The Last Frontier (13 page)

'Like it! Dear God, how could anyone ever like this life? Nothing but fear and hunger and repression, and, for us, always moving from place to place, always looking over our shoulders to see if someone is there, afraid to look over our shoulder in case someone is there. To speak in the wrong place, to smile at the wrong time -- '
'You'd go over to the west tomorrow, wouldn't you?'
'Yes. No, no, I cant. I can't. You see -- '
'Your mother, isn't that it?'
'My mother!' He could feel her shift against him as she turned to stare in the darkness. 'My mother is dead, Mr. Reynolds.'
'Dead?' His voice inflected in surprise. 'That's not what your father says.'
'1 know it's not.' Her voice softened. 'Poor, dear Jansci, hell never believe that Mother is dead. She was dying when they took her away, one lung was almost gone, she couldn't have lived a couple of days. But Jansci will never believe it. He'll stop hoping when he stops breathing.'
'But you tell him you believe it too?'
'Yes. I wait here because I am all Jansci has left in the world and cannot leave him. But if I told him that, he would have me across the Austrian frontier tomorrow -- he would never have me risk my life for him. And so I tell him I wait for Mother.'
'I see.' Reynolds could think of nothing else to say, wondered if he himself could have done what this girl was doing if he felt as she did. He remembered something, his impression that Jansci had seemed indifferent to the fate of his wife. 'Your father -- he has looked for your mother, searched for her, I mean?'
'You don't think so, do you? He always gives that impression, I don't know why.' She paused for a moment, then went on, 'You will not believe this, no one believes this, but it is true: there are nine concentration camps in Hungary, and, in the past eighteen months, Jansci has been inside five of them, just looking for Mother. Inside, and, as you see, out again. It's just not possible, is it?'
'It's just not possible,' Reynolds echoed slowly.
'And he's combed a thousand, over a thousand collective farms -- or what used to be collective farms before the October Rising. He has not found her, he never will find her. But always he looks, always he will keep on looking and he will never find her.'
Something in her voice caught Reynolds' attention. He reached up a gentle hand and touched her face: her cheeks were wet, but she did not turn away, she didn't resent the touch.
'I told you this wasn't for you, Miss Illyurin.'
'Julia, always Julia. You mustn't say that name, you mustn't even think that name.... Why am I telling you all these things?'
'Who knows? But tell me more -- tell me about Jansci. I have heard a little, but only a little.'
'What can I tell you? "A little," you say, but that's all I, too, know about my father. He will never talk about what is gone, he will not even say why he will not talk. I think it is because he lives now only for peace and the making of peace, to help all those who cannot help themselves. That is What I heard him say once. I think his memory tortures him. He has lost so much, and he has killed so many. Reynolds said nothing, and after a time the girl went on, 'Jansci's father was a Communist leader in the Ukraine. He was a good Communist and he was also a good man -- you can be both at the same time, Mr. Reynolds. In 1938 he -- and practically every leading Communist in the Ukraine -- died in the secret police torture cellars in Kiev. That was when it all started. Jansci executed the executioners, and some of the judges, but too many hands were against him. He was taken to Siberia and spent six months in an underground cell in the Vladivostock transit camp waiting for ice to melt and the steamer to come to take them away. He saw no daylight for six months, he didn't see another human being for six months -- his crusts and.the slops that passed for food were lowered through a batch. They all knew who he was and he was to take a long time dying. He had no blankets, no bed, and the temperature was far below zero. For the last month they stopped all supplies of water also, but Jansci survived by licking tine hoar frost off the door of his cell. They were beginning to learn that Jansci was indestructible.'
'Go on, go on.' Reynolds still held the girl's hand tightly in his own, but neither of them was aware of it. 'And after that?'
'After that the freighter came and took him away, to the Kolyma Mountains. No one ever comes back from the Kolyma Mountains -- but Jansci came back.' He could hear the awe in the girl's voice even as she spoke, even as she repeated something she must have said or thought a thousand times. "These were the worst months of his life. I don't know what happened in those days, I don't think there is anyone still alive who knows what happened then. All I know is that he sometimes still wakes up from his sleep, his face grey, whispering, 'Davai, davai -- get going, get going! -- and "Bystrey, bystrey" -- faster, faster! It's something to do with driving or pulling sledges, I don't know what. I know too, that even to this day, he cannot bear to hear the sound of sleigh bells. You've seen the missing fingers on his hands -- it was a favourite sport t© drag prisoners along behind the NKVD's -- or OGPU's, as it was then -- propeller-driven sledges, and see how close they could be brought to the propeller.... Sometimes they were jerked too close, and their faces....' She was silent for a moment, then went on, her voice unsteady. 'I suppose you could say Jansci was lucky. His fingers, only his fingers... and his hands, these scars on his 'hands. Do you know how he came by these, Mr. Reynolds?'
He shook his head in the darkness, and she seemed to sense the movement.
'Wolves, Mr. Reynolds. Wolves mad with hunger. The guards trapped them, starved them and then flung a man and a wolf into the same pit. The man would have only his hands: Jansci had only his hands. His arms, his entire body is a mass of these scars."
'lt% not possible, all this is not possible.' Reynolds' low-pitched mutter was that of a man trying to convince himself of something which must be true.
'In the Kolyma Mountains all things are possible. That wasn't the worst, that was nothing. Other things happened to him there, degrading, horrible, bestial things, but he has never spoken of them to me.'
'And the palms of his hands, the crucifixion marks on his hands?'
"These aren't crucifixion marks, all the Biblical pictures are wrong, you can't crucify a man by the palms of his hands.... Jansci had done something terrible, I don't know what it was, so they took him out to the taiga, the deep forest, in the middle of winter, stripped him of all his clothes, nailed him to two trees that grew close together and left him. They knew it would be only a few minutes, the fearful cold or the wolves.... He escaped, God knows how he escaped, Jansci doesn't, but he escaped, found his clothes where they had thrown them away and left the Kolyma Mountains. That was when all his fingers, his fingertips and nails went, that's when he lost all his toes.... You have seen the way he walks?'
'Yes.' Reynolds remembered the strange, stiff-legged gait. He thought of Jansci's face, its kindness and its infinite gentleness, and tried to see that face against the background of its history, but the gap was too great, his imagination baulked at the attempt. "I would not have believed this of any man, Julia. To survive so much.... He must be indestructible.'
'1 think so too.... It took him four months to arrive at the Trans-Siberian Railway where it crosses the Lena, and when he stopped a train he was quite insane. He was out of his mind for a long time, but he finally recovered and made his way back to the Ukraine.
"That was in 1941 He joined the army, and became a major inside a year. Jansci joined for the reason that most Ukranians joined -- to wait his chance, as they are still.,Baiting their chance, to turn their regiments against the Red Army. And the chance came soon, when Germany attacked'
There was a long pause, then she went on quietly.
'We know now, but we didn't know then, what the Russians told the world. We know what they told of the long, bloody battle as we fell back on the Dnieper, the scorched earth, the desperate defence of Kiev. Lies, lies, all lies -- and still most of the world doesn't know it.' He could hear her voice softening in memory. 'We welcomed the Germans with open arms. We gave them the most wonderful welcome any army has ever had. We gave them food and wine, we decorated our streets, we garlanded the storm-troopers with flowers. Not one shot was fired in defence of Kiev. Ukranian regiments, Ukranian divisions deserted en masse to the Germans, Jansci said there's never been anything like it in history, and soon the Germans had an army of a million Russians fighting for them, under the command of the Soviet General Andrei Vlassov. Jansci was with this army, he rose to be Major-General and one of Vlassov's right-hand men, and fought with this army, until the Germans fell back on his home town of Vinnitsa in 1943.' Her voice tailed away, came again after a long silence. 'It was after Vinnitsa that Jansci changed. He swore he would never fight again, he swore he would never kill again. He has kept his promise.'
'Vinnitsa?' Reynolds' curiosity was roused. 'What happened at Vinnitsa?'
'You -- you've never heard of Vinnitsa?'
'Never.'
'Dear God,' she whispered. 'I thought the whole world had heard of Vinnitsa.'
'Sorry, no. What happened there?'
'Don't ask me, don't ask me!' Reynolds heard the long, quivering sigh. 'Someone else, but please don't ask me.'
'Okay, okay.' Reynolds' voice was quick, surprised. He could feel her whole body shaking with silent sobs, and he patted her shoulder awkwardly. 'Skip it. It doesn't matter.'
'Thank you.' Her voice was muffled. 'That's just about all, Mr. Reynolds. Jansci went to visit his old home in Vinnitsa, and the Russians were waiting for him -- they had been waiting a long time. He was put in command of a Ukranian regiment -- all deserters who had been recaptured -- given obsolete weapons and no uniforms at all and forced into a suicide position against the Germans. That happened to tens of thousands of Ukranians. He was captured by the Germans -- he had thrown away his weapons and walked across to their lines, was recognised and spent the rest of the war with General Vlassov. After the war the Ukrainian Liberation Army broke up into sections -- some of them, believe it or not, are still operating -- and it was there that he met the Count. They have never parted since."
'He is a. Pole, isn't he -- the Count, I mean?'
'Yes, that's where they met -- in Poland.'
'And who is he really? Do you know?'
He sensed rather than saw the shake of the head in the darkness.
'Jansci knows, but only Jansci. I only know that next only to my father, he is the most wonderful person I have ever known. And there's some strange bond between them. I think it's because they both have so much blood on their hands, and because neither of them has killed for years. They are dedicated men, Mr. Reynolds.'
'Is he really a Count?'
'He is indeed. So much I know. He owned huge estates, lakes and forests and great pastures at a place called Augustow, up near the borders of East Prussia and Lithuania -- or what used to be the borders. He fought the Germans in 1939, then took to the underground. After a long time he was captured and the Germans thought that it would be very amusing to make a Polish aristocrat earn his living by forced labour. You know the kind of labour, Mr. Reynolds -- clearing the thousands of corpses out of the Warsaw ghetto after the Stukas and the tanks had finished with it. He and a band of others killed their gaolers and joined General Bor's Polish Resistance Army. You will remember What happened -- Marshal Rossokovsky halted his Russian armies outside Warsaw and let the Germans and the Polish resistance fight it out to the death in the sewers of Warsaw.'
"I remember. People speak of it as the bitterest battle of the war. The Poles were massacred, of course.'
'Nearly all. The remnants, the Count among them, were taken off to the Auschwitz gas chambers. The German guards let them nearly all go, no one yet knows why -- but not before they branded them. The Count has his number inside his forearm, running from wrist to elbow, all scarred, raised lumps.' She shivered. 'It's horrible.'
'And then he met your father?'
'Yes. They were both with Vlassov's men, but they didn't stay long. The endless, senseless killings sickened them both. These bands used to disguise themselves as Russians, stop and board the Polish trains, make the passengers get out and shoot all who held Communist Party cards -- and many of the holders had no option but to have these cards, if they and their families were to survive: or they would move into towns, ferret out the Stakhanovites or would-be Stakhanovites and throw them among the ice blocks of the Vistula. So they left for Czechoslovakia and joined the Slovak partisans in the High Tatra.'
'I've heard of them, even in England,' Reynolds acknowledged. 'The fiercest and most independent fighters in Central Europe.'
'I think Jansci and the Count would agree,' she said feelingly. 'But they left very soon. The Slovaks weren't really interested in fighting for something, they were just interested in fighting, and when things were dull they were just as happy to fight among themselves. So Jansci and the Count came to Hungary -- they've been here over seven years now, most of the time outside Budapest.'
'And how long have you been here?'
'The same time. One of the first things Jansci and the Count did was to come to the Ukraine for us, and they took my mother and me here by way of the Carpathians and the High Tatra. I know what it must sound like, but it was a wonderful journey. It was high summer, the sun shone, they knew everybody, they had friends everywhere. I never saw my mother so happy.'
'Yes.' Reynolds steered her away from the topic. "The rest I know. The Count tips off who's next for the axe and Jansci gets them out. I've talked to dozens in England alone who were taken out by Jansci. The strange thing is that none of them hated the Russians. They all want peace, Jansci has talked them all into preaching for peace. He even tried to talk to me!'
'I told you,' she said softly. 'He's a wonderful man.' A minute passed in silence, two minutes, then she said suddenly, surprisingly: 'You're not married, are you, Mr. Reynolds?'
'What's that again?' Reynolds was startled at the sudden switch.
'You haven't a wife, have you, or a sweetheart or any girls at all? And please don't say "No, and don't bother applying for the vacancy," for that would be harsh and cruel and just a little cheap, and I don't really think you are any of these things.'