Tin Sky (11 page)

When I first heard about the matter last month, I enquired at the 161st HQ whether a search could be organized to stop rumours (and killings) once and for all. The reply wasn’t encouraging: I was told to ignore what happens to civilians, and Russians to boot. Additional reasons: Krasny Yar isn’t strategically relevant (true, but what’s strategically relevant when our biggest headaches at the moment are partisan bands, for whom two rocks and a log are shelter enough?) The woods are partly mined – by us or by the Reds, I don’t have that detail, and don’t really have a clear idea of the contours of the risk zone. The non-com I met there would have told me if there was danger. Seems we haven’t yet decided whether we’ll clear them or finish mining them in weeks to come. Most importantly, no German soldier has been harmed in or around Krasny Yar.

Should the official disinterest surprise me? When we first arrived at Merefa, I reported to the German War Crimes Bureau that we’d discovered the bodies of executed German soldiers in this schoolyard, along with the corpses of many civilians. The 161st Division judge promised to “send someone”, which in time I have learnt to suspect is another way to say that nothing will happen. In
nearly four years of war we’ve all grown overwhelmed with the sheer amount of violations from all quarters. Back in Poland and even at the start of the Russian campaign we had a system going: reports regularly flowed from the field through divisional command, and we even had “flying judges”, unattached to specific units, sent directly from Germany to investigate. I haven’t given up on the “Merefa Schoolyard” case, as I call it, all the more since there are two or three other important pieces of news I hope to report if the right counterpart comes about. Krasny Yar isn’t one of them exactly, but if a judge arrives and looks half-interested, I’ll add it to the list. Lt. Colonel von Salomon tells me I’m “too picky”, a strange choice of words under the circumstances, because I think myself thorough but not fastidious. 20 German soldiers and at least twice as many Russian nationals fatten the earth where Kostya’s hens scratch for grubs: it isn’t picky to urge for a fair enquiry.

Enough. I’ve got a busy day tomorrow. If I belonged to my older relatives’ generation (and had a bed at my disposal), I could say
And now to bed
, as Victorian diarists used to do. But a camp bed is what I have, too uncomfortable to honour with a diary line.

WEDNESDAY 5 MAY

Something nagged at him the moment Bora opened his eyes, a kernel of foreboding that something negative lay just around the corner. Not waiting
for him
directly – it would be useful if warnings came that way; his destiny would be manageable then – but in relation to him, involving him somehow. He lay staring at the ceiling trying to tell himself it wasn’t so, that anxiety trailed behind other, less admissible feelings. Towards dawn he’d dreamt of his wife. Dikta slowly, lovingly taking his clothes off, in a room whose ceiling was so low over them it nearly touched the bedposts. They’d never lain in such a room, but she’d more than once undressed him – though always in great haste. As a rule, Bora made himself not think of her, because
it was difficult enough as it was. Being away, not lying with her, having to make do.
Making do
implied a few unalterable rules: cold showers, long hours, staying well away from Russian girls. Dreams he tried not to have, or to forget immediately. Starting the day with Dikta on his mind, aching for her, was absolutely no good. He’d rather worry.

Kostya, who’d already left for the Komarevka station in a two-horse droshky, set aside a pail of icy well water ready for him every morning. In his shorts, Bora stepped barefoot into the cold shade outside the school building, and emptied the pail over his head and shoulders.
Nitichenko is starting to spook me, damn him. I’ll kick him from here to Losukovka if he shows up again
. He shaved, dressed, drank a tin of coffee and headed out of Merefa towards Kharkov with a painful sense of tightness at the pit of his stomach, his typical mode of transferring stress to the body, where he could clench his jaw and bear it.

7 a.m. At this time, Kostya would be picking up the babushkas who’d do the regiment’s wash. The day promised sunshine, despite a few flesh-coloured clouds from the endless east (it was Russia, Russia and then again Russia, all the way to the Pacific Ocean). Bora mentally reviewed what he’d tell Platonov in case he balked at completing the questionnaire –
I swear I’ll threaten to kill his women if he crosses me
– but in fact was still thinking of Dikta. In the dream (or else in his elaboration of it), she knelt on the bed wearing a satin garter belt and nothing else. Rose-pink satin, the colour of clouds and all the slippery or lacy things she wore under her clothes, meant to exalt rather than cover, like sea froth between Venus’ thighs. The last thing, the last thing he should be thinking of.

Meanwhile, he’d reached the
Kombinat
. In the grassy patch in front of Stark’s office, Russian prisoners were hauling water from a trough. They froze when the German vehicle came to a screeching halt nearby. Without a word Bora jumped off, grabbed the bucket from one of them, set it on the trough’s edge and dunked his own head into it. Coincidentally, District
Commissioner Stark was stepping out of the door for a smoke, and remained there, open-mouthed, with the cigarette in his hand. He was still staring when Bora restarted the engine and sped away.

Nothing’s about to happen.
He kept drumming the thought into his mind while he crossed the temporary bridge over the Udy.
There’s nothing unusual, nothing’s about to happen
. Nothing unusual at the checkpoints, at the corner of Novomirskaya, past the railroad tracks, entering the Velikaya Osnova district. Yet the moment he turned into Mykolaivska, Bora
knew
things were wrong, despite the usual appearance of the street.

As soon as he set foot inside the special detention centre, he heard Mina’s furious barking at the foot of the stairs. “We just phoned the hospital, Herr Major,” the guard on the ground floor informed him. “Number Five really took ill this time. Will you go and see him at once?”

Bora didn’t need to be told; he was already climbing the steps two at a time. With a first-aid kit over his shoulder, Weller overtook him at an even faster pace, grabbing the handrail to speed himself up. “Surgeon’s coming,” he shouted, and ran ahead.

Platonov’s door was wide open. The general lay on top of his bedcover, fully dressed, grey in the face, eyes closed. The sergeant heading the centre and two guards stood by while the medic felt for vital signs and started preparing an injection at once. “Usually this brings him around,” he said, barely turning his face towards Bora. “This time, I’m not sure. It’s his heart, I think.”

“The men thought he was sleeping,” the sergeant volunteered, “but he wouldn’t move when they shook him.”

After giving the shot, Weller renewed his checking and tapping: quick, neutral motions that might equally suggest hope or impending failure.

Bora was trying not to let his anger get the better of him. Finding anything that resembled a responsibility for what had
happened seemed the only way to cope with his disappointment. “What did he have to eat?” he pressed the guards.

“Nothing, Herr Major. We were about to bring him his breakfast.”

“Did he take any medication? Weller, did you give him any?”

The medic shook his head without looking. “The
Oberstarzt
specifically forbade that he be handed any medicine to take on his own.”

“Sergeant, how did he seem last night?”

“Other than that he hardly touched his dinner, Herr Major, he slept through until midnight. At 02.00 hours we checked on him and he was pacing back and forth, talking to himself. At four he lay down again and had nightmares, because we heard him cry out in his sleep like he always did. An hour ago he started groaning, but that was no news either. Then he went quiet, and we only realized we ought to send for help when he wouldn’t wake up.”

Weller, who’d been crouching by the bed, stood up when he heard the heavy steps of the army surgeon from Hospital 169 clattering up the stairs. He walked in, nodded to Bora, sent out the guards and launched into some expert, thorough auscultation and work of his own. Another injection, more searching for life signs, and, finally, a pause.

“He’s gone.”

Fuck
, Bora thought, without reacting openly. Before he could think of what to say, the surgeon – a weary-looking man who seemed in need of medical attention as much as any patient of his – confirmed, “Myocardial infarction.”

“Are we sure?”

The surgeon’s eyes, bleary and yellow with jaundice, blinked twice. His pallor – like von Salomon’s obsessions, like the stubbed, blackened thumbnail on Weller’s hand as he put away the useless medications – was a sign of the times. Details stood before him so starkly as to become symbols. Bora waited for an answer with heart in mouth.
We are all bruised, inside and
out. Those of us who didn’t die, that is; who didn’t lose fingers and toes to frost, who weren’t blinded or maimed. War marks us all, sooner or later. Other than by fever, I wonder how
I
am marked
.

“There was hardly anything that could have been done, Major. A quick but natural process.”

The disappointment was nearly too much to take. Bora suppressed the thought that Platonov’s wife and daughter were arriving by train within the hour.

“He’s the first prisoner I’ve ever lost.”

That was not strictly true. It did not take into account the prisoners executed after Bora had failed to make them talk, or those who had told what they knew, but had been taken away just the same and shot against his will. He was reacting badly not only because of what else he could have learnt from Platonov with the lure of his womenfolk; it also seemed to him that the old man had purposely, perversely succeeded in silencing himself forever before his last surrender.

“Yes?” The surgeon sounded unmoved by Bora’s statement. “Well, Major, he was a sickly man. I saw him when they first brought him in, and whatever happened to him in years past has undermined his health. He bore signs of repeated forms of stress and abuse.”

“I want a post-mortem.”

Before them, Platonov seemed unnaturally long and narrow on the bed, as if death had stretched him out at both ends. Sourness, and the contempt with which he must have spat out his last breath, remained stamped on his face. The surgeon stared at Bora. “I don’t think we need to look for blame. This was bound to happen whether you, I or the medic were here or not; probably even if the prisoner hadn’t been kept under pressure lately.”

“I want a post-mortem, Herr Oberstarzt.”

Bora’s resentment failed to get a response. The surgeon dropped his shoulders: he’d obviously long ago learnt not to fight useless battles. “As you wish. But it will confirm what I’m telling you.”

“
Please
.”

“Very well. I’ve got my hands full now, so I’ll run an autopsy first thing in the morning. Is that soon enough for you?”

“Thank you.”

“All right, then. Weller, come along: there’s nothing else we can do here. I’ll send an ambulance for the body.”

On the fourth floor, flies circled the landing. Bora reached it, carrying in his briefcase Platonov’s few personal items, including his women’s photo and the blank sheet and pencil he’d issued him in case the prisoner decided to add information, which had been left untouched on the table. Thorough as he was, Bora saw partial failure rather than partial success, and knew himself well enough to anticipate how he’d dwell on this failure from now on.
I should have stayed in the room. I should have kept pushing him. I shouldn’t have given him a chance to escape by death.
In the corridor, all was quiet. Bora hesitated at the top of the stairs before entering Tibyetsky’s room. The handful of nights he’d spent there, waiting for Platonov to talk, seemed such a waste of precious time now. He felt no sorrow whatever for the old man: only anger at knowing he’d have to deal with his wife and daughter in fifty minutes’ time.

According to the guards Khan was up and about, so Bora, who had the key to the room, knocked briefly as a formality and stepped in.

A transient, artificial ceiling of cigar smoke ebbed away upon his entrance, dissolving in a pungent wave.

“Komandir Tibyetsky.”

Flemish merchants, well-fed city dwellers portrayed by Dutch painters in their comfortable interiors: Hendrick Terborch surfaced through Khan Tibyetsky as he sat bootless, sipping soda from an inexplicably ornate tall goblet, rimmed in gold. Army Supply had found it somewhere, that remnant of pre-revolutionary splendour, and had set it aside with the rest of the mismatched furnishings for the special detention centre.
Bora had never used it. It was the sort of goblet you could find in Renaissance Bruges, or in Amsterdam.

“Major Bora.”

This was a separate world from downstairs; other rules applied. Remote as their relationship might be, the two men faced each other in the unspoken awareness of a common past – theirs were the well-to-do North European cities, the solidity of aristocracy and landed gentry, a cultivated breed of men and women accustomed to seeing what they shared across and despite national borders. All Khan was doing amounted to a dipping of lips in the sweet drink, seated on the bed with a partly unwrapped chocolate ration by his side, and the photograph showing him in all his glory on the bedside table. Bora on the other hand, pale after Platonov’s death, had to seal off his turmoil in order to concentrate solely on the minor task of paying a visit to his prize guest.