Tin Sky (38 page)

Larisa gloated. “See? There are things I know about your father that your mother ignores. It was to me, not to her, that your father wrote from America, to tell me that he was dying. He kept it from The Little One, and his last letter was to
me
.”

Half true. Bora looked down from the icon. Under the pretence of an overseas tour, the Maestro had kept his terminal illness from Nina, but his deathbed note was addressed to Oberst Edwin Sickingen, recommending his young wife and son to him. Not that the colonel needed encouragement to pursue his first love, but he was married to Donna Maria Ascanio at the time. Even after his annulment, the widowed Nina had made him wait two more years before agreeing to wed him.

With unexpected energy, Larisa lifted her legs down from the chaise longue and fumbled around the floor with her stubby feet until she drove them into a pair of embroidered slippers. “Give me a hand to get up; we’ll go to the parlour. Before we return to boring subjects, we must make music. You on the piano, I on the violin. Your father’s music you know how to play. But do you play Mozart? Do you play Schumann?”

“I’d say so,
gospozha
.”

She led the way to the other room. Opening the violin case, she half-turned. “
Narodnaya Slava
– you asked about it. It’s an expression, as you say, a generic expression. To us who lived in Kharkov, though, in the old days it was a cinema off Voennaya, by the Horse Market. If it means anything else, I am not familiar with its significance. Where did you hear it?”

“It doesn’t matter, Larisa Vasilievna. I was hoping it would have a deeper meaning.”

20 May, 7.20 p.m., Merefa.

It was a blessing. I couldn’t have taken it if she had played badly. Instead, she is a consummate violinist. We did a Schumann “Kinderszene” and a fantasia from César Franck’s “Accursed Huntsman”, transcribed for piano and violin by my father (his manuscript was what I read from). The third work was the charming Mozart set of variations on Antonio Albanese’s “Hélas, j’ai perdu mon amant”. Larisa wept as she played: it is a moving, nostalgic piece; you needn’t have lost someone or be far from the one you love to feel it. Decayed physically as she is, there was a moment when she nearly looked as she must have appeared then. Somehow, the weight and sagging skin fell off her and she made my heart race with emotion. I briefly understood why Friedrich von Bora had loved her.

“We were gods” is the controversial chapter in her autobiography where she describes her relationship with him. If she sang as she plays, and if he conducted as we all know he did, the hubris of her words is less unforgivable. And so is her risqué account of
their mutual passion, which so troubled me at seventeen when I first read about it, on the sly. A notorious acquaintance of the family, R. v. Ch., unmarried and beautiful, lent it to me from her private library, because we certainly did not keep a copy at home. What is it that Dante writes about the lovers seduced by the story of Tristan and Isolde? Precocious six-footer that I was, I gloried in my brazenness, proposing to the lady by the bookshelf when the intention had been there all along on R. v. Ch.’s part. Brief but intense, and no doubt more fun for me than for her. Luckily six years later she was still available, because it was Peter’s turn, and my parents (the general first, Nina second) made me understand that as the older brother I had to “think of it”. So I brought him along with a bouquet of roses and left him there with an excuse. Thank God she had a sense of humour!

Anyhow, as soon as Larisa and I finished playing, the short-lived enchantment dissolved entirely. I was glad to leave her house. I doubt I’ll ever go back. She followed up on her decision to give me none of the objects that were Friedrich’s and that she has managed to keep through these thirty-two terrible years. Not his conductor’s baton (the ebony one Brahms had made for Gaspare Spontini and then ensured his pupil would receive), not his musical scores, not the photograph where they are portrayed together at Tsarskoe Selo… But it is also true what I said: that I wanted none of those things. Friedrich von Bora is a musical legend to me as to everyone else. My father, really, is the rock-solid Generaloberst Edwin Sickingen. He made me what I am, and I am grateful to him.

When all was said and done, I came away from
La Malinovskaya
with the following considerations (which I have integrated with Tarasov’s testimony):

       
1.
   
In 1920, Khan and Platonov conquered Krasny Yar and for a month set up a makeshift command there (remember the Great War wooden crate I saw in the hideout). They also took over what Makhno left behind, meant as “funds for the revolution”, and started arguing about the matter. At this point it
could have been anything from bank drafts to jewels to gold ingots – not cash, because it would have lost its value. It could have been documents, if they had market value.

       
2.
   
Beginning in 1926, when their respective revolutionary duties slackened and Lenin’s NEP opened up Russia to foreign investments, the two comrades – having apparently made up – returned to Kharkov; through their friendship with dashing Mikhail Frunze they started to frequent Larisa’s privileged townhouse. Officially they had errands in or around Kharkov. According to Tarasov, Khan visited the Yar, possibly because the goods were still hidden there. Fact is, Khan spent lavishly and Platonov reprehended him for it; their renewed disagreement went beyond his lifestyle (see the accusation of being a “thief’s thief”), so Khan might have helped himself to the entirety of those funds.

       
3.
   
In the see-saw of their relationship, the two officers seemed tied by a mutually unbreakable bond: Khan because he was blackmailed, maybe, and Platonov due to his career ambition, which Khan helped fulfil.

       
4.
   
Shortly before the Famine, when waters were becoming dangerous in no-longer-independent Ukraine, Khan was the first to cease visiting Larisa. Platonov came at least once on his own, according to Larisa, with generic “foreigners” and opportunists. At least one could be the man accompanied to Krasny Yar. Who was he? One of the Western (including American) engineers, managers and technicians, who in Tarasov’s words came to “grub for Russia’s natural resources, including ore from Krivoy Rog and coal from Lugansk”? If it makes a difference, Tarasov said
neznakomets
(stranger), which is not identical to
inostranets
(foreigner), the word Larisa used. A stranger may not necessarily be from outside Russia. Whatever: does this man have anything to do with any of this? Did our honest Platonov relent and try to further his ambitions by buying off a foreign investor? Unlikely: I don’t see how. Did he plan to punish Khan, the “thief’s thief”, by making it impossible for him to keep using the funds? How so? I even thought the existence of a visitor
might simply be dangled before his colleague’s eyes, so that Khan would be afraid of putting his fingers into the till again.

       
5.
   
The Purge trials began in 1936. Suddenly, all games were up. The two comrades, bound hand and foot to each other, were sucked into the vortex that would kill over a million Russians. The show trials followed one another. Finally Khan saw his chance to break free, and either directly or indirectly brought about Platonov’s fall. The rest is history: by the time Platonov was rehabilitated, broken in body if not in soul, Khan had surpassed him in glory and fame, becoming the star he was when I saw him towering on the T-34 that so enthralled my colleague Scherer.

Questions: are the murders at Krasny Yar connected with the events listed above? What valuables (if any), what secrets, remain hidden there? If there’s one or more guardian (I use the term for lack of a better word) in the woods, his reach and ability must be limited, as some who venture into the Yar do so undisturbed: the priest, the men from the 241st, Nagel and myself…

I was never convinced that Khan’s death was a vendetta by the NKVD, or by the Ukrainians: they’re only exploiting a done deal. But who’s behind it, then? Only the RSHA and
Abwehr
were informed of Khan’s presence in Kharkov. Colonel Bentivegni, Gestapo Müller – do they know what this is all about and are keeping silent? Mantau and I could be nothing but pawns in a far larger game.

Were old Platonov still alive right now, I’d dangle his pretty daughter by her ankles out of the window to make him tell.

Unrelated note: Hurrah, the regimental mounts are due tomorrow morning. Lippe and Nagel are already at the Smijeff–Gottendorf rail station to oversee the operation, and I’m joining them on Saturday at the latest to see the quality of the shipment for myself.

Other note: Kostya is close to worshipping the ground I walk on, on account of the dozen chicks I brought back from Borovoye (it was interesting driving back with them peeping inside a basket on the front seat). I told him to spare the altars and get me a working shower instead.

9

FRIDAY 21 MAY, KHARKOV

In his second-storey office at Hospital 169, Dr Mayr stood up from the chair behind his desk on hearing Bora’s words. He gave the impression of being cut in two by the blade of light coming through the sheets of wax paper glued across the broken window. Hammering on the same floor, the whine of electric saws lent an air of added confusion to the moment.

“Are you sure?”

“Quite sure. Barring accidents, Sanitätsoberfeldwebel Weller will be safely Fatherland-bound come next Sunday.”

“May I ask how you found out?”

“You may not.”
As if you didn’t know.
Bora expected some official statement of surprised relief in the order of
thank God
, or
that’s a weight off my chest
. The enigmatic reaction annoyed him. He noticed that the medicines he’d brought in were gone from the glass cabinet; the bulletin board was empty as well, and on the clothes stand an army shirt on a hanger badly needed ironing. The man before him, too, seemed in dire need of smoothing out, hot-pressing or whatever could take the psychological and physical wrinkles off him. And yet he’d asked Geko Stark in writing to urge Weller’s repatriation. Not so much on the spur of the moment, Bora chose to provoke.

“Since I kept my part of the bargain, we’re even, Herr Oberstarzt. While I’m here, though, and since I heard that you too,
coincidentally, are due for a furlough soon – just out of curiosity: is there really no doubt in your professional mind that my prisoner died a natural death?”

The weariness in the surgeon’s glance quickened a little. “What, that again, Major? Will you not let it go? Didn’t I perform a post-mortem for you, although there was no reason for it?”

Receiving three questions as answers to one further ill-disposed Bora. “So you said. But I was talking to someone recently, and Mikhail Frunze came into the conversation. The Bolshevik, yes, the founder of the Red Army. He died of an overdose of chloroform in a Soviet hospital eighteen years ago.”

“So? What does it have to do with us?”

“Please do not misunderstand me, and do not read into my words more than I am specifically asking: is there
any
possibility my prisoner was accidentally administered the wrong medicine, or an excess of medication?”

The blade of outdoor light drew a jagged line across the surgeon’s figure as he waved his hands to dismiss the idea. “Oberfeldwebel Weller is trained and experienced —”

“Yes, and so are you. Please answer my question.”

“I really don’t understand you, Major. In a severe cardiac crisis, with a patient whose general health is so gravely compromised —”

“What was he given?”

“What I had on hand: camphor in a 20 per cent solution.”

Bora retrieved a small notebook from his breast pocket, flipped it open and pencilled a note. “Camphor, 20 per cent. Not something else? What about aconitine, for example?”

“Aconitine!” Mayr burst out. “Are you mad? On a cardiac patient? Besides, an excess of medication would be detectable right away in an autopsy.”

“
Right away
. And you did the post-mortem when? Twenty-four hours after the decease, did you not? Isn’t it true that a lapse of hours would make a difference to the detection and measurement of some substances?”

In the segmented light from the window, Mayr’s field-grey uniform, murky between the flaps of his white coat, had the colour of water at winter’s end. It was the tinge of ice-melt, when brooks run along snowy banks. His agitated face looked pale yellow. “This is totally out of order!” He raised his voice. “This is
unconscionable
behaviour!”

Why is he so alarmed? He knows more than he says
. Bora slipped the notebook’s thin pencil back into its leather loop. He kept his tone under control. “You’re reading too much into my words. Take – say – a substance like aconitine nitrate, a remedy against neuralgia as far as I know, hypodermically injected: could a lapse of hours make it undetectable?”

“I contest your assumption! It’s unheard of, Major Bora! Are you by any chance accusing me of negligence or conspiracy, or worse?”

“Could a lapse of twenty-four hours be enough?”

“I have no idea. Maybe. But —”

The notebook slid back into Bora’s breast pocket. “That’s all I needed to know for now, Herr Oberstarzt. Thank you.”

Mayr was trembling in a cold rage when Bora left the office. Down the hallway he went, and to the ground floor. There through an open doorway he glimpsed a white-stockinged nurse leaning over someone’s bedside, her stout calves wholly unattractive, and, passing by another ward, an army chaplain administering the last sacrament. His hands, in the process of draping the stole over his shoulders, were waxy and long-fingered. Everything reeked of phenol, as if cleanliness were the sole bastion against death.