‘Ouch!’ Benya winced as he was stung but they scooped out the honey, excited at this amazing find, he eating with his knife and she with her hands like a little bear.
Fabiana stood, rinsed her hands and drank water straight from the bucket, her brown throat straining as she gulped, and then she poured the rest of the bucket over her head. She glanced at Benya and went to the well, bringing out a full bucket for him. As he drank, he wondered whether he could really trust her: she was an Italian on the Fascist side, an enemy, and he was a Russian Jew. Yet she had placed herself in peril for him, and if he sent her back, she could well be tortured and shot. It was true she had served as a human shield during his escape – some Italians were still romantics – but now they were hunting him because she was with him. He was intensely aware that having her by his side would probably hinder his own chances of escaping to safety. And then there was his own side: if any Soviet soldiers saw him with a Fascist woman, he would be the one before the firing squad as a traitor.
He looked at her. Her dark wet hair was slicked back, and he knew she knew he was sizing her up. The way she had ridden out after him, bringing the guns – that took reckless courage, he thought. She was an astonishing character, that was for sure. He exhaled, making up his mind. They should stay together for now. If they survived the night and the next day, they could go their separate ways then. She could tell Malamore that he had forced her, as a hostage perhaps, and recount his cruelties and his violence. This might even squeeze a few tears out of that old crocodile.
‘You’re worrying,’ she said, looking at him.
‘Is it so obvious?’
‘I know you. How’s your shoulder?’
‘Sore.’
‘It will be. I’ll re-dress it. Check it hasn’t opened up again.’ A pause. ‘You’re thinking I should go back to Malamore, aren’t you?’
He could see her suntanned skin. Every pore was engrained with dust yet shining from the water. Her bravery briefly overwhelmed him: she had lost her husband, and now had to cope with this. He thought of her, the massacred Jews in the woods, the child on Kapto’s knee, his own hopelessness – and he wanted to cry.
‘Thank you for bringing the guns and food. For everything.’ He yawned suddenly, shaking himself to stay awake. ‘I’m exhausted.’
‘Me too.’ She peered at him. ‘You’re very pale.’
‘We must sleep a bit. We’ll be safer outside, I think. Let’s move the horses.’
The cottage was in a clump of poplars which in turn was guarded by a gilded escort of sunflowers that stood as high as a man. They hobbled the horses just on the edge of the wood so they could eat the grass but not stray, and they spread their horse blankets and lay down in the shade, almost surrounded by the sunflowers, and pulled their boots off. He was so stiff from the saddle that he wondered if he would be able to ride again later. His lower back, thighs and buttocks were in agony, as if the saddle had grated his bones.
Keeping his pistol right beside him, a grenade on his belt, the Papasha within reach, he closed his eyes.
Fabiana Bacigalupe, he said to himself, a name out of a Benya Golden novel.
He felt her lie down, then move over, now almost against him. He sensed her breath on his neck. She was asleep.
VII
It was evening in the special family mansion, and Sergo Beria had just got home from his office, where he worked in foreign intelligence while finishing his scientific studies. Only a highly educated person could work in foreign intelligence and Stalin himself had suggested this job for Sergo, who was one of his favourite youngsters.
‘Lavrenti,’ Stalin had said to his father, ‘let me read his reports. I think I’ll be impressed …’
Sergo spoke perfect English and had read the classics of French and English literature. In the office today he had read the American and British newspapers, analysing the statements of President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill. He was also allowed to see the transcripts of the devices that listened to the Western diplomats in Moscow. As he came into the house, he heard the skid of brakes outside. A Packard limousine followed by a Willys jeep full of guards had pulled in and officers with sub-machine guns stood in the courtyard. His father was home.
Balding and wearing rimless spectacles, Lavrenti Beria, overweight and ashen with exhaustion, yet seethingly alert, dressed in a flowery Georgian blouse and baggy linen trousers, burst into the kitchen and hugged his wife Nino, and then Sergo.
‘Darling Lavrenti,’ cried Nino. ‘You look terrible! You must sleep. How are you?’
‘I haven’t slept for twenty-four hours,’ he said. ‘But I’m not the only one. He hasn’t slept for seventeen hours and he’s a lot older than me, twenty years older.’ They all knew who ‘He’ was. Dictatorship had the power to turn day into night and night into day. Stalin was nocturnal and worked at night so the entire government did too.
‘What’s the news?’ asked Nino.
‘Nothing good. We’ve made idiotic mistakes and now we’re paying the price.’ Beria was the only man in Russia who could say such a thing and he revelled in his ability to do so. No one was bugging his house; he did the bugging. He radiated the energy of a man at the height of his powers during the greatest crisis of his nation. ‘We’re surrounded by too many cowards, too many fools.’ He stopped and looked at his little family: ‘Darling! What a joy to see your face. Kiss me again.’ Then he turned to Sergo: ‘How’s my clever son? How did you get so handsome with an ugly father like me? I’m so proud of my Sergo!’ He took Sergo in his arms and kissed him three times on his cheeks. ‘Come and talk to me while I rest …’
Upstairs in his study-cum-office, Sergo pulled down the blinds, Beria kicked off his shoes and fell back on the wide sofa where he often napped when he got the chance.
‘Mamiko’ – Sergo used the Georgian for ‘Daddy’ – ‘is it really so bad in the south?’
‘Worse, bicho, my boy,’ replied his father. ‘We could lose the war there. Not just our war, but if the Germans break through, the British and Americans would lose too. It’s desperate. Now tell me about your life. Tell me what the war drums are saying?’ All the leaders had read The Last of the Mohicans and every one of them talked about war drums and white chiefs. Sergo told him that he had been on a date with Martha Peshkova.
‘That girl is adorable,’ said Beria. ‘And what news of Sveta? He never lets her out. Poor child! She’s a prisoner in that gloomy apartment. Still so lonely?’
‘Well, yes and no …’
‘Still in love with you? I’d never let you marry into that family. Stay away!’
‘Don’t worry, Mamiko, she’s over me.’
Beria sat up. ‘She’s got someone else?’
Sergo took a breath, remembering what he’d promised Martha. ‘I didn’t say that.’
‘You know something, bicho. Tell me.’
‘I shouldn’t say. It’s a secret.’
‘I think I can keep a secret or two, don’t you?’ said Beria. ‘Tell me about Svetlana.’
When he was alone, Beria closed his eyes. He saw the grey face of Stalin earlier that morning hearing that the Russians were losing the battle of the Don Bend; remembered the cowardly panic of the headless-chicken generals at Budyonny’s headquarters in the North Caucasus; reminded himself that he had to recheck the plane, tank, rifle production figures and the mines of the Gulag Camps; and noted that the death roster of 124 eminent prisoners signed by Stalin would, by now, have been executed in Lefortovo Prison; some of their names meant nothing but he had tortured a couple himself back in ’38. Finally he indulged himself with the vision of the young woman with her Veronica Lake figure, golden hair and wanton thighs who’d been brought to him by his adjutant Colonel Sarkisian, how she’d ridden him naked in his office and then asked for an apartment for her mother. One day he’d find a girl who loved him for himself, he mused.
And out of all this murkiness and toil, only one thing was bright: Sergo his son, his sun, his hop
e for the cruel realm in which he was himself the cruellest. I will never let him work in my filthy world, he promised himself. He is too good for that. How I love him.
And Beria slept.
VIII
‘A Jew?’ asked SS-Obersturmführer Oskar Dirlewanger from the doorway of the house in Shepilovka where the collaborator SS-Brigadeführer Kaminsky had his headquarters. Malamore, who had been about to leave, looked up. The commander of the Sonderkommando, Oskar Dirlewanger, was just forty-seven but wizened by booze, pills, opium and the years in prison for petty thefts and raping children. His needled head was almost shrunken and too small for his body, which itself was so thin that his patron Himmler nicknamed him ‘Gandhi’. ‘A Jew has taken an Aryan nurse? Shameless.’ He pulled on his shirt and started to button it up.
‘He simply used her as a human shield to escape,’ said Malamore, aware that he was sounding almost apologetic.
‘Fuck that.’ Dirlewanger absentmindedly fingered his necklace of what appeared to be yellow beans, wrinkled and shapeless. ‘Can’t you see the Communist Jew has taken her for sexual gratification? Look, gentlemen, I know all about sexual congress with our enemies. You should see the Polish girls, the little Jewesses I’ve had along the way. But we can’t allow it the other way round.’ He strapped on his gunbelt.
‘Nonsense, Obersturmführer, and besides we didn’t ask for your help,’ replied Malamore in German.
‘What is this girl to you?’ Dirlewanger asked, alert suddenly.
‘Careful, Obersturmführer,’ said Malamore. ‘She is the respectable widow of an officer of the Tridentine killed in action this week, an Italian nurse.’
‘But you know her, don’t you?’
‘I do.’
‘Biblically? Inside and out?’
‘I warn you—’ Malamore seethed inside with a disquieting mixture of anger and nerves.
‘Fine.’ Dirlewanger waved a hand. ‘Let’s leave it at that.’ He turned to Kaminsky. ‘We’re responsible for this, Kaminsky. I shall join your detachment, Consul Malamore, with a few of my chosen poachers.’
This was not turning out as Malamore planned. This Dirlewanger was not a real soldier at all. More like a ratcatcher or someone who belonged in a straitjacket in an asylum. He would make a complaint to the High Command of the Armarta Italiana, General Gariboldi himself if necessary. If these cutthroats were with him, how was he to keep Fabiana safe?
‘I insist,’ replied Dirlewanger. ‘Our mission to Russia is to wipe out the very possibility of Blutschande – blood-shame – yet you let a Jew, yes a fucking Bolshevik Jew, right here in Russia where we’re annihilating the Jewish bacteria forever, steal your own whore from under your nose—’
No one had spoken to Malamore like this, ever. He wheeled around towards Dirlewanger, his hand on his Beretta. ‘She’s not anyone’s whore.’
‘Pardon me, Malamore. Apologies. No need to take offence. None was meant.’ Dirlewanger smiled, revealing yellow teeth, little and sharp like a ferret. A point scored. ‘But, esteemed consul,’ he went on. ‘She is something to you or I’ll be damned. This is the most reaction I’ve got from you in six months. Forgive me for speaking directly to a comrade but I can have a whore and cut her throat five minutes later. You can see one of mine hanging outside right here. Duty’s everything to me, and we all know you Italians are notorious for letting romance interfere with our mission.’
A vein started to throb on Malamore’s forehead.
‘Don’t do anything,’ whispered Montefalcone, who suddenly recognized that the necklace Dirlewanger wore was made of human earlobes. ‘Let’s get out of here. She’s getting further away all the time.’
‘He’s right,’ said Dirlewanger. ‘Pardon me but I am known for my frankness. I get the job done and if I upset the prudish bourgeois, I am proud of that. My patron the Reichsführer-SS himself regards it as an admirable quality. Lucky you have us Germans behind you, Consul Malamore.’ He turned to the doctor. ‘Dr Kapto, we need to get you to the Sixth Army today, but let’s also be clear. The Jew escaped under your watch, and I call that a strange occurrence. If you don’t want that investigated, I suggest you join us.’
‘But the child—’
‘Bring your little “lady friend” if you must. Everyone should see this beautiful countryside at least once. I’ve called the Sixth Army headquarters for you and they know about your map and they are keen to get it urgently. Wehrmacht units will ensure your map reaches Colonel von Schwerin.’
‘Thank you. It will be my pleasure to ride out with you, Obersturmführer,’ said Dr Kapto, ruffling the girl’s hair. He glanced brightly around the room with his colourless eyes.
‘All is agreed then,’ said Dirlewanger. ‘Brigadeführer Kaminsky, report this anti-partisan Aktion to the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe as well as our Italian, Romanian and Hungarian allies in case we pass through their sectors. Grishaka! Mironka!’ he shouted. ‘Saddle the horses!’
Two Cossack grooms, teenaged boys with topknots and unbuttoned German tunics, appeared at the doorway and then skedaddled towards the stables. There was no time to be lost.
IX
When Fabiana awoke, she imagined herself as a girl during the school holidays lazing in a field in the countryside. All she could smell was the sweet dust that she associated with harvest and the masculine leather of saddles. She was on the ground, on a blanket, her head on a saddlebag. A crackle of shots somewhere, then the familiar boom of the big guns, and the smell of burning and diesel. Though the evening light was beginning to fade, it was still hot. Her blouse was open; fingers of sweat ran down her chest and her back. She opened her eyes. There was someone else with her. She heard a horse whinny and the reality struck her: she was in the war, her husband was dead, Malamore was out there looking for her; and she, a nurse of the Armata Italiana, was with a Russian man – a Jew and probably a Communist, a convict who’d served in the Camps – a stranger whom she hardly knew.
She felt sick. She couldn’t see how she could return to her own side now. Her people would surely execute her. She imagined scenarios of shots fired through the grass; she could taste her own end, feel the massive blow of a bullet smashing into her; she could see herself lying on the grasslands, her mouth a little open, her eyes staring. Could she lie about what had happened? Would they believe her? Or court-martial her? If so, better to perish out here. The shame for her darling parents if she was shot for treason … Everyone would hear of it on the Campo San Stin, the archive, the school … She would ruin them all.
Fabiana lay still and cursed her own impulsive stupidity. In normal life, there’s always a way to reverse even the silliest of decisions but not in war and she wanted to weep. She was going to die very soon and with this knowledge came a bracing surge of freedom. She could be anything now, do anything. She could say what she wished. She belonged to no country, no city, no man. She was living breath to breath. She had seen many men die, she had been beaten by her husband Ippolito, she was in a wild, hostile land and she was surprised to find that she was not so afraid of dying any more. She had seen so many young men step across that threshold, just a breath one side, and no breath the other. Instead, a sudden joy rushed through her. This field of sunflowers was her own private kingdom and here things couldn’t be simpler. A cottage, two horses, two beehives, a well – and this man.
She turned over and Benya Golden was looking back at her, lying on his side. Blue eyes speckled with yellow. She had spent hours watching him in the tent but then he had been weak, unconscious, like a sick child. Now he gave her a look of greeting and she returned it. He too, she sensed, was as much himself as he could be out here on the steppe, on the run. They said nothing for a while. He was very thin, she noticed again, his nose hawkish, and he had a certain sort of Jewish face and very long black eyelashes. The thinness made him seem older than his early forties; his fair skin was tanned by riding on the steppe; his shorn hair and his beard though growing fast in the heat were sown with grey.
; He sat up and shook off the dust and hay, and the ashes, that seemed to float in the air all the time.
‘You’ve been awake long?’ she asked.
‘I’ve been up for a while. I must ride on soon,’ he said. She reached into her saddlebag and handed him bread and some fruit. Then they fell upon the honey and this time he watched her as she scooped chunks of honeycomb and ate it off her cupped fingers and he did the same, which made them both laugh as the honey revived them. Then she brought out a flask, a man’s regimental flask engraved IB, which he knew had belonged to her husband Ippolito Bacigalupe.
‘Armenian cognac.’ She handed it to him. He took a mouthful; then she did the same.
‘We mustn’t take too much,’ he said.
‘Why not?’ she answered. ‘We deserve it and’ – she shrugged – ‘this is a beautiful place and we’re alive …’ She took another swig and he accepted it too. ‘There’s nothing more decadent and delicious than drinking at breakfast,’ he said, the sort of urbane line he’d used to say in his old life. Now it seemed absurd.
Beside them their horses whickered as they drank water from the bucket Benya had brought them. Standing guard on every side, the sunflowers whispered and swayed, raising their focus towards the last rays of the setting sun.
‘You said, “I must ride on …”’ she started.
Benya nodded. ‘You have to go back. The longer you’re with me, the harder it will be for you. It won’t just be Italians looking for us now. Germans and Hiwis will be too. The Kalmyks scouts will track us, and will work out we didn’t take the direct route back to the Russian lines. Please, ride to the nearest village … You can blame me, say I held you at gunpoint, that I kidnapped you, I committed untold cruelties, appalling liberties, ravished you savagely …’
Red Sky at Noon (The Moscow Trilogy) Page 20