The Lieutenant’s Lover (30 page)

‘I’ll ask around,’ said the manager. ‘This Kornikova…?’

‘She’s a friend. But ask quietly. Please don’t mention my name.’

The manager nodded. He pushed his spectacles higher up his nose. ‘I’ll ask around. If she’s here, then it shouldn’t be so hard…’

Misha left.

Another seed planted. Another two factories still to visit. Misha’s certainty about finding her continued, bright, strong, unreasonable.

Tonya quickly came to understand the new conditions of her life.

Oderbruch Special Camp was the smallest of the dozen or so camps that still remained active. It had been set up by the Soviets to handle political prisoners: leading Nazis, members of the Waffen SS, other influential Nazis. But, as Tonya soon realised, such prisoners were the exceptions. Most of the prisoners were ordinary criminals, blackmarketeers, landowners who had resisted collectivisation, journalists who had spoken the truth, and many who had been denounced by unknown people for unknown offences. The camp was, Tonya realised, the Soviet zone’s own sweet version of the Siberian Gulag. Instead of the snakes and spiders of Soviet propaganda, Tonya saw only suffering wretches, ill-clothed, ill-fed, forgotten. She felt, not for the first time, ashamed to be Russian.

But she herself was fairly well off. Her regular duties were light. Every now and then, prisoners would be summoned for an interrogation at which Tonya was required to interpret. She found these sessions unpleasant, but not awful. The sessions were listless rather than frightful. The NKVD had no real interest in their prisoners, no real interest in forcing confessions or finding out information. Quite the opposite. The principal policy was neglect. There were no beatings and few punishments. Most activities were banned – singing, lectures, language lessons, games – and all news of the outside world was cut off. No charges were brought, no trials held, no sentences given, no release dates mentioned.

And because of the camp’s lack of interest in its prisoners, Tonya’s duties consisted of simple, unimportant things. She spent her time translating shopping lists for the camp quartermaster, or interpreting for a Russian driver and a German mechanic when there was a vehicle breakdown.

And that was it. Tonya’s accommodation was fine. She was one of only three women on the staff (the other two comprised an NKVD sergeant and the quartermaster’s wife who also worked as a typist). The three women slept together in a single room. The NKVD sergeant spent the first couple of weeks putting Tonya in her place, but with just three of them together, Tonya knew that things would soon sort themselves out, and they did. The three women were hardly the best of friends, but they got along just fine.

It was known in the camp that Tonya had been demoted and punished for offences committed in Berlin and her security clearance inside the camp didn’t permit her to leave it. But she was still in Germany! When she’d heard her new assignment after being released from detention, her heart had leaped for joy. Oderbruch might seem like the underside of nowhere, but she was little more than forty or fifty miles away from Misha. To Tonya, as for any Russian, such distances seemed simply trivial, no more than a step. And yet how to cross them …?

She beat her head against that problem, without making progress. She felt the problem must be soluble, yet she saw no way to solve it. She felt stuck – or at least, she was until one gentle summer’s night in early July. A nearby farmer had been cutting dead wood out of his orchards and piled together the clippings for burning. The fragrant wood smoke drifted across the camp. She herself felt suddenly homesick. Not homesick for Russia exactly – her memories of her own country were too overlaid with other feelings – but homesick all the same. She too wanted the freedom to roam where she wanted, to lie on her back looking up at the stars, to smell wood smoke, to make and burn fires of her own – in short, to make a life of her own, however simple.

She began to walk up and down the perimeter of the camp fence. She walked slowly, breathed deeply. Strangely enough, the thing she missed most was music. Her violin lessons had made a deep impression. She wondered if Misha owned a musical instrument. Did he still dance?

Her pacing took her to the foot of the main camp gate, the point at which she normally turned and went back the way she’d come. But a figure broke away from the shadows of one of the huts and came moving towards her. The twilight had deepened into almost-night. Deep indigo blue and violet still glowed in the west, but the east showed black beneath a tangle of stars. Tonya watched the person approach.

‘Comrade Kornikova,’ he said, nodding profusely, ‘good evening. You are well?’

Tonya smiled at the question. Such obsequious politeness told her to expect something interesting. The man – whoever he was – smelt strongly of warm meat juices and alcohol.

‘I’m very well, comrade, thank you. I’m afraid I can’t…’

‘Ah! I beg your pardon. All cats are grey in the dark.’ The man was short, only an inch or two taller than Tonya. There was a squirrelish busyness to his movements. The brim of his army cap hid his eyes. He jerked his hand upwards and snatched his cap from his head.
‘Yefreytor
Rokossovsky. But, please, comrade, to you, I am Boris Alexandrovich.’

‘Boris Alexandrovich, good evening.’

‘Good evening, good evening. Listen, I feel very bad. The other day when you helped us, I hardly thanked you.’

Tonya took a moment or two to understand what he meant. Then she remembered that a week or so back, there had been a problem with the supply of vegetables from the local collectivised farm. She had helped intermediate between the angry Russians and the perplexed locals. The matter had been simple enough and her intervention had lasted little more than ten minutes. Besides, as far as she remembered, Rokossovsky had shown as much gratitude as the situation had warranted.

‘That’s quite all right. I was only doing my job.’

‘Yes, but … a man should say his thanks. Listen, I brought you this.’ Rokossovsky put his hand inside his jacket and brought out a roasted onion and half a roast hare, wrapped in a parcel of cloth. The hare was still warm. Though food in the camp was plentiful, for people of Tonya’s humble level, any meat provided was little enough and of the worst sort. The hare felt like a real treat. It reminded her, in fact, of those feasts in the hunting lodge in Petrozavodsk when Misha would return clear-faced and exultant from a hunt, simultaneously stamping snow from his boots, tossing a pair of cleanly shot hares onto the table, pulling off his cap, setting down his rifle, and embracing her.

She took the gift.

‘Boris Alexandrovich, thank you.’

‘Ah yes, you are most welcome. I should have thought of something earlier, comrade. I apologise.’

‘That’s all right, thank you.’

‘Is it good?’

Tonya wanted to eat the hare on her own, but realised that Rokossovsky didn’t intend to let her. She began to eat it, picking meat straight from the bone with her teeth. The food was excellent. It was the true taste of Petrozavodsk, and once again the sense of homesickness began to pound at her. Rokossovsky watched her closely, nodding at her every bite, grinning to encourage her. When she bit into the onion, he said, ‘Onion treats seven ailments, so they say. But you’re already well. Very good.’ Tonya finished the onion and ate part of the hare. Then, hoping to be allowed to eat the rest in peace, told Rokossovsky she’d save the remains for later. He seemed disappointed, but not for long.

‘Well done, comrade. Very wise. Best not to waste it, by eating too fast.’

Tonya wrapped the hare and folded it inside her tunic. She hoped her companion would leave, but knew he wouldn’t.

She yawned loudly. ‘It’s getting late…’

‘Yes, comrade, but … listen, may I speak with you?’

‘Of course.’

‘They say that he who risks nothing, never drinks champagne. And this business is…’ Rokossovsky found himself unable to get further. Somewhere deep in Tonya’s subconscious there was a prickle of excitement.

‘A fly cannot get into a closed mouth,’ she said, answering his proverb with another.

‘Yes, yes! Exactly! And in this stink of a camp, there are many flies.’

‘Boris Alexandrovich, is there something I can do to help you?’

He seemed relieved to be asked a direct question. ‘Yes, my comrades and I … you liked the hare, comrade? I apologise for… Listen.’ He finally mastered his nervousness and began to speak. Once he’d started, he was almost unstoppable. The quartermaster received supplies for the entire camp. But he and others, including Rokossovsky, had contrived to fiddle things so that the camp received supplies sufficient for eleven hundred prisoners, instead of the eight hundred actually present. ‘He’s a shrewd one, that quartermaster. He could cheat a fish of its skin. The winter was a bad one. There wasn’t much food. The prisoners seemed to drop like wasps in autumn.’ Rokossovsky shrugged. The morality of the situation obviously didn’t concern him much. ‘But what isn’t written, isn’t known. We have food to sell, and when I take the truck into Bad Freienwalde for fuel, then I…’ He broke off, not quite daring actually to name his crime. But it was clear enough. ‘These Germans – they’re only dogs really – despite everything, they’re still rich. Why I saw one man. He owned three handsaws, comrade, can you imagine? Three! And in all my village, there were only two.’

Tonya put up a hand to stop the flow. The excitement that she had sensed before had now hardened and condensed into something tangible, almost pebble-like in its density. ‘I understand. You sell what you have. But you want my help?’

These Germans. They look ragged and bargain hard. There is gold in their cellars. This I know for a true fact. My friend, Sergei Mikhailovich, has a friend who told him—’

‘If you want my help to bargain, Boris Alexandrovich, then you are most welcome. Bargaining is easy if you understand the language.’

‘Yes, yes, comrade Kornikova!’

‘But you know, of course, that I’m not permitted to leave the camp. The terms of my assignment here…’

‘Ah, yes!’ Word of Tonya’s punishment and demotion was fairly well known around the camp. Rokossovsky either hadn’t known or, more likely, had clean forgotten. But he wasn’t downcast. ‘But still, there are ways… I’d have to think … we would need it to be safe…’

Tonya nodded. Rokossovsky was half-excited, half-nervous.

‘You think about it, Boris Alexandrovich. I’d be delighted to help you. You can come and talk to me whenever you wish.’

‘Yes. But remember, comrade. These things are dangerous. Keep your ears wide and your mouth narrow.’

Tonya smiled. ‘The wolf doesn’t eat the wolf,’ she quoted.

Rokossovsky’s eyes lit up. ‘Exactly, comrade. And we’re two wolves together, eh?’ He thanked her again, then vanished into the night.

And Tonya’s excitement could now burst out like a glorious firework, green and gold against the night sky. Rokossovsky was the opening she’d been waiting for. How it would work, she had as yet no idea, but she knew this squirrelish little man had it in him to open a path to freedom. The apple-branch fire had almost died to nothing now, but its smell still lingered on the air. The night sky was solid black now, dazzled with stars and the first hint of moonrise. Tonya ate the last of her hare, still almost warm. She was happy, gloriously happy.

Cotbus.

The town square. A large hall, formerly some kind of agricultural exchange, had been converted into a kind of canteen for Soviet troops and privileged local workers. The place was mostly deserted. Around forty yellow-topped tables and wooden seats stood around under unshaded overhead lights. The service counter was blue with steam and the smell of boiled milk.

Misha, holding the ticket that authorised him to enter, looked around uncertainly. A group of cleaning women, certainly local Germans, sat at one table with a clutter of mops and buckets standing behind them. Two Red Army officers sat at another table, playing cards. Otherwise there was almost no one. Misha marked the rank and regiment of the two officers, then walked up to the counter and asked for a glass of ersatz-coffee, which he paid for in worn-out Reichsmark notes.

As Misha moved away from the counter, he heard a noise behind him. Turning, he saw a man hurrying up to him. The man was dressed in a soft brown suit, and had a wispy beard and nervous eyes.

‘Herr Müller.
Ja
. I’m sorry. I’m late. Apologies.’

‘You’re Kunz?’

‘Kunz. Yes. I should have said. Kunz.’

They shook hands. Kunz’s handshake was limp and apologetic. The man was of fighting age, but he didn’t look as though he’d ever been a soldier. Kunz himself bought a glass of hot milk and a bun so stale that it could have broken teeth. Then they sat down together at a table.

‘You need help with translation? Herr Ingenieur Bofinger said that…’

‘Yes.’

Misha sighed, trying not to show his disappointment. He’d been in Cotbus selling his castings. His samples had been greedily accepted, a price agreed, and the plant manager – the forceful and intelligent Herr Bofinger – had arranged this meeting. The man’s Russian was halting but not bad, and he’d certainly be able to handle the business that Misha would give him. But no, Kunz had never heard of a female translator used by the Soviets. The name Kornikova meant nothing to him.