Kolchak's Gold (15 page)

By the end of the third week of our interviews he had fallen into the pattern of beginning the discussion with a lecture on gold, and then good-humoredly allowing me to steer him back to Siberia; he would talk—ever more freely—about his brother Maxim and the months with Kolchak. Then after an hour or two he would tire of that. Sometimes we would have tea together; sometimes Nikki would come at the end of her day in the office and the three of us would take tea in his flat or go out to a café. He wasn't talked-out yet; he would dominate the conversations, even when others joined us, and the rich variety of his interests was constantly surprising. Once he launched into a half-hour monologue on the effect the Beatles had had on modern popular music; another time he participated energetically and knowledgeably in an argument with a visiting American museum curator on the relative merits of half a dozen post-Impressionist painters, half of whom I had never heard of. And there were several evenings with friends when there would be long heated post-mortems of the Napoleonic wars or the North African campaigns of the Second World War or the repercussions of the Marshall Plan.

Finally after we had been at it for weeks he started to broaden the topics in our private interviews: he carried the story forward past the Civil War into the Stalin years and began to talk of his brother Maxim, whom he had never seen again; but he had received a few letters and had heard of his brother's doings indirectly through friends and fellow agents, during the war.
*

Toward the end of June 1971 the old man's health began to fail more rapidly and obviously than before. Nikki insisted on calling in a doctor even when Haim Tippelskirch objected. He was still investing great enthusiasm into our interviews but finally on July seventh he was taken away to hospital.

We continued our talks there for more than a week but he was fading quickly and I could not bring myself to press him; after a while I went to see him every day only in company with Nikki or others of his friends, so that he was forestalled from launching into long talks which only left him limp and in pain. They had him on drugs—tranquilizers and painkillers for the most part; the cancer was everywhere in his system and there was no point attempting surgery, although he was being subjected to cobalt treatments.

I had far outstayed my plans. But there were no pressing engagements at home, Nikki had still been unable to finish the work for which she had been summoned back to Tel Aviv, and I felt a responsibility to the old man now; I could not leave until the end. None of us pretended there was any hope for his recovery; not even the old man himself. The doctor was a close friend, an old colleague of Hannah's, and he knew the old man far too well to lie to him.

Haim Tippelskirch did not take it easily or cheerfully; it depressed him and made him angry but I saw no evidence of self-pity and he did not become maudlin. He did not take the attitude that he had been betrayed; he behaved as if cancer were a straightforward enemy, worthy of his rage and hatred but not his fear. Sometimes he would roar at the nurse to take the medications away: he didn't mind losing the fight but he wanted to go down with a clear head, using his brain to the end. And he did so as long as he could.

His body wasted away horribly. He was covered with spots of a cyanotic blue; the flesh melted from his skeleton. His hands no longer trembled but he had no strength to lift them from the sheets. He lay propped up on pillows fighting for breath, very angry that he was too debilitated even to read. Conversation was the only stimulus left; he detested the television they had offered him and had refused to have the set placed in the room. There was a small radio by the bed and he listened to the news with active interest; the rest of the time he left it tuned to a rock-music station from Luxembourg which came in by way of a relay broadcast antenna somewhere in Greece, I believe.

I can't pretend he didn't become cranky and childish; he didn't die a hero's death. But I was in awe of his courage and this only made the inevitable end more heartbreaking. By then I was as fond of him as if he were my own uncle and I felt that he loved me a bit as well; he was always pleased when I appeared at his bedside.

The Mediterranean summer was viciously hot; we went through the streets, Nikki and I, in wilted flimsy clothing, trying to avoid the crush of swarming tourists. There was an air conditioner in her flat but it did not work very well; we hardly spent a moment in the place except to sleep. The old man had put me in touch with three other survivors—a Polish Jew and two old women from South Russia who had watched the Red and White armies chase one another across the farm fields—and although none of them had been in Siberia I interviewed all three for as much background detail as they could provide.

Nikki and I were tourists now and then; we visited Jerusalem and Haifa and we drove out into the frontiers as far as one was allowed to go before being turned back by the military roadblocks. We swam off the beaches as often as we could; we enjoyed it all, and enjoyed each other, as much as we could under the shadow of the old man's dying. We took in concerts and movies and I appeared three or four times on radio and television panel programs at the behest of my Israeli publisher. Nikki spent the weekdays in her office, obviously working very hard but not burdening me with the tiresome details of whatever she was doing there. She had an ability which I envied, to compartmentalize her life; but then I didn't need to compartmentalize mine. My work couldn't be separated from my life by time-clock hours. Nikki understood this because she too was immersed spiritually in her work, mainly organizing refugee efforts; it was more than a job for her and she knew how it was to carry one's profession around as a built-in component of life rather than a separate entity, a mere source of economic sustenance.

On an afternoon in early August we went to visit Haim and found both his daughters at his side. They informed us that their brother, Haim's eldest, was flying home from New York. It could only mean the doctor had passed final sentence.

He was in strong spirits, although hardly cheerful ones. He complained of the brevity of one daughter's skirt (the unpregnant one) and made pointed remarks about his younger son-in-law, the father-to-be. Evidently Haim didn't think much of that one. I think he was employed in a curio factory in some shirtsleeve capacity. The other son-in-law managed a
kibbutz
and the old man was happy enough with him, one gathered. There was awkward affection in the room but neither the old man nor his daughters were expansive types by comparison with the stereotypes of
Fiddler on the Roof;
they were not clutching one another's hands or weeping loudly. It was a quiet sadness in the room, mature and deep, broken only by Haim's growling complaints and the fierce rock music of his radio.

After a short while he said he had to speak privately with Nikki. He waved the rest of us from the room.

We waited in the outer hall. It was not a time for getting acquainted and none of us had any small talk then. The two women were in their thirties and not very attractive. There were a few strained remarks; one of them said her father was very fond of me—she said it almost sharply as if she meant to impose on me an obligation to prove deserving of his fondness. I said something vague by way of thanks. Nearly a quarter hour went by before Nikki appeared in the door and we returned into his presence.

Afterward Nikki wouldn't tell me what he had said to her. She said it was something of no importance to anyone but the two of them. If I make issue of it now it is only because of hindsight; at the time it passed from my mind very quickly but I recall noticing that it was the first time she had withheld anything from me deliberately, as far as I knew.

Two days later he died.

*
Bristow's figures are not exaggerated. Nearly thirty millions died in Russia in 1914–1921 (Russians, their enemies, and their allies). A like number, or something very close to it, perished in the Second World War on the Axis fronts with the Central Powers and with Japan. And the Stalinist purges between the wars destroyed tens of millions of lives. Taking into account a number of “little wars” (like the Russo-Finnish War of 1940 and the Russo-Japanese war of 1905), the total war-associated deaths of the Russian twentieth century number very close to one hundred millions.—Ed.

*
At press time the free market price of gold on the European exchanges was fluctuating around one hundred and thirty dollars.—Ed.

†
At press time it would appear to be as high as eight billion dollars.—Ed.

*
There follows a series of interviews on the subject of Maxim Tippelskirch and World War II in the Ukraine and the Crimea. To eliminate unnecessary duplication of material, we have transplanted this material to a point farther along in the book where it fits more logically into place.—Ed.

N
ikki was very quiet that day and the next. There is an old Jewish saying: The deeper the sorrow, the less voice it has.

They had not been related but they had been more than friends. She helped his three grown children make the funeral arrangements; he was cremated on a Thursday afternoon.

We gathered afterward in his flat and the “children”—everyone called them that but they were at least as old as I was—were very busy making everyone comfortable and going around the place talking about what the old man would have wanted done with this possession and that. The rest of us milled about in a strained way and people drifted out of the place after the decent interval had been observed. Finally the elder daughter came to me and announced to my surprise that a week ago Haim had directed that I receive the military-history portion of his library and certain other books—he had made a list. She gave it to me and asked me to select a convenient time to come and pack the books for shipping to America. I ended up making an appointment to come around on the weekend. Nikki said she knew where to find small packing cartons.

That evening I had a look at the list. In addition to the two or three hundred volumes on warfare he had bequeathed me a sizable collection of books on Jews, on Russian Jews, on Israel, and on gold. I can't honestly say I realized there was a message in that; I realize it now but a great deal has happened in the meantime. But at the time—this was almost two years ago—it was merely the generous act of a man whom I had befriended.

He left me one other thing. Nikki transmitted it to me one evening that weekend. She was at the little desk in her flat, going through bills and letters. I was reading over some notes I had made and she was bent over the pile of paper on her desk, tapping a pencil against her teeth. She was wearing a faded housedress and her hair tumbled loosely over one shoulder; I set my notes aside and watched her. The light from the desk lamp made highlights in her hair and she was lovely in that glow, like a Flemish portrait.

She plucked a slip of paper from the pile and turned her face toward me; she caught my stare and smiled immediately.

“You're very beautiful.”

“No. That's silly.”

“Je t'adore.”

She shook her head impatiently in that pert way of hers; she pushed her lower lip forward to blow hair off her forehead. I said very theatrically, “Ah, my beauty, let me be your batman, your orderly, your serf. Let me kiss the hem of your skirt and polish your shoes.”

It brought her laugh but her slim fingers were at war; in the end she picked up the slip of paper again and flapped it up and down at me. “He meant you to have this.”

“What is it?”

“Just a name.” She read it off: “Otto von Geyr.”

I crossed the room to take it from her; I brushed her neck with my lips and straightened to read the note. It was in his crabbed hand:

Otto von Geyr—SS Gruppenfuhrer, RSHA, General

—
see Ukraine
1941–42,
Crimea
1943–44—

Sebastopol. Lives in Bavaria, gov't post of

some kind.
Re
Czarist treasury.