Voss deemed this conversation quite comical when I reported it to him. “It was about time! Nothing like failure to sharpen the wits.” We had met as agreed, on Sunday, toward noon, in front of the Feldkommandantur. A troop of kids was clustered around the barricades, fascinated by the motorcycles and an amphibious Schwimmwagen parked there. “Partisans!” bellowed a territorial who was vainly trying to scatter them with a stick; no sooner were they chased away from one side than they streamed in on the other, and the reservist was already out of breath. We climbed the steep slope of Karl Marx Street, toward the museum, and I finished summing up Bräutigam’s remarks. “Better late than never,” Voss commented, “but in my opinion it won’t work. We’ve developed too many bad habits. This business with the military administration is just a grace period. In six or ten months they’ll have to hand over the reins, and then all the jackals being kept on the leash will pour in, the Schickedanzes, the Körners, the Sauckel-Einsatzes, and all hell will break loose again. You see, the problem is that we don’t have a colonial tradition. Even before the Great War, we were managing our African possessions very badly. And then afterward, we didn’t have any more possessions at all, and the little bit of experience we had accumulated in colonial administration was lost. Just compare us to the English: look at the delicacy, the tact with which they govern and exploit their empire. They know very well how to wield the stick when they have to, but they always offer the carrot first, and go back to the carrot right after they hit with the stick. Even the Soviets, at bottom, have done better than us: despite their brutality, they were able to create a feeling of a shared identity, and their empire is holding. The troops that kept us in check on the Terek were made up mostly of Georgians and Armenians. I’ve spoken with some Armenian prisoners: they think of themselves as Soviet, and fight for the USSR without hesitation. We haven’t been able to offer them anything better.” We had arrived at the green door of the museum and I knocked. After a few minutes the vehicle gate, a little higher up, opened a little, giving us a glimpse of an old wrinkled peasant wearing a cap, his beard and callous fingers yellowed by makhorka. He exchanged a few words with Voss, then pulled the gate open a little more. “He says the museum is closed, but if we like, we can come in and look. Some German officers live here, in the library.” The gate opened onto a little paved courtyard, surrounded by charming little whitewashed buildings; on the right, a second floor had been built over a shed, with a staircase outside; the library was there. In the background rose the Mashuk, omnipresent, massive, tatters of clouds clinging to its eastern slope. To the left, lower down, you could see a little garden, with vines on a trellis, then some other buildings, their roofs covered with thatch. Voss climbed the steps to the library. Inside, the varnished wooden shelves took up so much space that you could barely slip past them. The old man had followed us; I handed him three cigarettes; his face lit up, but he remained near the door, watching us. Voss examined the books through the glass but didn’t touch anything. My gaze came to rest on a little oil portrait of Lermontov, rather nicely done: he was represented in a red dolman decked with epaulettes and gilt braid, his lips moist, his eyes surprisingly anxious, wavering between rage, fear, and unbridled mockery. In another corner hung an engraved portrait, under which I could just make out an inscription in Cyrillic: this was Martynov, Lermontov’s killer. Voss was trying to open one of the cases, but it was locked. The old man said something and they conversed a little. “The curator has run away,” Voss translated for me. “One of the employees has the keys, but she isn’t in today. Too bad, they have some nice things.”—“You’ll be back.”—“Certainly. Come, he’s going to open Lermontov’s house for us.” We crossed the courtyard and the little garden to reach one of the low houses. The old man pushed open the door; inside, it was dark, but the light let in by the opening was enough to see by. The walls had been whitewashed, and the furniture was simple; there were some beautiful oriental carpets and Caucasian sabers hanging from nails. A narrow sofa looked very uncomfortable. Voss had paused in front of a desk and was stroking it with his fingers. The old man explained something to him. “He wrote
A Hero of Our Time at this table,” Voss translated pensively.—“Right here?”—“No, in St. Petersburg. When the museum was created, the government had the table sent here.” There was nothing else to see. Outside, clouds were veiling the sun. Voss thanked the old man, and I gave him a few more cigarettes. “We’ll have to come back when there’s someone who can explain everything,” said Voss. “By the way,” he added at the gate, “I forgot to tell you: Professor Oberländer is here.”—“Oberländer? But I know him. I met him in Lemberg, at the beginning of the campaign.”—“All the better. I was going to suggest we have dinner with him.” In the street, Voss turned left, toward the wide flagstone-paved lane that started at Lenin’s statue. The path kept rising; I was short of breath already. Instead of leaving the lane to head for the Aeolian Harp and the Academic Gallery, Voss kept going straight ahead, along the Mashuk, on a paved road that I hadn’t yet taken. The sky was darkening rapidly and I was afraid it would rain. We passed a few sanatoriums, then the pavement ended and we continued on a wide dirt path. This place was not much traveled: a peasant sitting on a wagon passed us, the jingling of the harnesses mingled with the lowing of the ox and the grating squeal of ill-sprung wheels; after that, the road was deserted. A little farther on, to the left, a brick archway opened into the mountainside. We went up to it and squinted to see into the darkness; an iron gate, padlocked, barred access to the tunnel. “That’s the Proval,” Voss said. “At the end, there’s an open-air grotto, with a sulfur spring.”—“Isn’t this where Pechorin meets Vera?”—“I’m not sure. Isn’t that in the grotto beneath the Aeolian Harp?”—“We’ll have to check.” The clouds were passing just over our heads: I felt that if I lifted my arm I could stroke the swirls of vapor. We couldn’t see the sky at all and the atmosphere had become muffled, silent. Our footsteps crunched on the sandy earth; the path rose gently; and soon the clouds surrounded us. We could barely make out the tall trees lining the path; the air seemed heavy; the world had disappeared. In the distance, a cuckoo’s call echoed in the woods, an anxious, sorrowful cry. We walked in silence. This lasted a long time. Here and there, I caught a fleeting glimpse of large, dark, indistinct masses, buildings probably; then forest again. The clouds were dissipating, the gray shone with a confused gleam and all of a sudden they unraveled and scattered and we found ourselves in the sunlight. It hadn’t rained. To our right, beyond the trees, the jagged shapes of the Beshtau stood out; another twenty minutes’ walk brought us to the monument. “We’ve taken the long way round,” said Voss. “From the other side it’s faster.”—“Yes, but it was worth it.” The monument, a white obelisk erected in the middle of a poorly maintained lawn, offered little of interest: faced with this setting, carefully landscaped by bourgeois piety, it was hard to imagine the gunshots, the blood, the hoarse cries, the rage of the murdered poet. A few German vehicles were lined up in the parking area; below, in front of the forest, there were tables and benches where some soldiers were eating. For the sake of thoroughness I went over to examine the bronze medallion and the inscription on the monument. “I saw the photo of a temporary monument that they built in 1901,” Voss told me. “A kind of fanciful half-rotunda made of wood and plaster, with a bust perched high up top. It was much funnier.”—“They must have had trouble funding it. Should we go eat?”—“Yes, they make good shashlik here.” We crossed the parking area and went down to the tables. Two vehicles bore the tactical marks of the Einsatzkommando; I recognized several officers at one of the tables. Kern waved at us and I waved back, but I didn’t go over to say hello. There were also Turek, Bolte, Pfeiffer. I chose a table that was set somewhat back, near the woods, with coarse stools. A local mountain man in a skullcap, his cheeks badly shaved around his thick moustache, approached: “No pork,” Voss translated. “Just mutton. But there’s vodka and