A Man Without Breath (23 page)

The executioner himself wasn’t much more than a boy, but he went about his job with ruthless efficiency, and little more sign of emotion than if he had been about to kick at the sidewalls of a set of tyres. Instead, he placed the instep of his boot on the wooden steps and – almost carelessly – pushed them over.

The two condemned men dropped several centimetres and then swung like coat hangers, their legs cycling furiously on bicycles that weren’t there; and all the time their necks seemed to grow longer, like footballers straining to head the ball at a goal. Both men groaned loudly and steam enveloped their torsos as they lost control of their bladders. I turned away with a feeling of profound disgust and anger that I had been tricked by Corporal Hermichen into witnessing his squalid death.

It makes for a hell of a weekend when you’re obliged to attend a hanging.

*

I went to the Zadneprovsky Market on Bazarnaya Square, where you could buy all manner of things. Even in winter the square was full of enterprising Russians with something to sell now that the constraints of communism had been removed: an icon, an old vase, a home-made broom, jars of pickled beets and onions, some radishes, quilted clothing, pencils, snow shovels, hand-carved chess sets and pipes, portraits of Stalin, portraits of Hitler, unexploded propaganda grenades, cigarette papers, safety matches, lend-lease fuel packs for preparing food, lend-lease meat rations, lend-lease anti-gas goggles, lend-lease first-aid kits, bundled copies of a satirical magazine called
Crocodile
, back issues of
Pravda
that
were useful for starting a fire, packets of Mahorka – this was Red Army tobacco (so strong it was like inhaling your very first cigarette) – and of course numerous Red Army souvenirs: these were popular with German soldiers, especially RKKA helmets, medals, tobacco tins, butter cans, spoons, razors, liquid polish, TT pistol holsters, wrist compasses, trench-shovels, map-cases, cavalry sabres and – most popular of all – SVT bayonets.

I wasn’t in search of any of this stuff. A souvenir was something you bought to remind you of somewhere, and although it wasn’t yet over, I knew I didn’t ever want to be reminded of my time in Smolensk. After the day I’d just had I wanted to forget about it as quickly as possible. So I went to Bazarnaya Square with something else in mind: a source of cheap oblivion.

I bought two large bottles of home-brewed beer –
brewski
 – and was about to buy a bottle of
samogon
 – the cheap but powerful home-made spirit we Germans were always being warned not to drink – when I saw a familiar face. It was Doctor Batov, from the Smolensk State Medical Academy.

‘You don’t want this stuff,’ he said removing the
samogon
from my hand. ‘Not if you want to see yourself in the mirror tomorrow.’

‘That was rather the point,’ I said. ‘I’m not sure I do. I heard the thing to do was pour the
samogon
into the
brewski
and drink the mixture.
Yorsh
, it’s called, isn’t it?’

‘For an intelligent man you have some very stupid ideas. If you drink two and a half litres of
yorsh
you may never see again. I suppose I should be glad if an enemy soldier kills or blinds himself, but I can easily make an exception in your case. What happened? I thought you weren’t coming back. Or is your return to Smolensk a punishment for discovering their dirty little secret?’

He was talking about the Polish intelligence report we had translated in his laboratory with the aid of the stereo microscope.

‘Actually, I decided to keep my mouth shut about that,’ I said. ‘At least for now. My life seems precarious enough without rocking the steps it’s standing on. No, I’m back here in Smolensk on other duties. Although I certainly wish I wasn’t. I just want to get drunk and to forget more than I care to remember. It’s been that sort of a day, I’m afraid.’

And I told him where I’d been and what I’d seen.

Batov shook his head. ‘It’s a curious example your generals try to make,’ he said. ‘Hanging one kind of German soldier for behaving like another kind of German soldier. Do they suppose it will make us dislike the Germans a little less if you execute one of your own for killing Russians – after all, that’s what you’re here for, isn’t it? To get rid of us so that you can live in the space made by our absence? There’s a kind of schizophrenia working here.’

‘That’s just a medical name for hypocrisy,’ I said. ‘Which is the homage the Wehrmacht pays to virtue. Honour and justice in Germany are just a delusion. But it’s a delusion that someone in my line of work has to deal with every day. Sometimes I think that the greater insanity is not to be found in our leaders but in the judges I work for.’

‘I’m a doctor, so I prefer medical names. But if your government is schizophrenic, then mine is certainly dangerously paranoid. You’ve no idea.’

‘No. But it might be amusing to compare notes.’

Batov smiled. ‘Come with me,’ he said. ‘I’ll show you where you can buy the better stuff. It’s not great, but it won’t put you in hospital. At the SSMA we’re rather short of beds as it is.’

We went to another corner of the square – a quieter corner, on Kauf Strasse – where a man with a face like a box of iron filings and with whom Batov had clearly dealt before sold me a
chekuschka
, which was a quarter-litre of vodka from Estonia. The bottle was asymmetrical in a way that made you think you were already drunk, and the stuff looked no less suspicious than the
samogon
, but Batov assured me it was good stuff, which was probably why I decided to buy two and suggested he keep me company.

‘Drinking alone is never a good idea,’ I said. ‘Especially when you’re by yourself.’

‘I was on my way to the bakery on Bruckenstrasse.’ He shrugged. ‘But the chances are they won’t have any bread anyway. And even when they do it’s like eating earth. So yes, I would like that. I live south of the river. On Gudunow Strasse. We can go there and drink these bottles if you like.’

‘Why do you use the German names for the streets and not your own Russian names?’

‘Because then you wouldn’t know where I was talking about. Of course this might just be a cunning trap. Me being an Ivan, I could have decided to lure you back to my place where some partisans are waiting to cut off your ears and nose and your balls.’

‘You’d be doing me a favour. It’s my ears and nose and my balls that seem to get me in trouble.’ I nodded firmly. ‘Let’s go, doctor. It would be nice to spend time with a Russian who’s not an Ivan, or a Popov, or a Slav, or a subhuman. It would be good to be with a Russian who’s just a man.’

‘Oh my God, you’re an idealist,’ said Batov. ‘And clearly a dangerous one at that. It’s obvious to me that you’ve been sent here to Russia to put that idealism severely to the test. Which is perfectly understandable. And rather perceptive of
your superiors. Russia is the best place for a cruel experiment like that. This is the country for cruel experiments – it’s where idealists are sent to die, my friend. Killing people who believe in things is our national sport.’

With the bottles in Batov’s empty shopping bag we went and found my car and drove over the rickety temporary wooden bridge that connected the southern part of the city with the northern part: German engineers had been busy. But Russian women were, it seemed, no less industrious; on the banks of the Dnieper they were already hard at work building the wooden rafts that would transport things into the city when the river was properly navigable.

‘Is it the women who do all the work here?’ I asked.

‘Someone has to, don’t you think? It will be the same for you Germans one day, you mark my words. It’s always the women who rebuild the civilizations that the men have done their best to destroy.’

Batov lived alone in a surprisingly spacious apartment in a largely undamaged building that was painted the same shade of green as many of the churches and public buildings.

‘Is there some reason why every other building has been painted green?’ I asked. ‘Camouflage, perhaps?’

‘I think green was the only colour available,’ said Batov. ‘This is Russia. Explanations are usually commonplace. We probably exceeded some sort of five-year plan for paint production, only no one thought to produce more than one colour. Very likely blue paint was made the previous year. Blue is the right colour for a lot of these buildings, by the way. Historically speaking.’

Inside, the apartment was a series of rooms connected by a long corridor that ran along the wall facing onto the street.
Built into this long wall was a series of bookshelves that were full of books. The apartment smelt of furniture polish and fried food and tobacco.

‘That’s quite a collection you have there,’ I said.

Batov shrugged. ‘They serve a double purpose. As well as keeping me busy – I love to read – they help to insulate the corridor against the cold. It’s doubly fortunate that Russians write such thick books. Perhaps that’s why.’

We went into a cosy little drawing room that was heated with a tall brown ceramic stove that stood in the corner like a petrified tree. While I glanced around the room, Batov pushed some wood in the brass door on the grate and closed it again. I knew his wife was dead, but there were no pictures of her to be seen, and this puzzled me, as there were many marks on the wallpaper where framed pictures had been hanging, as well as many photographs of Batov himself and a girl I presumed was his daughter.

‘Your wife,’ I said. ‘Was she killed in the war?’

‘No, she died before the war,’ he said, fetching some small glasses, some black bread and some pickles.

‘Do you have a picture of her?’

‘Somewhere,’ he said, waving a hand at the apartment and its contents. ‘In a box in the bedroom, I think. You’re wondering why I keep her hidden, perhaps? Like an old pair of gloves.’

‘I was rather.’

He sat down and I poured two glasses.

‘Here’s to her, anyway,’ I said. ‘What was her name?’

‘Jelena. Yes, here’s to her. And to the memory of your own wife.’

We threw the glasses back and then banged them down on the table. I nodded. ‘Not bad,’ I said. ‘Not bad at all. So that’s
chekuschka
.’

‘
Chekuschka
is really what we call the size of the bottle, not the stuff that’s in it,’ he said. ‘The vodka is cheap stuff but nowadays that’s all there is.’

I nodded. ‘Your wife,’ I said. ‘I didn’t mean to pry. Really, it’s none of my business.’

‘It’s not because I didn’t love her that I keep her photographs hidden,’ explained Batov, ‘but because in 1937 she was arrested by the NKVD after she had been accused of anti-Soviet agitation and wrecking. It was a difficult time for the country. Many were arrested or simply disappeared. I don’t display her photographs because I’m afraid to do so would be to risk the same thing happening to me. I could hang them up again, of course. After all, it’s not as if the NKVD are likely to come calling while you Germans are here in Smolensk. But somehow I haven’t had the courage. Courage is another thing that’s in short supply in Smolensk these days.’

‘What did happen?’ I said. ‘To Jelena, I mean. After she was arrested.’

‘She was shot. At that particular time in Soviet history, arrest and a bullet in the back of the head were more or less synonymous. Anyway, that’s what they told me. A letter came in the post, which was thoughtful of them; so many people never learn these things for sure. No, I was lucky that way. She was Ukrainian–Polish, you see. I think I told you before – when you came to the hospital – she was from the Subcarpathian province. As a Pole she was a member of a so-called fifth-column community, and this made the authorities suspicious of her. The charge was nonsense of course. Jelena was an excellent doctor and devoted to all of her patients. But that certainly didn’t stop the authorities from alleging she had secretly poisoned many of her Russian patients. I imagine they tortured her to get her to implicate me, but as you can
see I’m still here, so I don’t think she could have told them what they wanted. Now I blame myself for not leaving Russia and going to live with her in Poland. Perhaps she would be alive if we had left. But that’s true of millions, I shouldn’t wonder. Jews especially, but Poles, too. Since the war of nineteen-twenty it’s been almost as difficult to be Polish under the Bolsheviks as it is to be Jewish under the Germans. It’s an old historical scar, but as always these scars run deep. The Russians lost, you see. Soviet forces under Marshal Tukhachevsky were defeated by General Pilsudski outside Warsaw – the so-called miracle on the Vistula. Stalin always blamed Tukhachevsky, and for his part he blamed Stalin. There was no love lost between them, so really it’s amazing that Tukhachevsky lasted as long as he did. But he was arrested in 1937 and he and his wife and two brothers were shot; I believe his three sisters and a daughter were sent to penal camps. So I suppose I and my daughter can count ourselves lucky in that we’re still here to tell the tale. I told you the name of this street is Gudunow Street. It is. But before the war it used to be called Tukhachevsky Street. And just living on a street with this name was a cause for suspicion. Really, you look like you think I’m exaggerating, but I’m not. People were arrested for much less than that.’

‘And I thought Hitler was bad.’

Batov smiled. ‘Hitler is just a minor demon in hell, but Stalin is the devil himself.’

We tossed another couple of glasses back and ate the bread and pickles – Batov called these little snacks
zakuski
 – and it wasn’t long before we had finished the first bottle, which he then placed beside the leg of the table.

‘In Russia an empty on the table is a bad omen,’ he said. ‘And we can’t afford any of those on Tukhachevsky Street. It’s
bad enough that I have a
fashisty
in my apartment. The floor lady will cross herself three times if she sees a
Hans
in the building and think her building has been cursed. Many at the hospital feel the same way about you
germanets
. It’s odd but for some Russians there’s really not much difference between you Germans and the Poles. I suppose that might be because there are parts of Poland which used to be German, which became Polish, and now they’re German again.’