I am not fast enough to duck.
His first punch hits me above the eye.
The second is on the mouth.
Searing pain from the signet ring.
_ _ _
I am sitting on a tree stub, gazing out across the river behind the kolkhoz. Blood seeps from my mouth if I ease up the pressure on the cloth. Manfred has put some boys to work cutting down willow, the switches are piled up high, one of the boys strips off the bark with a knife and tosses them onto the pile. They are hardly more than ten or twelve years old, the five of them, part of the entourage of flotsam and jetsam that surfaces wherever we go: remnants of families; barefoot children with runny noses; the elderly; the crippled; mad people with filthy, slobbering mouths. One of them has mounted a flag on a stick, a hammer and sickle defaced by the words SMERT SUKAM, death to the whores. He waves it about, jabbering away, showing off the tattoo on his stomach, four onion-shaped cupolas and a saltire, Andreaskreuz. They emerge from the undergrowth, from the low houses, to see if there might be some crumbs for them, a few kopeks or Reichsmark, a hunk of bread, a bag of salt.
Manfred inspects their work.
He comes towards me.
He is holding something in his hand; it looks like the lid of a wicker laundry basket. He holds his other hand behind his back.
‘Lovely, isn’t it?’ he says, and produces a wooden sword and a three-pronged trident carved from a forked branch. ‘And look here. A gladius and a fascina, and a what’s it called …’
‘Parma,’ I say with a nod towards the woven shield.
‘A parma, that’s it. You were always so clever, Heinrich. What was the name of them now, the Thracians, and the ones with the tridents and those nets …’
‘Retiarii …’
‘That’s it!’ Manfred exclaims, and thumps me on the back. ‘In my nostrils, the scent of mortal blood doth laugh me welcome … Aeschylus, wasn’t it? They knew a thing or two, the Ancient Greeks.’
He puts his hands on my shoulders and turns me around, narrows his eyes.
‘Let me have a look at you,’ he says.
‘It’s nothing.’
‘Open your mouth …’
He grips my hand and pulls away the cloth. I feel the blood as it begins to leak from my lower jaw.
‘That needs cleaning up,’ he says, and whistles for a Sanitäter.
_ _ _
Later, still at the river.
Manfred stands with his legs apart, his piss thick and lazy.
The Sanitäter picked the remains of a lower incisor from my jaw with a pair of tongs and injected a shot of morphine directly into the wound.
‘I’m sorry,’ Manfred says. ‘I don’t know what got into me. It was … I can’t explain it.’
‘A reflex?’
‘Yes, a reflex. Exactly.’
He hitches up his trousers, buttons the fly and turns back round, fishes his Efkas from his breast pocket and comes towards me. Cigarettes protrude from the packet. I take two, poking one between Manfred’s lips.
‘Can you forgive me?’ he says.
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘If you throw that bloody ring away.’
He stiffens for a second, then steps back. He twists the ring from his finger, weighs the heavy gold in his palm, gazing at the matted surface of the metal, the sparkle of the gemstones.
‘Twenty-four carat. Studded with diamonds. Have you any idea how much this is worth?’
He looks me straight in the eye.
‘No.’
He hurls it into the river.
‘Happy now?’
We stand for a while, smoking, staring at the warm, green water amid a hum of insects.
‘We pick things up, don’t we?’ Manfred says after a while. ‘A picture, a fragment of conversation, something that makes an impression. Sometimes I find it odd that we should be the ones who will remember them. That they should only live on in our memories.’
‘Who?’
‘The Jews.’
He smiles and spits a shred of tobacco from his tongue.
‘Like the other day: Michael’s always so clumsy, so I shouted at him. Do you know what I said?’
‘No, what?’
‘Klutz!’
‘Klutz?’
‘Yes, it just came out … klutz!’
He turns his head towards me, and laughs.
‘Mentsh … never forget to stay a mentsh … otherwise we’re nothing but mumkhes, are we? Mumkhes from Daytshland.’
‘What?’
‘Experts from Deutschland …’
‘Manfred …’
‘What?’
‘I will go back with you. But on one condition.’
‘Yes?’
‘I don’t want to kill any more.’
In the death zone
Manfred lets me sit in the command vehicle when we return to the forests for the second phase of Operation Hermann: Tightening the cauldron, definition of the battle area. From the vehicle I see Stukas diving in a howling swarm, then, on the pull-up, a fierce series of explosions.
They emerge from the forests, drawing livestock. Cows, horses, goats, small home-made cages containing birds and frogs. A Ukrainian from the SchuMa battalion cradles a hedgehog in his arms, he has mixed some powdered milk in a cup, a small darting tongue.
The lines of human slaves, joined together at the neck by nooses, swaying.
Inner Congo.
Manfred dictates the report of the day to me.
He gives me the figures and the words: blood sacrifice, bandit, loot.
_ _ _
Daily dispatch, Transcript
Telegraph. 16 July 1943
From: Hstf. Schlosser, SS-Kavallerie 2
Re. Operation Hermann, south-west sector
Operation commenced 10:00 hrs.
Cordon positioned, coordinates 54°1’N, 26°19’Ø.
Shock troops formed 1/ 2 /40.
Total force:
SS-Kavallerie 2/4/75
SchuMa 3/6/130
Orpo 1/ 21
Lith. Hiwi 3/7/139
Armament:
2 anti-tank guns
1 anti-aircraft
24 Mg 42
Transport:
3 lorries
1 self-propelled gun
3 Kübelwagen
2 Sd.Kfz: 1 233, 1 250/command vehicle
324 horses
Losses, ours: 1 slightly injured (Orpo). Neutralised 2 bunkers. Incinerated 3 abandoned camps, fortified. 988 bandits killed, incl. 251 Jewish. Loot: 1 German carbine model 98, 6 pistols, ammunition, 40 wooden mines.
128 men, 73 women, 19 children deported to the Reich.
120 horses, 21 cows, 214 goats sent to Ivenets.
Hauptsturmführer Manfred Schlosser
Hereby attested,
Oberleutnant der Polizei, Heinrich Hoffmann.
_ _ _
At the campfire, evening, under a bright summer sky.
It’s the fifth day of the operation.
Everything squelches with moisture here, the damp darkness of the trees, the fat grass. Mud prevails.
Manfred has mounted his boots on two sticks angled
