Kolchak's gold

“Quite well.”

“Do you think you’ll have time to finish within the limitations of your visa?”

In his circumspect manner Zandor somehow contrived to make the most innocuous remark sound like a threat. Uncertain of his objective, I said, “I think so. A bit more time wouldn’t hurt.”

“My ministry has asked whether there’s anything you require that we haven’t provided. Perhaps I can help arrange for an extension on your visa. What would you say? A fortnight? Three weeks?”

“That’s very kind,” I said. “Which ministry is that, Mr. Zandor?”

“Propaganda. The Ministry of Propaganda.” I didn’t believe a word of it.

He added, “That’s a word which has unpleasant overtones in English, does it not? Here we consider it an honorable calling.” There was a hint of asperity in his voice. His smooth smile tried to ingratiate but the eyes remained cold when they flicked casually across my face.

He waved me to a high-back wing chair near the corner of his table. While I was settling into it he said, “Would you care for coffee?”

“Thank you.”

Zandor made a signal and the bodyguard turned to the door, his chin tucked in with disapproval; and went out. At the table Zandor had turned his attention momentarily to a stack of papers. He used his thumb to flip through them the way a bank teller would count money. His expression was one of acerbic boredom: superior, suggestive of weltschmerz, irritated at having to devote his important time to a case as trivial as mine. Beyond him through the high windows the sky was as grey as a sheet of metal. The rain seemed to be diminishing.

He put a finger on the stack of papers. “You have examined some very interesting documents, Mr. Bristow.”

I froze up; I said, probably overcasually, “It’s been a good opportunity-I’m very grateful to the Soviet government.”

“You seem to have very wide interests, judging by the material you’ve asked to see.”

A pulse thudded in my throat. I wondered if he noticed it. “Obsessive curiosity is the occupational malady of my profession.”

“And so it should be, I’m sure.”

He seemed given to the abrupt startling movement. He shoved his chair back, stood, went to the window and spoke with his back to me.

“Even today there are politicians in Bonn with a brown past, Mr. Bristow. The war is not a dead thing. Yet in Paris the young students ask, ‘Hitler-connais pas?’ To the young, words like Fascist and Hitler are mere figures of speech, to be applied indiscriminately to anyone whose behavior displeases them. You know a year or two ago the British filmed a television program about Hitler in Berchtesgaden and Munich, and the actor who played the role was embraced by Germans in the streets. There were women who wept.”

“I know there are still Nazi sympathizers.”

“It could be stated rather more strongly than that, couldn’t it? During the First War Germany was still a civilized nation. But no more. Not since Hitler. They stink of murder-they’re a blight on our era.”

The words were more forceful than the voice; Zandor spoke with a sort of sepulchral enthusiasm and it didn’t ring true. He went on:

“It’s too soon for the world to forget these things. Those who cherish fascism are still in positions to acquire power in the West, where their ambitions frequently coincide with those of the evil corruptions of capitalism. The Nazis must not be pushed away down the gratings of history. We all have an obligation to keep the lesson of the war vividly before the minds of new generations.”

He turned to face me. My feeling was the one you get when you’re sitting up late watching an old movie you’ve seen before. Not precisely deja vu; more a sense that I had experienced this scene too often before-that the celluloid was brittle with age.

Zandor returned to his seat and stared-whimsically, I thought-at a point a yard above my head. “In the Soviet Union we were knocked to our knees by the Germans, Mr. Bristow. But we learned that an army could shoot very well from that position. Nevertheless it’s an experience none of us ought to have to repeat. When the Germans took Russian prisoners they held them in concentration camps by the hundreds of thousands. The SS slaughtered thousands of Russians with machine guns. The Master Race hadn’t the time to feed the rest of them so they starved them to death, about three million of them. The survivors turned to cannibalism and consumed the wasted corpses of their comrades. From Sebastopol alone, ten thousand Russian women were transported to the concentration camps in Germany. Most them went up the chimney at Auschwitz. Not Jews. Russians.”

It was tempting to riposte that conditions during the Stalinist pogroms and purges had been no different from what he was describing. But of course I didn’t. He was watching me for a reaction-smiling slightly, but eyes at odds with his lips-and I only said, “I know these things, Mr. Zandor.”

He picked up a pencil and held it upright, bouncing its point on the table. “We Russians are known for xenophobia. Granted. But I think when it comes to distrusting Germans you must concede we have a just point.”

“All Germans?”

“Nearly all.”

I said, “Even during the war there were Germans-high-ranking officers-who tried to do away with Hitler.”

“Mr. Bristow, we’re both aware that the plot to kill Hitler was carried out only after the plotters decided Germany was losing the war. The plot was hatched ten years too late, and it failed. It was hardly admirable. Since the war the Germans have done a remarkable job of convincing themselves that the treason of cowards cost Hitler the war-so that they have their excuse to exculpate the Nazis and restore Hitler’s memory to untarnished greatness, which they have done.”

“You’re talking about a minority of Germans today.”

Again the phlegmatic smile. “Perhaps. It’s true that my aunt and two of my brothers were among those who did not return from Auschwitz.” He spoke precisely, relishing the dry phrases. Yet it was complete sham: how cold he really was, how faithless-like a priest who only wore the collar because it gave him a sinecure-never any question of belief or real feeling. He was one of those clever ones whose existence is limned by the words with which they play-the ones who have not very much reality outside the words. His sophistication was amoral, the artifice of one who hadn’t ever experienced a real emotion. He spoke of tragic atrocities-he spoke for the victims-yet looking at him, his eyes mirroring arrogant contempt, you could see he had never known anything of pity.

Zandor tucked his chin in toward his tie, probably displeased with my lack of zealous agreement but determined to carry on with his argument. If he was aware of my silent antipathy he gave no indication of it; but it may merely have been his habitual remoteness.

He touched the pencil point to the stack of papers beside his blotter. “You’ve confined your investigations mainly to military operations with reference to the siege here?”

“That’s right, yes.” A sudden new line of questioning: and I was afraid again.

Zandor gave a gloomy sigh. “To be sure it’s desirable that the heroism of Russian soldiers be emphasized in your book-”

“I fully intend to do that.”

“-but isn’t it equally important that you emphasize the crimes of the invaders? And don’t you think-”

“I have no intention of whitewashing the Nazis.”

“-don’t you think history demands that you make clear the moral distinctions between German and Russian, if that is the correct-”

“Mr. Zandor,” I said in an effort to be reasonable, “I think you’re inferring too much from a glance at the kind of records I’ve asked to look at. The crimes of the Nazis have been documented ad nauseam and we have those facts available to us in the West, for the most part. What we don’t have there is the details of the Soviet military campaigns which”-I added this as a palliative-“led to the great Red victory over the Third Reich. But you’re mistaken if you’ve got the impression that I have any intention of ignoring the Nazi atrocities.”

Zandor leaned forward, intending me to listen to him; clearly I had provoked him and he retaliated with schoolmasterish pique. “I’ve tried to complete my statement three times, but you keep interrupting. Now please let me finish.”