Red Sky at Noon (The Moscow Trilogy)

by Simon Sebag Montefiore

  She knew that Malamore blamed her husband for the incompetent Italian response but instead he replied, ‘That’s war. But that Bolshevik cavalry was annihilated yesterday.’

  ‘That’s reassuring,’ she said, looking into those features gouged into a mask by the glare after years of fighting in Abyssinia, Spain, Greece and this second summer in Russia. There were, she thought, not many Italians like Malamore. Even though he wore Blackshirt uniform – the black fez with tassel, the black blouse with scarlet flames and fasces, the symbols of the Fascist Party – it was impossible to embellish this harsh man who, she thought, belonged to another time, a condottiere of the Renaissance perhaps, and whose eyes were like the slits of a castle in the sun. ‘Then victory will be ours?’

  ‘Our German allies are just finishing off Ivan’s last bridgeheads on the Don. Then we push for the Volga and Stalingrad. Ivan will collapse. Victory.’

  ‘E poi … console? Then what?’

  There was a long silence punctuated by the hiss of the cigarette and the gravelling of his breathing. Between the cottages she could see his Kalmyk scouts holding his stallion Borgia and their horses. Then Malamore’s hand was on her bare arm: ‘Malamore is here for you.’ Using the third person, she noted.

  ‘Thank you, consul.’

  ‘Not consul. Call me Cesare.’

  As Malamore stood with his hand on her amber-skinned arm, the boys in the house (unaware that the dread consul was present) started singing again, achieving an operatic crescendo of Italian passion that made Fabiana want to have hysterics.

  ‘What is this unit, an opera?’ he muttered. He took her hand, kissed it abruptly, and replaced his fez; and she watched him mount Borgia and ride out with the SS officer and the Kalmyk scouts.

  Looking back, he raised a hand to his fez, and was gone.

  IV

  Every few minutes, Benya heard another crackle of gunshots. Then quiet. Then a few more gunshots. He knew by now what story this morbid rhythm told.

  He and his fellow partisans had taken up positions on either side of the lane that led between Mandryka’s headquarters in Shepilovka and the scene of his latest murderous aktion. First, they had dealt with the Romanians. It had been easy; they were drunk. Now they were closer to Novi Petroshevo where Mandryka and his men were.

  Benya and the others left the horses behind, hobbled and waiting, then crawled through the grass until they could see some of what was happening through their binoculars. Large pits had been dug amongst the trees. Under the orange sun, naked civilians stood together, guarded by Mandryka’s Schuma, who were wearing German tunics marked with the nationalist insignia of the cross of St George. Benya noticed that the naked adults assumed that wincing pose of shyness, hands covering themselves, assumed by people in ordinary life when they were in a changing room at the swimming pool or waiting for a doctor – but now, amidst this barbarity, its gentility broke his heart.

  ‘Recognize any of your former friends?’ asked Elmor, who was lying next to Benya.

  ‘At least five defectors from the Shtrafbat,’ whispered Benya, amazed to see the traitors Delibash, Ogloblin and Tufty Grishchuk in German uniforms. And there were Germans there too, some with SD on the sleeves, some in police uniforms. As Benya and the partisans watched, Mandryka’s men selected another ten people – including women and children – walked them to the edge of the pits and then the shots rang out.

  Three officers in German uniforms rode over on horseback to watch.

  ‘That’s Dirlewanger,’ said Elmor, pointing at a stick-thin German officer with lightning runes on his tunic. ‘In the 1920s he was convicted of murder and rape, but when the Nazis came to power, he put together his own gang of cutthroats, the Poachers’ Battalion. These Germans are soldiers in his Sonderkommando. He’s said to burn people in barns.’

  ‘Who’s beside him? With the knout?’ asked Zhurko.

  ‘That’s Mandryka himself,’ said Elmor. Benya saw a small, red-faced man in German-style uniform, swishing a thick leather whip in his hand.

  Dr Kapto rode right beside Mandryka. Wearing a German tunic with Russian markings, he was carrying on his saddle the girl, just like before. Benya remembered her wide moonlike eyes, but this time she seemed to be almost lost in a trance in a desolate land beyond hysteria.

  ‘He was our doctor till two nights ago,’ Benya said.

  ‘Lyovka,’ Elmor asked the man on his right, a spy who had managed to spend some time amongst Mandryka’s men. ‘Why is Kapto trusted by Mandryka?’

  ‘His arrival was a big surprise,’ Lyovka reported. ‘He was greeted with honour and some amazement. Mandryka calls him his “best friend”!’

  ‘And the child?’

  ‘He rides everywhere with that little girl, even eats with her next to him.’

  ‘He arrived with a nurse?’ asked Zhurko.

  ‘Tonya. She’s taken to life with Mandryka’s men. She carries a gun and she uses it.’

  Another group of civilians lay down in the pit. The shots rang out. Can there be so much sadness in this world? he thought. Isn’t there a measure to decree that this is enough?

  ‘Can we stop this?’ asked Benya.

  ‘Not yet,’ Elmor replied.

  ‘We can’t just do nothing!’

  ‘Go back to the horses,’ ordered Zhurko. ‘If we fight and die now, we don’t help anyone. Obey your orders, Golden.’

  Benya felt Elmor’s wintery glance, sensing he wouldn’t hesitate to execute an insubordinate Shtrafnik.

  Benya crawled back to the horses and he stroked Silver Socks and wept for what he had seen and heard. Over and over again, he could hear the volley of shots, then silence, then the scattered shots again. He covered his ears, longing for this to be over but inside he was raging. He longed to kill Mandryka himself – and Kapto.

  His mind was whirring. Kapto had been a special case even in Kolyma. He had not been shaven like the rest of the prisoners – hence his head of kinky-curled hair – and he received the best rations; no doubt the ‘Baby Doctor’ looked after the Commandant’s family as well as the illegitimate children of the guards. Benya remembered their final evening before they were thrown into the fighting, when Kapto had been called to see Melishko. ‘Bunions and piles,’ the men had joked but if it was just about the colonel’s ailments, why was there a general there as well? And why did Kapto return with a new uniform? Benya recalled the Willys jeep parked outside the headquarters, and also that Melishko was receiving orders at the time. If the telegraph was faulty, he thought, the jeep might have brought the orders. All coincidence? Benya sighed. The Baby Doctor had deceived everyone, winning trust in the Camps so that he managed to get to the front. But what were the chances of him getting to a sector where Mandryka was serving? Such things could happen, he supposed. War was a river in flood that washed everything downstream in the foam of its unpredictable rapids, throwing together unthinkable events and implausible people.

  When the officers returned, Elmor placed the men on both sides of the road. Benya lay in the grass with Prishchepa and Little Mametka. A skylark dived and flipped over him; higher still, the vultures circled. He prayed the horses wouldn’t whinny, but as Panka liked to say: ‘You can train horses to do anything except sing or be silent’. After a while, Lyovka, the scout, rode down to them fast – ‘They’re moving,’ he hissed – and leaped the ditch, leaving his horse in a bower of poplars just back from the road. Mandryka was coming. Benya pulled the wooden butt of the Papasha into his shoulder and against his cheek and waited, heart scudding.

  And there they were: the Schuma on horseback loping down the track and in the middle of them all Mandryka. Dirlewanger was not with them, neither was Kapto or the little girl. When they were just about level, Elmor opened fire with his Degtiarev, aiming right at Mandryka. Benya saw him jerk bolt upright and knew he had been hit even before he opened fire on Mandryka himself, but it was hard to get a clear shot after that. He hit two of the guards for sure but then they had closed in around
their leader and they were galloping for the safety of the village, and just at that moment Lyovka went down; heavy machine guns scythed down a couple of others, including Geft. Benya tried to lie flat, panicking.

  Where was the gunfire coming from? Then down the lane Benya saw German soldiers and Schuma jumping out of trucks and fanning out, their fire raking the partisans, ambushing the ambushers; and he knew he had to run back or they would trap him. He sprinted towards the horses, spluttering for air.

  A punch in the shoulder threw him to the ground. He felt an intense burning feeling, and black water closed above him, and around him.

  V

  Kolyma on a hot summer’s morning in June, a day Benya would never forget. Nor would Russia. Jaba’s barracks was suffocatingly hot, buzzing with mosquitoes, gnats and obese bluebottles that drove the men to distraction. Benya, who by now had covered Macbeth, Eugene Onegin, The Count of Monte Cristo and much else, was reciting a sonnet of Shakespeare to his pupil, Jaba, the Boss, sitting in just a pair of khaki shorts. Smiley (who officially worked in the dining block, hence the supply of food) stirred the pot of beet soup; Deathless was getting out the dumb-bells (Jaba did his calisthenics after his literary lesson); and Prishchepa, the boyish Cossack, was carving a wooden horse, all of them just in their underwear.

  ‘Beautiful lines,’ Jaba said. ‘Isn’t Shakespeare really just saying “Life is like a plate of lobio beans”?’ He stood up as a staccato twang rang from the loudspeakers and the rails started to sound. This was highly unusual. These were only used for reveille, or prisoner escapes, and were almost never rung in the middle of the day.

  ‘What the fuck, Boss!’ said Smiley.

  The loudspeakers zonked tinnily and then out buzzed a familiar nasal voice: ‘This is the Commandant. I have a news announcement. The traitorous Hitlerite Germans have betrayed Russia and invaded. Never has there been a more wicked infamy and we shall repay it. Under the command of Comrade Stalin, the Soviet forces have counter-attacked and are repelling the Hitlerite invaders on all fronts. Long live our brave Red Army! Long live our great Socialist Motherland! Long live our Great Stalin!’

  ‘What does this mean, Boss?’ asked Deathless.

  The men glanced sulkily at each other. War would change things. Less food. More gold. Every Zek knew things would only get worse.

  ‘Quiet,’ said Jaba. ‘Are we so uncultivated that we interrupt a sonnet for this shit? Say the last two lines again!’

  But Benya couldn’t concentrate.

  Now the war was here: Hitler had attacked his Soviet ally, ending Stalin’s diabolic compact with the Nazis. He was almost feverish with excitement. Everything at last was clear. This was his war, his moment …

  ‘Hey, Golden!’ said Jaba, squeezing his cheek till it hurt. ‘Are you daydreaming? This is not our war. Governments fight wars; we don’t recognize any state! Life is just a plate of lobio beans!’

  But Benya had walked straight from the barracks to the Commandant’s office escorted by a cloud of gnats, hovering in a column just above his head. Beyond the wire, the bleak mountains gleamed like jagged silver and, in the distance, a herd of reindeer grazed on a steep hillside. Outside the office, a prisoner was already repainting the slogans:

  GLORY TO STALIN, BRILLIANT MILITARY COMMANDER

  UNDER STALIN’S LEADERSHIP, ONWARD TO VICTORY

  UNDER STALIN’S LEADERSHIP, WE WILL DEFEAT THE NAZI HYDRA

  DEATH TO HITLER AND HIS HENCHMEN

  WATCH WHAT YOU SAY, SPIES ARE EVERYWHERE

  DEATH TO SPIES

  MORE GOLD FOR OUR VICTORY!

  WELCOME TO MEDYAK-7

  Outside the Commandant’s office, a Mongolian guard shoved him so hard that he fell. But he persevered, and because the guard knew that Benya was protected by Jaba, he let him in to see the Commandant’s assistant, a man whose eyes bulged so gloopily behind his bottle-thick spectacles that they resembled hard-boiled eggs.

  ‘What can I do for you, Prisoner Golden?’ asked Lieutenant Bobkin in a neutral drone. Now in a blue Chekist uniform, he was an ex-prisoner who had made the crossover from Zek to officer of the NKVD. ‘What’s your request?’

  ‘I want to volunteer to fight the Nazis,’ said Benya.

  ‘State your code!’

  ‘KRTD 58.8. Ten.’ Every prisoner had a code; KRTD meant Benya was guilty of counter-revolutionary Trotskyite activity; 58.8 denoted the clause of the criminal code reserved for those guilty of terrorism; ten the years of his sentence.

  ‘Ten?’ said Bobkin. ‘You’ve been misinformed. Your sentence is ten years for each indictment plus five for counter-revolutionary agitation, to be served consecutively.’

  Benya staggered, so great was his shock. ‘Wait, so how many is that?’

  ‘Twenty-five in total.’ Bobkin sighed. ‘Put your request in writing, Prisoner Golden, and I will pass it on to the authorities. But I have to warn you, you’ll die here in Kolyma.’

  VI

  The night was drenchingly hot in the village of Shepilovka and, when he awoke, Benya found himself a prisoner in one of the village stables that had been converted into makeshift cells. The bars to his cell were nailed crooked and he thought of escape, but he was afraid to move, too broken. His terrified mind jerked from thought to thought: his shoulder was hurting, his shirt sopping wet with blood, and it had been hours since he had eaten or drunk a thing.

  He could see through the bars that the flags in the village were at half-mast and the bodies swayed on the makeshift gallows in the courtyard. He couldn’t tell who they were. Death just wiped their personality as a rag wipes letters off a blackboard. Perhaps they were the lucky ones, thought Benya.

  But Mandryka was dead. They had got him! He had heard the music, a discordant village band, out-of-tune trumpets and balalaikas, playing a death march. This had been followed by volley after volley of gunfire as Mandryka’s men let off their guns in salute for their fallen chieftain, and the beginnings of a drunken wake, accompanied by the breathy notes of an accordion. Benya listened to the songs – he knew some of them: ‘Black Crow’, ‘Volga-Volga’. As speeches were made, and more volleys fired, he sensed a spasm of a grotesque and truly terrifying spirit abroad, made up of military ritual and peasant drunkenness and the lairy cruelty of this black-hearted time. He waited for what would happen next. He was bleeding from his shoulder; the pain made him sweat, the shivers came in gusts, and he guessed he would die. If it happens, at least be calm, he told himself, don’t beg, don’t shriek, don’t wet yourself, but then he knew he would do all those things, and anything, anything, to survive, and the hysteria made him shudder. We killed Mandryka, he told himself, at least we achieved something – and he remembered Melishko saying, ‘Maybe we’ll do something to make our families proud – even if they never know it.’

  But Melishko also had said, ‘You can’t get me,’ and they had got him.

  The party is over, and the shouting suddenly gets nearer. Mandryka’s men are pouring into the courtyard and taking out the prisoners. They are now so close, Benya can hear their breath, the chink of keys, locks grinding, and the breathless panting of excited, drunk men. Benya waits his turn. Then the door is opening and they seize him under the arms and toss him out into the courtyard, Russians, Cossacks and Ukrainians, all babbling at once, hard men, peasants and farm-boys, villagers and flotsam. They are kicking him and beating him with whips. There’s just a roil of bodies and Benya can’t focus. The band has started up again, somewhere else in the village, and some of the men are dancing, weaving in and out, singing to themselves, and a shirtless old Cossack is playing an accordion. One group are trying to hang a man from the gallows but the rope keeps breaking and the man swings back and forth like a macabre pendulum. Some of Mandryka’s men – yes, he can see his former comrade Ogloblin amongst them – have a man on the ground and others – there are Bap and Delibash – are less focused, and are staggering from one scene to another, coming in for a kick. The orders are being barked out in a hoarse feminine
voice that he recognizes and then he sees her: it is Tonya, in a German grey tunic with a Schmeisser on her shoulder, the long flat face with its smudged gaze, her almost invisible eyebrows and reddish eyelashes, and her fat legs are clad in fancy stockings and riding boots. Everyone is sweating alcohol, he can smell it, and garlic and peppers.

  Tonya wipes her forehead on her cuff. ‘Cut the nettles!’ she says to the men. ‘Make them feel it.’ They enjoy following her orders, these hard, angry men. They are joking about her: ‘Smertina’ – the Death Woman – ‘cooks spicy dishes, the bitch!’ they say, but they obey.

  ‘Yes, nurse, if you say so, nurse!’ cackles one, swinging his whip.

  ‘We can’t deny you, Mama,’ gasps the shirtless Cossack, who drops the accordion, which gives out a few breathy notes, and bends over a man who’s lying on the sand.

  ‘Are the horses well shod?’ she says.

  ‘I’m seeing to that, Mama!’ It is the voice of Tufty Grishchuk, the farrier who’s shod Silver Socks so many times. Drunk and husky, he wears his leather apron over a grey tunic.

  Tonya sees Benya suddenly, and she darts at him, her quirt striking him across the face. The sting brings tears, but he stares right into her eyes, her sleepy eyes, always so bored. But now they shake him to his bones. Now her eyes are greedy with that freak lust he himself recognizes. Tonya has been recast and then unleashed.

  She smiles as she never did all the months he knew her, a smile stained in the brightest pink lipstick, and before he knows it, she’s struck him again with the butt of her gun, so hard that he falls through the grip of his handlers and finds himself on the ground. From this boot-level vantage, he sees across the yard to where a crowd has gathered.

  He can’t fathom it at first. They’re holding one of the Shtrafniki, young fair-haired Geft, who’s lightly wounded, and Grishchuk, the farrier in his leather apron, is laying out his tools, asking his assistant, Delibash, for them one by one: ‘Clinchers!’ ‘Hoof knife!’ ‘Nippers!’ ‘Shoe!’ ‘Nails!’ and finally with relish: ‘Hammer!’