Tin Sky (53 page)

When Mayr woke up with a start, Bora was finishing the letter to his wife he’d begun the day before. After the signature he capped his pen, setting the sheet aside so the ink would dry on it. “We have an agreement,” he said laconically.

With a mumbled apology for falling asleep, the surgeon said, “Weller’s nerves gave in after all. My colleague tells me he’s delusional.”

Bora frowned. “He’ll do well continuing to play insane.” The handshake they exchanged was dry and warm with fever. “Know that if I meet that gutless Weller anywhere, I’ll fire a bullet into his skull with my own hands. Have a safe trip to the Fatherland, Herr Oberstarzt.”

Overnight, Bora’s fever rose. The objective enormity of his action, the consequences if discovered prompted him – not for the first time in the last three years – to keep a loaded gun under his bed. In a restless state between waking and sleep, he distinctly saw leaves, shadows, the minutiae in Larisa’s garden as if he were still there waiting for Stark; he saw himself at Trakhenen with Peter, when as boys they had lain face up on his stepfather’s Great War horse blanket and watched the falling stars. It was summer; the banks of the Rominte were full of frogs. Then there was something else about Peter. The calendar on Stark’s desk had nothing to do with East Prussia or childhood, but there it was, too. The sick worry that the impression on today’s date might give Larisa’s address away and allow enquirers to reconstruct Stark’s itinerary became a very human desire to be as far away from here as possible. Sweat glued the undershirt to his stomach and armpits. In his agitation, Bora was tempted to go to Bespalovka for good and bury himself in his work there, but he had to stay, and present himself at the
Kombinat
besides. He fell into a brutal sleep towards dawn, and forgot he’d dreamt his brother’s death.

TUESDAY 1 JUNE

In the morning he was himself again, and the image of dispassion. He waited until 9 a.m. and drove to the
Kombinat
. The absence of Stark’s car from the grassy front lot was a given. It was the lack of typing, the breathless silence upstairs that impressed him. Stark’s assistant rose from his chair when Bora looked in from the hallway.

“Is the commissioner in?”

“Not yet, Major.”

Difficult to judge from his expression; bureaucrats are hard to read and go haywire for any change in routine, regardless of the motive behind it; a prolonged delay is to them as upsetting as a catastrophe. Bora glanced at his saddle on the floor. “Well, I’m here for the Karabakh. If I may, I’ll begin by harnessing him.”

The assistant looked down uncomfortably. “I’m sorry, Major Bora. General District Commissioner Magunia reviewed matters yesterday and decided to keep the stallion for reproduction. It is presently travelling to the Marbach stud farm. I’m very sorry.” He tried to dress his words in empathy, but his mind was evidently elsewhere. This morning everyone at the
Kombinat
must be labouring under the weight of Stark’s inexplicable truancy, and possibly Magunia’s hostility as well.

Bora replied (and meant it) that he was extremely disappointed about losing Turian-Chai. “I’ll have to live with it, I suppose.” He didn’t add that as a horse lover he couldn’t wish the animal a happier future than to enjoy the good life at the head of a stud farm, away from the battlefield. Shamelessly, he added instead, “I’ll wait for the commissioner, in any case. There’s the matter of my Russian prisoners’ destination, and of a permit I need for special food supplies. Will you please look on the commissioner’s desk and see if he left any instructions for me?”

“As you know, I don’t have the commissioner’s permission to look into his desk,” the assistant replied, but walked across the hallway to Stark’s office. “I’ll see what’s in the Out box.”

For all his internal turmoil, Bora followed calmly. In appearance, he was watching the official run his eyes across the neat array of paperwork. In fact, his attention was all on Stark’s desk calendar, open on today’s date. The previous leaf, used to scribble Larisa’s address, had been hurriedly detached along the perforated line, so much so that frayed bits of paper still hung from it. No other notes or reminders in view. The desk’s right-hand drawer was ajar enough to slip something in or out, possibly as Stark had left it after picking up his pistol on his way to Larisa’s.

The assistant sounded at a loss. “I don’t know, Major. We – have no directions as to the
Gebietskommissar
’s appointments today. It might be better for you to stop by later, or even phone before you come.”

“Very well, then. I’ll leave him a note.” Without waiting for the assistant to agree, Bora snatched a pencil from Stark’s desk and vigorously wrote on the calendar page.
Shipment of 123 Russian labourers began from Bespalovka at 04.00 on 1 June; arrival confirmed at rail station at 06.30. Please advise further. Bora (Major, Army)
. Whatever impression Stark’s note might have left on the paper below, it was now abundantly overwritten. “That’s that, then. Please have the saddle and harness replaced in my vehicle.”

When he left the
Kombinat
, Bora became aware of how his neck and shoulders ached after the effort of carrying the dead weight of a hefty man; other than that, he was a master of composure. On the highway to Kharkov he crossed SS and unmarked Gestapo vehicles in tow, travelling in the opposite direction. “What’s going on?” he indifferently enquired of the soldiers at the checkpoint. They didn’t know, but Bora had a strong impression the vehicles might belong to the search party. He stopped by divisional headquarters to have his orders updated and signed, and took the south-east road to Smijeff and Bespalovka. Halfway there he turned off towards Krasny Yar.

Peasants from Schubino and the surrounding area were still gathered in the clearing between the Kalekina farm and the woods, having come to identify and bury their dead sons and grandsons. Fresh graves dug in the thick soil, all fist-sized sods, formed a row along the leaning fence Bora had righted a few days earlier. Once he made them understand he wasn’t among those who’d carried out the operation, Bora got the reticent elders and the grieving women to talk. When he asked about the Kalekin widows, they told him the older one had hanged herself in the tractor shed. “So now her whole family is finished, and she’s done suffering.”

“The younger one?”

“The younger one moved in with the priest at Oseryanka.”

In the desolate house, open and probably already stolen from, a warm breeze made the cheap cotton draped across the window flutter as if it were alive. Bora recalled his first impression of the interior as an underwater world, where magic women noiselessly moved; now the trembling rag was like something lost, floating after a wreck. His present sadness seemed excessive, but somehow appropriate to the day.

Three of the
besprizornye
still lay where they’d been dragged by the SS. Grown youths machine-gunned in their tattered clothes, no one claimed them. Unclaimed and unknown, the peasants accused them of all the wrongdoing committed, from pilfering to the murder of old man Kalekin. For that reason, and because of the stench, everyone stayed away. The dead boys lay under a cloud of flies. One had unruly long hair, the other two were shaven close to the skull; all were barefooted, scrawny. Air and misery, as Roth said, was what they’d lived on for months, maybe years. Bora handed out
karbovanets
so the Russians would agree to dig a grave for them too.
The SS did me a favour after all; otherwise I might have had to shoot them myself.

What puzzled him most was hearing that, contrary to expectations, none of the civilians had ventured into the woods in the past two days. Some of these women and older men, come
on foot from a distance, were ready to go back without their children rather than daring Krasny Yar. “There could be other bodies,” Bora told them. “Don’t you want to know if other missing youngsters were left where they fell?”

They stood around him with their heads low – white kerchiefs and balding or grey brows, mulish and close-mouthed – while the unclaimed boys were shovelled into a shallow hole. Superstition is something you can’t argue against. But so are other things, much more pragmatic. Bora continued towards Bespalovka convinced of the rational explanation: it had prompted his request for orders and the stopover, after all. Once at the regimental camp, he commanded his troops to move into Krasny Yar not according to the original plan but as if against a stronghold, an encircling operation whose set-up required most of the day.

Written at Bespalovka, 3 June.

Thank God we Germans learnt our lesson about forest combat in 1941. Something told me not to trust the Yar this time. Yesterday, while committing a company to pretend a frontal advance towards the centre of the woods, I decided to send another to sweep around the northern edge, where the minefields were cleared by the SS. No sooner had they stepped into tree-covered ground than Ivan opened fire with all he had, snipers and mortar, machine guns tearing everything to shreds. It killed two of my troopers right off, and bogged the others down for a time.

In the three days since
Totenkopf
wiped out the
besprizornye
, on the mistaken principle that – like thunderbolts – the SS never strike the same place twice (or need to), Russian partisans had clearly moved into Krasny Yar. Whether they were those who’d escaped the 198th ID near the Obasnovka farm during Warm Gates, or fresh units arrived from across the Donets, it makes no difference. The confusion, wild shouting and volume of fire could have cowed us years ago, but not now. My platoon leaders kept the men from losing
heart, although for a moment I think they were overwhelmed. You couldn’t see where the shots came from; broken branches rained down, charges went off right and left: Varus at Teutoburg must have faced a similar sense of dismay. Thankfully, we were better equipped and organized than he was. Calling it a fierce battle would be too much, but for a good two hours it was an inferno. It took us that long to reduce their dogged resistance, strongest around the
kurgan
in the middle of the Yar. I made sure I had troopers waiting at the closest ford on the Donets, as I knew the Reds would try to get away in that direction. I positioned men at Schubino and the Kalekina farm as well. As for myself, I chose to advance with the “decoy” company, where, thanks to the experienced troopers, even greenhorns kept their wits about them under fire.

It took us until the afternoon to tighten the net, over ten hours in all. We were all justifiably provoked, and what frustrated us most was that in the end, rather than surrender, some of the partisans held grenades under their chins and made themselves explode. Others were cold-bloodedly killed by their own. We caught only a handful when it was all over, by the ditch near the walnut grove, the place called Orekhovy. Their commanding officer, an army regular gravely wounded, begged to be given his handgun. There were only Nagel and I present. Nagel frowned hard. He looked over for my assent, and because the man was too weak to hold the pistol steady, he mercifully did it for him.

So it’s done at last: the last of Krasny Yar’s ghosts have been exorcised. Even though it was worth it, it cost me fifteen casualties. After mopping up, I partly retraced the steps Nagel and I had followed when we first went into the woods together, to see what the
Totenkopf
engineers had been up to. Rags up in the air, where they’d blown up other caves and hideouts. Demolition charges were expertly placed in the
kurgan
, so that the collapsed corridor could explode without causing other cave-ins. The blast had revealed what I call an inner chamber for lack of a better expression, 3 x 3 metres in size, where the crates must have been kept these many years. A false treasure cave, as it were. Were the wild boys, the
besprizornye
, even dimly aware of it? It might have been with them as memories of events are handed down in all primitive societies, until they become one with fable. But taboos remain; strange pacts and unwritten laws stay inviolable. Boys little more than children killing or being killed aren’t so difficult to understand in this country: no more than a decade ago, Kostya’s sickly four-year-old sister was left to starve by his parents in order to save him and another healthy sibling, even though she wept and begged her mother for food! What do we Germans know? How can we judge? Even as a soldier I feel grief-stricken for all this, for everyone involved. As Nagel put it in his concise manner after the battle was over, “It’s a sick place where mercy means helping a man kill himself.”

Krasny Yar is definitely clear of occupants now. Engineers from the 161st are dismantling the remaining minefields in anticipation of the summer battle. Until our marching orders arrive, Gothland will camp at Bespalovka, ready to move out at any time.

KHARKOV

Debriefing with von Salomon was a concise matter. The lieutenant colonel heard Bora out without sitting for a moment at his desk. Hands behind his back, he paced a straight line between the window and the closed door of his office. The latest news about Commissioner Stark, rocking Kharkov’s administrative cadres, was foremost in his mind.

“Haven’t you seen them going by? The Gestapo has been at the Commissariat since 10.00 hours. Acting on information from the Central Security Office, its men also visited
Totenkopf’
s headquarters.”

Bora hinted at a nod. He’d hoped Stark’s disappearance would fuel the tension between the SA and Gestapo; that the state police would also show up on the Armed SS’ doorstep
was an added bonus. He said, “I did pass staff cars heading to the
Kombinat,
Herr Oberstleutnant. What’s the reason? As far as I could see, the district commissioner’s car wasn’t yet parked there when I drove by.”