At the dividing line between Heeresgruppe Mitte and Heeresgruppe Nord, one half of the camp follows the slow, green course of the Dvina. The air is damp and unbearable, a hum. Haber fumbles under his collar and swears, Grünfeldt has disappeared again: what is he up to? Semjon stands with a boy, we are inside a workshop, a steaming heat. He is no more than fourteen, a stick insect, hands in the pockets of his oversized trousers, held up by braces over his bare chest, chocks of wood under his feet, rags wound around his ankles and calves, eyes red, the corners of his mouth inflamed by some infection. Semjon has produced a tin of Thüringer pâté from his bag.
The boy says:
‘Khleb, Büchse njetu.’
He takes his too-large hand from his pocket, rubs his stomach in a circular movement, and coughs.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ I ask.
‘He does not want the tin,’ Semjon says. ‘It will make him sick.’
‘What does he want instead?’ I ask.
‘Bread.’
‘I see. Does he know anything?’
‘He says he saw a zek a few months back, he had the same tattoos.’
The boy nods, though it is unlikely he understands what we are saying. He speaks again, to Semjon.
‘He says he had two eyes on his back, just above the buttocks. He ran errands for him. He says he was from Vorkuta.’
‘Vorkuta?’
‘Yes. In the east. Gulag.’
‘Ask if there was a cockerel on his back too.’
Semjon turns again to the boy, they gesticulate, a long exchange. The boy grins and bunches his left hand, drills the index finger of his right hand into his tightened fist. Semjon punches him hard on the cheek and the boy is propelled onto his backside on the floor.
‘What does he say?’ I ask.
‘No. He said no.’
‘Why did you hit him?’
‘What?’
‘Why did you hit him?’
‘He said the prisoner was indecent … a faggot …’
‘What else?’
‘He joined up as a Hiwi. He is from the Asian republics, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, what do you call it … yellow.’
_ _ _
In the archive of the administration building. ‘What?’ is the response I get from the camp clerk when I ask if he remembers a zek with eyes tattooed in the small of his back who joined up with us. Kyrgyz, something like that. Grünefeldt laughs. He slaps his thigh. The Scharführer finds the names: 328 prisoners-of-war in Stalag 362 joined the Hiwis in ’42 and ’43.
I’m given the list. Semjon draws me aside once we are out.
He says nothing until we reach a cluster of trees.
‘Gospodin …’
‘What is it?’
‘I can show you the Hiwis, but he cannot be with us …’
‘Who?’
‘They are difficult, the Hiwis. We are … secretive. And if the one we are looking for is an untouchable, they will never tell. And that one in his uniform …’
‘What? Grünfeldt?’
‘Yes … He is, how do you say, a turkey … cluck, cluck … a mad person …’
_ _ _
I watch the car disappear along the dusty road. Grünfeldt is in it, feet up on the dashboard. He has been given two hundred alcohol coupons for palm oil in the Mitte archive, a copy of the list of 328 names, and a job to do. Find the Asian. Vorkuta is a large camp, but two prisoners with identical prison tattoos, two untouchables, both preferring penal unit to forced labour? It can’t be coincidence, they must know each other. I go inside and call Manfred. We agree that I can pick up his answer from the telegraph office at SS-Dienststelle Vitebsk.
We drive the forty-five kilometres to Vitebsk and wait; this place too bombed to oblivion, charred still, the fetid smell of ’41. Haber has to call Kube; he locates the Wehrmacht staff headquarters – Soviet concrete – and leaves us.
Semjon and I find a leafy spot, a café behind the station. It is early evening; a man plays the violin, there are German women here, and tablecloths.
The heart-shaped leaves of the linden trees flutter in the breeze. A quiet rustle.
I need a bath.
We have a table to ourselves. A goods train passes through, an endless procession of great, grey tanks, Tigers, followed by troops, with their legs protruding from the open wagons.
No one waves.
They smoke.
_ _ _
Semjon offers me the opened tin of peaches.
They smell of sugar and America.
‘The NKVD came and took my father and brother. The kolkhoz took our three cows. We ran away into the forests,’ he tells me.
‘I see.’
‘What you people are doing is good. They treated us like we were not human at all.’
‘And are you?’ I say with a smile.
He turns his bony, oblong face towards me, and spits out a shred of tobacco.
He is not smiling.
‘Our needs are small, gospodin.’
_ _ _
SS-Dienststelle Vitebsk, 21:00, I meet up with Haber again. I go in and pick up the list from Manfred and have the Scharführer make me out a receipt. Of the 328 Hiwis, 127 are confirmed dead, 52 are missing. The rest are divided between seven units, Jägerbataillons, combating the partisans, some are with Dirlewanger, in the Ukraine, Ostland and Weissruthenien, Rückwärtiges Heeresgebiet Mitte.
_ _ _
We drive through the nightfall. I have run out of cigarettes.
What Semjon shows me is folklore, a world of old, the shadow world of the Hiwis, in the barracks, the drinking joints, the holes in the ground draped with camouflage nets, the stables, this air of smoke, of gleaming eyes, a din of gambling and bottles, songs in mumbled language. They do not look at us, they hate us, they fear us, the master race; they are Russians, Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Romanians, yellow men.
Semjon translates, gesticulates, drinks, grins.
We cannot find our yellow man.
Maybe we are asking the wrong questions.
Maybe he is dead.
At two o’clock we run into SS-Jägerbataillon 502 some hundred kilometres south-west of Vitebsk, spread out over a wide area, south and east of the main road to Mogilev. The regular German troops are further ahead, on the other side of the birch wood. The Hiwis
