A Man Without Breath

Fuelled up on honey and schnapps, I slept like a worker bee in a temperature-controlled hive and dreamed about a crooked house with a witch in it and being lost in the woods with a wolf prowling around. The house even had a sauna and a small cinema and venison for supper. It wasn’t a nightmare because the witch turned out to like sitting in the sauna, which was how we got to know each other a lot better. You can get to know anyone well in a sauna, even a witch.

CHAPTER 6

Thursday, March 11th 1943

I awoke early the next morning feeling a little tired from the flight but keen to get on with my inquiry, because of course I was even keener to return home. After breakfast, Ahrens got the key to the cold storeroom where the remains were kept and we went down to the basement to examine these. I found a large tarpaulin laid out on the stone floor. Ahrens drew back the top part to reveal what looked like a tibia, a fibula, a femur and half a pelvis. I lit a cigarette – it was better than the stale, meaty smell coming off the bones – and dropped down on my haunches to take a closer look.

‘What’s this?’ I asked, handling the tarpaulin.

‘From an Opel Blitz,’ said Ahrens.

I nodded and let the smoke drift up my nostrils. There wasn’t much to say about the bones except that these were human and that an animal – presumably the wolf – had been chewing them.

‘What happened to the wolf?’ I asked.

‘We chased it off,’ said Ahrens.

‘Seen any wolves since?’

‘I haven’t but some of the men might have. We can ask if you like.’

‘Yes. And I’d like to see the spot where these remains were found.’

‘Of course.’

We fetched our greatcoats and were joined outside by Lieutenant Hodt and Oberfeldwebel Krimminski from the 537th, who had been guarding against German soldiers looking to take wood for their fires. At my request, the Oberfeldwebel had brought an entrenching tool. We walked north along the snow-covered castle road towards the Vitebsk highway. The forest was mostly birch trees, some of them recently felled, which seemed to bear out the colonel’s story regarding troop foraging.

‘There’s a fence about a kilometre away that marks the perimeter of the castle land,’ said Ahrens. ‘But there must have been some sort of a fight around here, as you can still see some trenches and foxholes.’

A little further on we turned west off the road and began the more difficult task of walking in the snow. A couple of hundred metres away we came upon a mound and a cross made from two pieces of birch.

‘It’s about here that we came across the wolf and the remains,’ explained Ahrens. ‘Krimminski? The captain was wondering if any of us had seen the animal since.’

‘No,’ said Krimminski. ‘But we’ve heard wolves at night.’

‘Any tracks?’

‘If there were any the snow covered them up. It snows most nights around here.’

‘So we wouldn’t know if the wolf had come back for seconds?’ I said.

‘It’s possible, sir,’ said Krimminski. ‘But I haven’t seen any signs of that having happened.’

‘This birch cross,’ I said. ‘Who put it there?’

‘Nobody seems to know,’ said Ahrens. ‘Although Lieutenant Hodt has a theory. Don’t you, Hodt?’

‘Yes sir. I think this is not the first time human remains have been found around here. My theory is that when it happened before, the locals reburied them and erected the cross.’

‘Good theory,’ I said. ‘Did you ask them about it?’

‘No one tells us very much about anything,’ said Hodt. ‘They’re still afraid of the NKVD.’

‘I shall want to speak to some of these locals of yours,’ I said.

‘We get on pretty well with our Hiwis,’ said Ahrens. ‘It didn’t seem worth upsetting the saucer of milk by accusing anyone of lying.’

‘All the same,’ I said. ‘I shall still want to speak to them.’

‘Then you’d better speak to the Susanins,’ said Ahrens. ‘They’re the couple who we have most to do with. They look after the hives and tell the Russian staff what to do in the castle.’

‘Who else is there?’

‘Let’s see: there’s Tsanava and Abakumov – they look after our chickens; Moskalenko who chops wood for us; the laundry is done by Olga and Irina. Our cooks are Tanya and Rudolfovich. Marusya, the kitchen maid. But look here, I don’t want you bullying them, Captain Gunther. There’s a status quo here I wouldn’t want to be disturbed.’

‘Colonel Ahrens,’ I said. ‘If this does turn out to be a grave full of dead Polish officers, then it’s probably already too late for that.’

Ahrens swore under his breath.

‘That is unless you yourselves shot some Polish officers,’ I said. ‘Or perhaps the SS. I can more or less guarantee that no one back in Berlin is interested in uncovering any evidence of that.’

‘We haven’t shot any Poles,’ sighed Ahrens. ‘Here, or anywhere else.’

‘What about Ivans? You must have captured a lot of Red Army after the battle of Smolensk. Did you shoot any of them, perhaps?’