Only if he believes can he make others believe. As soon as the Führer believes, it must come true.
Well, of course, the blonde murmured.
And, you know, my dear girl, sometimes a man needs, how should I put it, a little bolstering up. Especially an exhausted man.
Oh, Herr Strik, you’re so right, and so good to us! Do you think we’ll be staying here long? If so, these walls must be whitewashed—
Vlasov was at the door. Heidi rushed into his arms, gazing at him adoringly. He kissed her three times, in the Russian manner.
Screened by the theatrically leafy camouflage netting over the Charlotten-burger Chaussee, sequestered between bright-postered walls and sandbagged museum windows, Vlasov took long walks with his gilded victory angel. As long as she accompanied him (humming Mozart’s ever so healthy German melodies), he was permitted to go almost anywhere a German could. For a long time after the woman I loved so much had left me, I kept encountering mutual friends, small gifts from her, abandoned possessions of hers; place-names on the map ambushed me with recollections; from the walls, her photographs continued to smile at me so gently; after awhile I realized that there was nothing to do but seek out these things whose associations caused me such agony, and bury the freshly bloody grief under the dirt of new experience. Vlasov did the same. The thick green foliage of the Tiergarten reminded him of how it had been in the Russian swamps during the last days of his immaculateness; needless to say, he never mentioned anything about those times to Heidi.
They both enjoyed visiting Moltke’s statue in the Grosser Stern. That Prussian genius was gazing up into the distance, strict and old and withered, with an eagle on either side of his coat of arms. (Soon there’d be Soviet bulletholes in his legs.)
Heidi stopped humming and said: What a genius he must have been! Pure Aryan!
He was a brilliant field commander. He showed your generals the way to outflank the French—
But, Andrei, how could you have been allowed to study him in that horrid Soviet zone?
Her husband smiled a little. He said: I can quote him if you like. Here’s one of his maxims from 1869: The stronger our frontal position becomes on account of its success of fire, the more the attacker will focus his attack on our flanks. Deep deployment is appropriate to counter this danger.
Heidi was already bored, but she tried; he never forgot how hard she tried.—What does that mean exactly?
It means that if a rivercourse gets blocked by a boulder, the river will flow around it.
So how can the boulder keep from being surrounded? I assume that the boulder represents—
By being longer than the river is.
But that’s—
Irrational, isn’t it?
So what are you saying?
That Moltke’s notions are obsolete. Nobody can avoid encirclement in this age of tanks and planes…
When you’re encircled, what should you do?
Well, that’s the question, isn’t it? said he with his pitiful smile. (She was so glad that she’d been able to distract him.) You break out. You give up being a rock, and turn yourself into, let’s say, oil. Then you flow around the enemy water, and, if you’re strong enough, you encircle it.
But then the enemy can do the same!
Correct, he said flatly. There’s no end.
His didactic, lecturing attitude irritated her. He had no right. But then her mouth softened, and she slipped her arm around his waist.—I’m sorry, she said. I know you’re thinking about the Ostfront.
He kept silent.
You’re thinking about the Ostfront, aren’t you?
Yes…
Darling, you’d feel better if you told me.
Pressure on our Orel salient seems quite dangerous, although I try to reassure myself that the High Command knows more than I do. The enemy can flow right around us. At this rate—
Andrei, how close will they come before we turn them back?
I can easily see them crossing the Dnieper.
When we get home, can you show me on a map?
Yes, I can show you. No doubt Stalin still has many reserves to call on. I remember in my time, when the Siberians…
You said they might cross the Dnieper. But you still haven’t said where we’ll stop them?
Well, if somebody would only give me the responsibility I could…
You do trust in the Führer, don’t you?
Ha, ha! I’m not a politician; I’m only a… Listen. I want to ask you something. You know how hard I’ve tried to warn the High Command. They won’t listen.
I know, I know—
Should I try to reach Himmler directly?
Oh, Andrei! she cried compassionately.
Is there anything you’re not telling me?
Now she seemed to him suddenly to possess the same quality of distant gentleness as his lost brown-eyed woman, his integrity. Something terrible had happened. She was gazing at him without weeping or kissing; something was over.
Shall I call Himmler or not?
Hanging her head, Heidi temporized: What does Herr Strik say?
Vlasov stiffened.—It’s no good, is it? And you won’t even tell me why.
His wife swallowed nervously. She said: Andrei, be brave. You deserve to prevail. Even if the river pours over the rock, the rock can outlast it. You—
Let’s go home, he said. I want a drink.
After that, disregarding all warnings, he went out alone when Heidi was in the bath. Well, what was she supposed to do? She’d tried, but he wouldn’t appreciate her efforts. Perhaps her mother had been right. It’s not likely that he was present when the heavy wooden doors of the Zeughaus opened for a show of captured Soviet weapons (and an assassination attempt upon Hitler failed there, thanks perhaps to the vigilance of the facade’s stone helmets turned everywhere in different directions), because who would have wanted to take responsibility for allowing Vlasov near our Führer? Still, he could have his little promenades; he could breathe the summer breath of linden trees. A girls’ corps with their rakes held gun-straight against their shoulders were marching to the harvest. (An old pensioner was saying to his wife: According to our concentration of strength… ) Strik-Strikfeldt, who happened to be standing right around the corner, invited Vlasov to speak to an association of military convalescents, but he declined, wandering listlessly away past a house which had been demolished by an English bomb. His best friend sprinted after him with the enthusiastic ease of a new recruit.—Not that way, dear fellow! Why, there’s the Gestapo over there! They’ll make mincemeat of you! Don’t you remember what happened to Masha? Never mind about that stupid hospital even if they are expecting you; here, let me…
In short, Vlasov remained mired in Berlin, whose name ironically derives from a Slavic word: brl, meaning marsh. He could not seem to break out of this limbo. From one blacked out window to the next his tall reflection flicked as pallidly as a lightning-flash. Drinking schnapps, or sitting on the toilet reading Signal magazine, he remembered Vinnitsa, with himself and Strik-Strikfeldt at the rustic table, the pretty stenographer typing everything. Although everybody reassured him that his blueprints for action were still being studied at the highest level, on 8.6.43 the supreme commander himself had said, not without irritation: I don’t need this General Vlasov at all in our rear areas.
With all respect, my Führer, if Vlasov helped keep the Slavs quiet until we’d finished the war, we could release many, many soldiers from anti-partisan operations—
No and again no, Hitler interrupted. No German agency must take seriously the bait contained in the Vlasov program.
The Russian Liberation Army—