Pavel & I

by Dan Vyleta

  He was no longer alone.

  The soldier had crept up to him without his noticing. Now they stood a mere yard apart: Pavel with his hands clasped around the sink, and the Russian in the doorway, a cigarette behind his ear. Pavel could see him in the mirror. The word kurva cut up his features into eyes and mouth, his cheek’s bony wedge. God, he looked young. His hands held a gun, its muzzle pointed at the small of Pavel’s back. He didn’t say anything, but just in case Pavel slowly raised his hands and placed them on either side of the mirror. They stood like that, wordless, for about fifteen minutes, until they heard heavy footsteps right outside the apartment door and the rap of knuckles upon its wood.

  ‘Let’s go,’ said the soldier in Russian, and waved at him with his gun.

  Out in the corridor two more soldiers awaited them, machine pistols in hand. These had not bothered to dress up in police uniforms; both were smoking furiously, blowing smoke from their nostrils. Half a flight up, the old woman was standing on the stairs, a grim smile on her wizened face.

  ‘Now you him have,’ she said in her broken Russian. ‘I tell you he is doing no good.’

  The soldiers nodded their thanks and walked him out to a waiting car. They shoved him into the back seat, wrapped a Russian coat around his shoulders, squeezed in on either side. Their guns’ muzzles dug into Pavel’s side, hurting his kidneys. The driver started the engine and they took off down the street, then turned eastward, towards the sector border.

  ‘If he makes any trouble,’ the driver instructed one of the soldiers, ‘break his skull a little.’

  The man nodded and grimly slipped some knuckledusters over his gloved fist.

  Sonia sat upon her piano chair. Sat still enough to be conscious of the smell of her own unwashed body, and to hear the monkey on its cupboard perch, picking at its fur. She did not play. She had tried to, on and off, Haydn and then some Bach, but her mind was elsewhere. The Colonel’s words were ringing in her ears: Perhaps it would be a good idea for you to spend the night with him. Do you think that this could be arranged?

  Of course.

  For a long time now she had been sitting there, upon her chair before the piano, asking herself what it would feel like to kiss Pavel. She did not think it would be pleasant. His breath might be sour, his tongue clumsy. She imagined their kissing: standing stiff-limbed, him stooping over her at an awkward angle, their hips tilted outward as they took care not to touch. She wished to get it over with, but also that it would never happen.

  ‘What do you want to do now?’ he would ask with that blank, honest look, like he’d never known duplicity.

  ‘Brandy,’ she’d say. ‘I really need to get myself a glass of brandy.’

  And they would drink, and one thing would lead to another, and the Colonel would get his answers.

  ‘The thing is,’ she whispered to the monkey, ‘what I need to do right now is go melt some ice and wash out my crotch.’

  The monkey did not answer her and she continued to sit there, at the piano, not playing any music, as the day slipped from midday to evening and, in its progress, buried the sun.

  Pavel did not make any trouble at the border crossing. An American guard checked their papers and briefly looked over the faces in the car. The Russians had brought along someone else’s passport to stand in for Pavel’s. There was no way the picture could match his face, but the guard waved them through nevertheless. Glancing at the men to his left and right from the corners of his eyes, Pavel realized how much he resembled them. They shared the same Slavic cheekbones and broad, high forehead. It’s almost, he thought, like I’m coming home. The gun’s barrel stuck uncomfortably in his side.

  They hadn’t gone more than a block when one of the guards pushed Pavel’s hat down over his eyes. Blindfolded, he counted the minutes until he heard the engine being cut off; counted them slowly, by the measure of his breath. By his best estimate they drove for something like a quarter of an hour. That could put them pretty much anywhere in the eastern half of the city. It was even possible that they were crazy enough to have driven several times around the same five blocks, just to confuse him.

  The soldiers pulled him out of the car, through a door, into a building, and down a long corridor. Pavel did not resist, concentrated on his step. He had no wish to fall. Heels clicked as two men stood to attention to his left. A door opened, then another, and he was roughly shoved down upon a wooden chair. A hand went through his coat and jacket, found his remaining packs of cigarettes, some dollars and Reichsmarks, along with his passport. All these items were placed upon a desk not far from him – Pavel heard the coins rattle on its wooden surface. He sat still, chin rolled into his chest, and cradled his hands in his lap. After an indeterminable period a voice spoke to him in lightly accented English.

  ‘You may take off your hat, Mr Richter.’

  He did so, moving his hands slowly, and blinking his eyes a few times. The room was brightly lit by a number of bulbs that dangled from the ceiling.

  Pavel found himself on a chair at a few yards’ remove from a heavy oaken desk, whose Nazi ornamentation had been roughly disfigured with a hatchet’s help. Behind the desk, a clean-shaven man with salt-and-pepper hair and wire-rimmed glasses, trim and rather long-boned, no older perhaps than fifty. He sat in an officer’s greatcoat, hands stuck in tight leather gloves, a glass of tea steaming in front of him. A tidy man, handsome even, not a hair out of place, only the skin was a little yellow, like he’d borrowed it fromsome one dead. Pavel’s passport was in his hand. A second man stood next to Pavel’s chair in uncomfortable proximity; heavy-set and hulking. He wasn’t one of the soldiers who had brought him here, but rather a blond, ruddy-faced youth with eyes whose colour was drained from them by the electric light. Blue perhaps. He stood casually, one might say insolently, his thumbs hooked behind a leather belt, chewing tobacco. Pavel did not notice the third man immediately. He sat on a stool in the corner, almost in Pavel’s back: a dark-haired man with a melancholy air, busy with his fingernails. He never even looked up to acknowledge Pavel.

  ‘You smoke?’ the officer behind the desk asked Pavel. A good voice, quiet and sonorous. The mouth barely moved. Quiet words from behind a borrowed face.

  Pavel nodded in order to buy himself time. His mouth was dry and he wondered whether he could ask for a glass of water. The officer pushed one of Pavel’s own packs of cigarettes to the desk’s edge, along with a book of matches. Pavel made to get up, but the youth shoved him back into his chair and yelled at him.

  ‘Sit, you stupid shit!’ he spluttered. There were fragments of tobacco in his spit.

  ‘You can smoke,’ said the older man, ‘once you’ve answered some questions.’

  Pavel looked at him, and tried to keep all anger out of his voice.

  ‘I won’t talk,’ he said meekly. He meant it.

  ‘He won’t talk,’ laughed the youth, switching from English to Russian. ‘We catch him red-handed in that kurva’s flat, and he won’t talk. He’s not even in the army any more, not a soul knows he’s here, and he won’t talk.’ He wiped his mouth with the back of one hand. ‘By the time I’m done with him, he’ll sing bloody Onegin, you’ll see. Everyone starts talking when the knot reaches the arse.’

  His accent, Pavel noted, was Georgian, though for this he was unusually fair.

  ‘I should tell you,’ he said quietly, ‘that I speak Russian. In fairness I should tell you.’

  He said it slowly, taking care to shape the Russian vowels with his mouth. They stared at him dumbfounded, and for a minute or so there was total silence in the room.

  Thus there commenced a strange interrogation. Throughout, Pavel remained obstinately silent. The interrogator and his young helper became strangely tongue-tied, having lost the use of any language in which they might have discussed strategy in secret. Every so often, the blond man would start in on Pavel nevertheless, hurling abuse at him and asking him questions.

  ‘Look here, you swine. What were you doing in the fl
at in Lützowstrasse 92? What is your connection to Boyd Ferdinand White? Talk or you’ll be sorry. You think you’ll have the last laugh? Think again. We’ll grind you into dust and flush you down the toilet, you wrecker.

  ‘Prostitute! We know what you are. Confess already! Be a man and get it off your chest. What happened to Söldmann? Is he dead? Do the Americans have him? And what about the girl? Where is she? Speak, or I swear I will rip off your ears.

  ‘Dog! Talk, or we will crush your skull and piss in it, you hear? Who’s got the merchandise? Name your price. Russia is vast, Russia is rich. You can walk out of here showered in gold, or hobbling on crutches – it’s all in your hands.’

  For all its linguistic colour, there was a distinct lack of enthusiasm to this game. It seemed to Pavel like the man was going through the motions, performing before his superior, as it were, and earning his supper. After every outburst that saw the man stomp up and down before him with clenched fists, his face the colour of a ripe plum, there followed long minutes of silence. They stretched into half-hours as the day progressed. Rather to his surprise the youth made no move to beat him. Once or twice he seemed close, raising one fist high above his head, or pulling back a booted foot as though to kick his shin, but every time he stopped the motion, realigned his limb as though by force and carried on with his tirade. On occasion the dark-haired man on the stool would stoop to reiterate one of his colleague’s questions, though never the insults that went with them. He spoke so quietly, Pavel barely understood him; slurred his words, too, as though he was the worse for drink. Throughout, the officer sat quietly behind his desk. Twice he received calls on his black office telephone and answered with a monosyllabic ‘ Da’. The glass of tea standing before him had long grown cold.

  Pavel kept to his silence, as he had promised. It wasn’t that he wished to be impolite, let alone heroic. At first he was simply unsure what it was he was being asked to admit to; uncertain, too, as to the consequences of his words. He did not like to lie, and silence seemed to be the best strategy for gathering information and passing on none. In his mind’s eye he recalled Boyd’s body. Boyd’s passport had not protected him. He wondered what needed to happen before the Russians started disregarding his own.

  Then, as he sat there upon the hard, wooden chair, Russian breath upon his face, something else took hold of him: a sensation so sudden, he almost called out. It was as though his mind was starting to work again for the first time since he’d fallen sick. The cotton wool that had muffled his world fell away, and everything came into sharper focus, from the grain of the stool to the monotonous ticking of the big office clock above the door. Thoughts and sensations coursed through him, clamoured for a hearing. The woman, Sonia, headed off all competitors. She commanded his attention. He fell to thinking.

  On her upper lip, he thought, there are beard hairs. A dark smudge of hairs. They will grow coarse with age.

  She saved my life, he thought. Any man would feel grateful for that. A heart filled with gratitude. There is nothing surprising in that.

  What is it then, he asked himself, that bothers me about her? Something about the way she came in yesterday, and helped me yet again. Now why would she have done that? She wasn’t the least surprised about the body. And of course she is the Colonel’s mistress. He’s caught up in it all somehow, the Colonel.

  And then the lout yelled at him again, interrupting his train of thought. It rather annoyed Pavel, and for the first time in the long hours of interrogation he felt his eyes flash with anger.

  At long last – the clock showed it was well past ten o’clock at night – the interrogation came to an abrupt close. A woman in a smart uniform entered, keeping her eyes carefully averted from the prisoner. She bent over the desk and whispered something in the officer’s ear. There were several holes at the back of her tights, and the skin underneath was pink with cold. The officer listened to her, asked a question, then ran a gloved hand across his face, as though to check it was still in place. Once the woman had left he placed a quick phone call. He did not need to dial, simply pressed a button.

  ‘What’s the situation?’ he asked curtly.

  ‘How do you spell his name?’

  ‘And the rank?’

  ‘No, of course not. He’s unharmed.’

  ‘Five more minutes, and I’ll send him out. Make arrangements.’

  The man had, Pavel thought, a very pleasant telephone manner, at once precise and full of character, only it, too, seemed borrowed, along with the face. He considered commenting on it, but thought better of such a childish prank. Now that his head was working again, he didn’t want it bashed in.

  ‘You have friends in high places, Mr Richter. But I expect you know as much. We have no choice but to let you go.’

  The officer paused to give a precise little bow. It was the sort of gesture that might precede a marriage proposal, or the order for execution.

  ‘Before you leave us, how about looking at some pictures, Mr Richter? You may decide for yourself whether or not you choose to comment.’

  ‘As you wish,’ mumbled Pavel, responding to the man’s courtesy, however disingenuous. The belligerent youth, he noted, turned away in disgust and spat tobacco into a corner spittoon.

  The officer opened his drawer. He pulled out a number of photos, enlarged to the size of a standard letter. They had the flat, grainy look of having been taken through a long lens in bad light. Pavel recognized Boyd, and the midget. The midget was wearing a beautiful tuxedo. There was a picture of an older man with a thick pair of whiskers and a lab coat, and one of a youngish tough with a handlebar moustache and a livid scar running down his cheek. There were pictures of girls in busty, low-cut gowns, playing roulette in a club, and one of two people making love on a floral-patterned settee. Pavel flicked through them slowly, trying to appear impassive. He pointed to the midget.

  ‘Is this Söldmann?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And this?’ He pointed to the tough.

  ‘One of his boys. Arnulf von Schramm. The right-hand man.’

  ‘And that?’ Pavel put his finger on the older man with the lab coat.

  ‘You don’t really know very much about any of this, do you, Mr Richter?’

  ‘Quite frankly, sir, I know nothing at all.’

  ‘Well, then I think it is time for you to go.’

  He handed over Pavel’s passport, though Pavel noticed that he held on to his cigarettes and money. After some thought he added a card with a handwritten name and a number. The name was Karpov. Dimitri Stepanovich. General of the Soviet Army.

  ‘In case you remember something after all. Goodbye. – Lev!’

  He waved over the Georgian youth and whispered something in his ear. The young man saluted, jumped back over to Pavel and jerked him to his feet by one armpit. His hat was pushed back over his eyes, and the Georgian marched him down the corridor and into the night. Outside, a car whisked them off across cobblestoned roads. The driver did not speak to his guard; hummed a sad folk tune. They stopped after just a few minutes’ drive and stood around waiting. Pavel heard English voices.

  ‘Now,’ Lev told him. ‘Get out.’

  He pulled his hat back and realized he was at one of the border points to the British sector. A young soldier was waiting for him in an army jeep.

  ‘Get in, sir, before we freeze our bums off. I have orders from Colonel Fosko to drive you home.

  ‘You look tired, sir,’ he added as they chased down the sector’s empty streets. ‘The Colonel said you had a chat with them Russkies. Hope they didn’t rough you up none.’

  Pavel smiled absent-mindedly. He felt like he had done a good day’s work. Eighteen hours earlier he had set out to find Belle. He had found her, on a grainy photograph, with Boyd’s mouth clamped tight around one youthful breast. It was a frivolous thought, but Belle, she had beautiful breasts.

  Back in the office, General Karpov sat alone, having dispatched both of his assistants on their respective erran
ds. He used the phone to request a couple of files through channels, then dismissed Richter from his mind. The photos lay spread out across his desk. Karpov studied them, and ran a gloved hand over the man in the white lab coat. From afar one might have called it a caress. It’s impossible to vouch for it, of course: I wasn’t there to witness. And yet it happened all the same, the touch, and the name, tumbling from his tidy lips.

  Haldemann.

  We were all of us looking for Haldemann in the winter of ’46. It was Karpov who was destined to find him in the end.

  Sonia heard him climb the stairs. It was a few minutes before midnight. Of course it could have been just about anyone climbing the stairs, and yet she was sure it was Pavel. The footsteps stopped one flight down. Sonia heard his door open and close, stood still in her tracks and held her breath. It should have been quite impossible to hear anything through the floor, unless he was making a ruckus. Nevertheless she thought she could make out his quiet tread upon the floorboards, the slow, methodical motions as he fired up the stove. Pavel seemed restless. She heard him pace from wall to wall, the gait uncertain. Now he grabbed a book, read a page or two, placed it back on the shelf; sat down at the typewriter, punching out letters with no pattern or meaning. The sounds were so transparently clear to her ear that it was a shock when, all of a sudden, she heard his rap on her apartment door. She hastened over to open up for him. Pavel looked tired and excited all at once. She made a conscious effort not to interpret the tone of his voice.

  ‘You’re still up?’ he asked.