Craig Russell - The Carnival Master

‘I’m finishing for the afternoon. Got shopping to do,’ he explained to Werner. He indicated his desk, the files still lying on it from their meeting. ‘Why don’t you do your paperwork there? Might as well get used to it.’

Ansgar busied himself in the kitchen. To an outsider, a restaurant kitchen would seem the definition of chaos: orders shouted over the sound of food sizzling or boiling, cookers and ventilators running at industrial noise levels, staff weaving between each other in a rushed ballet. But for Ansgar, his kitchen was the only place of true order that he knew. The dance of the kitchen staff, the rhythm of pan and oven: he orchestrated it all. No one ever had to wait too long for their order; no dish arrived under- or overcooked. His reputation was that of the artist tempered by the perfectionist.

Ansgar had never married. He had never met anyone who would have understood his particular needs. And those needs would have eventually emerged. There had been women, but again he had kept his behaviour within the range of that which should be expected. For the other needs, for his true needs, there had been the women he had paid. And he had had to pay well. But Ansgar’s lack of a normal romantic life had meant he had no wife. The closest he had to a child was Adam, whom he was training. Adam was nineteen, eager and hardworking. Ansgar found in Adam someone to whom he could pass on the sacred knowledge of the chef de cuisine.

Ansgar had set the machinery of the kitchen in motion for luncheon. Each member of staff undertaking their preparatory roles. He took Adam to one side, taking this time to induct his protege in yet another level of the culinary arts.

‘I want you to prepare the Wildschweinschinken. It goes on the menu this lunchtime.’

‘Yes, Chef,’ said Adam eagerly. Ansgar had previously allowed him to prepare the leg of wild boar. He had carefully mixed the coating of herbs, spices and mustards, exactly to Ansgar’s otherwise secret recipe, and had rubbed them into the boar flesh. That had been a month ago, and the wild pig’s leg had been marinating and curing in the big storage refrigerator since then. Adam brought the boar ham from the fridge and placed it on the carving board.

‘We will carve this slice by slice only as and when an order comes in,’ said Ansgar. ‘But I want you to practise carving a couple of slices from it. Also, I intend to serve it with a salad. I want you to suggest something appropriate.’

Adam frowned. ‘Well…’

‘No, not yet. First I want you to carve the meat. Examine its texture, its consistency.’

Adam nodded and, holding the leg with the carving fork, placed his blade against it.

‘Wait,’ said Ansgar patiently. ‘I want you to think more about your cut. Not just how thick or thin to carve the slices. I want you to think about the beast this meat came from. Close your eyes and picture it.’

Adam looked embarrassed for a moment, then closed his eyes.

‘Can you see it?’

‘Yes. A wild boar.’

‘Okay. Now I want you to think about where it foraged for food in the forest. About its shape, about the speed with which it could run. I want you to visualise that for a moment. Can you see it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Okay. Now open your eyes and carve. Then, without thinking any more about it, I want you to tell me what salad I should serve it with.’

Adam shaved a perfect flake of ham from the joint, placed it on a plate and looked at Ansgar, beaming. ‘It should be served with wild mushroom, fennel, orange and rocket salad.’

‘Do you see? Do you see what happens when you think beyond the food, beyond the meat… to the living flesh? Do that, and you will be a great cook, Adam. Do that, and you will always understand the true nature of the food that you serve.’

With that, Ansgar stole a glance across the kitchen at Ekatherina.

Fabel wanted to buy a polo-neck sweater so he headed down to the Alsterhaus department store on Jungfernstieg, next to the Alster lake. Shopping in the Alsterhaus was a luxury he afforded himself perhaps a little too frequently, but he enjoyed browsing in its halls and treating himself to a morsel or two from the cheese bistro on the store’s top floor. He had decided to walk into town and the promise of a fine morning had been fulfilled: the blanket of grey had broken up and the sky was a cold, bright blue.

As he approached Jungfernstieg, he heard music. Fabel noticed a group of about a dozen men and women harmonising in a language that you didn’t need to understand to know that this was a song about pain and sorrow. The choir stood on the wide pavement a few metres from the deco-arched entrance to the Alsterhaus. Three men of Slavic appearance, like fishermen in a stream, were trying to hook the attention of passers-by. One of them approached Fabel.

‘We’re collecting signatures, sir. I wonder if I might trouble you for a moment.’

‘I’m afraid I’m-’

‘I’m sorry, sir, I won’t keep you. But do you know anything about the Holodomor?’ The Slav held him with a steady, inquisitive gaze. Fabel noticed the man’s eyes. Piercing blue, and cold; like the winter-morning sky above them. He felt a lurch in his gut as he thought of another Slav he had known who had piercingly bright eyes.

‘Are you Ukrainian?’ Fabel asked.

‘Yes, I am.’ The Slav smiled. ‘The Holodomor was the deliberate genocide of my people, carried out by the Soviet Union and Stalin. Between seven and ten million Ukrainians died. One quarter of the Ukrainian population. Starved to death by the Soviets between nineteen thirty-two and thirty-three.’ He flicked open the folder he had been holding beneath his clipboard. It was filled with grainy black-and-white photographs of human misery: emaciated children, bodies lying in the street, huge communal grave pits being filled with stick-like bodies. The images were redolent of those that Fabel had grown to associate with the Holocaust. ‘At one point, twenty-five thousand Ukrainians were dying every day. And practically no one outside Ukraine knows about the Holodomor. Even in Ukraine it was only after independence that we spoke about it openly. Russia still refuses to acknowledge that the Holodomor was an act of deliberate genocide. They say it was the result of incompetent collectivisation by Stalin’s commissars.’

‘And you dispute this?’ said Fabel. He looked at his watch to check how much time he had before he was due to meet Susanne on the top floor of the Alsterhaus.

‘It’s a downright lie,’ continued the Slav, undeterred. ‘People starved to death all over the Soviet Union because of Stalin’s insane collectivisation mania. That’s true. But in nineteen twenty-seven we had started to Ukrainianise our country. We made Ukrainian, not Russian, our official language. Stalin saw us as a threat, so he tried to exterminate us by starving us. More than twenty-five per cent of the Ukrainian population were wiped out. Please, your signature will help us have this crime recognised for what it is: genocide. We need the German and British and other governments to do what Spain has already done and formally recognise the Holodomor as a crime against humanity.’

‘I’m sorry. I’m not saying that I won’t support your claim, but I can’t sign this until I know more about what happened. I need to find out more about it for myself.’

‘I understand.’ The man handed Fabel a leaflet. ‘This tells you where you can get more information. Not just from our organisation. But please, sir, when you have read all of this, please visit our website and add your name to our list there.’

When Fabel looked up from the leaflet the Ukrainian was already hooking another shopper from the stream on the pavement.