Fabiana stood in the sun until they had passed, closing her eyes as she felt the chaff settle on her, and when she opened them, the column had disappeared across the steppe, burnt straw and black fumes whirling above it like its own divine cloud.
She saw the horseman appearing, out of the dust, and she sighed. It could only be one man.
‘Malamore inspecting,’ he said, his sun-gouged face, almost chiselled, like rock, expressionless. ‘Inspecting his favourite medical unit. Are you resting?’
She nodded up at him, shading her eyes with her arm, feeling vulnerable in her white pinafore. ‘I have a patient,’ she said.
‘One of ours?’
‘I think so. I must get on and examine him.’
‘Right.’ He saluted. ‘I’ll be back at nightfall.’ And he rode on into the haze.
II
Inside the brown Red Cross tent made of canvas and burlap, Fabiana saw five bare camp beds with stained mattresses. Atop one of them lay a fully clothed man who had been unceremoniously placed there. He was still in his riding boots, and there was a dirty bandage round his head. His face was heavily bruised, and he bled from his nose, lip and right eye. He was very thin, and he was not young. Most of the boys Fabiana saw were between eighteen and twenty-five. This man was somewhere, she guessed, between forty-five and fifty, and he had been badly fed for some time. He seemed tiny and shrunken on the bed; his shirt was stained with blood, some of it black and crusty, and his trousers were filthy with compacted dust, sweat, gore. If he had lice she wouldn’t be surprised. She was not sure what nationality he was, so she searched his pockets, but there were no papers. He was too old for a conscript and too ill nourished for an officer so Fabiana guessed he was either one of Mandryka’s Russians or one of Dirlewanger’s German ex-convicts who were said to be killing Russians and Jews, women and children in the villages. If he was a member of either of these special units, he was a degenerate. She remembered meeting Mandryka and Dirlewanger, when they were out riding with Malamore, and they had disgusted her. But she was just a nurse, and it was not her job to judge Italy’s allies, and that, she thought, was the quiet crime of these times: if you made your conscience elastic enough, you could learn to tolerate anything and still find joy in the blossoming of flowers.
As Fabiana started to examine him, she realized with a shock that he had been shot, and that his shirt was wet. She wondered if he was going to die. Instantly she set to work, cutting his clothes off him and attending to the wound in the shoulder. She had no orderly so she had to do it all herself. She lifted his shoulder. There was no exit wound which meant the bullet was still within.
I am going to call him Patient Number One, Fabiana decided, Il Primo. ‘Whoever you are, whatever you’ve done,’ she said aloud to him, ‘you’re my new beginning, my rebirth, the first patient I have cared for on my own, and you are going to live.’
Benya was dreaming. He was in Kolyma on 22 June 1941, the day the Germans had invaded Russia. After he had finished work with Dr Kapto in the clinic, he found Deathless waiting for him.
‘The Boss wants you,’ said Deathless, who held his hands like trowels.
In Jaba’s barracks, most of the prisoners were lying exhausted in their bunks, peering down the aisle of the dormitory towards Jaba’s section where the Criminals held court, playing cards and boasting about heists and shootouts, girls and money. Benya noticed a new arrival on the bunk by the door, a dark boy smoking. Probably a transfer from a neighbouring Camp.
As usual, Jaba was shirtless, and playing cards with two females and another Criminal nicknamed ‘Poxy’ – for his scarred face. No wonder every man was almost falling off his bunk to watch this card game, thought Benya. Except for nurses, there were not meant to be women in a men’s Camp.
Opposite Jaba sat a slim woman whose skin was as dark as a gypsy. Her hair was jet black, her eyes kindled coals, and she radiated such an aura of darkness that it glowed. She was smoking a cigarette, pursing her sinewy lips as she inhaled. She examined her cards with total concentration, and she did not look up when Benya arrived.
‘Sit and watch,’ said Jaba. Benya sat on the edge of a bunk. He couldn’t take his eyes off the woman.
‘You know who that is?’ hissed Deathless in his ear. ‘The Atamansha!’
Everyone knew that the Atamansha was the Cossack boss of the neighbouring women’s Camp, which she ran just as Jaba ran this one. Ataman was the title of a Cossack general – but, as far as Benya knew, this woman was the first female chieftain. He thought her gypsyish looks were quite beautiful, and all the more so when she put down the cigarette and absent-mindedly ran her hand through the hair of the nurse Nyushka, who was sitting next to her.
‘She’s here for a card game?’ asked Benya.
‘She’s asking a favour,’ said Deathless, ‘and the Boss said he’d play for it.’
They were playing Camp poker with special rules. Twice they showed their cards and it seemed the Atamansha had won but Jaba, narrowing his eyes and ruffling his plumage of grey spiky hair, somehow raised the stakes and they played on.
‘Is that your storyteller, Jaba?’
It took Benya a moment to realize the Atamansha was suddenly looking at him.
‘He’s my teacher,’ said Jaba.
‘You’re the book-writer, the ink-shitter?’ She addressed him directly in such a strong Don accent that it sounded absurdly quaint.
‘Yes,’ said Benya.
‘Well then, storyteller, sit beside me,’ said the Atamansha. ‘Maybe your blue eyes will bring me luck.’
‘A cunning gambit, Atamansha,’ said Jaba, ‘but those belong to me.’
‘All right, throw in the peach,’ said the Atamansha. Nyushka looked down.
‘I didn’t know you liked peaches,’ said Jaba.
‘I like everything,’ replied the Atamansha.
Jaba gestured at Benya, who obediently sat next to her on the chair. Without looking at him again, she showed him her cards. It had been two years since he had been this close to a woman. His leg was close to her leg and he could smell her skin and feel the spicy warmth radiating from her. He took in her britches in their tight boots, her blue Zek shirt open at the neck, her skin dark like baked earth, and he amazed himself by imagining what it might be like to make love to her. He was certain that he could handle her. She offered him a cigarette and he took it. Deathless lit it with a smirk. When she moved, she let her hands brush him; as she smoked, she blew the blue smoke into his face; and Benya started to imagine how this very scenario in the Boss’s barracks could lead to his kissing her coarse lips, to his unclipping her britches and reaching for her thighs…
He was alive again, he realized suddenly. After his arrest and sentencing, he had no longer felt such things. He had been ground into Camp dust. I had become a eunuch, he thought, a neuter, a husk. He had lost all sexual desire. He had ceased to be Benya Golden. But now here it was again on the very day the war started.
‘Show your cards,’ said Jaba quietly. He did everything quietly and never raised his voice.
The Atamansha threw down her hand.
‘You win,’ Jaba said.
‘I collect,’ she said.
‘All right,’ replied Jaba, nodding at Deathless, who suddenly locked his arms around Poxy, who couldn’t move. Smiley grabbed his hand and, quickly, wielding a pair of wire-clippers, sliced off Poxy’s pinkie finger. Poxy howled and convulsed with the agony. Deathless released him and led him away. Smiley tossed the finger on to the table in front of the Atamansha. Benya jumped up in horror.