In this inner sanctum of hard-core trainees the tactics of keeping the imperialists on the defensive were emphasized by use of constant, prodding harassment and pressure. Lenin remained the infallible source of inspiration. “Push out a bayonet. If it strikes fat, push deeper. If it strikes iron, pull back for another day.”
In order to learn how to counter imperialist propaganda the students were exposed to Western books, newspapers, speeches, broadcasts. For in Ufa, the enemy, the true enemy, was everyone who was not a Communist. This meant the temporary American and British allies just as it had meant the Nazis during the Non-Aggression Pact days.
During the meticulous courses in counterpropaganda Heinrich Hirsch, for the first time, was exposed to Jefferson, Lincoln, and Paine and Western thought. All of the Anglo/American ideologies were thoroughly dissected and destroyed in the classrooms, but at the same time, a new flood of thought opened.
For the first time in his life he was able to read that all of the world’s ideas were not discovered by Marx, Lenin, or Stalin. Added to his earlier confusions and disillusions, Hirsch knew that he could become an agent of the revolution only through the fear of power and the silencing forever of his own voices of inquisitiveness.
Something else happened to him in Ufa. Heinrich had reached his twenty-third year without ever having sex with a woman. He had always been too tired from his studies and too dedicated to indulge in such nonsense.
In Ufa he met Maria Majoros, the young daughter of a Spanish Communist who, like his own father, was a martyr of the Communist world.
At what moment does one try to describe the first awakening? What happens when the long suppressed emotion bursts alive like springtime? How does one tell of the sensation of first love? First a meeting of the eyes ... then, perhaps, stolen glances ... going out of the way to be at a place where you know she is passing ... a first rendezvous filled with trembling and fumbling, and then ... a knowing of love.
It was discovery that there were other things on this earth that belonged to most men that had been denied him.
Wild great cries of love to each other in stolen places ...
BULLETIN!
HEINRICH HIRSCH AND MARIA MAJOROS WILL APPEAR BEFORE THE KOMSOMOL COMMITTEE FOR THE PURPOSE OF SELF-CRITICISM.
Who told on them? Did it really matter? Was there ever life away from prying eyes?
They took their medicine. They stood side by side daring not to look at each other. The portrait of Stalin glared down at them; it always did. The angry eyes of the Komsomol Committee executives scorned them, and they confessed their shame.
“I beg for the understanding of my comrades for this petit bourgeois indulgent act I have committed,” Heinrich Hirsch said of the love of the only woman he had known. “I am humiliated for allowing myself to forget my Communist upbringing and behavior unworthy of a member of Komsomol.”
For an hour Heinrich Hirsch was berated; and then, Maria Majoros, a woman of proud Spanish blood, blurted her “confession”:
“The manifestations and provocations of my act with Heinrich Hirsch are contrary to the duty of a socialist woman. I beg mercy from my comrades to prove myself again worthy of making my contribution to world revolution.”
When the further debasement of Maria Majoros was over the girl was sent away from Ufa, never to be heard from again.
Heinrich Hirsch, the twenty-five-year-old deputy to Rudi Wöhlman on the German People’s Liberation Committee, had now finished his journey into the past at the flat on Geyer Strasse 2.
The old woman in the room was still filled with a fear of the strange young man.
“Don’t be frightened, Mutter,” he said softly, “I just wanted to see what it looked like.”
He walked outside into the shambles of Berlin. The homecoming was done.
Chapter Five
IGOR KARLOVY REQUISITIONED A mansion in Karlshorst for his billet. It was relatively undamaged, and the twelve rooms were the most luxurious he had ever been in. The headquarters office was established in the main drawing room; he did his own work in his enormous, lush bedroom. Reports poured in from all over the city with data for the dismantling of the Berlin industrial complex. In a few days he was due to hand in his own findings to Commissar Azov and the German People’s Liberation Committee.
A sound of singing reached his ears, the voices of his men. Igor took off his glasses, put them down for a moment, and listened from his desk. The song, known to him from childhood, was called “Volga, Volga,” a song of the cossacks and their lure. It was Russian, melodic, and mournful. Young Feodor’s voice sang with nostalgia.
A fine boy, young Feodor, Igor thought ... my most promising officer. They had been through it all together, Feodor and the colonel. They were more like brothers than senior and junior officers.
The voice of Ivan Orlov joined in the chorus. Ivan sings well, Igor thought, but that is about all. He hangs too closely on the words of the commissars and the edicts. He spies on us.
Igor stretched, yawned, patted his flat hard stomach, and slipped into his tunic without buttoning it and went into the living room. The singers were warmly comfortable after the first flushes of victory and the afterglow of Vodka. They sat about in the deep comfort of the great house with their boots off and their tunics open.
“Sit still, sit still,” Igor said as he entered.
Feodor tossed a mandolin to the colonel; he perched his foot on a stool, lit a cigarette, and caught up in the chorus:
Volga, Volga you’re my mother,
Volga, you’re a Russian stream ...
Captain Boris Chernov came in from the outside just as the song came to its sorrowful end telling of a young princess being thrown into the waters as a sacrifice.
“You’re late,” Igor admonished. “I’ve been holding up the entire report on your account.”
“Forgive me, Comrade Colonel,” Boris said, slyly holding up a woman’s delicate watch. “I got delayed by a little German dumpling.”
Ivan Orlov laughed. Igor set his instrument down, snatched the papers out of Boris’ case, and returned to his bedroom slamming the door behind him.
“What bothers the colonel?” Boris asked.
“He thinks our officers shouldn’t screw the German women,” Feodor snapped, coming to the colonel’s defense.
“Nonsense,” Ivan Orlov said.
“Let me tell you that many officers are condemning the whole thing and want to put a stop to it.”
“I was at headquarters”—Boris laughed—“an old woman was complaining she was raped eighty-four times. The doctor insisted she was enjoying it or she wouldn’t have bothered to count.”
Ivan laughed; Feodor got more angry.
“Come now, Feodor,” Boris said. “Do you think the Germans deserve better?”
“The hell with both of you,” Feodor answered. “Besides, I don’t think much of your taste. As for me, I wouldn’t stick mine between a German woman’s legs.”
Igor Karlovy was standing in the doorway, his fists clenched. “Carry on your goddamned discussion elsewhere. I’m trying to finish my work.”
Forty-eight hours after his report was filed, Commissar Azov summoned Igor to meet with the head of the German People’s Liberation Committee.
V. V. Azov, who made a fine art of keeping himself inconspicuous, mysterious, and anonymous, had a mansion in Potsdam on the Wannsee. His house was in a forest, shades eternally drawn, grounds heavily guarded.
The usual portrait of Stalin hung over the conference table in the dark-paneled room replacing an oil of Prussian nobility. Even in the worst days of Leningrad, Igor thought, there was never a shortage of Stalin’s portraits. V. V. Azov looked expressionless and bored as he took his place at the table.