Restitution (35 page)

Vavilov rose. ‘I’m not a Pole myself.’

And he could read minds too.

‘But then, many who claim Polish nationality aren’t either.’

Through the barred window Gregor could see the mountains above the city of Magadan, still white and glistening in the afternoon sun. When the sunset caught them later on they’d shimmer red
and orange. The
zeks,
inmates, said that the souls of those who died from cold, dysentery, starvation or beatings fled to those mountaintops for eternal rest. Probably the only kind you
could hope for in Kolyma. And yet it was a beautiful view. Even when Gregor’s stomach ached with hunger and his skin burned with a hundred insect bites, he’d find himself stopping and
marvelling, detesting the view for forcing him to admire it.

Until ten minutes ago he’d imagined he might be looking at the mountains for the rest of his life. This was the offer of release; he ought to be delirious with joy. But nothing was ever as
it ought to be in Kolyma. The prospect of leaving was almost chilling. He was almost scared of the world beyond the Magadan peninsula. There were certainties here: the certainty of hunger, of
filth, of fear. Hope upset these certainties. Hope was dangerous.

‘What are you thinking about, Comrade Smolinsky?’

Comrade
now. He must have fallen back through the looking glass.

‘About mirrors.’ None of his previous interrogators had ever asked Gregor for his thoughts.

‘What about them?’

‘I was wondering how I must appear to you, Comrade Vavilov,’ Gregor lied.

Vavilov lowered his head to the papers on the desk. ‘Pack up your things and say goodbye to the patients, Smolinsky.’ His voice sounded suddenly strained.

Outside on a patch of scrubby ground some arctic flowers were opening. The
zeks
claimed that Kolyma flowers were scentless because it was too cold. Gregor picked one and let its sweetness
fill his senses. He thought suddenly of Alix, how her lips had felt like petals when he’d kissed her. But that was years ago, she’d only been a little girl.

On board the
Felix Dzerzhinsky
Gregor and his fellow Polish conscripts were given a bucket they could empty twice a day. They’d even allowed Gregor a warm shower
before he’d left Kolyma, with real soap, not the foul-smelling black tablets usually provided. The doctor Gregor had worked for had examined his foot. ‘You might even make it,
Smolinsky. You might just. You’ll suffer from arthritis in that foot when you’re an old man, I’m afraid.’ Gregor almost laughed at the thought of himself surviving to old
age.

Olga, the nurse who’d gone to the nursery for Gregor, had clasped his hand when he’d come to say goodbye. ‘When you get home what will you tell them about this place?’
she’d asked.

He’d shrugged, doubting he had the vocabulary for adequate description. He didn’t even know where ‘home’ was. Possibly with Sofia, assuming she’d reached England.
He supposed he ought to try to get another letter through to her. She’d never written to him. Or if she had, the letters had never arrived. Rumour had it there was a warehouse full of
intercepted letters and parcels. He was unlikely to reach London now he’d joined Vavilov. Already his memories of Sofia were growing fainter. It was the earlier parts of his life that
preoccupied him now: that other girl and her family.

Vavilov hadn’t told him where they were going. It was only when he talked to other prisoners that Gregor built up a picture of what was in store. Rail journey west across the Soviet Union.
Training camp near Moscow. Then west through Poland and into the Reich itself. ‘The Allies are due to land in France sometime soon,’ one of the Poles told Gregor. ‘And we’ll
be part of the push from the east.’

Gregor blinked. The Allies in Europe. Americans and British pouring through France into Germany itself. His veins warmed with excitement. But it was foolish even to dream of seeing Alix
again.

Vavilov’s summons to join him on deck came as a surprise. A guard hauled Gregor up the iron steps towards the daylight. He blinked and gulped in sea air, remembering the
occasional ferry crossings to Sweden or Denmark he’d made with his parents before the war. God, the air was sweet after the stench down below. Unlike the situation on the voyage out to
Magadan the bucket was changed twice a day in concession to the prisoners’ new-found status as soldiers. But the odour never left the hold where the men lay on wooden platforms. Vavilov was
leaning against the rusty railings, watching the waves. Perhaps he was worried the ship would fail to avoid the rocks in this dangerous stretch of water with its narrow straits and the Japanese
enemy territories so close. Gregor noticed Vavilov’s shining boots and wondered where he obtained the polish, now rumoured to be as rare as real coffee. Vavilov was tall, broad-chested,
athletic; even in this environment he conveyed a certain distinction. ‘Let’s talk about what you’ll be doing when we reach Prussia.’ He didn’t turn towards Gregor and
his words were casual.

‘I imagined I’d be fighting. Or carrying out medical duties.’

Vavilov tossed a cigarette end overboard and turned. ‘What I want from you is what’s up here.’ He touched Gregor’s forehead briefly, his hand as light as a woman’s,
its fingers long with short but well-maintained nails. ‘You speak fluent German. You’re obviously from a professional family. None of those qualities would benefit you in battle. But
there may be other uses for you.’

Gregor’d known. Of course he’d known. No other reason for them to want him. He had no military experience and a shattered foot.

‘You want me to carry out intelligence work, Comrade.’

Vavilov was watching him. ‘Does the prospect alarm you?’

The sun was falling over the receding mountains. The blood-red land looked like a cruel beauty, taunting him, asking him if he’d miss her, if he thought it was worth selling himself.

‘Tell me more.’ Gregor turned his back on the scene.

Alix

Pomerania, 2002

We must have walked round the house six times. Gregor is limping. He needs to rest his foot.

‘Shall we find somewhere to sit?’

‘There are chairs in the kitchen.’

I take his arm and glance over my shoulder for our son. He’s stayed at a distance while we talked, like a friendly satellite, just out of earshot. Probably giving us privacy. Americans are
so polite.

‘Be with you in a moment,’ Michael calls. ‘Still some shots I want to take.’ He waves his camera.

We walk through the entrance hall with its bare walls and smell of damp. Someone has put up a plywood door at the top of the cellar steps but the kitchen itself opens off the passage just as it
did in my day. Inside it an old Formica-topped table and metal-framed chairs stand where once we had an oak table and chairs. Gregor sits down but I examine the old rusting stove on the wall.
‘This doesn’t look like our range.’ I remember the gingerbread men Lena used to bake for me. Officially she was our housekeeper, not the cook, but we lost servants to the war
effort and little by little Lena assumed most of the domestic roles. ‘Lena would do anything for us,’ Mami used to say. ‘She has given her whole life to this family.’

‘They probably ripped your range out to ship back to Russia. I used to see whole wagonloads of stoves and other domestic appliances heading east.’

‘Lena would have had something to say about that.’ I remove a handkerchief from my bag and rub at the tiles above the stove. ‘These are our tiles, though. See, the ships and
the monkeys.’ The old blue tiles from Holland depict voyages to the Spice Islands and the exotic treasures the merchant sailors found. ‘They’d be valuable now. Someone missed an
opportunity here.’ I shake out the handkerchief and start to wipe down one of the chairs.

‘Let’s not stay in here.’ Gregor’s words make me blink. ‘It feels . . .’

‘Sad.’

Perhaps, like me, he’s haunted by the ghosts of that night when the four of us sat here and waited for the Red Army to arrive. I suspected my mother of adultery and would barely speak to
her. I can still feel the tension, the unspoken words, the fear.

‘We’ll go back to the bench in the garden.’ Gregor rises. ‘My foot will be fine.’

‘If you’re sure.’ I take his arm again and we walk back into the hall. It’s a relief to see the sunlight stream in through the front door. ‘You’ve told me so
much but I still need to know how you came to West Germany.’

Gregor

Berlin, 1948

Like many others Gregor would cross to the western sector with little trouble a couple of times a week to see friends or watch a film, the guards checking his papers and
nodding him through. Usually he spent the time with Dieter, back from POW camp in the Soviet Union and living in an apartment in a western suburb. Dieter’s mother, Coca and Ute had abandoned
the garage, somehow wangling their way to Bavaria, where they had cousins who could find them jobs.

‘Shame to leave the old place.’ Dieter’s mother had hugged Dieter and Gregor. ‘But I’ve had enough of those
verdammte Kommis.
Look after each other. Try and
get him to move into the western sector, Dieter. He shouldn’t stay here. Nor should you, not with your health.’ Dieter had never fully recovered from the TB he’d suffered in the
camp. His mother looked back at the old garage with Gregor’s apartment block overshadowing it.

‘You know what he’s like, Mutti. Stubborn as a mule.’ Coca, shutting a suitcase, made a tssking noise in the back of her throat. ‘Don’t worry about Gregor.
He’ll get by.’ She lifted her head from the case and he caught the irritation blended with softness in her expression. Gregor and Coca’d had an on and off
thing
for a
couple of years after the war; not serious, but enjoyable. Now, like all the other women in his life, she was moving on. Coca had been different; she’d asked for nothing except sex and access
to his gramophone player. He knew she’d seen other men. He’d miss Coca. But not badly enough to move away from Berlin.

Dieter certainly knew how to look after Gregor. His care took the form of seeking out every bar in the western side of the city. And every available woman. ‘All those
years in Russia to make up for.’ He sipped a
Weissbier.
‘Mutti’s right. You’d have more fun if you moved in with me.’

‘The apartment’s all I’ve got left of the past.’

‘It’s on the wrong side of the city. And why do you want to cling to the past, anyway?’ Dieter leaned back in his chair. ‘I’m doing all I can to forget
it.’

‘I’ve noticed.’

Gregor left the city at weekends whenever possible. He’d travel as far east as he could, walking or cycling the last miles to the coast at Heringsdorf or Bansin so he
could gaze eastwards across the Baltic towards Pomerania, now all but abandoned by those Germans who’d remained after the war. He’d walk along the sand remembering childhood summers on
Pomeranian beaches, how he’d buried Alix up to her neck in sand, how he’d caught crabs and tormented her with them, how the mosquitoes had driven them mad. He thought of her more often
than he did of his wife.

When the sun shone on the Baltic it became a deeper blue, almost the colour of Alix’s eyes. But her eyes had probably been closed for years now. He’d made inquiries with the Red
Cross but they’d failed to find any information about her other than that she’d left a displaced persons camp near Erfurt in the summer of 1945. The Russians had taken over control of
that part of the country soon afterwards. Perhaps they’d discovered her Junker parentage and killed her.

He’d return to his apartment after these excursions and sit alone, without reading or listening to music, willing the years to pass. Return to work on Mondays came almost as a relief
– he’d found a job as an agricultural writer for the government. He could probably have pursued his earlier ambition of training as a doctor in this new socialist state, but he
couldn’t regain his enthusiasm for medicine.

He churned out copy on whatever subject they chose. Usually it was collectivization. Franz the farmer needed educating about the benefits of giving up his family farm to the state. Georg, his
neighbour, was delighted with the price guarantees he’d received for his grain and keen to explain the benefits to his doubting friend. Gregor wrote what he was told to write, ignoring the
little voice inside himself that occasionally wanted to make Franz point out that the state was in fact stealing land on which he’d successfully grown wheat for the country all through the
war years and long before.

While others complained of threadbare clothes and growling stomachs, he barely noticed them. Sometimes he found himself a girl. Two bodies were warmer than one in a cold bed. These relationships
lasted a month or two until the girls became possessive. Plenty of choice in a city where war had claimed so many men.

In August 1961 after a typical night out with Dieter in the western zone, Gregor headed back to his apartment just before dusk. Piles of scorched bricks still peppered the
city. Where the rubble had been removed, patches of grass showed the rectangles of old foundations and walls, shadowy in the half-light. A ghost city. Gregor sometimes still imagined he heard guns
firing and grenades exploding.

As he turned a corner he saw soldiers rolling out barbed wire across the road. A small crowd had gathered. Gregor caught the eye of an old man in a cap. ‘Bastards are sealing off the
Soviet sector. Too many people going west, they say.’

‘Can’t imagine why.’ A youth next to him rolled his eyes.

A woman with a baby in her arms and a toddler clinging to her skirts ran past the soldiers towards Gregor. When she reached him she dropped to the ground, still holding the baby, laughing.
‘Didn’t even have time to pack any clothes. But we’ll be on the right side. That’s what matters.’

‘What are you going to do?’ the old man asked Gregor.

‘I don’t know. I’ve got an apartment over there.
’ And an old gramophone, books, photos, a piano I never play any more . . .

The old man cackled. ‘And the Russians.’