And out of all this murkiness and toil, only one thing was bright: Sergo his son, his sun, his hope for the cruel realm in which he was himself the cruellest. I will never let him work in my filthy world, he promised himself. He is too good for that. How I love him.
And Beria slept.
VIII
‘A Jew?’ asked SS-Obersturmführer Oskar Dirlewanger from the doorway of the house in Shepilovka where the collaborator SS-Brigadeführer Kaminsky had his headquarters. Malamore, who had been about to leave, looked up. The commander of the Sonderkommando, Oskar Dirlewanger, was just forty-seven but wizened by booze, pills, opium and the years in prison for petty thefts and raping children. His needled head was almost shrunken and too small for his body, which itself was so thin that his patron Himmler nicknamed him ‘Gandhi’. ‘A Jew has taken an Aryan nurse? Shameless.’ He pulled on his shirt and started to button it up.
‘He simply used her as a human shield to escape,’ said Malamore, aware that he was sounding almost apologetic.
‘Fuck that.’ Dirlewanger absentmindedly fingered his necklace of what appeared to be yellow beans, wrinkled and shapeless. ‘Can’t you see the Communist Jew has taken her for sexual gratification? Look, gentlemen, I know all about sexual congress with our enemies. You should see the Polish girls, the little Jewesses I’ve had along the way. But we can’t allow it the other way round.’ He strapped on his gunbelt.
‘Nonsense, Obersturmführer, and besides we didn’t ask for your help,’ replied Malamore in German.
‘What is this girl to you?’ Dirlewanger asked, alert suddenly.
‘Careful, Obersturmführer,’ said Malamore. ‘She is the respectable widow of an officer of the Tridentine killed in action this week, an Italian nurse.’
‘But you know her, don’t you?’
‘I do.’
‘Biblically? Inside and out?’
‘I warn you—’ Malamore seethed inside with a disquieting mixture of anger and nerves.
‘Fine.’ Dirlewanger waved a hand. ‘Let’s leave it at that.’ He turned to Kaminsky. ‘We’re responsible for this, Kaminsky. I shall join your detachment, Consul Malamore, with a few of my chosen poachers.’
This was not turning out as Malamore planned. This Dirlewanger was not a real soldier at all. More like a ratcatcher or someone who belonged in a straitjacket in an asylum. He would make a complaint to the High Command of the Armarta Italiana, General Gariboldi himself if necessary. If these cutthroats were with him, how was he to keep Fabiana safe?
‘I insist,’ replied Dirlewanger. ‘Our mission to Russia is to wipe out the very possibility of Blutschande – blood-shame – yet you let a Jew, yes a fucking Bolshevik Jew, right here in Russia where we’re annihilating the Jewish bacteria forever, steal your own whore from under your nose—’
No one had spoken to Malamore like this, ever. He wheeled around towards Dirlewanger, his hand on his Beretta. ‘She’s not anyone’s whore.’
‘Pardon me, Malamore. Apologies. No need to take offence. None was meant.’ Dirlewanger smiled, revealing yellow teeth, little and sharp like a ferret. A point scored. ‘But, esteemed consul,’ he went on. ‘She is something to you or I’ll be damned. This is the most reaction I’ve got from you in six months. Forgive me for speaking directly to a comrade but I can have a whore and cut her throat five minutes later. You can see one of mine hanging outside right here. Duty’s everything to me, and we all know you Italians are notorious for letting romance interfere with our mission.’
A vein started to throb on Malamore’s forehead.
‘Don’t do anything,’ whispered Montefalcone, who suddenly recognized that the necklace Dirlewanger wore was made of human earlobes. ‘Let’s get out of here. She’s getting further away all the time.’
‘He’s right,’ said Dirlewanger. ‘Pardon me but I am known for my frankness. I get the job done and if I upset the prudish bourgeois, I am proud of that. My patron the Reichsführer-SS himself regards it as an admirable quality. Lucky you have us Germans behind you, Consul Malamore.’ He turned to the doctor. ‘Dr Kapto, we need to get you to the Sixth Army today, but let’s also be clear. The Jew escaped under your watch, and I call that a strange occurrence. If you don’t want that investigated, I suggest you join us.’
‘But the child—’
‘Bring your little “lady friend” if you must. Everyone should see this beautiful countryside at least once. I’ve called the Sixth Army headquarters for you and they know about your map and they are keen to get it urgently. Wehrmacht units will ensure your map reaches Colonel von Schwerin.’
‘Thank you. It will be my pleasure to ride out with you, Obersturmführer,’ said Dr Kapto, ruffling the girl’s hair. He glanced brightly around the room with his colourless eyes.
‘All is agreed then,’ said Dirlewanger. ‘Brigadeführer Kaminsky, report this anti-partisan Aktion to the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe as well as our Italian, Romanian and Hungarian allies in case we pass through their sectors. Grishaka! Mironka!’ he shouted. ‘Saddle the horses!’
Two Cossack grooms, teenaged boys with topknots and unbuttoned German tunics, appeared at the doorway and then skedaddled towards the stables. There was no time to be lost.
IX
When Fabiana awoke, she imagined herself as a girl during the school holidays lazing in a field in the countryside. All she could smell was the sweet dust that she associated with harvest and the masculine leather of saddles. She was on the ground, on a blanket, her head on a saddlebag. A crackle of shots somewhere, then the familiar boom of the big guns, and the smell of burning and diesel. Though the evening light was beginning to fade, it was still hot. Her blouse was open; fingers of sweat ran down her chest and her back. She opened her eyes. There was someone else with her. She heard a horse whinny and the reality struck her: she was in the war, her husband was dead, Malamore was out there looking for her; and she, a nurse of the Armata Italiana, was with a Russian man – a Jew and probably a Communist, a convict who’d served in the Camps – a stranger whom she hardly knew.
She felt sick. She couldn’t see how she could return to her own side now. Her people would surely execute her. She imagined scenarios of shots fired through the grass; she could taste her own end, feel the massive blow of a bullet smashing into her; she could see herself lying on the grasslands, her mouth a little open, her eyes staring. Could she lie about what had happened? Would they believe her? Or court-martial her? If so, better to perish out here. The shame for her darling parents if she was shot for treason… Everyone would hear of it on the Campo San Stin, the archive, the school… She would ruin them all.
Fabiana lay still and cursed her own impulsive stupidity. In normal life, there’s always a way to reverse even the silliest of decisions but not in war and she wanted to weep. She was going to die very soon and with this knowledge came a bracing surge of freedom. She could be anything now, do anything. She could say what she wished. She belonged to no country, no city, no man. She was living breath to breath. She had seen many men die, she had been beaten by her husband Ippolito, she was in a wild, hostile land and she was surprised to find that she was not so afraid of dying any more. She had seen so many young men step across that threshold, just a breath one side, and no breath the other. Instead, a sudden joy rushed through her. This field of sunflowers was her own private kingdom and here things couldn’t be simpler. A cottage, two horses, two beehives, a well – and this man.