Philip Kerr - A Man Without Breath

Those of us who had assembled to see the sentence carried out – myself, Colonel Ahrens, Judge Conrad, Lieutenant von Schlabrendorff, Lieutenant Voss, several non-commissioned members of the field police, and some army prison guards – put out our cigarettes respectfully as two men approached the gallows. We relaxed a little as we realized they were only prison guards and watched as they began to push and pull at the beams as if testing the frame’s strength until, satisfied that the wooden edifice would perform its function, one of them lifted a thumb in the direction of the prison door. There was a short interval and then the two condemned men emerged with their hands tied in front of them and walked slowly towards the gallows, looking to one side and then the other in a sort of helpless, cornered way as if searching for a means of escape or some sign that they had been reprieved. They were wearing boots and breeches, but no tunics, and their white collarless shirts were almost too bright to contemplate.

Seeing me, Corporal Hermichen smiled and mouthed a greeting, and thinking he now meant to tell me what I wanted to know, I moved closer to the gallows where the guards were already urging the two men up the wooden steps. Reluctantly they complied and the steps wobbled ominously.

Sergeant Kuhr looked up at the noose as if wondering if it was equal to the business of hanging him, and now that I was nearer I could see it was a fair question, as the rope was little more than a length of striped cord, like something that might have been used to hang a Christmas decoration – it hardly looked strong enough to hang a fully-grown man.

‘Picked a nice fucking day for it,’ he said. And then: ‘All this fuss over a bit of Ivan cunt. Incredible.’ He bowed his head for a moment as the executioner lassoed it and tightened the rope under his left ear. ‘Hurry up, I’m getting cold.’

‘Be a lot warmer where you’re going,’ said the executioner, and the sergeant laughed.

‘Won’t be sorry to leave this godforsaken place,’ he said.

‘So you came after all,’ Hermichen said to me.

‘Yes.’

‘I knew you would.’ He grinned. ‘You can’t afford to risk it can you? The possibility that I might say who really killed those two telephonists. Our German friend on the motorcycle. With the razor-sharp bayonet. We saw him you know. That night.’ Hermichen opened his hands and then clasped them tightly again. ‘I’ve been thinking of him a lot. They’d hang him too if he was caught.’

‘That’s always a possibility,’ I said.

‘Aye, but the thing is, I’m not in favour of hanging anyone, for obvious reasons.’

‘There’s not much time,’ I said.

‘Talk about stating the fucking obvious,’ snarled Sergeant Kuhr.

Overcoming a powerful sense of shame, I remained where I was as the executioner pulled the noose over Hermichen’s head. Just by being there it seemed as if I was actively assisting in a degrading act of human wickedness no less cruel or violent than that meted out to the two Russian women the pair had raped and murdered. Two more deaths in this terrible place seemed hardly to matter, and yet – I asked myself – when would the killing stop? There seemed to be no end to it.

‘Please, corporal,’ I said. ‘I urge you to tell me. For the sake of those two dead comrades.’

‘More to them than met the eye, too. Least that’s what people say.’

I swallowed hard, almost as if it had been me with the noose around my neck, drew a deep breath and pushed my chin toward my shoulder. I felt the bones and gristle of my own vertebrae crunch like a mouthful of Brazil nuts. It was good to be alive – to draw breath. Sometimes you had to be reminded of that.

‘Surely you wouldn’t want their murderer to go unpunished; or worse, to go to your own death suspected of having killed them yourself.’

‘Can’t see it matters much either way,’ said Sergeant Kuhr. ‘Not to us, eh Erich?’ He laughed.

Hermichen lifted his hands and wiped some snowflakes from his hair and face with scrupulous care. ‘He’s got a point,’ he said.

The executioner dismounted the steps, checked the knots of the ropes tied to the uprights, and contemplated the terrible sight in front of him. He looked at me and then back at the two condemned men, whereupon he placed his shiny black boot on the steps their lives were resting on. ‘Say what you want to say,’ the executioner told them roughly. ‘And hurry up about it. Haven’t got all day.’

‘I changed my mind,’ said Hermichen. ‘I’ve got nothing to say after all.’ And with that he closed his eyes and began to pray.

‘That’s the spirit,’ said Sergeant Kuhr. ‘Fuck ’em. Fuck ’em all.’

The executioner glanced over at Judge Conrad, who was nominally in charge of the execution. He was a stern-looking man who wore horn-rimmed glasses, but all the same, he’d seen enough for one day and he took them off and tucked them into the pocket of his greatcoat; then he nodded curtly. For his sake I hoped he was now seeing a blur of what was happening. He was a thoroughly decent man and I didn’t blame him for the sentence, not in the least; he had done his duty and given his verdict on the basis of the evidence.

The executioner himself wasn’t much more than a boy, but he went about his job with ruthless efficiency, and little more sign of emotion than if he had been about to kick at the sidewalls of a set of tyres. Instead, he placed the instep of his boot on the wooden steps and – almost carelessly – pushed them over.

The two condemned men dropped several centimetres and then swung like coat hangers, their legs cycling furiously on bicycles that weren’t there; and all the time their necks seemed to grow longer, like footballers straining to head the ball at a goal. Both men groaned loudly and steam enveloped their torsos as they lost control of their bladders. I turned away with a feeling of profound disgust and anger that I had been tricked by Corporal Hermichen into witnessing his squalid death.

It makes for a hell of a weekend when you’re obliged to attend a hanging.

*

I went to the Zadneprovsky Market on Bazarnaya Square, where you could buy all manner of things. Even in winter the square was full of enterprising Russians with something to sell now that the constraints of communism had been removed: an icon, an old vase, a home-made broom, jars of pickled beets and onions, some radishes, quilted clothing, pencils, snow shovels, hand-carved chess sets and pipes, portraits of Stalin, portraits of Hitler, unexploded propaganda grenades, cigarette papers, safety matches, lend-lease fuel packs for preparing food, lend-lease meat rations, lend-lease anti-gas goggles, lend-lease first-aid kits, bundled copies of a satirical magazine called Crocodile , back issues of Pravda that were useful for starting a fire, packets of Mahorka – this was Red Army tobacco (so strong it was like inhaling your very first cigarette) – and of course numerous Red Army souvenirs: these were popular with German soldiers, especially RKKA helmets, medals, tobacco tins, butter cans, spoons, razors, liquid polish, TT pistol holsters, wrist compasses, trench-shovels, map-cases, cavalry sabres and – most popular of all – SVT bayonets.

I wasn’t in search of any of this stuff. A souvenir was something you bought to remind you of somewhere, and although it wasn’t yet over, I knew I didn’t ever want to be reminded of my time in Smolensk. After the day I’d just had I wanted to forget about it as quickly as possible. So I went to Bazarnaya Square with something else in mind: a source of cheap oblivion.

I bought two large bottles of home-brewed beer – brewski – and was about to buy a bottle of samogon – the cheap but powerful home-made spirit we Germans were always being warned not to drink – when I saw a familiar face. It was Doctor Batov, from the Smolensk State Medical Academy.