Europe Central (53 page)

Indeed, my friend, I’ve been told of that, although I’ve never seen any—

Then don’t get above yourself.

(In enthusiastic corroboration of his thesis that the military situation could still be reversed, Vlasov was earnestly explaining: The problem of developing a tactical breakthrough into an operational breakthrough is only now being solved.)

Please excuse him, for he thinks in Russian. And, after all, from a strictly
rational
point of view—

I’ve read Vlasov’s manifesto. It’s a stinkingly
rational
manifesto, to be sure.

The audience was applauding Vlasov now, but afterwards the only person who came forward to speak with him was a functionary from the
Building Inspection Office for Russia. Strik-Strikfeldt, trying to improve his pet orator’s morale, said: My dear fellow, you’ve done for the occupied territories what Shostakovich did for the other side at Leningrad last year! What powerful propaganda!

My intention was not to make mere propaganda.

He seemed satisfied then, for they’d indulged him as they would have a little child, letting him get in the last word; but then they saw him sitting with his head in his hands. Strik-Strikfeldt ran to him: Is something wrong, old fellow?

Just a mild case of operational shock, he said with a broken laugh.

In the prisoner-of-war camps he addressed the senior block leaders, who wore black armbands. (Someone was playing the accordion.) He proposed to them that fighting imperialism might be better than hauling stones up quarry steps until they collapsed and were shot; better than being torn to pieces by
dogs, or being buried alive by trembling Jews who were then themselves buried alive; better than the experiments in the decompression chamber at Dachau (their blood didn’t boil until the altitude-equivalent was above seventy thousand feet). Soon he’d raised a million Vlasov Men, a million Russian soldiers fighting for Germany. He said to them: If we can help the Reich resist for another twelve to fifteen months, then we can build ourselves up into a power factor that the West won’t be able to forget.

Himmler got a transcript of his speech at Gatchina, the infamous one in which he dared to call the Germans “guests of the Russians.” The
Reichsführer was furious. He reported this treason directly to the Führer’s headquarters, in consequence of which the order went out to remand our Slav directly to a concentration camp. Meanwhile, the Vlasov Men were disbanded. Strik-Strikfeldt, who knew how to get around all obstacles in the most refined way, found his protégé a nice little villa on Kiebitzweg in Dahlem, not far from the Russian Liberation Army training camp.—Don’t tell him he’s actually under house arrest or he might feel a little trapped, he advised Heidi.

Are you sure it’s healthy for him to live in a fantasy?

Only if he believes can he make others believe. As soon as the Führer believes, it must come true.

Well, of course, the blonde murmured.

And, you know, my dear girl, sometimes a man needs, how should I put it, a little bolstering up. Especially an exhausted man.

Oh, Herr Strik, you’re so right, and so good to us! Do you think we’ll be staying here long? If so, these walls must be whitewashed—

Vlasov was at the door. Heidi rushed into his arms, gazing at him adoringly. He kissed her three times, in the Russian manner.

30

Screened by the theatrically leafy camouflage netting over the Charlotten-burger Chaussee, sequestered between bright-postered walls and sandbagged museum windows, Vlasov took long walks with his gilded victory angel. As long as she accompanied him (humming Mozart’s ever so healthy German melodies), he was permitted to go almost anywhere a German could. For a long time after the woman I loved so much had left me, I kept encountering mutual friends, small gifts from her, abandoned possessions of hers; place-names on the map ambushed me with recollections; from the walls, her photographs continued to smile at me so gently; after awhile I realized that there was nothing to do but seek out these things whose associations caused me such agony, and bury the freshly bloody grief under the dirt of new experience. Vlasov did the same. The thick green foliage of the Tiergarten reminded him of how it had been in the Russian swamps during the last days of his immaculateness; needless to say, he never mentioned anything about those times to Heidi.

They both enjoyed visiting Moltke’s statue in the Grosser Stern. That Prussian genius was gazing up into the distance, strict and old and withered, with an eagle on either side of his coat of arms. (Soon there’d be Soviet bulletholes in his legs.)

Heidi stopped humming and said: What a genius he must have been! Pure Aryan!

He was a brilliant field commander. He showed your generals the way to outflank the French—

But, Andrei, how could you have been allowed to study him in that horrid Soviet zone?

Her husband smiled a little. He said: I can quote him if you like. Here’s one of his maxims from 1869:
The stronger our frontal position becomes on account of its success of fire, the more the attacker will focus his attack on our flanks. Deep deployment is appropriate to counter this danger.

Heidi was already bored, but she tried; he never forgot how hard she tried.—What does that mean exactly?

It means that if a rivercourse gets blocked by a boulder, the river will flow around it.

So how can the boulder keep from being surrounded? I assume that the boulder represents—

By being longer than the river is.

But that’s—

Irrational, isn’t it?

So what are you saying?

That Moltke’s notions are obsolete. Nobody can avoid encirclement in this age of tanks and planes . . .

When you’re encircled, what should you do?

Well, that’s the question, isn’t it? said he with his pitiful smile. (She was so glad that she’d been able to distract him.) You break out. You give up being a rock, and turn yourself into, let’s say, oil. Then you flow around the enemy water, and, if you’re strong enough, you encircle it.

But then the enemy can do the same!

Correct, he said flatly. There’s no end.

His didactic, lecturing attitude irritated her. He had no right. But then her mouth softened, and she slipped her arm around his waist.—I’m sorry, she said. I know you’re thinking about the Ostfront.

He kept silent.

You’re thinking about the Ostfront, aren’t you?

Yes . . .

Darling, you’d feel better if you told me.

Pressure on our Orel salient seems quite dangerous, although I try to reassure myself that the High Command knows more than I do. The enemy can flow right around us. At this rate—

Andrei, how close will they come before we turn them back?

I can easily see them crossing the Dnieper.

When we get home, can you show me on a map?

Yes, I can show you. No doubt Stalin still has many reserves to call on. I remember in my time, when the Siberians . . .

You said they might cross the Dnieper. But you still haven’t said where we’ll stop them?

Well, if somebody would only give me the responsibility I could . . .

You do trust in the Führer, don’t you?

Ha, ha! I’m not a politician; I’m only a . . . Listen. I want to ask you something. You know how hard I’ve tried to warn the High Command. They won’t listen.

I know, I know—

Should I try to reach Himmler directly?

Oh, Andrei! she cried compassionately.

Is there anything you’re not telling me?

Now she seemed to him suddenly to possess the same quality of distant gentleness as his lost brown-eyed woman, his integrity. Something terrible had happened. She was gazing at him without weeping or kissing; something was over.

Shall I call Himmler or not?

Hanging her head, Heidi temporized: What does Herr Strik say?

Vlasov stiffened.—It’s no good, is it? And you won’t even tell me why.

His wife swallowed nervously. She said: Andrei, be brave. You deserve to prevail. Even if the river pours over the rock, the rock can outlast it. You—

Let’s go home, he said. I want a drink.

After that, disregarding all warnings, he went out alone when Heidi was in the bath. Well, what was she supposed to do? She’d tried, but he wouldn’t appreciate her efforts. Perhaps her mother had been right. It’s not likely that he was present when the heavy wooden doors of the Zeughaus opened for a show of captured Soviet weapons (and an assassination attempt upon Hitler failed there, thanks perhaps to the vigilance of the facade’s stone helmets turned everywhere in different directions), because who would have wanted to take responsibility for allowing Vlasov near our Führer? Still, he could have his little promenades; he could breathe the summer breath of linden trees. A girls’ corps with their rakes held gun-straight against their shoulders were marching to the harvest. (An old pensioner was saying to his wife:
According to our concentration of strength
. . . ) Strik-Strikfeldt, who happened to be standing right around the corner, invited Vlasov to speak to an association of military convalescents, but he declined, wandering listlessly away past a house which had been demolished by an English bomb. His best friend sprinted after him with the enthusiastic ease of a new recruit.—Not that way, dear fellow! Why, there’s the Gestapo over there! They’ll make mincemeat of you! Don’t you remember what happened to Masha? Never mind about that stupid hospital even if they
are
expecting you; here, let me . . .

In short, Vlasov remained mired in Berlin, whose name ironically derives from a Slavic word:
brl,
meaning
marsh.
He could not seem to break out of this limbo. From one blacked out window to the next his tall reflection flicked as pallidly as a lightning-flash. Drinking schnapps, or sitting on the toilet reading
Signal
magazine, he remembered Vinnitsa, with himself and Strik-Strikfeldt at the rustic table, the pretty stenographer typing everything. Although everybody reassured him that his blueprints for action were still being studied at the highest level, on 8.6.43 the supreme commander himself had said, not without irritation: I don’t need this General Vlasov at all in our rear areas.

With all respect, my Führer, if Vlasov helped keep the Slavs quiet until we’d finished the war, we could release many, many soldiers from anti-partisan operations—

No and again no, Hitler interrupted. No German agency must take seriously the bait contained in the Vlasov program.

The Russian Liberation Army—

That’s a phantom of the first order.

Like a loyal friend, Strik-Strikfeldt concealed this new disappointment from Vlasov as long as he could. (He did think it best, however, to sit the poor fellow down and show him a report whose correctness had been confirmed by Himmler himself: Vlasov’s Russian wife had been arrested and put to death in retribution for his treason. In the interests of that highest good, rationality, it was needful to show Vlasov that there could be no turning back.) At that point it was already July, by which time the Soviets had developed breakthroughs into a scientific operation performed first with tank and mechanical corps, then with tank armies. The front was becoming a sieve. But Germany’s slogan continued to be
Cling to every inch!