Pavel & I

by Dan Vyleta

  ‘And he signs off on that?’ one of the boys asked incredulously.

  ‘His wife and child are already in the truck,’ Paulchen reminded him. ‘A man has to do what a man has to do.’

  Then there was one about the children’s hospital down the road, how every morning a van stopped at its gates to load up all the babies that had died there that night, and how they put them into cardboard boxes because there wasn’t any wood to be had. It was said that they kept them in a warehouse out in Zehlendorf somewhere until the ground got soft enough again to dig them graves. Or the one about the man they called The Butcher, who took children home and promised themcandy, then sold their meat by the kilo. He was said to dress in a white suit and carry a walking stick with a silver tip.

  ‘Probably another ped-i-rast.’

  There were stories, too, that they never told, those that were too frightening to tell, or too personal. Anders had some stories like that, and he knew most of the others did. Once, Schlo’ had tried to tell him something about a giant prison out in Poland where everybody looked like a corpse. Had showed him the tattoo on his forearm and told him that they burned people there. ‘Smokestacks smoking night and day,’ he had said, round-eyed and weepy. ‘Smoking with people.’

  Anders had thought him full of shit. ‘Smokestacks smoking with people, eh?’ It was important not to believe everything you heard.

  The boys settled down eventually, after a final cigarette. Early in the morning Anders woke because Schlo’ was crying. Making sure none of the other boys were awake to see him do it, he curled up next to him and rocked Schlo’ in his arms until he fell back asleep. When dawn finally broke he helped Paulchen with breakfast, then set off to Pavel’s.

  He wanted to tell him that the fat man liked to fuck boys.

  Sonia saw Pavel leave the building from out of her front window, a lonely figure, the body bent around his kidneys’ pain, then got ready to leave herself. She did not want to run into the Colonel. At first her steps were aimless. She walked down neighbourhood streets and passed long queues of shoppers, felt their jealous glances upon her expensive coat. On Sophie-Charlotte-Platz a gaggle of schoolgirls passing around a cigarette butt; across from them two workers carting away rubble. Amongst the crowd, stolid talk of Christmas, and a man without gloves trying to sell a suitcase full of decorations. ‘Please,’ he said to her, ‘for the celebrations.’

  ‘I have no tree,’ she fobbed him off.

  ‘You could keep them for next year.’

  She shrugged and quickly moved on.

  The cold soon drove her underground. She had not been on the subway for a long time, had watched the streets from the reassuring distance of a car window. Beggars huddled in corners as she made her way down, stretched forward cups baited only with buttons. The platform itself was packed with people: Germans, British soldiers, and a pair of transport police hunting for black marketeers. When Sonia boarded the train and saw icicles growing out of its ceiling, she almost laughed out loud. A child broke off one of its tips and started sucking on it. Evidently it tasted funny: the girl made a face and dropped it. Now that the doors were closed the air in the train quickly got worse, filled by the smell of unwashed bodies – it was too cold to bathe – and something worse: the gasses of indigestion. A bent old lady broke wind next to her and glanced at her apologetically. ‘You should smell the stuff I’m eating,’ she murmured. Her breath stank as rancid as her fart. Sonia decided she would get off at the next station, but then she overheard a conversation between two of the Brits on the other side of the aisle.

  ‘It rolled in this morning. More than forty dead, I heard, and a dozen amputations.’

  ‘Amputations?’

  ‘Yeah, they’ve been chopping off limbs all morning. They’ve frozen right off.’

  ‘Jesus.’

  ‘Once the Krauts get wind of it, they’ll be baying for blood.’

  Sonia pushed through the throng of passengers and positioned herself between them.

  ‘Gnee-di-guss Frow-leyn,’ they said, sizing her up. ‘What is it we can do for you?’

  The train jostled and she felt herself thrown against one of them. He steadied her by putting one hand on her waist.

  ‘Forty dead?’ she asked him in English. ‘Where?’

  ‘At the station. The refugee train. Would you like some cigarettes?’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Company.’

  She tried to muster the indignation to slap him across one cheek but found none. His face was ruddy like a choirboy’s.

  ‘Not today,’ she told him, and he shrugged and let go of her waist.

  ‘That’s a bloody shame, love,’ he said good-naturedly.

  She turned her back on him and stayed like that until the train drew into Zoogarten station.

  He marched straight in. That was the first mistake he made. He thought Pavel would still be in bed, distraught over his friend’s death, or else the woman might be there, making him chicken soup from out of a tin. Instead he found the Colonel crouching on the floor like an outsized toad. His thighs bulged in his uniform trousers and even the boots seemed bloated to the boy, as though his feet had been sewn into them and were now trying to burst through the leather. Behind the fat man, Pavel’s mattress stood upended, his cupboards opened, books thrown carelessly upon the floor. The oven had gone out and the room was not much warmer than the street outside.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Anders asked, seeking refuge in German, hoping that it would startle the Tommy. That was his second mistake. He should have turned on his heel and run. Instead he decided to face the Colonel down.

  ‘ Sie gehören hier nicht hin.’

  The fat man took no heed of his words. His eyes travelled down towards a rag that was lying on the wooden floor.

  ‘What an idiot,’ he said conversationally. ‘Goes to the trouble of wiping the floor and hiding the body, but forgets to get rid of the cloth he cleaned it up with. Just look at it, it’s positively soaked with blood.’

  He picked up the frozen lump of cloth, then studied the boy from his cheerful button eyes. ‘You understand me, don’t you?’

  ‘He’s not an idiot,’ Anders said, in English now.

  ‘Ah, so you do.’

  The boy stood still, gnawing his lip. He asked himself whether the Colonel had found the dead Russian dwarf yet, standing upright in his trunk in the other room. The fat man caught the movement of his eyes.

  ‘Gone,’ he said. ‘Your friend left the suitcase. Spotted with blood stains. Put a hole into it – finest buckskin, a real shame. Cut the midget right out and carted him off. How did he do it, though? He’s too weak to have done it all by himself, and you didn’t know about it, did you now? It does make one think, doesn’t it? Yes, it rather does make one think.’

  He stood up, slowly, brushed off his knees with a pair of leather gloves that he held clutched in one loose fist, never letting the boy out of his sight. A glint of recognition passed through his face as he contemplated Anders’ clothing, then faded away again, giving way to lazy geniality.

  ‘When did Boyd drop him off, the corpse? You were here, weren’t you?’

  ‘I don’t know what you are talking about.’

  ‘Loyal, are we?’ The sausage lips turned into a smile. ‘Something else, then. Tell me, boy – how is it that a little arsewipe like you wears a fifty-pound coat?’

  Anders wasn’t ready for his pounce. Even if he had been, he might have been too slow for the fat man. As it was, he did not stand a chance. Before he could even so much as turn around, the Colonel’s weight slammed into him, pressed him into the wall. Anders’ nose got bent into a right angle, blood shot over his chin. He tried to kick, but even as he rammed a knee into the soft of the Colonel’s thigh, a hand caught hold of his throat and lifted him clear off the floor. The fingers were clammy on his skin, somehow almost tender in their embrace, and yet he found himself unable to breathe. As though he were a doll, Fosko carried him over to Pavel’s m
irror above the sink. He turned Anders around deftly, until he could see himself upon its soap-speckled surface, chin extended, and one giant baby paw covering the whole of his throat.

  ‘Look!’ said the Colonel as he gently peeled the coat off Anders’ shoulders. His voice was as cheerfully magnanimous as ever. ‘Look yourself in the eye. That’s right, in the eye. Watch it swell – like a slug that you squeeze between your fingers, or maybe you and your friends have blown up frogs together, stuck a length of hose in them and blown them up. That’s right, it’s swelling, positively bulging even. Soon now you will see it change colour – it’ll yellow and curdle, you’ll see, like an old man’s eye, curdle, you hear, until it’s the colour of butter. I have been told that, right at the end, some people start bleeding from the eyes, but maybe that’s just a myth. I’d imagine it’d be quite beautiful, tears of blood running down your cherub cheek, quite a picture that, downright ravishing. Ah-ha, see your nostrils flare now. My, my, it’s like a horse, a pure-bred Arab, only you have blood up yours, so there’s nothing doing.’

  He let go of the boy carelessly and let him fall onto the sink. Anders lay there crumpled; piss was running down his trouser leg. From the corner of his eye he saw the midget’s coat. It was thrown over the Colonel’s arm now, nicely folded, as though he was planning to give it a brush. Anders watched him bend down to him until he could feel his breath in his ear.

  ‘One more thing, my little boy. If your friend Pavel hears a word about this – one word is all it takes – I will string him up with my own hands and hang him from the curtain rod. String him up, your lachrymose friend, and then we can see whether he bleeds from the eyes. Do you understand? My dear boy, I asked you whether you understood.’

  Anders croaked ‘Yes’.

  ‘Then get out of here.’

  He gave him a paternal clap on his backside. Of all the humiliations, this seemed the worst to the boy. He ran to the door and then down onto the street. Outside he stood doubled over, gasping for air and trying to hide his tears with his hands. Within minutes he was cold to the bone. I must find myself a new coat, he thought. I will freeze to death. His legs, shaking, would not obey. The train station, he told himself. Paulchen sent some boys to the train station.He tried a step and stumbled like a drunk; a second, a third, doubled over and blood drying on his lip. Before long he was running, heedless of all surroundings. He crashed into vendors, soldiers, lamp posts, never once looking up. Above all he avoided the glossy fronts of shop windows. It was to him like he would never again be able to look at his reflection without seeing the Colonel there, leering over one of his shoulders.

  By the time he reached the train station the urine in his trousers had frozen into a stiff patch right between his legs.

  Zoogarten station was in uproar. One could see the angry crowd from a long way off, standing around on the square outside the station and gesticulating. ‘They are trying to kill us,’ she heard a man shout.

  ‘Because of the food shortages. They’ve got no bread for further mouths, so they kill us off before we even get here.’ Others around him told him to shut his fucking gob.

  Inside the station the chaos only increased. Soldiers stood in stiff-legged rows, bearing machine pistols and blocking off an entire platform. The crowd stood shoulder to shoulder, those who’d been drawn there by news of the catastrophe mingling with those who were trying to leave the city, bulging suitcases in their hands. A dozen dirty boys milled amongst the crowd, selling refreshments and spreading information. ‘Fifty-three on the last count,’ one of them told her in response to a held-out cigarette.

  ‘Fifty-three dead?’

  ‘Yes, and twenty-one amputations. Mostly feet, I think. You want some coffee?’

  She shook her head and pushed on towards the cordon of soldiers.

  It wasn’t clear to Sonia what she was looking for. She half expected to see stretchers laden with people, their shins and faces burned black by frost, but of course they had all been evacuated by now. A mound of suitcases piled up on the platform floor was the only sign that any mishap had occurred. It reminded her of the days after liberation, when there had been similar mounds sprouting on the sidewalks, compiled by looting soldiers. Perhaps, she sneered at herself, this is what I’m here for: a renewed sense of anger. Perhaps I’ve slunk along far enough on the road from victim to perpetrator that it’s become attractive again to think of myself as beaten, bruised and abused. The desire struck her as dangerously childish, and she quickly turned on her heel and made her way back to the station gates. Outside, casting her eyes over the angry crowd, she noticed Anders, running with his head drawn down into his chest and stumbling into people with every other step. He was not wearing a coat.

  Her first instinct was to hide from the boy. He looked like he had run into trouble, and if this was true, it was smarter to stay away from him. But then he caught sight of her himself, and she did not have the heart to pretend she hadn’t noticed him. She waved, watched him hesitate, then draw near. His nose looked swollen and there was bruising on his throat, in between collar and scarf.

  ‘Anders,’ she said, making as though to stroke his head, then thinking better of it. ‘What happened to you?’

  ‘Nothing,’ he said, his lips trembling. ‘It’s only that I’m cold.’

  She took him into a cafß full of foreigners and bought them two cups of hot cocoa. The boy stirred in three lumps of sugar and asked the waiter for two more. He was sulky and seemed in no mood to talk.

  ‘Where did you go yesterday?’ she asked him. ‘Pavel said you ran away.’

  ‘He shouldn’t have cried,’ he answered.

  ‘Who? Pavel?’

  ‘He cried. Like a girl.’ He looked at her grimly. ‘On the Colonel’s shoulder.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘You like him?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The Colonel.’

  She hesitated. ‘He lives with me,’ she told him. ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said the boy. ‘I hate him, too.’

  They sat and drank their cocoa in silence.

  ‘Where is Pavel?’ Anders asked when he had finished his. He ran his fingers along the cup’s bottom, licked fragments of chocolate from filthy tips. She ordered him another, and lit a cigarette for herself.

  ‘Gone looking for Belle.’

  ‘Belle. That’s Boyd’s whore, right?’

  ‘You shouldn’t talk like that.’

  ‘Says who?’

  She scrutinized his features: those insolent eyes, the blood that sat smeared across his upper lip, the squashed little face with its crooked teeth. His chin was raised, like he expected her to slap him. She asked herself how Pavel had managed to befriend him, and why he should have wished to.

  ‘You need a new coat. I’ve got something in my wardrobe I can shorten for you.’

  He shook his head. ‘I can’t.’ It was hard to be sure whether or not it was fear that stood in his eyes. ‘I don’t like that Colonel of yours.’

  ‘The Colonel will be gone by now.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I know. He told me he’s got a lunchtime meeting. If you want I’ll go up and look before we go in. Make sure he’s not around.’

  ‘You promise?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She stretched out her gloved hand and wondered whether he would take it. He sniffed at it like a dog who’s been thrown a suspicious piece of bone. It was only when he grabbed it that she realized how small his hands were. She held him gently, and he allowed himself to be led out into the street.

  Outside, Anders stopped and watched the police clear the square in front of the station. A few trucks had come to the scene and inside were more police, clutching truncheons.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘The refugee train arrived,’ she told him. ‘From the east. Many of the passengers froze to death.’

  ‘Okay,’ he said, like it didn’t matter to him. He turned his back on the scene and started walki
ng. God, she thought, we are breeding monsters. And then, when they were almost back at their building, he made her feel ashamed for the word.

  ‘Promise me,’ he said, ‘that you’re not in love with him.’

  ‘In love? With the Colonel?’

  ‘No. Pavel. Promise me you don’t love Pavel.’

  She burst out laughing and stuck her key in the front door.

  Love. No wonder she started laughing. The truth, though, is that I am not at all sure what she thought about Pavel at this point. I asked her about it later, but later is no good, of course, not when it’s about something like this, an impression, a feeling, things that come and go. She maintained, in any case, that she didn’t think too much of him. I reminded her that she had helped him, unprompted; had come to his rooms, closed the door behind herself, and helped him undress the midget.

  ‘Yes,’ she admitted, ‘that I did.’

  ‘You didn’t care for him then?’

  She shrugged her shoulders. ‘He was, you know, pathetic. And – honest.’

  ‘You care that much for honesty?’

  ‘No,’ she answered, ‘I don’t. Back then I thought it a disease.’

  She smiled without humour and checked her lipstick in a pocket mirror.

  ‘Stop your questions,’ she said. ‘They’ll lead you nowhere but to words.’

  I didn’t know what to say to that, and let it slide. Up until then it hadn’t occurred to me that there could be any problems with words.

  Find Belle. Pavel knew where to start looking. He’d grabbed all the remaining packs of cigarettes he still owned, along with the war photo of Boyd and himself, the two of them sitting on their helmets, eating soup. There had been no time for breakfast, and he’d bought two rolls and a cup of Ersatzkaffee at a baker’s on the way over to the American sector. The tram at that hour of the morning was full of workers in overalls and old Wehrmacht coats. He got out at Kaiser-Wilhelm-Platz and noted the change of uniform amongst the privates walking along the streets: American colours and farm-boy faces. Half of Wisconsin seemed to be in Berlin just then. By the time he reached the ‘Unknown Soldier’ his body had started hurting from the cold. He stood panting in the entrance for a minute, then walked into the bar and looked around for Doug Priestley, a decommissioned sergeant major whom everyone called ‘Tex’, along with a thousand other GIs who shared his provenance or sounded like they might. Tex was working behind the bar, a leather butcher’s apron wrapped around his wiry frame. He recognized Pavel at once. They shook hands, lit cigarettes and cupped them in their hands. The bar was quiet with only a handful of soldiers having a breakfast of scrambled eggs and beer. Tex poured Pavel a double shot of rye, and one for himself.