Scott Bury - Walking Out of War

“The people I stayed with may be able to help me get travel authorization. It’s the last thing I need.” He sat down on the end of his own bed.

The room had been designed and constructed as a single room, but the UNRRA had applied some arcane formula and determined that three men could stay in it. Three cots pressed against each other and the walls. They had to lean Maurice’s cot against the wall to open the wardrobe, and slide sideways to get around the other cots.

Maurice sneezed again, barely getting his handkerchief out in time. His roommates shook their heads and squeezed past him, out to try to find work, money, food and some way to get out of Europe.

When the door closed, Maurice flopped back onto the cot. He was still tired, his head still hurt and he was still wracked with sneezing. He wished for some more gin and pepper. He could not tell whether it had helped the night before, but as Andrei Hretsyk had said, after a couple of treatments, he didn’t care.

He turned up the dial on the steam radiator under the window, careful that the sheet on Zoltan’s cot wasn’t touching it. He looked at the grey slush on the sill outside the window and shivered. He decided to try Yulia’s treatment. He pushed his cot up against the wall and took the tiny electric hotplate from the wardrobe. The electricity in Vienna had been fairly consistent since he had arrived, which was a huge improvement over the coil-stove heated barracks in Camp Kufstein.

After a few minutes, he had a kettle boiling. He covered his head with his second shirt to try to capture the steam and breathed slowly. After a while, he started to feel his sinuses opening up. The pain in his forehead diminished.

There was a knock at the door, and Maurice realized he had fallen asleep on the cot. “Why do you have a shirt over your head?” asked Andrei Hretsyk when Maurice opened the door.

“Oh—I was using your wife’s treatment again,” Maurice said, confused and embarrassed. He threw the shirt onto his bed. “What are you doing here?”

Hretsyk still looked elegant, with his suit and shirt immaculate. He held his dark grey fedora in one hand and his thin leather briefcase in the other. “I have good news for you. I have found a British officer who can sign your travel permit.”

“Travel to where?”

“Canada.”

Maurice’s heart pounded. He stood still, mouth slightly open, eyes wide. He could not breathe for several seconds, and it wasn’t because of his cold.

“Well? Come on. He’s in the British sector, at their headquarters. “

Maurice grabbed his coat and battered hat with the “Canada” tag still clinging to it and followed Andrei out of the hotel. “What time is it?”

“It’s after two.”

I slept over four hours . Maurice also realized he was hungry, and his throat was dry as well as sore. He managed to persuade Andrei to stop at a little shop for a cup of tea, and drank it so fast it only made his throat even more painful.

They went south, out of the central part of the city which was under the rotating administration of the four occupying powers, toward the British-controlled Landstrasse district. Tiny snowflakes began to fall, swirling in the gusts between the shattered buildings of Vienna.

But before they could get to the Ringstrasse, the boundary of the central district, a battered, dirty Studebaker truck groaned up the street and slid to a messy stop in the snow beside Andrei and Maurice. A man jumped out of the passenger seat, and Maurice recognized the brown coats and red flashes of the NKVD.

He also recognized the NKVD officer from the storefront the day before.

“Halt!” the officer demanded. Behind him, three NKVD soldiers jumped out of the back of the truck. “Good afternoon, Mr. Hretsyk,” he said in Russian.

“Good afternoon, officer. Please stand aside. I am in a hurry,” Andrei said, but the Russian officer stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.

“We have been watching you, Mr. Hretsyk. We know you are helping Ukrainian refugees avoid repatriation.”

Andrei stood up as tall as he could and looked the NKVD officer in the eye. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. Now get out of my way.”

“This man is a deserter,” said the officer. Maurice felt cold that had nothing to do with the falling snow. He felt like his body was hollow, empty inside, and he heard a rushing sound in his ears. “He is coming with us back to the Soviet Union.”

Maurice blinked. The city of Vienna whirled in front of his eyes. Not now. Not when I’m so close.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Andrei said. “This man is a Canadian citizen.” He turned to Maurice and switched to English. “Show him your birth certificate, Maurice.”

Maurice could not keep his hands from shaking as he reached inside his coat and drew out his tattered Dominion of Canada birth certificate. He unfolded it carefully, trying not to stress the creases any more. What if this Russian takes it away from me? he wondered.

The Russian officer took the worn paper carefully, frowning. “I cannot read Roman script.”

“Then you will have to take my word for it,” said Andrei. He took the birth certificate out of the Russian’s hands and carefully gave it back to Maurice. Maurice’s hands shook so much, he had trouble refolding it, and did not even try to put it away in his inner coat pocket.

“I don’t have to take your word for anything,” said the officer.

“Listen here,” Andrei said, stepping between Maurice and the Russian. “You’re still in the four-power zone, and now is not the USSR’s turn to administer it. You have no right to arrest or deport anyone, let alone a citizen of an Allied country.”

The Russian’s hand went to his sidearm. “Who will stop me?”

Maurice’s heart pounded so loudly in his ears, he could barely hear the argument. He knew the time had come for him to say something, so he stepped beside Andrei Hretsyk and spoke in the best English he could manage. “Is there something I can help you with? Are you looking for some information about Canada?”

The NKVD officer glared at him. “Yes. Tell me who’s president of Canada,” he said in heavily accented, but nearly fluent English.

Hopefully, he won’t detect my accent. “There is no president of Canada. The Prime Minister is William Lyon Mackenzie King.”

He took a deep breath. Speaking had calmed him, the roaring in his ears had stopped and he could think clearly. “Mr. Hretsyk and I are on our way to a meeting with the British Administration Command—” Does that sound plausible?—”and the UNRRA. We really do not have time to delay. If we do not get there on time, there will be official enquiries.”

It was a fabrication, but it sounded officious enough that the NKVD officer’s hand left his sidearm holster.

“Come, Herr Hretsyk.” Maurice took Andrei’s elbow and led him around the NKVD officer. “We must hurry,” he continued in English. “You know how the colonel feels about…tawdriness.”

“That’s ‘tardiness,’” Andrei said under his breath as they put distance between themselves and the Russian—quickly, but not too quickly.

It took more than a half hour to reach the British headquarters in a sprawling, elegant 18th century mansion made of plaster-covered stones painted light green.

Andrei knew these men, too, and breezed past the guards and clerks until he stood in the office of Captain Philip C.L. Hildash, as indicated by an elegantly engraved sign on his ornate desk, made of cherry wood inlaid with other woods and carved in the eighteenth century style. “I’m acting in a colonel’s capacity,” he said by way of explaining a question no one had asked. “I understand you come highly recommended, Mr. Retsick.”