Pavel & I (27 page)

He hung his head then, and rolled his shoulders, dark eyes turned inwards, into himself.

‘One has to wonder, doesn't one? What the hell are you doing here?'

It's all I got that day. I tried again, of course, a dozen times over, targeting what I thought to be his weak points – the estranged wife, his passion for the Colonel's whore, his reticence about the midget's secret and the pain his obstinacy had precipitated. The curious thing was that I could see him being affected by my insinuations: his face would flush, with guilt or anger or shame. He never once tried to refute them, but rather listened with a certain receptive eagerness. And yet everything I said seemed to only entrench in him more deeply his refusal to co-operate. On occasion he would rouse himself to retaliate, calmly demanding that I expose myself as Boyd's tormentor and the boy's killer and thus ‘accept responsibility'. He never once raised his voice, and was scrupulously polite when it came to thanking me for the food, coffee and water I handed him.

It drained me, this long day of questions. When I thought I couldn't bear it any longer, I set up my chessboard and pretended a game against my brother, who had died long ago from a familiar mixture of patriotism and mustard gas, wedged tightly into some barren furrow of French earth. For every fallen pawn, I forced myself to formulate another question; three for a bishop and a half-dozen for the queen. By the time my king fell, I knew I had to be on my way.

It was past nine o'clock. I stood, drew close to his cage, bid Pavel a good night. He nodded acceptance, sitting on the corner of his mattress, but did not reiterate the phrase. On impulse, I dropped to my haunches, looked him eye to eye.

‘All I want,' I said, ‘is for us to talk like men.'

He turned away then, and ran a weary hand through his hair.

I walked out without further comment and, at the top of the stairs, switched off the light to leave him in total darkness. The door locked behind me with a pleasing little click.

Upstairs, the drawing room was still alive with occupants, and I stopped at the door for a moment to watch the Colonel's young children at a game of charades: a boy and a girl in their Sunday best, whispering in some private tongue of theirs. The gramophone was spewing forth some opera, drowning out their voices, something dour and German with too much brass. I did not notice the children's mother at first. She was sitting in the shadow of the Christmas tree, stiff-backed upon the couch, with her palms in her lap and her feet aligned beneath her. It was only when she rose to greet me that I saw she was crying.

‘Say good night to the gentleman,' she instructed her children. ‘Mr Peterson, is it?'

‘Yes, ma'am.'

The girl curtsied and the boy shook my hand, both of them doing their best not to stare at my patch.

‘Good night,' said the mother.

They had all three of them the most wonderful manners.

‘All I want, Pavel, is for us to talk like men.'

I'd said it lightly, on a hunch, to draw him into me and bait his heart. I wonder, though, how much truth lay in those words even then, in those early days of interrogation. In retrospect, it is hard to imagine a time when my heart was not yet heavy with the thought of him. Something about the man spoke to me: his gentleness, the calm good manners, a man dignified even when passing his water, down in his enemy's cell, and his jailer vexing him with questions.

But this is me talking now, gorged upon the illusions of hindsight. Back then, after my second day spent with Pavel, I lay exhausted, snoring, oblivious still to what lay in store. Wore a nightcap of wool and a triple layer of socks; my alarm clock ticking and a glass of water half-frozen on the dresser, eye-patch hanging off the bathroom hook. At sunup, I rose, ironed my hanky, and planned my next move. Outside, the sun hung low and sickly in the sky, barely clearing the mounds of rubble. I drove to work rehearsing words and strategies, my mind already with Pavel.

One wonders how he spent the nights, Pavel, haggard, sweating, cut off from all life. He will have searched the cage first of all; run his hands down its bars and rattled the lock. Will have kneeled in prayer, perhaps, his shirt spread out behind his head and shaping Hebrew syllables he barely understood. The conviction must have grown on him, that second night, that he would not be tortured. It may have signalled to him that the Colonel had long since secured the
merchandise, and that he, Pavel, was marked for quiet execution. One can picture him coming to terms with it: a bullet to the base of his neck, or the edge of a spade, if one wanted to be quiet about it. A long, dark night, sweating into his mattress's straw; not a wink of sleep, I should have thought, and shy brittle thoughts about Sonia, spelling out words he might have said, but never did.

When I got down to the basement that morning, Pavel was on his hands and knees. He had found that, in the basement's heat, a bunch of cockroaches had decided to defy the laws of the season and come out of whatever form of hibernation their kind favours. Pavel was crouching over them with delight, watching them dart from shadow to shadow and feed on the crumbs of his previous night's dinner. ‘Life,' he told me gloatingly, ‘down here in your torturer's den.'

The vision of his dark, moist eyes glowering at me from the cage while insects scuttled across its concrete floor so took me aback that I forgot all about the questions I had been mentally preparing all morning. I excused myself and went upstairs to brew some coffee. The Colonel's wife was there, dressed in her morning gown. There had been no news from the Colonel, and should she butter me some rolls? We talked about the weather, the Nuremberg trials, Germany's capacity for self-pity. Half an hour later I was back in the basement with Pavel.

‘Tell me more about your wife,' I said.

He turned his back on me and stared at roaches.

We said little more for the rest of the morning. I felt tired, uneasy, frustrated. Here we were, our third day in the basement, and I was not
an inch closer to the information the Colonel had asked me to procure. At the same time, I was becoming aware of my mounting curiosity. I had, within those very walls, listened to perhaps a half-dozen life stories and taken careful note of them. Now I was eager to learn Pavel's, right down to his private habits and desires. You would be surprised what men part with when under duress. I cast around for something that would hurt him. Sticks and stones, I remember thinking. No words came to mind that would compare to a good old-fashioned beating. Until I chanced upon the war, that is.

‘Where did you serve?' I asked.

‘What?'

‘In the war. Where did you serve?'

I waited while he made up his mind whether or not to answer me.

‘The D-Day landing. France, then Holland, going east.'

‘Did you kill any Krauts, my friend?'

‘Krauts,' he echoed. ‘I never liked that word.'

I repeated my question. ‘Did you kill?'

‘What is it to you?'

‘Look who's not taking responsibility now.'

He screwed up his mouth and would not speak further, but I could see I had hit upon a nerve, blood rushing to his face and his hands curling into tidy little fists. Now it was up to me to find out what had got him so agitated about the whole affair.

I got there through sheer verbosity. Thoroughly bored of restricting myself to the same monosyllabic questions, I launched into a description of my own period of service; told anecdotes, sketched comrades, chattered about the war. I know it was hardly part of the interrogator's handbook, but I must have felt that Pavel was a special case, who would not respond to the usual rigmarole of food deprivation
and bright shining lamps. It felt good, I must confess, letting go of prudent restraint. All the same, I watched him carefully, looking for a means to rouse him from his passivity and goad him into some form of self-betrayal.

Throughout my chatter he sat with his back against the bars and his eyes on the roaches, shooting me a glance, on occasion, when I was laying it on a little thick. At long last – we had just eaten our lunch – I paused and stood up from my chair and drew close to where he was sitting.

‘But none of this seems to interest you very much, Mr Richter. It seems like you have no stomach for the war. It offends you. You're one of those sensitive types – it's all there in the cast of your mouth – who prefer to shut out the unpleasantries of existence. Let me tell you something, Mr Richter: I take the Colonel over you any day. Not a nice man, I will admit, but an honest one. Looks life in the eye. You walked your way from Normandy to Berlin, a gun in your hand, and now you pretend it never happened. You won't even think about it.'

I spat out a piece of gristle, and hoped to God he would take the bait.

He did in the end, though he took his sweet time making up his mind. Sat sullenly upon the mattress, his head buried in one hand, and pushed tinned vegetables around on his lunchtime plate. Surrendered his cutlery, placed the plate on the floor, and stood. Took two steps and an age to walk over towards the iron bars. His face, I saw, had taken on a peculiarly solemn cast. I remember thinking that the man wore tragedy like a lady wears her stole. It set off his eyes.