Another Kind of Country (22 page)

Karel
punched him in the stomach. Reder stayed upright, waiting for more but Karel had tired of his sport. Reder watched as Karel tore the note into small pieces and threw them into the corporal’s box.

The pain didn’t bother Reder. Elation welled in him. K, he thought.
Kulakov hasn’t forgotten me
.

You couldn’t look to Karel’s underlings for any easing of the ferocity. When, at noon on a scorching day in August, an unwary Polish corporal bent to help a Polish prisoner who had fallen under the weight of a heavy and cumbersome log, Karel seemed to materialize from nowhere and laid the corporal on the ground beside the prisoner with a blow from a wrist-thick cudgel.

‘Let me catch you doing that again,’ Karel told the fallen corporal, ‘and you’ll find yourself on the wrong side of the fence here.’ He poked a toe into the bare back of the prisoner on the ground. ‘Move,’ he said, and then kicked him savagely in the base of his spine.

The prisoner died a few days later.

Reder kept his own tally of the deaths. As summer eased into autumn and then into winter, he calculated the deaths at about one a week. In winter, he knew, more would die: the cold, the starvation diet and their flimsy clothing would combine to make sure of that. And if you were strong enough physically to cope with all of that, you still ran the risk of disease in the cramped, overcrowded prisoners’ huts.

The snow fell on Jaworzno in the second week of November. As the cold intensified, Reder realized that he faced a brutally stark choice: escape or die. He was emaciated from the daily ration of bread and cabbage or potato soup, his hands were raw and blistered, and his greatcoat, although cared for and guarded zealously
even at night in the freezing hut, was too worn to get him through a winter in Jaworzno. A run for it in the forest, maybe when he was permitted to go for a shit, was the best Reder could think of. It wasn’t much of a plan but a bullet in the back was at least a quick exit.
But fuck it, he’d come so far, survived so long
. He’d given up hope of Kulakov: too much time had passed since Karel had destroyed the book and the accompanying letter. Reder knew now that he was on his own.

Yes, you’re on your own, Hans Reder
. Ask for permission to go for a crap when that fat corporal is in charge of the forest detail, the slow-witted one who smokes a lot and puffs and pants between drags on the cigarette. Wait for the next fall of snow, the falling snow will hinder you on your run through the forest but it will also slow the pursuers down.

The corporal was on duty in the first week of December. The prisoners were marching back to the camp at the end of the twelve-hour shift when the snow came: big soft flakes swirling so heavily that you could hardly see the man in front of you.

‘No slacking!’ The corporal panted. ‘Pick it up – we’re almost there.’

Tomorrow, Reder thought. Let it go on snowing, it’s this fat fuck’s last day on this roster.
Tomorrow
.

Inside the camp they had to line up in the square for evening roll-call. The snow went on falling. The group from the coal mine wasn’t back yet. Even the lousy soup seemed desirable as they stood waiting in the thickening snow. You picked up your can of soup at the cook hut and took it with you to your hut.

The waiting prisoners seemed to heave a collective sigh of relief when they saw the coal-mine group come looming out of the snow. The main gate opened, the prisoners hurried through, lined up for roll-call. Names were quickly called, answers shouted even more speedily.

Colonel
Karel came striding through the thickening snow before the prisoners could be dismissed. Over his leather coat a rubber cape lay draped across his shoulders; a grey, Russian-style fur hat covered his head and ears.

The men groaned. But silently. They looked only at the snow-covered ground.

‘Everything in order?’ Karel demanded.

‘Sir!’ The fat corporal sounded wheezier than ever.

‘All present and correct?’

‘Sir!’ Another wheezing shout.

Karel adjusted his cape on his shoulders as he surveyed his prisoners: sodden, frozen, starving.

He seemed about to say more when a black car came through the falling snow like a dark ghost. It drew to a halt outside the gates, engine humming, windscreen wipers clacking, steam rising from its long bonnet, snowflakes floating in the headlights.

Karel seemed as transfixed as the prisoners: visiting cars were infrequent at Jaworzno Labour Camp.

A long, impatient blast on the horn came from the car.

‘Open the fucking gates!’ Karel’s angry outburst set the sentry fumbling at the lock, hauling the long bolt back.

The long black German car drew to a halt beside Karel.

The heavyset figure who got out on the passenger side had NKVD written all over the long raincoat and the felt hat pulled low: Reder had seen enough of the Russian Gestapo in his time with the Red Army.

‘Colonel Karel?’

Karel’s salute was perfunctory: Russian secret police or not, this was Polish turf.

The Russian clicked his fingers and the driver, a uniformed Red Army corporal, was out of the car, unfolding a black umbrella over the NKVD man.

‘My credentials.’ The Russian
handed an ID card to Karel.

The prisoners watched in silence. Maybe the Russians were taking over the Jaworzno camp again: a change couldn’t be worse – and just might be less brutal than Karel’s regime.

‘What can I do for you?’ Karel’s tone had become respectful: whatever your rank, you didn’t fuck around with the Soviet secret police.

Reder, in the front row of the assembled prisoners, could hear only the words ‘fucking snow’ and ‘vodka’ in the Russian’s reply. He saw Karel nod, heard him order the corporals to dismiss the prisoners. In silence the prisoners hurried to the cook hut for the daily round of soup and a slice of bread. For once the bread was not green with mould; there was even half a potato in Reder’s mug. Like everyone else, he wolfed his food down. In seconds his tin mug was empty; there was nothing to chew on except the arrival of the thuggish Russian in the falling snow. Tomorrow, he reminded himself.

‘Prisoner Reder!’ Karel’s adjutant, a skinny fellow with glasses, was standing in the open doorway of the hut, shouting. ‘Prisoner Reder!’

He felt the prisoners’ eyes upon him as he pushed between them, sensed their relief:
someone else was in the firing line
.

‘Move, Reder!’ The kick in the arse from the bespectacled adjutant was routine, the kind of reminder that you learned to expect. ‘Colonel Karel’s office, now!’

Reder wondered what offence he’d committed. He knew the other prisoners would be wondering what punishment he was in for – the nature of any offence was unimportant.

He ran shivering through the falling snow, stood shivering, waiting outside Karel’s office for the adjutant.

Karel’s voice barked in answer to the adjutant’s knock.

Inside, the office was baked in heat from the pot-bellied stove
in the centre. Reder stood just outside the door, head bowed, waiting for Karel to speak.

‘You are Hans Reder of the Free German Forces of the Soviet Army?’ Not Karel but the newcomer, in the accent that Reder had learned was from Moscow.

Reder straightened, lifted his head, looked from the Russian to Karel.

‘Answer the officer, you German pig!’ Karel was sprawled in the captain’s chair behind the desk, his eyes dark.

‘Yes, sir.’ No bowing, no clicking of heels. ‘I am Hans Reder.’

‘You stink, Reder.’ The Russian snorted. ‘I can smell you across the room.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Always agree, to do otherwise could earn you an extra beating.

‘All Germans stink.’ Karel spat at the stove; for a second they all watched the thick phlegm sizzling on the hot metal. ‘They stink like pigs.’

The Russian laughed. ‘Maybe we should put you in the boot, Reder, rather than inside the car.’

The car. Inside the car
. Reder said the words to himself, couldn’t stop his lips moving silently. He heard Karel tell the Russian to sign here, saw the Russian bend over the desk, scrawl on the bottom of a foolscap page. Karel signed another page, the pen scratching like the spit still sizzling on the stove. Reder could hardly breathe. They wouldn’t take him in the car if they were going to shoot him, would they?
You never knew with the NKVD
.

But by then everybody was on their feet and Karel was saying something to the Russian that Reder couldn’t hear. The Russian was putting on his coat, his hat, and the driver – Reder hadn’t noticed him until now – was opening the door of Karel’s office. The sudden rush of swirling snow and freezing air woke Reder up, opened his ears.

‘Reder!’

Reder
turned in the doorway to face Karel.

‘I should’ve killed you when I had the chance.’

Reder waited, silent.

‘Fuck this,’ the Russian said, ‘let’s get in the car.’

Reder went back to hardly daring to breathe. Yet the car was real, the rear leather seat was real. He touched the side window, fearful least it melt and he should find himself again in the falling snow, waiting for Karel to decide if he should live or die. As in a dream he saw the guard open the gates and the car swung outside into the night. He stared back through the rear windscreen and already Jaworzno Central Labour Camp was hidden in the dark and the snow. He started to shiver.

‘Here.’ The Russian turned in the front seat, handed him a bottle of vodka. Reder hesitated but the Russian nodded his encouragement. ‘Drink up, Reder. Colonel Kulakov sent word that we’re to take good care of you.’

Colonel
: so Kulakov had done more than survive, he’d climbed the ranks.

‘I just wonder,’ the Russian said, ‘if the colonel realizes what kind of stinking package we’re going to deliver to him in Berlin.’ He laughed at his own joke. ‘You’d better wash, Reder, or stay downwind of Colonel Kulakov.’ The driver joined in the laughter.

Reder didn’t heed the laughter. He pushed his finger inside the lining of his coat, felt the comforting coarseness of the book. Somehow they had both survived, Reder himself and
Socialism: The Solution
. Through everything, the little book had seemed like a lifeline to Reder, to the hope of a tomorrow.

The NKVD officer had turned in his seat and was watching Reder.

‘Let’s see what you’ve got there,’ he said.

Reder
took the book out slowly, handed it over.

The Russian grinned at the title. ‘Good stuff, this – obviously Colonel Kulakov has been educating you,’

Reder nodded. He took the book, held it close as he curled up in the luxury of the leather seat. He knew he wouldn’t sleep. He didn’t want to. He wanted to savour every moment of this journey of liberation.

They drove through the night. Progress was slow, hindered by the thickening snow. In some Polish town, grey, silent, the driver kicked at the door of a bakery and an elderly Pole, frightened, brought them thick slices of Polish bread covered with dark lard and gave them mugs of steaming black tea. When they had finished, they stood and pissed in the middle of the deserted street.

The NKVD officer, nameless, slept and snored. Reder dozed and woke, wondering if he was dreaming. The snow stopped as dirty grey light filled the sky. They skirted a small town and Reder sensed they were in Germany. Another stop, at a farmhouse this time, its windows boarded up, and a toothless crone gave them dry bread and a hot black drink that might have been brewed from leaves or berries or grain. The old woman curtsied as they drove out of the mucky farmyard.

They stopped to fill the tank from a pair of jerrycans stored in the boot of the BMW. Spoils of war, Reder thought, liberated from the BMW factory in Bavaria. The entire country was the spoils of war. We brought it on ourselves. He remembered Kulakov’s words:
we have to build a better, socialist country
. Daylight now and Reder tried to focus on the remembered words, but exhaustion took him and he fell asleep in the hot interior of the car.

A poke in the shoulder woke him.

‘Berlin,’ the Russian said.

Reder
had never been to the city. What he saw through the windows of the car were the leftovers of civilization. Jagged broken walls. Mounds of rubble. A single tram carriage crawling through the ruins. Old men and children and women in crocodile lines collecting bricks and stones and slates. And everywhere dust, like stony snow, thickening the winter air.

‘You can thank your fucking Führer,’ the Russian said.

Reder looked at the gaunt, ragged creatures working on the ruined streets and kept his silence. They looked like ghosts wrapped in rags. And he looked worse, knew he smelled worse.

He coughed. ‘Sir?’

The Russian turned in the front seat, looked at Reder.

‘Could I please wash, sir, before meeting Colonel Kulakov?’

The Russian stroked his stubbly chin, wrinkled his broad nose, shook his head. ‘Let’s show the good colonel what we’ve put up with all the way from fucking Poland.’ The driver yawned, spat out through the open window. He looked at the NKVD officer but said nothing.

They left the rubbled streets behind. A Russian officer waved them down at a roadblock, waved them on after he’d inspected their papers. A wider thoroughfare now, stumps of trees on either side that had once guarded a gracious boulevard. Wide, spear-tipped gates ahead, pulled open; papers examined once more; waved forward once more on a curving drive that opened on to a baroque
Schloss
with yellow walls and carved pediments over the windows and the tall door.

The NKVD agent got out, signalled to Reder.

The Russian tipped his hat to the sergeant inside the door but presented no papers. Reder followed him along a narrow corridor to the left of the sweeping staircase. Doors were open along the corridor, a telephone rang, typewriters clacked. A blonde woman in Red Army uniform looked up from her typewriter
as he passed and he saw what he looked like in the expression of horror on her round face: a stinking bundle of rags clattering along the tiled floor in wooden clogs.

The Russian knocked at the last door, turned the brass knob.