A Man Without Breath

‘It’s not really you we’re interested in, but the Germans you worked with. And Oleg Rudakov, the doorman from the Glinka.’

‘He’s run away,’ she said. ‘That’s what I heard from some of the other girls.’

‘The girls in the apartment at Olgastrasse?’

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘Are any of them nurses, too?’ I asked her. ‘At the Smolensk State Medical Academy?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Several. At least the better-looking ones who speak a bit of German.’

‘The ones who need the money, eh?’

‘Everyone needs the money.’

‘Why did Oleg Rudakov run away? Because of what happened to you?’

‘No. I think he ran away after what happened to Doctor Batov.’

Her spoken German improved as the interview progressed. Which is more than could be said of my Russian. I had some language books, and I kept trying it out, but without much success.

‘Was Dr Batov involved with your call-girl ring?’

‘Not directly. But he certainly knew about it. He helped keep us healthy. You know?’

‘Yes. Have you any idea who might have killed him?’

Tanya shook her head. ‘No. Nobody knows. It’s another reason why people are scared. It’s why Oleg ran away, I think.’

‘Did you know that Oleg Rudakov had a brother who was a patient at the Smolensk State Medical?’

‘Everyone in Smolensk knew this. The Rudakov brothers were both from Smolensk. Oleg used to give money to the hospital – to Dr Batov – for looking after his brother, Arkady.’

‘Tell me about Arkady. Was he really injured as badly as Batov said he was? Or perhaps thought he was?’

‘Do you mean was Arkady faking?’ She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. It’s possible, I suppose. Arkady was always very clever. That’s what people said. I did not know him before his injury – when he was NKVD – but to be lieutenant in NKVD you have to be clever. Clever enough never again to want to do what he and others had to do in Katyn Wood. Clever enough to find a way out perhaps that did not mean he too would be shot.’

‘So, you know about that, too? About what happened in Katyn Wood?’

‘Everyone in Smolensk knows about this terrible thing. Everyone. Anyone who says they don’t is lying. Lying because they are afraid. Or lying because they hate Germans more than they hate NKVD. I cannot say which it is because I don’t know, but they are lying. Lying is best way to stay alive in this town. Three years ago, when this thing happened – yes, it was spring of 1940 – the militia closed the road to Vitebsk, but they did not stop the train. I heard that people who were on the trains near Gnezdovo heard the sound of shots from Katyn Wood – at least until the NKVD came onto the trains and made sure all of the windows were closed.’

‘You’re sure about this?’ I said.

‘That everyone knows what happened? Yes, I’m sure.’ Tanya’s eyes flashed defiantly. ‘Just as everyone knows there were two thousand Jews from the ghetto at Vitebsk murdered by the German army at Mazurino. Not to mention all of the Jews who were found floating in the Zapadnaya Dvina River. They say that the lampreys caught from the Zap are the biggest ever this year because of all the bodies they had to feed on.’

Voss groaned, and I guessed it was because he’d eaten lamprey pie for dinner in the mess at Krasny Bor the previous evening.

I smiled. ‘Thank you, Tanya. You’ve been most helpful.’

‘I can go.’

‘We’ll take you home, if you like.’

‘Thank you, but no, I’ll walk. Is all right at night when no one sees. But not in the day. After you Germans have gone from Smolensk it will be pretty bad here, I think. It is best the NKVD don’t know I go with Germans.’

*