Europe Central (52 page)

I’m listening.

Although I flatter myself that I’ve become your friend, of course there are certain aspects to your situation here that . . . well, you haven’t always been fairly treated. I admit that, and I’m sorry. But there’s one matter very dear to my heart in which you’ve never quite believed:
the honor of the German soldier.
To get right down to it, Germans really are honorable people. They don’t murder women and children. I don’t deny that there’s been occasional wartime harshness, but not—not what you think.

So? said Vlasov.

Well, the news is going to be broadcast this afternoon. Lieutenant-Colonel Ahrens of our Five Hundred and Thirty-seventh Signal Regiment first made the report last month, but it was classified top secret until the forensic teams had made a complete investigation.

Vlasov stared at him.

It seems that a wolf was nosing around in the forest near Smolensk, and uncovered bones. Some Hiwis on work detail found the pit. They erected a cross. In due time Ahrens was notified.

You love to spin out a story, don’t you?

The site is riddled with graves! The largest one is stacked twelve bodies deep. We’ve uncovered four thousand victims so far, and Ahrens believes there will be ten thousand more. We’re already calling it
the Katy
Massacre.
Do you want to guess who’s buried there?

Jews, I suppose. Maybe Russians—

You joker! No, no,
no
! They’re all Polish officers, and from their identity documents we’ve established that they were murdered between April and May of 1940.

Well, and why not? muttered Vlasov dully. You were already in Poland by then—

My dear fellow, you’re really beginning to offend me! We’re recording their names, and when the exhumations are completed those names will be given to the world.
Without exception, those officers were in Soviet custody.

I can’t—

It’s incontrovertible. Some of them were finished off with bayonets. The German army doesn’t use four-cornered ones—

All right, I believe you. So the NKVD murdered fourteen or fifteen thousand prisoners of war. Well, but—

Don’t you want to know about the ammunition? his friend demanded triumphantly.

What about it?

Geco, 7.65 millimeter.

Vlasov froze. And his wooer, seeing that deep penetration had been accomplished at last, moved instantly forward to exploit the initial success.

You know very well that the Reich sold many thousands of rounds to Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania and even the Soviet Union. Apparently your NKVD preferred the reliability of German death, as it were. (That’s right; reach into your pocket and take a look.) Now, I beg your pardon if I’m trespassing on some private grief, but whatever it was that you saw in that burned village, wouldn’t it be just as well now if you could lay your prejudices to rest? Wouldn’t you be better off, not to say happier, if you could be fair and logical? With this discovery, your hopes have been
exonerated.
So try to relax and trust in us—

29

They sent him back to the occupied territories in hopes of retaining some sort of ideological bridgehead. Their new slogan:
humane and correct treatment.
He was as pliable now as one of Buchenwald’s little “doll boys” who offer themselves to the Kapos in exchange for food. From the train, he thought he heard shooting and screaming. He got drunk then and muttered: Between the breasts of Zoya . . .

Excuse me, my dear friend, laughed Strik-Strikfeldt, but perhaps I shouldn’t report that comment to your wife!

In Kiev a man who’d been waiting in the lavatory whispered, in words as evenly spaced as the numbered silver standards of vanquished regiments: General Vlasov, I was a waiter at the big Nazi banquet this March. And I heard what the quartermaster said. He was quoting the Reich Commissioner of the Ukraine. I was so horrified that I memorized every word. General Vlasov, he said, and I swear this:
Some people are disturbed that the population here may not necessarily eat enough. The population cannot ask for that. One merely has to keep in mind what our heroes at Stalingrad were forced to do without
. . .

Vlasov smilingly clapped the man’s shoulder: But what can we do now? It’s too late. We have to go forward and perform our best, don’t you see? Because otherwise, everything we believe in would be endangered.

In Riga he saw a German private beating and kicking a Russian artist for being five minutes late to an agitprop meeting of the Vlasov Men. He sat watching; helplessly he rubbed his heavy eyes.

For the May Day celebrations at Pskov (which lies on the former Stalin Line), Vlasov appeared only when they menaced him. He’d been reliably informed that many more White Russians as well as Jews had been shot. He shaved; he cleaned his German boots. A standing ovation! Afterward, approaching the line of
dignitaries, all of them with their hands in the pockets of their long grey cloaks, he found himself compelled to bow forward in order to grasp the barely extended hand of the
colonel, who smiled stiffly and said: You Russians are not soldiers as that word is usually employed. You are ideological enemies.—Vlasov shrugged. He hardly cared for his own life anymore, or so he supposed, the anguish of his lost love now failing into dormancy, but still viable like a virus, waiting for contact with the host, which was why that host, his integrity, had to smile gently and stay away, waiting patiently for his love for her to die. Off to another factory, to serve the workers hope instead of bread! Then, with true Germanic mobility, he continued back to Riga, the railroad tracks’ rank grass failing by a long shot to grapple with the grey summer sky; and here he had to meet with more workers and then with a delegation from the Orthodox Church. Justifying the existence of his still hypothetical Russian Liberation Army, he quoted the proverb
A Russian can bear much which would kill a German.
(Whenever he thought of Russia, unclean feelings afflicted him, like water and blood seeping out of mass graves.) In Luga the crowds broke through the police line as they were almost to do years later in Moscow when the American pianist Van Cliburn made his debut.

Do you wish to be German slaves? he dared to shout.

No!

Then fight at my side! Fight for a free Russia on equal terms with the Reich! Show the Germans what we can do!

The
-men smiled in disgust. (Come to think of it, the Germans beside Vlasov were always smiling just a shade too broadly in the photographs.) In the aisle, a Waffen-
-captain and Strik-Strikfeldt were arguing in low voices. The Waffen-
-captain said: If one gave Vlasov’s army a flag—

We have!

... And his soldiers honors, one would have to treat them as comrades with natural human and political rights, and the
national Russian idea
would break through. Nothing could be less desirable to us than such a development.

Yes, yes, said Strik-Strikfeldt, smiling straight into the curtainlike, willow-like wings of the eagle on the Waffen-
man’s tank battle badge, but, if you don’t mind my saying so, might it not be counterproductive to take absolutely
everything
from the population here?

Captain Strik-Strikfeldt, I’m not sure you appreciate the situation. Aren’t you aware that the Führer himself has already decreed that within ten years our eastern territories must be entirely German?