‘Smoke grenade,’ he barks.
He looks at me, elated.
‘The bastards are building tunnels. There could be exit holes all over the place.’
‘Like when we used to hunt foxes back home,’ says Michael. ‘Do you remember that, Hans?’
‘Mm,’ says Hans. ‘The crucial thing is locating exits and digging out the lair. But always make sure you’ve found all the holes first.’
A young Sturmmann appears.
‘What colour smoke have we got?’ Manfred asks. The Sturmmann scurries back to the lorries, then comes staggering back with a heavy box.
Manfred opens it, cigarette in mouth.
‘Purple, yellow, blue … what do you think, Heinrich?’
‘I don’t care,’ I say.
‘Oh, come on … play along …’
‘Well, if you insist … purple.’
‘Excellent.’
Manfred picks a long, bulbous grenade from the box, takes the rifle from Hans and fixes the grenade to the muzzle, thrusts the end into the hole and fires. He repeats the procedure twice. We hear the dull thuds of the exploding grenades inside the tunnel system.
He gathers a company, spreads them out in the forest. We wait.
After a while the cries go up:
‘Here!’
‘And here!’
Purple smoke seeps up into the air in six different places. No, seven. The last plume is perhaps two hundred metres away.
_ _ _
They have placed explosive charges and incendiary bombs at all exits, as well as within the tunnels. When the bombs go off we see the ground lift and shudder, but the tunnel itself retains its upper boundary, the explosion goes inwards and down. The sudden change in pressure leaves me deafened for a moment.
Peasant villagers, press-ganged, begin to dig, from the periphery towards the middle. After an hour we encounter the first human remains. The peasants lay them out in the clearing, and the hours pass.
Manfred hovers, trying to make head and tail of things. I can see his lips moving. He is counting.
Michael comes waddling over on his short legs.
‘Come on, we’ve found some intact.’
_ _ _
As we stand at the edge of the crater, which is some five or six metres deep, we see them at the bottom. Presumably perished in the blast. There are three, clinging to each other.
A Hiwi in the crater attaches ropes to them, so they can be winched up and placed in the grass. Two elderly women and a boy, ten or twelve years old. Manfred crouches down and puts two fingers to the boy’s neck.
‘He’s alive!’
He drags him to his feet, slaps him hard in the face, twice. It is as if the boy is drugged, in another world entirely.
He stands and sways, eyes closed. Manfred yells in his face.
Michael takes over, pulls out his P38, raises his outstretched arm towards the boy.
‘No, for Christ’s sake!’ says Manfred and pushes his arm away. ‘Not like that …’
Michael blinks, his eyes like a pig’s.
‘How, then?’
‘I don’t know yet.’
_ _ _
I have lost my bearings. We skitter through mud, up and down.
The boy sits between Michael and Hans.
A bottle is passed around.
The machine gunner pulls back the charging handle, disengages the safety catch and swivels his body to the left. The vehicle lurches as he discharges a round into the forest.
Manfred pokes his head through the window, steering with one hand so the vehicle swerves. He straightens up, and yells at the top of his lungs:
‘Heil Hitler!’
The machine gunner turns again, lets off another round. I hear the shots against the trees, the bark ripped from the trunks.
We each of us drink from the bottle once more, I hand it to the Schütze.
We screech:
‘Heeiiiil Hitleeeeeer!’
_ _ _
Manfred is on the roof, while the machine gunner holds on to his legs. He is pissing.
He hurls the bottle into the trees with his other hand.
‘Steiner … you old Nazi bastard! I love you! Prost!’
He climbs down again.
I can see he has been crying.
‘He taught me everything, Heinrich,’ he says, and splays out his hand in front of me.
On the index finger is a large gold signet ring bearing the Runic insignia of the SS.
‘Hubert gave this to me. Twenty-four carat. Studded with diamonds. Don’t you find it … vulgar?’
He wipes his eyes, sniggers, and is at once transformed. He begins to turn the ring with his thumb.
‘I didn’t want to wear it then … but now …’
Michael puts his hand on Manfred’s shoulder, but he shoves him away. He looks at me.
‘Heinrich?’
‘What?’
‘I know how he’s going to die now … Goga.’
Belorussian Black Pied
Kolkhoz 31
Manfred handed over command and our small party left the forest, driving back towards Lida. We stopped here, where we have been waiting for three quarters of an hour, engines idling. Manfred is inside. He went in through the gate with Hans and Michael and some Lithuanian SS. The low concrete buildings of the collective, tin roofs matt in the sunlight, are cluttered with corroding machinery, the kolkhoz abandoned, plundered to its foundations two years ago, livestock confiscated, peasants driven out, the party chairman dragged off with a rope around his neck and strung up in the grain silo. His boots disappeared while no one was looking, I found them on a nine-year-old boy in Lida a week later: white matchsticks in great, black, shiny commissar boots. Now Manfred has got wind of some kind of pig breeding station that has been established here, Institut für Landwirtschaft, Göring’s Four Year Plan, or Kube’s colonists perhaps, together with the university at Munich – crossing north German breeds with inferior Russian ones. Long-eared Irkutsk with Hanoverian; the one with the long hams and the small ears; the Danish Landrace with its extra rib crossed with the Tsivilsk, a short-snouted Soviet breed with spots and thirteen pairs of teats. Something like that. But this is a forbidden zone: I have no idea what they do inside, the sun is out and for a moment I find it all so delightful – this yellow-green haze, the quiet rustle of the birch leaves – they could be making monsters for all I care, I’m really not bothered about any of it: this place smells of hay and
