again, stack them up in the yard.
There are always about twenty-five men, with the new arrivals replacing the dead. Every second day they bring us soup, just hot water with barley in it. Sometimes there’s bread, a scrap for each man. Hard to sleep for very long, but the cold keeps the lice from crawling.
One of the guards, a man they call Kolya, seems to be assigned to this side of the cellar. He has seen me embrace Florian and I can feel his contempt when he’s near. Still, he’s not brutal. He knows I speak Russian and so stops by sometimes to tell me what’s happening outside. He has a strange scar across the bridge of his nose, as if someone had struck him with a sword but stopped short of slicing through his head. Today he mentioned that the bombed-out building overhead used to be the opera house. Nice touch, dying in an opera house.
We’re all just waiting to be told what to do, everyone thinking the same thing. How much longer can I hold out? A week, a month, a year? I worry most about Florian. Can I protect him in captivity?
An hour ago I went to the “latrine.” Just a pool of shit in one of the back rooms. Frozen, but it still stank. My urine gave off steam; a little more precious body heat lost. On the way back I stepped over plaster slabs and thought I saw a hand. But it was a glove, a black gauntlet, with a wide cuff. Part of a costume but still good, one more layer of protection against the cold. I put it over Florian’s injured hand, which was so cold I could feel no pulse in it. He keeps up a brave front, but when I hold the lantern over him I can see that his bright blue eyes are glassy with pain. To keep him talking, I asked him what opera he thought the glove might be from. Faust, he whispered. Faust, for sure, and it was the devil’s gauntlet. He could tell by the fire in his missing fingers.
February 4, 1943
There are things worse than dying. Being eaten by rats while you’re still alive is worse. They don’t like the frozen corpses and prefer the bodies that are still warm. One of the jobs of the medics is to keep the rats away from the feet of the wounded who are too weak to fight them off. The mice are a plague too, and have caused outbreaks of tularemia among the troops. Since I can’t sleep much anyhow, I make rounds continuously, without medicine or morphine, simply talking to the men who want to talk, lying to the ones who are afraid. I promise to take messages to their families, as if it were certain I would make it home myself. Then I go back to our corner and hold Florian in my arms.
February 5, 1943
Florian is feverish. He keeps saying that he hears music, like a chorus singing. I tell him it’s only the wind outside. I hold him in my arms and feel how frail he’s gotten. “Don’t leave me,” he begs, and I promise not to.
I fell asleep, keeping him warm, and dreamt the opera house over our heads was still there. I was outside in the snow
, but I could hear the orchestra and a woman singing. “D’amour l’ardente flame…” Then I saw soldiers riding toward me on horseback. They stopped in front of the opera house and one of them offered me his hand. It was the devil wearing the black gauntlet, and he asked me if I wanted to go home. I said of course I did, and I was suddenly on horseback, riding away with him, going back to St. Petersburg. Strange. I left St. Petersburg when I was seven. It’s the last place I would consider home.
Kolya the guard woke us up with his foot. “Hey, you sweethearts,” he said sarcastically. Then to me, “Get your kit and report to Major Karlovsky.”
“I want to bring my comrade,” I said. “He’s my assistant.”
Kolya said no, but I could come back for him later. Meanwhile, he’d keep an eye on him. I don’t trust Kolya, but had no choice. I left Florian, making sure he had his glove on.
February 6, 1943
We may be saved after all. With thousands of wounded men and few surviving medics, a major named Karlovsky has been put in charge of rounding up the German doctors. Because I spoke Russian, Kolya separated me from the rest of the group and took me alone to Karlovsky’s headquarters, a primitive enclosure dug into the cliffs overlooking the Volga. He must have thought that Karlovsky was alone, but he wasn’t. One step into the dugout and we were facing both the major and General Vasily Chuikov, Commander of the 62nd Army that had just taken Stalingrad. Karlovsky saw my German uniform and was furious. “Get that prisoner out of here,” he snarled. Chuikov stood a meter away from us, waiting for the interruption to end. He scratched his jaw with swollen fingers and a bandaged hand. The rumors were true, then. He had eczema. Without thinking, I pulled away from Kolya and said in my best Russian, “Commander, I’m a dermatologist. I can cure that.”
“This one speaks Russian,” Chuikov remarked, surprised, of course. I talked fast. “My name is Sergei Marovsky, General. I was born in Leningrad. I’m a dermatologist,” I repeated. He glared at me, I suppose trying to decide which was worse, a Wehrmacht soldier or a Tsarist. But his hands must have been hurting a lot.
“I can cure that.” I lied again, pointing to the red swollen things protruding from the bandaged palm. Open sores, some infected, were on the knuckles. He lifted one hand, I thought to slap me, but it was to wave me away. “Wait outside,” he said, and Kolya took me outside the dugout. “Don’t talk about yourself. That will remind him you are a Russian fighting with Germans. We execute men for that. Talk about medicine. Promise him cure.”
“Yes, I will. And I’ll tell him I need my medical assistant.”
Kolya shook his head. “Pretty Face? Forget him. He’s wounded, no good to Russian hospital. Maybe good luck can save him, but not you. Two of you together is death for sure.”
Just then, Chuikov came out alone and signaled me to follow him. His dugout was close by and like Karlovsky’s, only larger, set back farther into the cliff and with an improvised door. Inside, I saw he even had electricity, and lights were on over a small table. I unwrapped his bandages under the lightbulb and saw swelling, blisters, open sores. His doctors had been telling him it was nerves. Idiots. But none of them were dermatologists. I told him it was simple eczema, exacerbated by dirt. He ordered hot water from his cook and I washed his hands to stop the itching and clean out some of the infection. I told him to send for vegetable oil from his field kitchen and rub it in to stop the dryness. “Clean cotton gloves,” I added. “Get two pairs, not too tight. I’ll wash them for you and you can change them every day. That will make all the difference.” I made him promise to drink nothing but clean water, and lots of it, to hydrate his skin. He must have been desperate, because he agreed to everything. He even smiled and I saw that his front teeth were capped in gold.
I thought he would send me back to the German field station, but instead he ordered one of his men to take me to a soldiers’ bivouac across the Volga. I was to be a “free” prisoner encamped with his troops and had to treat his hands every morning. My new guard took me to a supply truck and a bivouac where soldiers were sitting around a fire. He ordered me to take off my uniform tunic and gave me one of their padded winter jackets. I’m here now, warm for the first time in weeks, but I must get back to the opera-house medical station for Florian. I’ll try to find Karlovsky in the morning.
February 7, 1943
The Russians need front-line surgeons, since their losses were just as great as ours. Though everyone is wary of me, they put me into the surgery to assist when I’m not tending the commander. The soldiers have the same wounds as the Germans, and the care is almost the same. Except they use pure grain vodka both as anaesthetic and as antiseptic.
Time is running out to save Florian. He has no idea what happened to me. While I washed Commander Chuikov’s hands this morning, I asked if I could return to get my medical assistant, but he said to forget about the Germans. The subject was obviously closed. My only chance is with Karlovsky, but I don’t have much mobility and I can’t find him. How much time do I have left before Florian is moved?
February 8, 1943
I’ve been watching them all day, the surrendered men, the whole Sixth Army and the armies of the Hungarians, Romanians, Italians, in a five-man-wide line slogging across the frozen Volga and disappearing over the horizon. Like a gargantuan, and endless, gray serpent. Most of them have only their issue denims, lightweight coats. Their leather boots are caked in ice that will soon freeze their feet like so much bad meat and cripple them. A few of them have thrown their deadly boots away and shuffle along in straw sentry shoes. Others have feet wrapped in strips of wool cut from coats. The ones who could find blankets have them draped over their heads, keeping the wind away from their emaciated faces. A few Russians, still in their white camouflage cloaks, herd the POWs, but mostly they are unguarded.
I watched my comrades of a few days ago shuffle along dumbly like they already know they’re dead. I could be shuffling with them. And Florian?
Still no sign of Karlovsky and I’m desperate to find him before it’s too late.
February 9, 1943
I finally found Major Karlovsky, standing together with Kolya, and I begged him to let me return to get Florian as my medical assistant. Kolya whispered something in his ear, the bastard, and Karlovsky was suddenly suspicious. “What’s the hurry? Is that your butt boy? If he is, you can just go on back to him, for good. But you can’t bring him along. There are no butt boys in the Red Army.”
“No, of course not,” I said. “He’s just a comrade, a very good medic.”
Karlovsky laughed. “Well then, you’ll have new comrades here on this side of the river. Make your choice. Go back to your pretty friend and join the long march to a POW camp or be a man in Chuikov’s Army. Go on.” He took a step backward to let me pass him, even stretched out an arm toward the opera-house collection station where Florian waited. All I had to do was walk. Kolya looked away but I knew he had betrayed me. I hesitated, speechless.
“Smart choice,” Karlovsky said, and the two of them marched away.
February 10, 1943
I was sick all night with regret. I had to see Florian. Maybe together we could work out something to save us both. I tracked down Karlovsky again and begged him to let me return to the German medical station to “fetch my medical instruments,” although it was obvious I already had my medical kit with me. He must have been in a good mood this morning because he agreed, and I hurried through the wrecked city back to the opera-house cellar.
When I arrived, I felt like I’d been shot. The cellar was empty. Where Florian had been lying there was only the leather gauntlet, covered with plaster. Did he leave it as a sign for me, or did it drop when he was carried away? Did he freeze during the night without me to warm him? Had the rats… I couldn’t finish the thought.
The corpses were still piled up like cordwood outside. Like a madman, I rushed along the rows, poking among them, brushing snow and ice from the dead faces. I would have collapsed in grief if I had found him, but
it was almost worse that I didn’t. If he’s not dead, then he’s among the prisoners force-marched eastward through the snow. He can’t survive that.
God, he’s gone. He’s gone. Oh, Florian. If I knew where you were in that endless trudging line, I’d run after you. How far can you march before you fall? They’re pulling us apart, dragging you eastward and forcing me toward the west. I have the glove, the sign of my cowardice, but where my heart was there’s a stone. How can I live, day after day, imagining you lying by the roadside, covered with snow? I bought my life with yours, and now I’m an empty shell.
Katherina’s hand shook as she folded the pages of the translation and tucked them along with the original into the journal. Next to her, Anastasia was silent, watching her.
“So that’s where it all came from. The uniform, the glove, the guilt that was hanging over our family.”
“Your father obviously felt like he’d made a devil’s pact, to the point of being superstitious about it. And then, of course, Schalk showed up, offering him even more deals.”
“That explains his cynicism, too. I remember from my earliest years that he said ‘you have to save yourself, because when you need your friends, they will abandon you.’”
Anastasia took her hand, kissing her palm. “But he didn’t abandon anyone. The guards took him out of the cellar at gunpoint. And then, when he had to choose between life and loyalty, all he was guilty of, really, was hesitating. It was just his dream that made him think it was a ‘pact.’ He kept that black gauntlet for forty years, to torture himself, as if it were his contract. But there never was one, even in the abstract sense.”
“He thought there was. It colored his whole life.”
“I know. We all make up our life stories, don’t we? My mother lived in Tsarist Russia in her head, long after it was gone. But your father lived with the devil. Get rid of the glove, darling. Break his fake contract the way you broke that insane contract with Raspin.”
Mephisto Aria Page 23