Philip Kerr - A Man Without Breath

‘You don’t want this stuff,’ he said removing the samogon from my hand. ‘Not if you want to see yourself in the mirror tomorrow.’

‘That was rather the point,’ I said. ‘I’m not sure I do. I heard the thing to do was pour the samogon into the brewski and drink the mixture. Yorsh , it’s called, isn’t it?’

‘For an intelligent man you have some very stupid ideas. If you drink two and a half litres of yorsh you may never see again. I suppose I should be glad if an enemy soldier kills or blinds himself, but I can easily make an exception in your case. What happened? I thought you weren’t coming back. Or is your return to Smolensk a punishment for discovering their dirty little secret?’

He was talking about the Polish intelligence report we had translated in his laboratory with the aid of the stereo microscope.

‘Actually, I decided to keep my mouth shut about that,’ I said. ‘At least for now. My life seems precarious enough without rocking the steps it’s standing on. No, I’m back here in Smolensk on other duties. Although I certainly wish I wasn’t. I just want to get drunk and to forget more than I care to remember. It’s been that sort of a day, I’m afraid.’

And I told him where I’d been and what I’d seen.

Batov shook his head. ‘It’s a curious example your generals try to make,’ he said. ‘Hanging one kind of German soldier for behaving like another kind of German soldier. Do they suppose it will make us dislike the Germans a little less if you execute one of your own for killing Russians – after all, that’s what you’re here for, isn’t it? To get rid of us so that you can live in the space made by our absence? There’s a kind of schizophrenia working here.’

‘That’s just a medical name for hypocrisy,’ I said. ‘Which is the homage the Wehrmacht pays to virtue. Honour and justice in Germany are just a delusion. But it’s a delusion that someone in my line of work has to deal with every day. Sometimes I think that the greater insanity is not to be found in our leaders but in the judges I work for.’

‘I’m a doctor, so I prefer medical names. But if your government is schizophrenic, then mine is certainly dangerously paranoid. You’ve no idea.’

‘No. But it might be amusing to compare notes.’

Batov smiled. ‘Come with me,’ he said. ‘I’ll show you where you can buy the better stuff. It’s not great, but it won’t put you in hospital. At the SSMA we’re rather short of beds as it is.’

We went to another corner of the square – a quieter corner, on Kauf Strasse – where a man with a face like a box of iron filings and with whom Batov had clearly dealt before sold me a chekuschka , which was a quarter-litre of vodka from Estonia. The bottle was asymmetrical in a way that made you think you were already drunk, and the stuff looked no less suspicious than the samogon , but Batov assured me it was good stuff, which was probably why I decided to buy two and suggested he keep me company.

‘Drinking alone is never a good idea,’ I said. ‘Especially when you’re by yourself.’

‘I was on my way to the bakery on Bruckenstrasse.’ He shrugged. ‘But the chances are they won’t have any bread anyway. And even when they do it’s like eating earth. So yes, I would like that. I live south of the river. On Gudunow Strasse. We can go there and drink these bottles if you like.’

‘Why do you use the German names for the streets and not your own Russian names?’

‘Because then you wouldn’t know where I was talking about. Of course this might just be a cunning trap. Me being an Ivan, I could have decided to lure you back to my place where some partisans are waiting to cut off your ears and nose and your balls.’

‘You’d be doing me a favour. It’s my ears and nose and my balls that seem to get me in trouble.’ I nodded firmly. ‘Let’s go, doctor. It would be nice to spend time with a Russian who’s not an Ivan, or a Popov, or a Slav, or a subhuman. It would be good to be with a Russian who’s just a man.’

‘Oh my God, you’re an idealist,’ said Batov. ‘And clearly a dangerous one at that. It’s obvious to me that you’ve been sent here to Russia to put that idealism severely to the test. Which is perfectly understandable. And rather perceptive of your superiors. Russia is the best place for a cruel experiment like that. This is the country for cruel experiments – it’s where idealists are sent to die, my friend. Killing people who believe in things is our national sport.’

With the bottles in Batov’s empty shopping bag we went and found my car and drove over the rickety temporary wooden bridge that connected the southern part of the city with the northern part: German engineers had been busy. But Russian women were, it seemed, no less industrious; on the banks of the Dnieper they were already hard at work building the wooden rafts that would transport things into the city when the river was properly navigable.

‘Is it the women who do all the work here?’ I asked.

‘Someone has to, don’t you think? It will be the same for you Germans one day, you mark my words. It’s always the women who rebuild the civilizations that the men have done their best to destroy.’

Batov lived alone in a surprisingly spacious apartment in a largely undamaged building that was painted the same shade of green as many of the churches and public buildings.

‘Is there some reason why every other building has been painted green?’ I asked. ‘Camouflage, perhaps?’

‘I think green was the only colour available,’ said Batov. ‘This is Russia. Explanations are usually commonplace. We probably exceeded some sort of five-year plan for paint production, only no one thought to produce more than one colour. Very likely blue paint was made the previous year. Blue is the right colour for a lot of these buildings, by the way. Historically speaking.’

Inside, the apartment was a series of rooms connected by a long corridor that ran along the wall facing onto the street. Built into this long wall was a series of bookshelves that were full of books. The apartment smelt of furniture polish and fried food and tobacco.

‘That’s quite a collection you have there,’ I said.

Batov shrugged. ‘They serve a double purpose. As well as keeping me busy – I love to read – they help to insulate the corridor against the cold. It’s doubly fortunate that Russians write such thick books. Perhaps that’s why.’

We went into a cosy little drawing room that was heated with a tall brown ceramic stove that stood in the corner like a petrified tree. While I glanced around the room, Batov pushed some wood in the brass door on the grate and closed it again. I knew his wife was dead, but there were no pictures of her to be seen, and this puzzled me, as there were many marks on the wallpaper where framed pictures had been hanging, as well as many photographs of Batov himself and a girl I presumed was his daughter.

‘Your wife,’ I said. ‘Was she killed in the war?’

‘No, she died before the war,’ he said, fetching some small glasses, some black bread and some pickles.

‘Do you have a picture of her?’

‘Somewhere,’ he said, waving a hand at the apartment and its contents. ‘In a box in the bedroom, I think. You’re wondering why I keep her hidden, perhaps? Like an old pair of gloves.’

‘I was rather.’

He sat down and I poured two glasses.

‘Here’s to her, anyway,’ I said. ‘What was her name?’

‘Jelena. Yes, here’s to her. And to the memory of your own wife.’

We threw the glasses back and then banged them down on the table. I nodded. ‘Not bad,’ I said. ‘Not bad at all. So that’s chekuschka .’