Manfred bends down and pats me on the cheek.
‘Didn’t you get my message?’
‘No. What message?’
‘That he’d slipped through – they were disguised in German uniform.’
‘No. I went to help him …’
Manfred sits up, tugs on the noose and spurs his horse on. Goga is in his grip.
‘Hey,’ I shout after him.
‘What?’ says Manfred.
‘I need to interrogate him,’ I say.
‘You?’
‘Yes!’
‘Since when did you have the stomach?’
‘I was the one who found him!’
Manfred swivels in the saddle as I come up alongside him.
He raises my chin with his whip, which he draws across my throat.
‘How’s the wound?’
‘What?’
‘Your neck?’ he says. ‘Did he hit the bone?’
‘It’s nothing,’ I say. ‘I need to interrogate him, it’s my job after all. It might not even be him!’
‘It’s him,’ says Manfred. ‘But come and watch the performance, by all means, after I’ve finished with the little faggot …’
He jerks his head in Goga’s direction.
Entertainment
My house in Lida, the next day.
I spend the day at home, most of it in the bath.
My Masja comes in intermittently and scrubs my back with a brush of boar bristles, cleaning and dabbing the wound in my neck; the bullet chipped my collarbone, I am yellow, orange and blue. Masja empties the tub, reaching down between my legs, and fills it up with fresh water from the big jug. She has rolled up her sleeves, and draws an arm across her brow. Her neck is moist, hair plaited like Etke’s.
If only I could reach out to her.
Does she hate me?
Does it matter?
I reach for the squat bottle on the table next to the tub instead.
I think about Goga, what Manfred is doing to him in the basement. The Ukrainian who severed the windpipe of the Jew from Zaludok. Has he unrolled his cloth of instruments, selected his knives, his tongs, his shears? What secrets is he extracting from him? How did he know Steiner’s route? Did he witness Steiner wipe out his family? Was it revenge? Or merely an absurd accident? A joke told by an idiot? Why was I not allowed to question him?
And all the time: Goga, pointing the gun at me.
What lay in that moment?
Scorn, anger … what?
‘Herr, why are you laughing?’
‘Sorry?’
‘You are laughing, Herr.’
Masja wrings the sponge and scrubs my back.
‘A man was going to kill me, Masja.’
‘What is funny about that, Herr?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Then why did you laugh?’
‘I think I am rather angry with him. He seemed so … indifferent.’
_ _ _
The foyer is buzzing with people as I enter Manfred’s white hospital.
I finish my cigarette, hesitate for a moment at the top of the stairs. But I have questions for Goga, and descend into the basement. On the landing I bump into Michael on his way up.
‘Oberleutnant der Polizei,’ he says, placing a hand on my shoulder as I try to pass.
‘I want to see Manfred,’ I tell him, turning to face him.
‘I’m sure you do,’ he says.
His hand stays put.
‘I’m here to question Goga,’ I say, and place my hand on his. ‘Manfred said …’
He steps up close, the stench of his breath in my face, and I can see his eyes swimming with inebriation.
‘Fuck off,’ he says. ‘Or …’
‘Or what?’ I say, and twist free.
‘Or else we’ll come after you,’ he says with a smile.
‘We?’
‘Yes, we …’
Later, when I telephone Manfred from the mess, it is Michael who answers and hangs up.
_ _ _
I am sitting in the park again with my Kirsch.
I never found out what the young telegraphist girl I slapped was called.
It feels like an infinity ago. I want to apologise, but no one comes down from the offices of the regional commission, only soldiers on leave from the front, bandaged, hobbling, leaning into their crutches, silent.
I stare at my photograph of Eline, but the moist gleam of her lips has no effect. Her half-turned face.
It is growing dark by the time I get to my feet.
I am drunk and immeasurably tired as I sit down again in the half-empty theatre that is the Wehrmacht cinema.
The mood is shiftless as the curtain goes up to the tramp of marching feet in the Wochenschau newsreel. No more mention of Kursk, all Belgorod now, and Raum Orel, conquered Soviet tanks and downed Ilyushins, prisoners sent back down the line. Are we losing? When the map comes up, Kursk is way behind the front line. We are losing. A Hauptmann of the Luftwaffe turns round and asks for a light, and I do the honours for us both. Does he not realise that we are being swept off the court, that the Russians are coming? Will they be forgiving? Does he not know a single fucking thing? He shushes me when I lean forward to pursue it with him, and the curtain goes up for the main film.
I shrug and sit back, slouch into my coat and drink.
Intoxication topped with the tart taste of cherry.
I yawn.
The first strains of Ich Weiss, es wird einmal ein Wunder geschehen. I Know One Day A Miracle Will Happen. I sit forward in my seat, the titles passing over the screen, a background of foliage. Die grosse Liebe. Zarah Leander is the singer in the Scala cabaret. Viktor Staal is the fighter pilot on leave. She looks like Eline in her black dress. The Hauptmann in front of me applauds vigorously as she finishes Mein Leben für die Liebe. He twists round to look at me, but all I do is stare while Viktor Staal follows her through the streets after the show and an air-raid warning throws them together outside her building.
Leander opens the windows of her apartment as a precaution against wayward shards of anti-aircraft and Staal turns off the lights at the other end of the room. Then suddenly she turns towards me in the darkness and whispers:
Is it true what they say?
She holds my gaze.
Is it?
I close my eyes tight and open them again. She is still looking at me.
They say you don’t do what we
