Europe Central (51 page)

I don’t know whether I love you or not, he told her with his accustomed frankness. But after all this time I, I have very strong sexual feelings . . .

Smiling, the young widow recited:
The healthy is a heroic commandment.

24

She felt dreary most of the time. Oh, yes, she was dead, desolate, cut off; what she loved was far away beneath the Russian earth. (No name on the grave, they said—only his helmet.) As long as she could remember, she’d hated to be alone. Sometimes there was nothing to do except flip through
Signal
magazine. What she admired the most about this General Vlasov was that he owned a dream for which he was willing to fight fanatically to the end. (This fellow led the main attack on our Army Group Center during the Battle of Moscow! crowed Strik-Strikfeldt with loving exaggeration.) She had heard so much about his qualities—his unshakeable will, his charisma with subordinates, his intelligence and above all (for we Germans believe that strength forms its own justification) his prowess on the battlefield. She knew about his Order of the Red Banner, and the medal he’d received in China. (You really admire him, too, don’t you, Herr Strik?) She even knew about the wife in Moscow. It was said that he hadn’t yet cooperated with Germany a hundred percent. Who can blame Heidi for hoping to smash his defensive front?

Andrei, you’re a biologically valuable man, she said, crossing her muscular thighs. You’re a fighter, a son of the soil. You
deserve
to have two wives. The Führer needs your children . . .

Vlasov laughed in embarrassment.—The Führer doesn’t know he needs me—

Well, then he hasn’t been informed. But didn’t he approve your Smolensk Declaration?

He needs to act on it, or the Ostfront cannot be held! I’m getting worried about that. Moreover, the number of tank battalions in each Panzer division must be increased. Fortunately, Guderian’s been appointed Inspector-General of Armored Troops—

Heidi rose and touched his hand.—I think you’re a real Nazi and you don’t even know it. Tell me this. What’s your heart’s desire?

To fight for the liberation of Russia.

That’s exactly what my husband said. Do you find me beautiful?

Scarcely knowing what he was saying, Vlasov muttered: Heidi, when I look at you my heart beats fast . . .

Since you’re ready to die for the Führer, I’m ready to give you what you want.

25

Of course she couldn’t believe that in this Slav’s arms she’d be able to breed an Übermensch, but at the beginning it wasn’t even about breeding. (Vlasov is said to have played a guitar when he wooed her. He was always sweet with her little daughter Frauke.) The blond, blue-eyed
-men who came here to recover and then went back to the Ostfront to die, she’d had as many of them as she liked. Perhaps she wanted a change from bread and butter.

A little later, with what Himmler used to berate in Heydrich as “cold, rational criticism,” she began to brood on the lesson of Stalingrad. Her convalescents (the lucky few who’d been airlifted out of that so-called “fortress”) couldn’t help telling her how it had really been, especially when they lay weeping in her arms. Nearly everyone except General Vlasov was getting cold feet now!—They promised Paulus full supply by air, so he wasn’t permitted to break out even when the Panzers still had enough fuel. So we kept starving, and the Russians kept shooting and tightening the ring . . . (What else did her charges mention? Probably not the German prison cages, nor the Russian epidemics cured with flamethrowers.) And so Heidi unrolled the map, and her pet Slav, whom they jokingly called
the democratic people’s Jew,
held down the furling corners like a good doggie. Below Leningrad crouched the flag comprised of four squares, two white, two black: 18. Bolshevo; then clung Korück 583 below that, Span. Legion to the west of it,
Nordlund in between, all of them seemingly sheltered by that black front line which ran east along the gulf shore below Leningrad, then curved by fits southeast and southwest, down toward Moscow. But her soldier-boys had whispered to her that the Russians were beginning to introduce homogeneous tank armies, hundreds and then thousands of those terrible T-34s. They could break through anywhere, at any time. What if the war were really lost? Maybe even then Heidi could be First Lady of the new Russia if she married General Vlasov and he . . .—Like everybody associated with the
she’d grown accustomed to dreaming magnificent dreams. Besides, her mother insisted on marriage to legitimize the relationship.

Andrei darling, what do you think of what I just said?

Looking at the map, not at her, he replied with a sad little grin: Oh, well, in Moscow I had to haul everything on sleds attached to tanks. The struggle for life—

She flung her arms around him. She said: I understand you with all my heart.

The hostility of her friends, and especially of her mother, who could hardly have imagined her to be capable of committing racial disgrace with a Slav, was painful, to be sure, but not unexpected. Moreover, there comes a moment in almost everyone’s life when fate (as our Führer would call it) summons us to cross the gulf of change, and reestablish ourselves in an antipodal world. At such a time, even the most earnest protestations of those who love us dwindle into the merest formalities of departure.

And perhaps it enhanced Heidi’s self-confidence that in every true German sense she was better than the man she’d agreed to marry. Oh, she could admit that without pity toward herself! (Allegations that Strik-Strikfeldt, whom everyone considered to be sunnily indispensable, had loaned her a copy of Vlasov’s Gestapo file, need not be entirely ruled out.)

He was stroking her hair. He seemed constrained or worried about something.

She murmured: Andrei, darling, I know you will always be grateful to me, and give me whatever I wish . . .

26

Wilfried Karlovich, whatever happened to Masha?

My dear fellow, I don’t have enough grey cells to remember every skirt you’ve—

She was a typist at Viktoriastrasse.

A typist, you say? Probably an illegal element. Here, have a look for yourself; there’s nobody by that name on the roster. Come, come, why are you glaring at me in that way? Do you really think that here in the Reich people simply disappear without cause? In Stalinist Russia, now, that’s a different matter—

She—

Our faithful advocate of the
Wlassow-Aktion
raised a finger for silence. Far away, they both could hear the short blasts of the early warning siren. Then he shrugged and said to Vlasov: I fear that certain assumptions are obstructing you again. Think about it. Would it be rational to harm anybody who can contribute to the war effort?

No. Not rational—

Did you really care for her all that much? If so, perhaps I can—

She was the merest flirtation, replied Vlasov in his flat way. But I’m concerned for her as a human being.

Most likely she’s working in an armaments factory. Meanwhile, how do you feel about Heidi? I want you to know that in recognition of your hard work, certain regulations have been waived. Your union with Heidi has been sanctioned
at the highest level.
—Or is there some obstacle? By the way, what are you playing with in your pocket?—Oh, I see, it must be that stupid cartridge of yours . . .

27

On 22.3.43 we find him presiding over the graduation of the first officers’ class at Dabendorf. He was very happy with his Russian Liberation Army cockade, which made use of the same three colors as the French
tricouleur
and the American stars-’n’-stripes. Gripping the lectern, which barely came above his waist, he continued the commencement speech: I expect each of you not only to take a stand, but to be a fanatical fighter for our ideal. What do I mean by fanaticism? Well, let’s momentarily consider the logic of this war. Logically speaking, we are incapable of forcing the Bolsheviks, with their incomparably greater forces, to withdraw. Logic compels us to abandon our struggle. Therefore, I call on you to abandon logic. When I led the Fourth Mechanized at Lvov, we attacked Sixth Army—long before Stalingrad, you understand, so they were close to full strength, while we hardly had any tanks (Kroeger, stop filling up my glass!)—and so logically speaking we shouldn’t have hoped for any success. But that was when General von Kleist himself paid me a real compliment. He said . . .

Let’s hope he can pull this off, one officer muttered to another.

Anyhow, better here than in a camp!

What if he’s been tricked?

The Führer says . . .

At her own request, and against the wishes of her mother, who’d warned:
Liebchen,
stay out of politics. It’s not healthy for a woman!, Vlasov’s fiancée attended the reception. I’ve read that she was wearing her German National Sports badge, whose interlocking letter-tendrils had been encircled by a wreath whose fruit was a single swastika. A Russian prisoner-of-war complimented her on it, with what might have been an ironic smile. Heidi said to him: I have to pass a test every year, or they’ll take it back.

28

On the morning of 13.4.43, a few hours before Radio Berlin made a spectacular announcement to the world, launching what Goebbels would call
a hundred-percent victory for German propaganda and especially for me personally,
Vlasov was sheltering listlessly in the arms of Heidi Bielenberg, enduring her endearments (the only Russian words she was ever to learn), when the telephone rang. Praying that it be a summons to command, execution, or anything other than more of this, he reached for the receiver. It was Strik-Strikfeldt.

My dear Vlasov, am I disturbing you? Listen, I have some extremely important news. I’ll be over in a quarter-hour.

Ya tebya lyublyu,
his wife was saying.

I love you, too, he said mechanically. Rising, he began to dress.

Andrei, be prepared for everything. Be ready; be healthy—

(He was choking within his tightly buttoned collar.)

Andrei, did you hear me?

The buzzer assaulted him. He went downstairs.

Well, well, Vlasov, and have you been keeping busy?

I’ve been making up a list of words which are considered to be obscenities in both Germany and the USSR. Want to hear a few?
Internationalism. Cosmopolitan. Plutocracy. Intellectual. Softness. Weakness. Mercy.

And what would you expect, my dear fellow? We’re at war with each other, so it’s natural that both our systems would get a trifle hardened and bunkered down . . .

That’s good, murmured Vlasov, that you always show respect . . .

And how’s your pretty wife?

She’s pretty, and she’s my wife.

I take it she’s
en déshabillé,
or you’d have invited me up . . .

Wilfried Karlovich, I’m the son of peasants. I don’t understand French.

Let’s take a walk, said his jocular genius, and before Vlasov knew it, they’d passed the Zeughaus and were crossing the river by means of the dear old Schlossbrücke whose wrought-iron horses Strik-Strikfeldt rarely failed to caress in a triply echeloned offensive. This time, however, he denied himself the snaky fish, the martial seahorse and even the cheerfully grotesque merman whose tail transformed itself into horse-legs. He was very excited. Beneath a winged Victory who proudly watched them from her pink-granite pillar he paused and said: I wanted to be the first to tell you . . .