The party is here.
I leave it to Semjon to deal with the many faces. Haber seats himself on one of the chairs they must have brought over from a nearby house. I sit down in a corner, in the hay, and pull off my boots.
It is warm here, I could sleep.
_ _ _
Flickering shadows, the stench of carbide lamps and sweat.
A grinning man is playing the accordion, his shoulders swaying, he grimaces like an imbecile. Is he singing?
On the ground a game is going on with sticks, but I can’t work out if they are counters or if they are meant to be placed in some particular way, if that is the game, some kind of Mikado. They keep saying trik-trak, is that what it’s called? I lie here as they toss their sticks, their hands swift. Is it fortune telling or gambling?
A door opens from a cowshed on the other side.
A girl, not more than thirteen or fourteen, spits semen into her hand.
Someone says jevrejka, Jewess.
Haber jumps to his feet, he speaks almost in a whisper, slaps a Hiwi hard in the face and drags the girl away by the hair.
Then suddenly it’s quiet.
The abrupt, muffled report of a PPK outside in the night.
Haber comes back in and sits down again. He runs his hand through his hair.
I storm out with a lamp.
The girl is on her stomach behind an outhouse.
I sit down beside her, pull back her clothing to reveal her neck.
She is breathing, snapping at the air.
I take her hand in mine, but she does not react.
I hear her fade away, a whisper of life.
I stay with her.
Her darkness in the wet grass.
_ _ _
I clutch the photograph of Eline.
Her finery, her pout, all for me.
Do you think the miracle will happen?
How do you mean?
That life will be wonderful?
She still looks like Zarah Leander.
_ _ _
When I wake up, my limbs stiff, the body of the girl is gone.
Semjon is standing a short distance away, looking like he has only just seen me.
‘Gospodin …’
I get to my feet and return the photo to my pocket.
‘There was a girl here. Haber …’
‘Here,’ he says, handing me three packets of Efkas. ‘Come, we must be getting on.’
We walk down the dusty gravel track behind the farm. A Kübelwagen comes the same way and blows its horn. We step aside. Grünfeldt jumps out, the vehicle still in motion, his spindly legs buckle beneath him and he stumbles forward, his arms flailing to find some balance. He falls headlong into the ditch, narrowly avoiding a birch tree.
The driver stops some ten metres further down the track and turns his head to look, mouth open.
‘His name is Tulabajev! Turkestan Legion!’ Grünfeldt shouts. ‘We’re flying out!’
The yellow man’s friend
The Tante Ju rattles.
Haber reads Tulabajev’s dossier. They have got him in an infirmary near Kiev.
‘Does anyone know where Turkestan is?’ he asks.
Semjon stares at his knees, Grünfeldt is a shade of green; we lurch into a wind pocket, the fuselage shudders. We are too far east, the main battle line is down below, a circle of fire, a seeping wound on the plain. The cabin wrenches, the clatter of flak fragmenting into scrap with each explosion.
I bang my knee on an ammunition box – my shoes squelch with blood.
My head screams.
The aircraft heels over.
The pilot gives the wing a pat on the landing strip twenty kilometres west of Kiev.
His goggles are pushed up onto his brow, leaving white rings on his sun-scorched face.
_ _ _
Infirmary Ia for internal medicine is housed in a manor, encircled by a bombed-out park, the lawns in flower, most of the trunks of the linden trees split to the root, charred. The whitewashed facade of the main house gleams.
Geese strut majestically, swanlike almost.
A new crematorium has been built behind the former stables.
Black smoke rises from its chimney.
‘I’m going for a walk in the park,’ Grünfeldt says. ‘Maybe I can find some mushrooms …’
Semjon and I are led into a consulting room, a nurse with eczema on her hands dresses my knee. We are asked to follow along and enter what looks like a changing room; white tiles, benches. There are signs on the wall in Gothic lettering:
Remove all clothing! Wait until security staff arrive! Do not enter next sluice!
We place our clothes in two neat piles on one of the benches and wait.
Semjon’s penis is long and heavy and he has thick crops of hair on his chest and back.
He looks human.
The two men who come in to collect us are wearing gas masks and one-piece suits of rubber-treated cotton reinforced from the shafts of their boots to the gloves and collar. Their eyes stare at us from behind circles of glass.
We are hosed down by hard jets of water. They sprinkle us with disinfectant powder that stings on the skin. We are hosed down again. Scalding water. One of them puts our clothes in a bag marked with a triangle with a circle around it. For disinfection!
They open another door. It gives with a sigh of suction from the rubber insulation strips and we are led into the Next sluice. Clean underwear and two rubber suits. One of the men jabs a rubber hand. They watch as we put them on, checking to make sure the suits are tight at the neck, hands, feet.
‘Can you hear us?’ one of them says.
I adjust my receiver, which gives out a high-pitched squeal – too much treble, interference.
‘Yes!’
‘Good. I am SS Doctor Severin Hildesheim.’
‘Oberleutnant der Polizei, Heinrich Hoffmann,’ I reply, and hold out my arm towards Semjon. ‘And this is my interpreter. What’s wrong with Tulabajev?’
‘We don’t know. But it makes you think.’
‘About what?’
‘About what a human is …’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The boundaries of zoology are unclear. Come.’
_ _ _
Tulabajev is liquid, a process. The receiver crackles.
He is lying on a bed, his entire body and head bandaged, only his
