A Man Without Breath

I smiled to myself and put my hand to my mouth as if I might belch after swallowing such egregious lies whole – not just the lies Goebbels told, but the lies I’d told myself.

‘It may be however that these orders need to be heard again, in certain quarters. I can even write it down in the lieutenant’s ring-file if you like. Just to make sure that he remembers.’

‘Thank you,’ said Archdeacon Jasinski. ‘You’ve been most helpful.’

I figured he was the person in the Polish Red Cross probably most in fear of the Nazis. According to what Freiherr von Gersdorff had told me, when Jasinski had been the bishop of Lodz, he had been subjected to close home arrest. The governor of the Kalisz-Lodz District, one Friedrich Ubelhor, had forced him to sweep the square in front of the cathedral, while his auxiliary bishop, Monsignor Tomczak, had been sent to a concentration camp after suffering a brutal beating. That kind of thing can test a man’s faith not just in his fellow men but in God, too. I’d seen the archdeacon crossing himself on the edge of grave number one. He did it with such alacrity that I wondered if he was reminding himself of what he believed, although the evidence of his own eyes ought to have told him that God was not to be found in Katyn Wood and probably nowhere else either. Even the cathedral felt more like a museum.

I smiled. ‘Don’t thank me yet, archdeacon. Give me time here. History teaches that my superiors can always be depended on to entertain me with one disappointment heaped on top of another.’

‘One more thing,’ said the count.

‘Two,’ said the archdeacon. ‘The Szkola Podchorazych.’

‘Please.’ I glanced at my wristwatch. ‘I think I’m nearing the limit of my usefulness.’

‘The lieutenant’s ring-file contains other mistakes that we’ve tried to bring to his attention,’ said the count. ‘He says the trees on the grave are four years old, but this would mean they were planted in 1939, a year before-’

‘I think we can all remember what happened in 1939,’ I said.

‘And he says the epaulettes on some of the victims have the initials “J.P.” when they are actually “S.P.”, which is the Polish Cadet Officers’ School.’

‘If you’ll forgive me, count, I have to go to the airport and help look after the distinguished medical representatives of twelve countries, not to mention journalists and other Red Cross officials.’

‘Of course,’ said the count.

‘But rest assured, gentlemen, I promise to speak to Berlin today about those two other matters we discussed. It will give me something to do.’

*

Buhtz, Ines, Sloventzik and I went in a coach to fetch the experts and their assistants from the airport. I had a peculiar feeling about that coach. Supplied by the SS, it had new windows and the floor under the carpet was made of thick steel; beneath the hood was a Saurer engine, but it was fitted with a curious gas generator that ran on wood chips – you could smell the huge amounts of carbon monoxide it created long after the thing had gone – because, according to the driver, gasoline was short and all our spare supplies were now being directed north to supply the Ninth Army. That much was true, I knew, but still, I had a peculiar feeling about that coach.

Ines told me she was very excited because the international commission included all of the most distinguished names in the field of forensic medicine outside of Great Britain and the United States, and that she hoped to learn much from these men during their three days in Smolensk. She was as eager as if she’d been a little girl who was going to meet her favourite movie stars. Professor Naville of Geneva and Professor Cortes of Madrid were the two she declared to be specially eminent in her field; the rest were from as far afield as Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, Finland, Croatia, Italy, Holland, Bohemia and Moravia, Romania, Slovakia, Hungary and France. Not officially part of the international commission, Buhtz and Ines were going to present the experts with evidence they had collected from the nine hundred and eight bodies that had so far been exhumed; but the commission’s all-important report was to be compiled without any German participation. Being the ringmaster suited Buhtz just fine. He was tired. Since the beginning of April he’d carried out more post-mortems than an Etruscan soothsayer and identified almost seven hundred men. Ines had performed several dozen post-mortems herself, and when it was all over and done with I wondered what she’d make of my own entrails.