Pavel & I

by Dan Vyleta

  Of course, she’d taken notice of his entrance. Taken notice of his greeting, too, and the idiotic cooing that issued from his lips. She wasn’t ready to acknowledge him yet. Fosko was still alive. Just now, he had pulled his skull out of the iron, and begun to drag himself towards what he had to be mistaking for the door. He disgusted her. Vomit caked the inside of her mouth.

  Slowly, Sonia reached over to where Pavel had dropped his gun; wrapped her hand around its butt. She stood up, walked stiffly over to the Colonel, the floorboards dark with blood. Pulling the trigger was a small thing.

  She wondered what stayed her hand. Was it that killing was wrong? Of all the men in the world, surely this one deserved it. The gun in her hand would not stop shaking. She looked up and found herself in Fosko’s gilt-framed mirror, a slip of a girl, half-naked and freezing. Her body was shivering so hard that her breasts jiggled, white against the black lace bra. Behind her, Pavel looked on with distracted disapproval. It was impossible to love him just then. She slung her arms around her frame and sought to suppress her shivers.

  In the mirror, all one could see of the Colonel was one shiny boot. The monkey clung to it as though it were its long-lost twin.

  She pointed the gun again, this time in earnest. Steadied it, with the palm of her left hand.

  ‘Don’t,’ said Pavel.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I need to think it through first.’

  He sat down behind Fosko’s desk and threw his brow in creases. God damn him, this Pavel. He sat and thought like he was Newton, inventing gravity. All this, just to figure out whether or not to kill a man who was already dead.

  ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘Give me the gun. Go to his wardrobe and find us some coats. We are both freezing to death. And some cigarettes.’

  She nodded yes and left the room, wondering where it had come from, his ability to treat her like a servant, or a wife.

  While Sonia was away, Pavel picked up the gun fromwhere she had placed it on the desk and walked over to the Colonel. He bent down to him, searched out his eye, placed the muzzle to his neck. They fell into each other’s rhythmof breathing. The Colonel whispered something.

  Perhaps he was just trying to breathe.

  Pavel reached down and wiped off blood to better see the Colonel’s wound. It was a messy crater of viscous matter. There was no way of telling how much time he had left.

  When he heard her return, Pavel straightened up and hurried back to the desk. Sonia passed him a woolly sweater and a tweed jacket, both much too large. She was wearing a double-breasted fox-fur coat, knee-length, and a cotton scarf in the colours of an Oxford college, complete with crest.

  ‘Did you kill him yet?’ she asked. Her nonchalance was skin-deep. One could see the quiver underneath.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m still thinking.’

  ‘What’s there to think about? Put a bullet in him.’

  ‘And have him found here, with your number in his pocket book? What do you think will happen when the police show up? I doubt they will rule it an accident.’

  She frowned, ran a hand over her cheek. The hand was beautiful. It struck him that he hadn’t touched her yet.

  ‘So what are we going to do?’

  But he just shook his head and sat, unmoving. Behind them, amongst the clutter of knocked-over furniture, the monkey clambered over to squat on the Colonel’s face, and drilled a leathery finger into his skull, the Colonel watching it out of the corner of one fatty eye.

  And thus they sat idle while the minutes ticked away. I would not have thought he had it in him, this cold rationality in the face of another man’s suffering. Sonia, too, could not make head nor tail of it. She thought it unworthy of him, the man she had built up in her dreams. That, and he was filthy: a beard on his face, the stink of prison. She had waited for this moment. Now she felt cheated.

  One can relate to her frustration. Pavel had returned from the dead and walked in five minutes too late, dressed like a bum. Came to save her, no doubt, but came late nonetheless, the gun drooping in his hand. He did not touch her, kiss her, stroke her cheek. Stank. Sat puzzling. The same old voice, gentle like a girl’s, awkward in his bearded face. The beard obscuring the cast of his mouth; his cheeks and forehead covered with grime.

  She will have clutched at straws. Maybe, she will have thought,maybe all he needs is a good wash. One good scrub, and he’ll go back to being soulful. Dribbled spit on one finger and ran it down his mucky temple. Trying to find the man underneath.

  They should have been heading for the road. Left the house, no matter where. Pavel’s indecision struck her as crazy. Worse than crazy. Constipated. Hamlet whispering to graveyard skulls.

  ‘Let’s go,’ she urged, and ran a toe over the reel of microfilm on the floor. He didn’t seem to hear her. She wondered briefly would he react if she crushed it with her heel.

  ‘What’s on it anyway?’ she asked.

  This time she got an answer.

  ‘Scientific papers,’ he said. ‘Curricula Vitae. A number of addresses.’

  ‘It’s incomplete.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You cut out a part. That’s why there was a photographic lens on your desk, and a flashlight. You looked at the film and cut some of it out before you brought it up to me.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I tried to figure it out. Why you did it. Then it became clear. You didn’t trust me with the whole of the film.’

  ‘No. I didn’t. Couldn’t risk it.’

  ‘What’s on the missing part?’

  ‘Another address. Photos of a man entering and leaving a building. Details about his activities during the war. I only read scraps and pieces. My projection didn’t work very well, and I had to work fast.’

  ‘So you were clever then, too. Worked fast. And thought fast. Faster than now.’

  ‘You’re angry with me,’ he whispered.

  ‘I haven’t the faintest idea what sort of man you are.’

  She said it and the phone started ringing. It was hard to tell whether it had been her words or the phone that had made him flinch.

  The phone rang. He was in the midst of it, making up his mind, and the phone rang. It was a heavy black phone that sat at one end of the desk, next to the cigar box. A cigar cutter lay by its side. Pavel remembered that he still hadn’t had a cigarette. Sonia hadn’t brought him any. He could have lit a cigar but felt too self-conscious to do so. One did not steal from the dead. He slipped a hand into the tweed jacket and searched it for cigarettes. He found a shilling piece and a rusty screw.

  The phone rang a second time.

  It might be best to just make a run for it. Take Sonia by the hand, climb into the Colonel’s car and drive as far as they could before the morning, when Fosko’s corpse would be discovered, alongside an agitated Peterson, and the Brits would declare a manhunt. She might forgive him then, after a bath and a shave, at least until such a time as they got caught. It seemed impossible that they would not get caught. This was occupied Germany, a roadblock every few miles. He didn’t even carry a passport. It might buy him a few days with her. And nights. He wondered whether he was willing to throw away both of their lives for those few nights.

  The phone rang a third time.

  Pavel could shoot the Colonel. That part didn’t make much of a difference to anyone, only in court they might say it was murder. It would be an act of mercy. He could shoot him with Peterson’s gun, which might help hide their tracks, assuming that Peterson was nowhere to be found. Unlike Fosko, one could get rid of Peterson; march him out of here; make him disappear. Why not? The man deserved it. He was a torturer. Boyd had been under his fist and knife. Others would be. Over time, it would seem like justice, killing Peterson.

  The phone rang a fourth time.

  Assuming they did get away; collected their money and his papers, and got out of the city. A few days’ head start was all they needed. Where would they go? Back to the US, where he had a w
ife, and a mother who loved him? Russia might have him, but Sonia wouldn’t come. France might do for a while, though they’d treat her as an enemy. He pictured her telling her story over there to a bunch of resistance fighters. How she went to bed with a midget, on His Majesty’s service. Much could be forgiven for that, especially in France. The one person who wouldn’t forgive was Anders. He had never fallen for her lipstick smile.

  The phone rang a fifth time.

  ‘Where is the boy?’ he asked all of a sudden.

  ‘Shit,’ she said. ‘The boy.’

  Her eyes fastened on the phone. Pavel saw it and made a grab for the receiver. By the time he got to it, the caller had already rung off. He tapped down on the fork, but the connection was gone. He tried to speak; his mouth was dry, his tongue looking for spit to speak by.

  ‘Where the hell is Anders?’

  Sonia reached over and dialled Franzi’s number. There was no answer. She tried again, but the line went dead halfway through the second ring. She could not even get the operator.

  ‘He’s at Paulchen’s. He was meant to pick up a projector. But he never came back. Something must have happened.’

  They both turned to stare at the Colonel. It dawned on them how he’d gone about finding Sonia.

  ‘Is he alive?’ she screamed at him, and the Colonel blew a bubble. Pavel got up and stood over him with the gun, the second time that evening.

  ‘You bastard,’ he said.

  It wasn’t clear to Pavel whether he was answered by a cough, or laughter.

  Surely, he thought to himself, I’m going to shoot him now.

  Sonia gathered momentum and kicked the Colonel right in the crotch. It little changed the sounds he was making.

  While Sonia kicked and Pavel wavered – while Fosko bled and spoke through bubbles – while Anders sat, broken-nosed and broken-hearted, a leering Georg looming large on his horizon – while I stood waiting in one much mended stocking, boot in hand and a host of roaches crushed upon its heel – while Söldmann slowly rotted, up in his attic’s grave, and Franzi, long forgotten, stamped star shapes into rolled-out dough for cookies – while Berlin sat at cards, sat in blankets and mittens, trumping clubs with hearts, or boiled up ice upon the cooker in order to soak dinner-stained crockery – just then, at that very moment, General Dimitri Stepanovich Karpov’s long-boned finger pressed down upon the front doorbell of Colonel Fosko’s private residence in western Berlin. It had a celebratory air, that ringing; he’d even shed the kid glove for its pleasure. A moment before, at Karpov’s signal, his adjutant, Georgian Lev, had cut the phone cable where it led into the house; cut it deftly and spat tobacco at its shower of sparks. Karpov’s men had long since surrounded the villa, a little surprised that nobody was about to guard the compound. The General had not yet decided whether or not to deal civilly with Fosko. As it turned out, he would be spared this particular decision; the Colonel, he was soon to learn, was indisposed. The bell rang through the house for a full minute. Karpov had the good sense to stand somewhat to the side of the door and only present his profile. With a man like Fosko, he mused, it was hard to predict when exactly he would start shooting.

  He was not greeted by bullets, however. Rather Pavel Richter opened the door, pale and tweed-coated, an English firearm slack in his hand. The women from the surveillance photos was by his side. Underneath her fox fur, Karpov noted, she seemed to be wearing nothing but a black lace bra. He cocked a brow and took the time to make a formal bow before he placed them under arrest. Sensibly, neither of them attempted to resist. He requested to see the Colonel, and with what struck him as something akin to mirth, they led him up the stairs to meet him. Karpov’s men, meanwhile, searched the house for hidden dangers. They found me on my bug hunt and warmed their hands against the boiler. I did not speak any Russian and could not even ask them what the hell was going on. You imagine it: a storyteller locked out of his own tale. It turns one into a historian, that retrospective scrounger of fact. I cannot think of a more sordid occupation.

  5

  3 January 1947 (cont.)

  The bell rang downstairs. It reminded her of something she had heard on the radio once, before the war. An American writer of crime fiction fielding a question about the paroxysms of his plot. ‘When I don’t know what happens next, I have someone come through the door with a gun.’ Dead bodies littering his prose. It had all seemed frivolous to her. Before the war.

  Pavel accepted it first. ‘We better open.’ There was no fight in his voice. They walked down together, like a couple expecting dinner guests. At the bottom of the stairs, Sonia reached out to grab his hand. She found it holding a gun; recoiled and wondered whether he had noticed the motion. They passed a window and saw movement in the garden. ‘The Russians,’ Pavel said flatly. It amazed her that he could tell from so casual a glance.

  The General was tall and polite. He was accompanied by the man she had hit with a frying pan: those watercolour eyes, they ran with recognition.

  ‘Take me to the Colonel,’ Karpov instructed after disarming Pavel. He had a man pat Pavel down, but searched Sonia for weapons himself. She had to unbutton the fur for this, endure an embrace. His hands did not linger. He was a gentleman, or else he liked boys. When they were done, they led him up the stairs and towards the Colonel’s study. The youth with the water-eyes left the procession to go to the bathroom and piss. He left the door open, leaned his rifle against the wall; stooped and spat chewing tobacco past his own jet of urine. In a single gesture he became everything Pavel was not.

  The first thing Karpov did, upon entering the study, was shoot the monkey. He shot it casually, pulling a handgun from his coat pocket and putting it back as soon as the barrel had cooled. He bent briefly to examine Fosko’s wound, then walked over to pick up the two parts of the microfilm off the floor. Lev rejoined the group, still buttoning his trousers. Two of the Russians were briskly ordered to search the rest of the house.

  ‘This film has been damaged.’

  Karpov’s voice was perfectly composed. In his efficient leanness he cut a sharp contrast to the dying man. The General rounded the desk and sat in Fosko’s chair.

  ‘Where is the rest?’

  Pavel shot Sonia a glance. ‘We don’t know. That’s how we found it. On Söldmann.’

  Karpov considered this, pursed his lips, then barked something at the blond youth. He spoke in Russian.

  Pavel paled, stuck to English. ‘But we don’t know anything.’

  ‘I believe you have said this before, Mr Richter.’

  ‘She doesn’t know anything.’

  ‘We’ll see.’

  ‘We can’t. Go. Not right away.’

  ‘And why not?’

  Sonia watched Pavel run his hands through his hair. She liked the gesture. It spoke of exasperation. It was suicidal, she knew, but she liked a Pavel who was finally out of his depth.

  He did not stay like this. The hands dropped, and the tongue took a turn; switched alphabets in fact, spoke the language of rape. It held Karpov’s attention. He gestured to his subordinate and had him fetch a chair so that Pavel and he could have a civilized conversation. Soldier to soldier, man to man. Sonia spoke no Russian and felt left out. All she understood was a name, oft repeated.

  Haldemann.

  She stood, trying to remember where she had heard it before.

  Pavel tried to explain about the boy. That he was being held, in all likelihood, by a gang of German hoodlums. ‘A good boy,’ he explained. ‘From the streets of Berlin.’

  Karpov made a gesture to indicate that he was not impervious to the plight of a minor; that he was a cultured man, a sentimentalist even, despite the world.

  ‘Alas,’ he said, ‘the times are bad.’ He softened his mockery with the hint of a smile, right around the eyes. ‘What can you offer me, Mr Richter?’

  ‘I know where Haldemann is hiding.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You can take a few days to beat it out of me and hope he’s still t
here when you’re done. Or I can just tell you.’

  ‘If I rescue the boy.’

  ‘If you rescue the boy.’

  ‘It’s a generous offer.’ Again, that hint of an ocular smile, though the lips did not move. It was as though he could cut his face in two.

  ‘A phone call might do it.’

  ‘To say what?’

  ‘That the Colonel is dead. It might do it. Just as long as Anders is alive.’

  Karpov shook his head. ‘It’ll be better if we all go. Pick him up. Move on to Haldemann. I assume he’s hiding in the city?’

  ‘Yes, in the city.’

  ‘I’ll tell my men to get ready. You tell the woman. And get your coat.’

  ‘You’ll let us go when you have Haldemann?’

  ‘If everything goes to my satisfaction.’

  ‘You will let us go?’

  ‘Your coat, Mr Richter. And the woman.’

  When Pavel got up from the chair and turned, he found Sonia crouching next to Fosko’s body, one hand in the monkey’s fur. It was smoking from its chest.

  ‘We never even gave it a name,’ she complained.

  Pavel reached down and put a hand on her shoulder.

  ‘I thought you hated that monkey.’

  ‘So did I.’

  He couldn’t see her face but thought she might be smiling. Sonia bent her neck towards her shoulder and placed one cheek upon the back of his hand.

  ‘What happens now?’ she asked.

  ‘First I get my coat, then we all go get Anders.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘There’s this man they are looking for. From the microfilm.’

  ‘Haldemann.’

  ‘Yes, Haldemann.’

  ‘Who’s he?’

  ‘He’s who everybody keeps dying for.’

  ‘Someone special then?’

  ‘A Nazi.’ He looked over to Karpov. ‘We have to go.’ He held out his hand and helped her up. For a moment they stood face to face.

  ‘The last time,’ she said. ‘The last time we stood like this, you leaned forward to kiss me.’