‘Yes,’ I said. ‘East Prussia.’
‘To a Russian that’s much too complicated. Better to hate you all. Safer, too. For us.’
‘You might say that it’s the Poles who have brought me back here to Smolensk,’ I said. I told Batov about Katyn Wood, and how we were waiting for a thaw to begin so we could start digging.
Batov brushed up his thick, Stalin-sized moustache with the inside of his hand. He didn’t say anything for a moment but his dark shadowy eyes were full of questions that were mostly for himself, I think. The face was lean and the nose keen-looking, even fastidious, and the bushy-black moustache almost designed to protect his nostrils from some of the less pleasant smells that afflicted any resident of Smolensk; and probably not just the smells: the words and ideas of any governmental tyranny can stink as bad as any backed-up sewer. For a moment he hung his head almost as if he was feeling shame.
‘You must understand that in spite of all this I love my country, Herr Gunther,’ he said. ‘Very much. I am in love with Mother Russia. Her music, her literature, her art, the ballet – yes, I love the ballet. My daughter, too. It is still her life. There’s nothing she wishes more than to be a great ballerina like Anna Pavlova and dance The Dying Swan in Paris. But I love the truth more. Yes, even in Russia. And I hate all cruelty.’
I sensed he was about to tell me something, so I lit two cigarettes, handed him one silently, opened the second bottle and then refilled our glasses.
‘When I joined my profession I took an oath to help my fellow man,’ he said. ‘But lately this is more and more difficult. The situation here in Smolensk is terrible. Of course, you know that. You have eyes and you’re not a fool. But it was no less terrible before you Germans arrived here with your new street names and your Aryan superiority. Wagner is a great composer, yes; but is he any greater than Tchaikovsky, or Mussorgsky? I think not. Things have been done here in Russia that no civilized country should ever have countenanced doing against another civilized country. Not just by you, but by us, the Russians, too. And one of those things was what was done to the Poles.’
‘If I didn’t know you were here, Doctor Batov, I’d say I was talking to myself.’
‘Perhaps that’s why I feel able to tell you about this,’ he said. ‘When first we met I sensed you are someone who is trying to be a good man. In spite of the uniform you are wearing. Although it’s odd – I could have sworn it was a different one the last time you were here.’
‘It is different,’ I said. ‘But that’s a long story. For another time.’
‘I don’t say that you are a good man, Captain Gunther – you are still a captain, yes?’
I nodded.
‘No, you are not a good man. There are none of us can claim to be that, today. I think we must all make compromises to stay alive. When my wife was arrested, the authorities made me sign another piece of paper saying that I recognized the justice of the sentence given to her. I didn’t want to do that, but I did it all the same. I told myself Jelena would have wanted me to sign it, only the truth is that I signed it because if I hadn’t they would have arrested me. Was there any sense in us both being dead? I don’t think so. And yet—’
He had a smile that was full of brilliantly white teeth, and it returned briefly to his thoughtful, almost preoccupied face, but only as a way of preventing the tears in his eyes from increasing in quantity; he blinked them away and tossed back the drink I had poured for him.
I looked away out of something like decency and glanced over the books that were piled next to his chair. They all looked like they’d been read, but I wondered if just one of them contained a single truth like the one I guessed he knew as well as I did: that being dead is probably the worst thing that can happen to you – after this nothing matters very much, especially not what other people say about you. As long as you can draw breath you’ve got a chance of turning around whatever nastiness you’ve been involved in; at least that was what I was praying when I prayed at all.
Batov wiped his moustache with the back of his hand. ‘I haven’t drunk vodka like this in a long time,’ he said. ‘Frankly I haven’t been able to afford it. Even before you Germans turned up, things were very hard. And they’re not about to get easier. For me, at any rate.’
‘That’s why we’re drinking, isn’t it? To forget about shit like that. Because life is shit but the alternative is always worse. At least that’s the way it looks to me. I’m in a dark place but the other side of the curtain looks even darker to me. And it frightens me.’
‘You sound like a Russian now. It must be the vodka, Captain Gunther. What you say is quite correct, and that’s why any Russian drinks. We pretend to live because dying is much more reality than we can cope with. Which reminds me of a story – about drinking yorsh, as a matter of fact. That stuff is lethal. Even to those who are themselves lethal. Perhaps them most of all, because they have so much more to forget. Let’s see now, yes it would have been May of 1940 when two senior NKVD officers arrived at the state hospital in a Zis driven by a blue-hat NCO. Because of who they were and the power they wield – the power of life and death – I was asked to supervise their medical treatment myself. I say asked, but it would be more accurate to say that the blue-hat NCO put a gun to my head and told me that if they died, he would come back to the hospital and personally blow my brains out. He actually took out a gun and put it to my head, just to make the point. He even made me help to carry the two officers out of the back of the truck, which I will never forget as long as I live. As I dropped the tailgate I thought the two men had been seriously injured, because the floor of the truck was covered in blood. Only the blood was not theirs. And in fact the two NKVD men were not injured at all, but blind drunk. The NCO was pretty drunk himself. They’d all been drinking yorsh for several days and the two officers were suffering from acute alcoholic poisoning. Also on the floor of the truck I saw several leather aprons and a briefcase that fell on the ground as we carried the men out and burst open: it was full of automatic pistols.’
‘Do you remember the names of these men?’
‘Yes. One was a Major Vasili Mikhailovich Blokhin, and the other was a Lieutenant Rudakov – Arkady Rudakov. But I don’t remember the NCO. And really, who they were is not important, because almost immediately I knew what they were. These people are the worst we have, you know. State-sanctioned psychopaths. Well, everyone in Russia knows this type: unlike most people this kind of NKVD man doesn’t give a damn what he says about anything or anyone. And always he is threatening to shoot you, as if it means nothing to him because he does it so often. I mean this kind of a fellow handles guns like I handle a stethoscope. When he wakes up in the morning he probably reaches for his gun before he scratches his own balls. He shoots someone with less thought than you or I would stamp on an ant.
‘If you were to magnify a flea several thousand times you’d have an idea of what these men are like. Ugly and bloated with blood, with thin legs and hairy fat bodies. If you squashed one of them there would be such a great quantity of blood that came bursting out of their bodies that you would see nothing but red. Then there were their uniforms: the blue hats, the double TT shoulder-holsters, and the Orders of the Badge of Honour on their gymnasterka tunics – they would have received those orders from Stalin himself for their service in 1937 and 1938. In other words, one of these men might easily have been the very man who shot my own dear wife.