Pavel & I

by Dan Vyleta

  ‘Yes, I did.’

  She shrugged, blushing, her hand in his. ‘You’d better get your coat, Pavel Richter. You might freeze.’

  The Russians walked them both out into the corridor, then down the stairs and into the cellar. Underground, the air was hot and rotten; two Russians on guard, their shirts open to the navel, and a one-eyed Englishman under lock and key. They found me sitting on the ground inside the cage, cradling one boot by its heel. Around my woolly stocking there lay scattered the carcasses of insects. Pavel ignored me at first; searched the basement shelves for his coat. It had been taken off him when he had first been dragged down there. He found it and shook off the dust. Lev kept his eye on him, making sure he didn’t pocket anything that could be used as a weapon. As he dressed, Pavel approached the cage.

  ‘Where are they taking you?’ I asked him.

  ‘To Anders. I’m trading him for Haldemann.’

  ‘And the Colonel?’

  Pavel shook his head. I took it to mean that the Colonel was dead, or getting there. It was sobering to think that he had outlived his role in our lives; that all he should leave us with was a picture: a fat man with fat lips, and a faible for mink.

  ‘What will happen to me?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He turned to Karpov who stood at the top of the stairs.

  ‘What happens to him?’ he called.

  ‘We take him along.’

  ‘They take you along,’ Pavel translated. I think we both broke into a smile at the news. Behind Pavel, watching our easy interaction, stood Sonia, sweat running into her fox fur.

  I fetched my coat and we moved out, five Soviet soldiers in civilian clothing and three prisoners, bracing ourselves for the cold. Outside, the moon stood ripe and heavy, and the air so raw that one rationed one’s breath. We got into the General’s limousine. Karpov drove. Lev sat at his side, covering us prisoners with his gun. The other Russians jumped into a second car, its ignition coughing until it finally caught.

  ‘Where to?’ Karpov asked Pavel.

  ‘Charlottenburg. Schillerstrasse.’

  Sitting beside him, Sonia slowly, shyly, stole her hand back into Pavel’s.

  And so we left the Colonel’s house, squeezed together on the back seat of a requisitioned German limousine, a Georgian gun in our faces. Pavel sat next to me, his eyes on the road. To his left, Sonia was holding his hand. A tender gesture, regretful of the time she had wasted on anger, only his wedding ring kept catching on her knuckle. I wondered briefly what Pavel would have done had I made to hold his other hand, my fingers laced with his. All I wanted was for him to know that I did not begrudge him his violence towards me. In the end I decided against it. It would have been too ridiculous. In all things one must answer the call of dignity.

  We raced towards Berlin. The Grünewald woods soon gave way to the city’s outskirts, and country road turned into thoroughfare. It never ceased to take my breath: those majestic roads lined by a landscape of rubble. Here and there a wall stood up out of the debris, five storeys high, its windows shattered, the roof collapsed, leaning into the moon like a drunk picking a fight. At the next corner, two lampposts, bent at the waist as though in curtsy. The car hurtled on and came upon a street where buildings stood plentiful; a little chipped, it is true, but defiantly beautiful with their twelve-foot doorways and Jugendstil balconies. Drawn curtains at the windows, the streets too cold for foot traffic, and too poor to afford more than a handful of cars. One could drive through Berlin on nights such as this and feel like there was not a living soul beyond those headlights; the city dead and one’s every breath a smoke signal, sent into the air in the vain hope of an answer.

  Another corner, a change of gear, and the car rolled to a halt.

  ‘There,’ said Pavel. ‘Towards the end of the block. They might have posted sentries.’

  Karpov cut the engine and got out of the car. Sonia sat shivering while Lev passed around cigarettes, then a match, one hand always on the gun, eyeing them for movement. We sat smoking, aware of Sonia’s mute shiver, waiting for what would happen next.

  Outside, Karpov sent two soldiers to circle the building, then wrenched open the gate to Paulchen’s backyard, and disappeared within.

  The door burst open, amidst a shower of splinters. Whoever had been on guard must have been asleep or had been taken without a chance to call out. They wore civilian coats over their uniforms, but Anders recognized them for Russians immediately. You could always tell by their boots. The trim man with the wire glasses was their leader. Unlike the others, he wasn’t holding a rifle.

  ‘Which one is Paulchen?’ he asked into the mass of boys who sat rooted to their various corners, chess piece or marble in hand, or a spoonful of soup arrested midway between bowl and mouth. His German was open-vowelled, the rhythms wrong. He had to ask again.

  ‘Which one is Paulchen?’

  The boys’ eyes turned to the armchair where Paulchen had been brooding by the phone. His Luger was stuffed down the seat-cushion’s side, along with a half-bar of chocolate.

  ‘You?’

  A glum nod.

  The Russian shot him. There was no haste to the act. He threw back the coat, unbuttoned his gun from its leather holster, took it out, levelled it, and shot Paulchen in the face. The bullet whistled through the backrest and shattered the window behind. It wasn’t as loud as Anders would have imagined. As the blood squirted from the hole underneath Paulchen’s eye, he remembered his vow to set to his comrades with a knife. It threw him into hot anger with a God who answered prayers willy-nilly, and made an angel of this silver-haired Russian who now bent down to him and ran a probing hand over his injuries.

  ‘Are you Anders?’ he asked.

  Anders nodded, just as Paulchen had done a moment earlier. He had no fear of being shot.

  ‘Can you walk?’

  Another nod.

  ‘Then stand.’

  As Anders staggered to his feet, the man scooped up the telephone, dialled a number and spoke briefly in Russian. Before he hung up, he passed on the address, injecting something like a ‘j’ before the ‘i’ of Schillerstrasse. Then he walked back over to Anders, took hold of his hand, and marched him out like a schoolboy. The other Russians stayed behind. Anders wondered what would happen to his comrades of old.

  Downstairs, another Russian joined them, also armed with a rifle. They walked through the yard, out the open gate and towards a jeep and a limousine. Pavel and Sonia were in the back of the limousine, along with the one-eyed man who worked for the Colonel. Anders had last seen him when they’d carted off Schlo’, his neck bent double like a fish hook. The three figures sat together like they were sharing a taxi. The boy stood rooted, confused as to what to feel, until he made out the gun that was pointed at them from the front. It reconciled him, and he allowed himself joy at seeing his friends alive.

  ‘Move,’ said the Russian. ‘Get in the car.’

  He was not sure how to greet Pavel, so he hugged Sonia first, stuck his face into her furs then withdrew embarrassed when he encountered bare skin.

  ‘I didn’t squeal,’ he started to say, but she shushed him, passed him over to his grave and bearded friend. They shook hands. Pavel’s thumb soft upon his knuckles.

  ‘You’re hurt,’ he murmured. ‘What happened up there?’

  ‘The Russians shot Paulchen.’ He tried to keep it in, but it tumbled out nevertheless. It was that or burst into tears. ‘How come you’re both sitting in a car with them?’ he asked, and was embarrassed when he saw they did not know how to respond.

  Karpov opened the car door briefly to get his cigarette case which he had left on the dash. It was made of ornamented silver, and bore three monogrammed initials, CИK. The cigarettes inside were American. He offered one to Pavel. Pavel accepted. ‘Your father?’ he asked in Russian, pointing to the monogram.

  ‘Yes. Stepan Ivanovich. May he rest in peace.’

  ‘Why are we stopping?’

  ‘We are waiting for some of my
men to come with a truck.’

  ‘Whatever for?’

  ‘To transport all those boys. The Soviet Union needs workers for its mines.’

  Pavel tried to read Karpov’s face. He failed. The moon rendered it lifeless and wooden.

  ‘You don’t have to do this,’ he said. ‘All those boys. Just to teach me manners.’

  The General shrugged. ‘It’s nothing. In the greater scheme of things. You’ll forget about them before the week is out.’

  He inhaled and blew smoke into one gloved fist. ‘Trust me, Mr Richter. Very soon you will find yourself getting sentimental over something, something quite small really, a kitten on a garden wall, and it will be like those boys never even existed. Yesterday’s news. A line you read in the paper and used for kindling.’

  ‘You’re cold, Karpov. You have a dead soul.’

  ‘I forgot that you’re a poet, Mr Richter. They left it out of your file. It’s a serious oversight.’

  ‘My file?’

  ‘Your file, Mr Richter. Your military record. We got it through channels. And here you are judging other men’s souls.’

  Karpov smiled and closed the door on Pavel; Pavel sitting there, asking himself how many others would be made to suffer for his mistakes.

  ‘What did he say?’ Sonia wanted to know.

  ‘They’re taking the boys away with them.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because they are witnesses. This is the British sector. The Soviets have no right to be here.’

  ‘What a bastard.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Pavel. ‘That’s precisely what he is.’

  He turned to her then, and to the boy who sat sprawled across her lap, and wondered what needed to be said before he went and found Haldemann for Karpov, and all their lives hung in the balance.

  He spoke to the boy first. It was difficult to know where to start. Anders looked over to him; the boy was cooling one cheek against the window’s glass, running a cautious hand over his twice-broken nose. Pavel thought about touching him, on the knee perhaps, or at the crook of his elbow, but was unsure of himself.

  ‘We never finished Oliver Twist,’ he said at last. ‘Made sure he comes out all right.’

  The boy waved away the attempt at banter.

  ‘I was mad at you,’ he told Pavel, teeth in his lip. ‘On account of you cried. On the Colonel’s shoulder. Back when we saw Boyd White. When he was dead.’

  ‘Are you still mad at me now?’

  ‘No, I’m not. The Colonel – he’s dead, too, right? That’s why you’re here, with the Russians.’

  Pavel had trouble controlling his voice.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘The Colonel’s dead. An ugly death.’

  ‘Aren’t you glad?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  The boy looked up at him to see whether he meant it. He reached out a hand and stroked Pavel’s cheek. They stayed like that for a while, the boy’s hand growing cosy in his beard.

  ‘What’s going to happen next?’ Anders asked eventually.

  ‘We give them what they want.’

  ‘And then?’

  Pavel hesitated, looked over to Lev and the gun that was pointed at his face.

  ‘I don’t know, Anders,’ he said and the boy accepted this without a murmur. He let go of Pavel’s cheek and leaned back into the door.

  The truck arrived and they sat waiting while two Russians in civilian garb got out, climbed the stairs and returned with a procession of boys, pale-faced and underdressed. They walked in an orderly line. Sonia wondered where they had learned it. Perhaps they had been born to it, the soldier’s march, and the prisoner’s. Things might have been different with a procession of girls. Surely one of them would have twirled a lock of her hair, or stuck out a hip; bent clumsily from her waist to pick up a handkerchief, or stopped to smooth out her skirts. She counted thirteen boys, all different sizes, all of them mucky. The last soldier carried the body, wrapped in a sheet. There was no mistaking the shape, nor the red stain that stuck skin to cotton and made recognizable the cut of the chin, the low, boyish brow. The soldiers worked slowly, loading up the boys one by one, unperturbed by the many lighted windows and their owners’ watchful eyes. Paulchen was loaded up last. They lay him right at his companions’ feet. For a moment, she tried to guess where they’d cart the dead boy. Chances were they would simply drive him over to police headquarters and instruct the medical examiner to diagnose him with terminal TB. Dead bodies did not strike her as a problem for a man like Karpov. At most they amounted to paperwork, a nuisance. She wondered whether, if he had stood where Fosko had stood, she would have attended to his needs with the same mercenary docility.

  But it was Pavel who crowded her thinking, always Pavel, with his wild man’s stubble and the gall to sacrifice a dozen boys’ lives to buy slack for another. As she leaned against his shoulder and warmed his hand between her own, she watched him surreptitiously, from behind lowered lids. It was hard at this point to understand how they had got there, sitting thigh to thigh under a Russian’s gaze. She wondered whether either of them would live through the night.

  Karpov ordered two of his men to climb into the back of the truck and guard the boys. He stood watching it drive down the moonlit street until it turned at the corner. Then he got back in the car and asked Pavel where to go next.

  ‘It’s time you keep to your part of the bargain.’

  Pavel hesitated. ‘You can let the boy go now,’ he said. ‘And the woman.’

  The General flashed a mirthless smile. ‘You know very well I can’t. Where to now?’

  ‘Alt-Moabit. Near the park.’

  ‘Good.’

  He started the engine and pulled the car into the road.

  Pavel was running out of time. They were almost there: another few blocks and he’d have to tell Karpov to stop the car. If he was going to speak it needed to be now, three men listening in, and Haldemann already crowding his mind. Pavel gestured to the boy to inch closer.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ he asked softly.

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘When we are done here, you need to go to a hospital.’

  ‘I’m okay.’

  ‘There could be something wrong. Internal bleeding. You need to have it looked at.’

  The boy nodded consent, but suspicion was beginning to cloud his eyes.

  ‘What’s happening?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m going to get someone for the General. Someone he wants. You’ll wait here with Sonia. You’ll be all right, won’t you?’

  ‘Sure.’ And then: ‘There isn’t any choice, right?’

  Pavel smiled ruefully. ‘Come closer, Anders. Come real close.’

  The boy leaned over, wincing as he moved his ribcage. His mouth was a swollen mess of dried blood and shreds of skin; the nose a dislocated lump. Gently, Pavel reached out, grabbed his face on either side and planted his own lips upon the boy’s. He held him like that for two or three moments, then let go, amidst the taste of blood.

  ‘Euhh,’ said the boy. ‘What was that about?’

  ‘It’s a Russian thing. It means there is no anger between us.’

  ‘Are you going to give Sonia one, too?’

  But Pavel had no answer to this.

  He gave Karpov a sign to stop the car and cut the engine. All this was done without the need to utter a single word; a tap on the shoulder and a look was all it took. The two Russians got out and waited for Pavel to follow suit. He leaned forward a little, to unwedge himself, but Sonia stopped him with a tug at the arm. Pavel looked at her then, looked at her from up close. The moonlight reflected off her chin’s down; a thousand silky hairs that clung to the planes of her cheeks like ivy. The mouth a tight line; furrows on the brow. Pavel thought it anger. He was surprised when she reached out and gently stroked his cheek.

  ‘I know,’ he mumbled. ‘I ought to shave.’

  The brow unfolded. ‘I was beginning to forget about that.’ And quietly: ‘You’ll come back?’

>   He smiled weakly. ‘What choice do I have?’

  ‘Oh, Pavel. You really know how to cheer a girl.’

  They parted without a kiss. Outside, Karpov offered him another cigarette and asked him to point out where Haldemann was hiding.

  ‘Which one is it?’

  ‘That one over there.’ Pavel pointed to a brown brick building. There had been a photo on the microfilm, and a close-up of the doorway. He took a long drag on his cigarette, held down the smoke, exhaled. It gave him the illusion of patience. The next moment he shattered it with a question.

  ‘What do we do now?’

  The General hesitated. His eyes wandered over to Lev, then to the driver of the second car. He had lost all his other soldiers to a truckload of boys. His attention reverted to Pavel; studied him with a peculiar intensity.

  ‘I should call for backup. I could use another three or four men. Somebody to guard the exits, in case he makes a run for it.’

  Pavel nodded. ‘It could take a while, though. Finding a working telephone and all. And then, of course, he might still throw himself out the window. When he learns you are Russian, I mean.’

  They stood smoking, looking at the building. Pavel watched Karpov clench and unclench his fist as he was trying to make up his mind. His fingers had to be freezing in their thin leather gloves. Minutes passed before he spoke.

  ‘Are you a chess player, Mr Richter?’

  Pavel shook his head. ‘I don’t know the first thing about chess.’

  ‘Really? I would have thought you did.’

  ‘I’m sorry to disappoint.’

  Pavel held his stare, blew white smoke into the night. His teeth ached with the cold. ‘Why don’t we go in and finish it? You and I, General. We’ll pick up Haldemann. Convince him to come quietly. And then we can all go home. Warm up over a glass of hot tea.’

  Karpov stood, pursed his lips. He took his time making up his mind. ‘Lev will go with you,’ he said at length. ‘He’s younger than I am. Stronger. A better shot, too. You understand what I’m saying?’