‘At first we thought it was gangrene,’ Hildesheim says. ‘Now we have no idea. Some Soviet weapon, perhaps, we know nothing. There have been several cases …’
‘Is he conscious?’ I ask, my eyes fixed on Tulabajev.
‘Yes!’
I am startled by the loudness of his reply, and yet I did not see his lips move at all. Only his hands tremble, but I cannot tell if the reaction is conscious. And then they are still again. You could break a piece off his fingers, they are yellow and brittle as beeswax.
‘Was that him?’ I ask.
‘Yes,’ says Hildesheim. ‘He can’t control his voice, and his lungs are full of fluid. Sometimes he lies there shouting in his own language.’
‘Is Tulabajev tattooed?’
‘He was,’ says Hildesheim. ‘The small of his back. But they’re gone now, the skin is completely destroyed …’
‘What did they look like, do you recall?’
‘Eyes. Two big eyes, on his lower back. Quite bizarre.’
My heart misses a beat.
I hand Etke’s drawing of the cockerel to Semjon. ‘Ask Tulabajev if he knows who has a tattoo like this.’
Tulabajev emits a savage growl as Semjon holds the drawing up in front of him. He sounds like someone drowning, a splutter of terror from the depths of his being, his eyes are bloodshot, pupils large and black. He is livid.
‘He calls him Goga,’ Semjon says a moment after.
‘Goga?’
‘That’s what he calls him.’
‘Goga what?’
‘He was Prokhonov’s slave in the camp … he doesn’t know his real name.’
‘Vorkuta?’
‘Yes.’
‘Was he Jewish? Ask him …’
‘He doesn’t know. But he is a Belorussian, from a village, a bend in the river, they had beehives … he always talked about them, he says. The bees …’
‘Does he remember the name of this village?’
‘No. He knew it once, but no longer. The wind has taken it.’
‘The wind?’
‘That’s what he says. He says they joined up to get away from Prokhonov. He hasn’t seen Goga since Christmas ’41, Tula.’
Tulabajev has drifted into sleep again, his breathing is momentous, he mists up my mask.
‘I don’t think there’s any more we can do,’ says Hildesheimer, when after a while Tulabajev has failed to react.
It’s not much, but we have something: a name, and a place. Someone called Goga from a bend in a river. We turn to leave.
‘Zaludok!’ Tulabajev cries from the bed. We are at his side in an instant.
‘Was he from Zaludok?’ I bark, but Tulabajev is no longer there. A deep, plunging gargle issues from his throat, like a stone tossed in a stagnant pool as its fetid waters close over it.
_ _ _
The flight back is uneventful. Haber and Semjon sleep, Grünfeldt reads Illustrierte, one long leg crossed over the other. On the cover, Zarah Leander’s comely figure on its way in to some establishment in Berlin: black lips, glossy hair, white lace gloves, shapely ankles, black high heels. She holds up her long black train with both hands.
I sit with a large map showing Steiner’s route and follow it with my finger. He was not at Zaludok in August ’41 when the first massacre took place, but he did hold a meeting of his staff at its town hall when they liquidated the ghetto last May, killing two thirds and moving the rest to the ghetto in Sjtjutjyn. I flick through Haber’s filing cards from Minsk. No Jews from Zaludok convicted of homosexuality, but then the records show only given addresses at the time of arrest. On the other hand, there was a wave of arrests running from September ’39 to June ’41 throughout the western part of the Belorussian Soviet Republic after the region passed from Polish control to the NKVD – the time we broke bread with Stalin. Fifty-two of the eighty-seven were arrested in that period.
Reconstruction: Our man, alias Goga, hails from Zaludok, he moves to somewhere bigger, Lida for instance. Seven of the arrests on our cards are from Lida, or Baranovitj, fourteen in all. He is deported to Vorkuta after the Soviets enter, is tormented and tortured, tattooed by force by a thief named Prokhonov, joins a penal unit along with other untouchables, among them Tulabajev, is dispatched into the fray, the Battle of Moscow, perhaps parachuted down behind our lines. Whatever, he ends up in the puszcza and starts looking into what has become of his family. Maybe they were wiped out in Zaludok by Einsatzgruppe B as early as August ’41, while Steiner was holidaying at the casino in Baden. Maybe they survived the first selection, only to be killed the year after. Maybe Goga returns incognito to the town of his birth on that exact day, 8 May ’42, when Steiner arrives to watch the last liquidation. Maybe he sees him standing on the steps, or seated at some sumptuous table, napkin around his bull’s neck, sucking on crayfish tails and toasting the good life as the last of the Jews are lined up on the square and divided up into those who are to die and those who are to live.
Maybe.
We need his real name, a face.
_ _ _
I part company with Grünfeldt and Haber in the Kubepalast at Minsk after delivering a full report to Kube. He is irritable this time. Perhaps it is indigestion.
The truth
The door is open and the light switch doesn’t work as I enter my house in Lida after 160 kilometres in a bumping, freezing cold car. It is almost three in the morning.
‘Masja,’ I whisper. ‘Masja …’
Nothing. I leave the door ajar, it gives me some light. I go up the stairs.
‘Masja, are you there?’
The switch doesn’t work upstairs either. I follow the banister, find her door in the darkness, and knock. Nothing.
I open the door.
‘Masja, for crying out loud … How many times have I told you …’
The window is wide open, curtains flapping, but she
