Voroshilovgrad (18 page)

“I'll use it to cut the grass,” I answered irritably. “You want me to pay for the gas or something? You greedy bastard . . .”

“No, it has nothing to do with the gas . . .” Injured replied, sliding off his gloves and heading outside to start up his car.

We rode in silence, descending into the valley, speeding over the bridge, and entering the city. Injured would occasionally nod at women who recognized him. We passed the bus station, the
grain elevator, and then pulled up at the railroad crossing. Injured stopped and said:

“All right, this is as far as I go. I don't want anyone seeing me over there.”

“How come?”

“I've got a girl down there,” Injured explained. “She thinks I'm in Poland. I told her I was going there on business, you know? I don't want to blow my cover. You can walk from here—it's not too far.”

“I know,” I said, shutting the door behind me.

The sparse buildings on the outskirts of town gave way to fields of crops—there were fewer and fewer people here, more and more animals. Cows, tied down with durable ropes, like blimps, were grazing in the fields. The road leading off the highway toward the airport had become thoroughly overgrown. A few poplar trees stood orphaned and abandoned; the metal gate at the entrance was covered in rust and black metal stars hung there like dead planets. I walked up and pushed on the gate. It screeched loudly and swung open. Ernst was already standing outside the building. Apparently, he had spotted me coming down the road, and now he was waiting for me in full uniform. He was dressed in a British fireman's jacket on top of a black army T-shirt and jean shorts held up by an old German belt with “God with us” on the buckle, with a pair of Keds on his feet. He looked like an Iron Maiden fan. He came up to me and shook my hand.

“It's a good thing you decided to come,” he said.

“I'd like you to know that it was quite a hassle getting here—we really should have rescheduled after all.”

“Time, Herman, time,” Ernst replied, “who knows how much of it you've got left . . .”

“What are you getting at?”

“I mean that we need to walk through those doors that others have opened for us.”

He said that with a pensive air, then started walking. I followed. We trod through the thick grass and grapevines that surrounded the airport. We went past a garage, cut behind the small administration building, and found ourselves next to a large structure that looked like a hangar. A flat lot, empty as a highway in the early morning, had by now become visible behind the various structures—this was the runway. A sense of neglect pervaded everything. Now Ernst struck me as looking like a man who'd gone AWOL after falling behind his unit. He was hiding out in abandoned warehouses, awaiting court martial. He opened the metal doors and motioned for me to come in. It was an old cafeteria where, as far as I could gather, the airport employees used to eat. I could picture it now—gallant pilots, all-star rural aviators returning home after completing hazardous flights over a vast sea of corn to their quiet and cozy haven where they would be greeted by their loyal mechanics, their wise dispatchers, and some warm compote. The room was spacious, lined with old tables and metal chairs. There were propaganda posters on the walls—a testament to the might and constancy of Red aviation and doubtless the product of some committee dedicated to improving the public perception of using planes to apply chemical agents to crops in peacetime. Not much had changed over the past twenty years. Aside from the fact that I was wearing a German army jacket and
Ernst a British one.

Ernst invited me to take a seat at the table, produced a ten-liter metal canister from somewhere by the wall, sat down across from me, plonked the canister down at his feet, and took two crummy table glasses marked with red oil paint out of his pocket. He put the glasses down and I peered inside of them—the bottom of mine read 7 and Ernst's read 12. Ernst hefted the canister, opened it up, and filled up both our glasses with red liquid.

“It's wine,” he said, handing me the glass. “I make it myself.” We clinked glasses. “I use the grapes that grow right here at the airport. One could say that this is all that's left of Soviet aviation.”

“Let its memory live on,” I said and downed my glass.

The wine was acerbic and hot.

“Let me tell you.” Ernst downed his glass too and started pouring another round. “Killing aviation might be the worst thing they ever did. Democracy can't exist without aviation. Airplanes are the cornerstone of civil society.”

I suggested we drink to that. Ernst was all for it. Anyone watching us would probably have thought we were drinking gasoline.

“How's Injured? Hanging in there?” Ernst asked after a short pause. An awkward silence had set in while he was pouring. I never know what to say to break the ice. He'd clearly felt my anxiety, so he was trying to change the subject to something more neutral.

“All right,” I answered, “he's been playing some soccer.”

“Soccer?” Ernst was genuinely surprised. “He's still at it?”

“They're all still playing. We beat the gas guys yesterday.”

“What do you mean
they
?”

“Well, all the guys I used to play with. Python, Conductor,
Andryukha Michael Jackson.” Ernst was giving me a strange look. “The Balalaeshnikov brothers too,” I added, less confidently.

“The Balalaeshnikovs? Aren't they the guys who died in a fire at their movie theater?”

“What do you mean they died in a fire? I was playing soccer with them yesterday.”

“Of course you were,” Ernst said. “Since when has dying in a fire ever kept anyone from playing soccer? So, how's Injured hanging in there?” he asked again.

“He's doing all right. He didn't wanna give me a ride over here. He said your whole tank scheme is a bunch of baloney.”

“That's what he said?”

“Yep, what's that he said.”

“And he was talking about the
tanks
?”

“Yeah.”

“Hmm,” said Ernst, turning sullen. “Injured is rather impulsive, that's his personality type—he can't concentrate on any one particular thing. He's got the same problem with women. You know that, right?”

“I figured as much.”

“Actually,” Ernst went on, “a few years back, Injured was helping me try to dig up three German grenadiers.”

“What do you mean, ‘dig up'?”

“Well,” said Ernst, apparently not sure how to explain, “digging them up, you know, from the pitch-black void. I'd find them with a metal detector—they had metal crowns in their teeth, they'd set it off. Incidentally, Injured offered his help, straight away. I figured he was in it for the
Reichsmarks
. But why would grenadiers have
Reichsmarks?”

“How'd it all play out?”

“Badly,” Ernst replied, pouring us another round out of the canister. “We found them and exhumed them. But it turned out that they'd actually been properly buried after the war, but they hadn't put down any markers. So, I was accused of desecrating military burial sites. I barely got off. But I still wear the belt I found.” He showed me. “Ever since then, Injured has been skeptical about the whole thing.”

Ernst poured another dose into his face. I followed suit, trying to keep up.

“Gotcha. So what now? You really want to find a tank?”

Ernst gave me a shrewd and attentive look. I started to feel a bit uneasy.

“Herman,” he said, “what would you do if you suddenly came into a lot of money? Like a million . . .”

“A million.”

“Uh-huh.”

“
Reichsmarks
?”

“Dollars.”

“I'd buy myself a house . . . in Africa.”

“What would you do with a house in Africa?”

“I've always wanted to live in a country where there's no racism.”

“Got ya.” Ernst nodded wisely. “You know what I would do?”

“What?”

“I'd buy an airplane, Herman. And I'd bring local air travel back to life.”

“But why?”

“Why, you ask? Because I can live just fine in a city where there's racism. But I just can't live in a city where there's no aviation.”

“It's really that important to you?”

“You see,” Ernst said, having to tilt the canister even more to fill up our glasses now, “it's not just a matter of air travel. If not for me, the damn corn guys would have bought up this property a long time ago.” He gestured around at his domain. “They would have ripped up the asphalt and planted this whole area with corn. Herman, you see all this? Everything they built here—it'd be cornfields.”

“Why haven't they done it yet?”

“Because it's still technically state property. But trust me, as soon as they let me go, everything's going to get bought up. Because they don't care about anything but their damn corn, you know what I mean?” Ernst was already rather drunk, so he was getting less lucid but more effusive as he went along: “All they need airplanes for is to look after their corn. They don't care about air travel, Herman. For me, airplanes aren't just a job. You know, when I was a kid, I would dream about the sky. In school I'd draw airplanes in my notebooks—the same models that were soaring up there, over our heads. Herman, think about it. When we were kids, we all wanted to be aviators. We wanted to fly and touch the sky! Dude, we were all named after astronauts!”

“Especially you, Ernst Thälmann . . .”

“Whatever,” he said, not losing any momentum “What happened to our dreams? Who took our tickets to heaven away from us? I ask you, why have we who love the sky been ostracized?
Why have we been forced into seclusion?”

Ernst shook his head anxiously and went quiet. I also went quiet because I didn't know how what to say to all that. Finally, he perked up again:

“For me,” he said, “it's a matter of principle. I want to revive air travel in this city where the only choice is pushing people around or getting pushed around yourself. They're letting those fuckers tell them what to do. You could say that this is my life's work.”

“All right,” I tried encouraging him, “but where does the tank come in?”

“Herman, you're a history buff, right?”

“Sure.”

“Then you probably know how many Tigers were produced in the Reich?”

“What model are we talking about?”

“All the models put together.”

“Around fifteen hundred.”

“Well, thirteen hundred fifty-five, to be exact,” Ernst said jubilantly. “Would you say that's a lot?”

“Not really,” I answered after thinking for a bit.

“No, it's not many at all,” Ernst concurred. “You know how many are still intact?”

“About a hundred,” I guessed.

“Six, Herman, just six. What do you think? How much would a Tiger be worth today?”

“A million.”

“Or more.”

“And you know where you can find one?” I asked, trying to
keep the doubt out of my voice.

“I don't know, but there's got to be one around here. I can just feel it. I'll dig it up one day, and then I'll tell all those businessmen buying up scrap metal from state companies where they can stick it. Those assholes! They've sold out and ruined the aviation industry,” he concluded, pouring another glass.

I was only then realizing just how drunk he really was, so I didn't see any point in arguing. I thought, “Why
not
aviation? Not a bad dream for a guy who lives in an old cafeteria.”

“All right, Herman,” Ernst said, coming back to life, “time is on our side, or history. You know, history doesn't teach us a thing. A tank war—can you picture it? A tank war is a great migration of peoples. Think of those simple German mechanics, those young boys—the majority of them hadn't ever been away from home before, let alone crossing a continent. Say you were born and raised in a small German town. You went to church, to school, fell in love for the first time, and stayed loosely informed about politics, at least enough to know who the chancellor was. Then the war starts and you get drafted. You get some training and become a tank driver. Then you start moving east, farther and farther east, crossing borders, taking over foreign cities, and destroying your enemy's resources, both material and human. You come to realize that you're seeing the same cities and same landscapes here as you saw back home, and the people too—they're essentially the same, if you don't count the communists and Gypsies. The women are just as pretty, while the kids are just as naïve and carefree. And you take over their capitals, not really too concerned about what awaits you, where the war will take you tomorrow. With that attitude, you
cross through Czechoslovakia, then Poland, and finally, your tank has rolled across the border into the USSR, the country of developed socialism. At first everything was going smoothly—blitzkrieg, your generals' genius strategies, a quick advance eastward. You even crossed the Dnieper pretty much problem-free. But that's when things go bad—you suddenly find yourself in an absolutely barren landscape: no cities, no people, and no infrastructure. Even your enemies have disappeared—they're somewhere out there, hiding. In a place like this you'd be relieved to see
anyone
, even them, but no, they've disappeared, too, and the farther east you advance, the more worried you get. And when you finally find yourself here,” Ernst said, his finger circling in the air, “you get this eerie feeling, you realize how good you had it till then, because here, right on the other side of the nearest fence, as soon as you get three hundred meters away from the railroad tracks, everything you thought you knew about war, about Europe, about landscapes, is nullified, because endless emptiness begins right on the other side of that fence, emptiness without content, form, or connotation. It's real, absolute emptiness, and there's nothing to hold on to. And what's waiting for you on the other side of all that emptiness? Stalingrad. That's what a tank war is, Herman.”