The Tolstoy Estate Read online

  ‘Tell her she’s no longer head of anything,’ Metz said.

  ‘Captain,’ interrupted Major Weidemann, twisting at the waist. ‘I’d like to know if she was violated by any of our men. Ask her this. You said she mentioned damaged doors.’

  Metz frowned. ‘Major, that’s hardly relevant. And besides, no man under my command —’

  ‘Alas, you’re wrong, Herr Oberstleutnant,’ Weidemann said. ‘Every day I encounter new cases of venereal disease – some, I regret to say, among men of the battalion.’

  Volker Hirsch was colouring – an opportunity too good for Molineux to resist. ‘Hirsch, you filthy animal, trust you to get the clap.’

  ‘I . . . that’s . . .’

  ‘Don’t bother to deny it.’

  ‘But I do!’

  ‘Do deny it? Or do have it?’

  With a look of pained repugnance Metz turned to Weidemann. ‘Aren’t the brothels a more likely vector?’

  ‘Still worried about our brothels, Herr Oberstleutnant?’

  ‘Not worried, Major. It just seems to me that the risks outweigh the benefits.’

  ‘Our brothel workers are rigorously screened for infection. No, I’m convinced that local women are the primary source, and I plan to say as much in a report to Major General Oeding.’

  ‘With respect, sir,’ Molineux said, ‘that’s hardly going to deter a man like Hirsch.’

  Ignoring him Weidemann said, ‘Bauer, would you put my question to this woman.’

  ‘That won’t be necessary,’ Trubetzkaya said in flawless German, silencing all of them. ‘The answer is no. I wasn’t so stupid as to be in my room when you arrived. I’ve only discovered the damage just now.’

  ‘Well, well, well,’ said Molineux.

  ‘You speak German,’ Metz said.

  ‘What of it?’ she answered.

  ‘You tried to deceive us.’

  ‘Hardly. You deceived yourself.’

  ‘To eavesdrop on us. Gain intelligence.’

  ‘Intelligence? Don’t make me laugh.’

  Bauer marvelled at her German, which she spoke without a trace of an accent. It was months since he’d heard a woman speaking his native language with such verve, though this pleasure was marred by the realisation that she wouldn’t be needing him to interpret for her. He recalled Metz and Weidemann’s debate about venereal disease and inwardly cringed.

  Metz demanded to know how she came to speak German.

  She shrugged. ‘Any half-decently educated person can speak the five or six main European dialects.’

  Metz, who was monolingual, wisely let this go. ‘But you have no accent,’ he said.

  Actually, this wasn’t quite right, decided Bauer. Rather, she spoke a German shorn of regional inflection – the Platonic ideal of the language perhaps. Her voice was deepish for a woman and appealingly hoarse.

  ‘I learned it as a child,’ she said.

  ‘Where was this?’ Metz asked.

  ‘Leningrad. In those days still St Petersburg.’

  ‘From whom?’

  She hesitated. ‘A governess.’

  ‘A governess? And yet you’re a Bolshevik?’

  Bauer said, ‘Sir, we should ask the head custodian her first name and patronymic.’

  ‘Former head custodian. And her surname will do – it’s German we’re speaking. Your name again?’ he asked her.

  ‘Trubetzkaya,’ she said, adding, ‘Katerina Dmitrievna.’

  Mentally Bauer rehearsed the names, a technique he had devised as a youth to keep track of the characters in War and Peace.

  ‘Frau Trubetzkaya,’ Metz said, ‘you will now take us to Leo Tolstoy’s study. He had one, I suppose?’

  ‘Of course. But why should I?’

  ‘You needn’t concern yourself with why. Those days are past.’

  Trubetzkaya laughed. ‘No more whys? Remarkable. If I’d known German medicine was so advanced I might have hung out the bunting.’

  ‘The study,’ Metz repeated.

  ‘As you wish,’ she replied, and led them out of the room, across the entrance hall and down a corridor to a large corner room even emptier than the first.

  ‘This is it?’ Metz asked.

  ‘What did you expect?’ Trubetzkaya said. ‘To find him at his desk?’

  ‘This is where Tolstoy wrote?’ Bauer asked. ‘Anna Karenina? War and Peace?’

  ‘Yes, and everything after.’

  Metz turned to Ehrlich. ‘First thing tomorrow, get a desk in here. And have a telephone set up.’

  Trubetzkaya scoffed. ‘Hoping a little greatness will rub off on you?’

  ‘Deeds win greatness, gnädige Frau, not words. Writers document; great men do.’

  ‘Spoken like a soldier.’

  ‘A soldier-surgeon,’ he corrected. ‘But my point holds: with his rifle our humblest Landser shapes the world in a way your Tolstoy never did.’

  ‘How odd. You sound rather like him in War and Peace – the dull bits: the little man as mover of Great Events. But you’re mistaken. Lev Tolstoy did shape the world. Even now he’s tipping the war in our favour.’

  ‘Nonsense.’

  ‘Our troops are reading him: War and Peace, abridged. And learning how to win.’

  Metz sneered. ‘Your Red Army is in headlong retreat.’

  ‘Three days I’ve been hearing those guns. Whose they are I don’t know, but it sounds like resistance.’

  ‘It’s only a matter of time until Tula falls, gnädige Frau, and when it does the whole Soviet centre will collapse. By Christmas, I assure you, we’ll be well ensconced in Moscow.’

  It struck Bauer that Metz was giving a good deal of verbal latitude to a woman who only minutes ago he’d wanted to silence.

  ‘Let’s say you’re right,’ she said, ‘though I strongly doubt it.’ Bauer guessed what was coming and she didn’t disappoint. ‘In 1812 Napoleon held Moscow for most of September and October, and yet by November his Grande Armée was – how shall I put it? – in headlong retreat.’

  ‘Madam, warfare is no longer a matter of rag-tag armies chasing one another about the countryside. It’s total, and our strength is the greater.’

  ‘Russia remains large, its winters cold.’

  Metz gave her a supercilious smile. ‘You seem like an intelligent woman. Don’t you know that history never repeats itself?’

  ‘Ah, but there you’re wrong, Herr Oberstleutnant. 1707, the Swedes. It was in Russia they learned neutrality. If you’re smart enough, you Germans will learn the same lesson – though somehow I doubt it.’

  Metz’s smile had faded. He gestured to the doorway. ‘You will now show us the rest of the house.’

  Their next destination was a similar-sized room across the corridor, this one lined with bookshelves, all of them empty.

  ‘The library,’ Trubetzkaya said. ‘Everything in Russian we evacuated, though you’ll still find a few things in German.’ On the floor were several book-laden crates, and their guide went over to one of them and rummaged inside. ‘Here we are,’ she said, and held up a hefty green volume. ‘For your edification,’ she said, presenting it to Metz, who glanced at the title before handing it on to Ehrlich.

  ‘Destroy this,’ he said.

  ‘De Sade?’ Molineux asked.

  ‘War and Peace,’ Trubetzkaya said. ‘You won’t read it?’ she asked Metz.

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘A pity. You might learn something.’

  ‘I’ve read it,’ Bauer said.

  ‘The incinerator,’ Metz said to Ehrlich, ‘just as soon as it’s running.’

  ‘By midday tomorrow,’ put in Weidemann.

  ‘Thank you, Major,’ Metz said, and turned to Trubetzkaya. ‘Now if you don’t mind, gnädige Frau – the rest of the house.’

  Following Metz and Trubetzkaya the others departed one by one, Bauer hanging back until only he and Ehrlich remained.

  ‘I’ll take that,’ Bauer said, holding out a hand for the book.

&
nbsp; ‘The lieutenant colonel just told me to burn it.’

  ‘And I’m ordering you to give it to me,’ Bauer said. Let Ehrlich have a proper grievance against him, however small.

  Ehrlich hesitated then passed him the book. ‘I’ll have to tell the lieutenant colonel.’

  ‘Of course you will.’

  ‘I doubt he’ll be pleased.’

  ‘That’s for me to worry about,’ Bauer said, and tucked the book under his arm.

  They caught up with the others in a kitchen, and from there followed Trubetzkaya upstairs. A landing. A bathroom. Three or four empty bedrooms.

  ‘Which was Tolstoy’s?’ Metz asked.

  As if to appraise him better, she tilted her head. ‘You’re really quite a vain man, aren’t you?’

  ‘Just show us his room.’

  She shrugged and led them to the northern end of the house, where she opened a door into a tiny whitewashed room with a solitary window, little more than a cell. On the floor lay Weidemann’s kit and beside it his gramophone, known to Molineux, but nobody else, as Bertha.

  ‘I don’t need much space,’ Weidemann said, ‘and therefore took the liberty of claiming the room for myself.’

  Ignoring him, Metz asked Trubetzkaya if the room had really been Tolstoy’s.

  ‘For his last two decades, yes,’ she said.

  ‘I can check, you know. Captain Bauer reads Russian.’

  ‘How reassuring for you. He certainly can’t speak it.’

  ‘What about the marital bedroom?’ Metz asked.

  ‘Down the hall. Though really that room was Sophia Andreyevna’s.’

  ‘The wife?’

  ‘Correct,’ Trubetzkaya said. ‘That room is grander. Much more your style.’

  ‘There you’re wrong, Madam,’ Metz said. ‘This room will do nicely. Major, take your kit to the wife’s room.’ To Trubetzkaya he said, ‘You Russians call each other comrade, but your system is a sham, a tyranny dressed up as utopia. For true comradeship you need only look at the German army, where command is absolute but hardships are shared.’

  ‘That’s lucky because there will be plenty to go around.’

  Metz ordered Corporal Ehrlich to bring up his kit.

  ‘The ghost won’t unnerve you?’ Trubetzkaya asked.

  Metz paused. ‘There’s a ghost?’

  Trubetzkaya eyed him as if suspecting a joke, but Bauer feared Metz was sincere. Months ago he had announced the results of his horoscope (a long life, modest fame, disappointment with his children), and around his neck he wore a souvenir from the previous war, a lucky lump of shrapnel that had whirred past his ear and lodged in the door of a dugout.

  ‘There’s always a ghost,’ Trubetzkaya said.

  ‘Leo Tolstoy’s?’

  ‘I haven’t seen it myself.’

  ‘But others have?’

  Trubetzkaya smiled archly at him. ‘You can’t expect me to answer that, Herr Oberstleutnant. The house must have its secrets.’

  Metz looked displeased but didn’t press for an answer. ‘This estate is to be the site of a Wehrmacht field hospital,’ he said. ‘Soviet citizens, yourself included, are to be gone by tomorrow morning, 09:00 hours.’

  ‘You expect me to leave the old man?’ she said.

  ‘Old man?’

  ‘Lev Nikolayevich.’

  To hide his incomprehension Metz thrust out his chin.

  ‘She means Tolstoy,’ Bauer said.

  ‘Because I won’t go,’ Trubetzkaya went on. ‘And nor will my staff.’

  ‘Suit yourself,’ Metz said. ‘But don’t say you weren’t warned.’ He turned to his officers. ‘You see what scum the Bolsheviks are, leaving their womenfolk behind to face the enemy?’

  ‘We prefer our men at the front, killing Germans,’ Trubetzkaya said, then pushed her way to the door, elbowing Bauer in the sternum as she passed. She marched along the corridor to the stairs, and Molineux whistled in admiration. She ignored him and moments later was gone.

  THREE

  The word Yasnaya – bright – Bauer already knew; polyana he had to look up in a dictionary – not the scanty phrase book issued by the army, containing expressions like Hands up and Surrender or be killed, but his own dictionary, the one he’d owned since university. Glade or clearing, it read. A bright glade or clearing, then. A sunny place.

  Though not in late autumn. It was the first day of November and dark outside when Bauer woke in the room he and Molineux had been allocated upstairs. Breakfast was in the drawing room, now the officers’ mess. Beyond the curtains and hastily applied blackout paper there was still no hint of light.

  At 08:00 hours Bauer joined the other officers and the orderlies in the vestibule. Dawn was coming on at last, but even so the vestibule seemed gloomier than it had the previous night under lights. Metz arrived, greeted them cheerily, then stopped by the door to confer with Sergeant Major Ritter. ‘You’ve secured the perimeter?’

  ‘Around the main buildings, sir, but not between them,’ Ritter replied in his pitted voice, which sounded as though it would soon clear but never did.

  ‘But we have an escort?’

  ‘A squad, sir.’

  ‘Excellent. And you’ve rounded up the staff?’

  ‘Yes, and searched them for weapons. Their quarters too.’

  ‘Good man,’ he said, sounding alert and looking immaculate in a freshly pressed uniform. Bauer had slept poorly, kept awake by Molineux’s snoring, and despite a change of clothes he felt crumpled and weary.

  Metz led them out onto the porch and down the front steps. Drizzle. No wind. The cloud clotted and low. Dead leaves slicked and smothered the grass. On a circle of lawn at the centre of the turning circle a single corpsman stood guard over the estate’s Soviet staff: five white-bearded men in peasant smocks and seven women, the youngest looking of them the head custodian, Trubetzkaya.

  With the others Bauer followed Metz across the gravel drive, and simultaneously Trubetzkaya advanced towards them, ignoring the guard’s shouted warning to stay put.

  ‘You’re going to shoot us now?’ she asked Metz. ‘Is that why we’re here?’ The corpsman collared her just before she stopped in front of Metz, who motioned him to let her go. ‘You’ll never kill enough of us, you know,’ Trubetzkaya said. ‘If every Russian came to the front and threw his hat in your direction, you’d spend three weeks getting over the pile.’ She was wearing the quilted brown jacket she’d had on the night before, and a woollen cap from which strands of her auburn hair were spilling. Her nose was ruddy, and in the daylight her eyes and mouth looked a little lined, so that mentally Bauer revised her age upwards, nearer his own, and felt obscurely pleased.

  ‘Are you a communist?’ Metz asked her.

  She considered this. ‘Herr Oberstleutnant,’ she said at last, ‘I am your enemy. Whether I am also a communist is immaterial.’

  ‘Are you a member of the Soviet Communist Party?’

  She stared at him with disdain. ‘Yes, I am.’

  ‘And these people here,’ Metz said, pointing at the staff, ‘are they communists?’

  She glanced over her shoulder. ‘None of them. I am the sole Party member here.’

  Metz said, ‘If you’re lying, there will be consequences, understand? You could be sent to a camp, or shot. For now I’m inclined towards leniency. Last night I ordered you and your staff to clear out of here by nine.’

  ‘And as I said —’

  ‘But,’ Metz said, raising a hand, ‘if you agree not to interfere with our work, I’m proposing to let you return each day to get on with your duties.’

  Bauer allowed himself a little smile of self-congratulation: the estate’s staff would have been useful, he’d told Metz the night before, if their leader had been less of a firebrand.

  ‘Return?’ she asked. ‘Most of us are quartered here.’

  ‘Not from now on. Where you find shelter is your concern. The village, I assume. There will be a curfew from 21:00 to 06:00 hours. Otherwise you will
be free to come and go and do your work unhindered – just report to the front sentry post and to the guard at each building.’

  Trubetzkaya considered this then said, ‘We’ll do nothing to help you.’

  ‘Your usual duties. If you regard that as helping us, so be it, stay away. You have cleaning staff, I take it?’

  ‘Of course . . .’

  ‘Then let them clean. Those old men, what do they do?’

  ‘Gardening,’ she said. ‘Maintenance.’

  ‘Let them garden and maintain,’ Metz said. ‘Unless otherwise instructed, you will stay out of our way. And be warned: the smallest act of resistance will be punished, and severely.’

  ‘And will you stay out of our way?’

  ‘Your meaning?’

  ‘According to your colleague here,’ she said, gesturing at Major Weidemann, ‘you have rapists in your ranks.’

  Metz inhaled so sharply his nostrils flared. Coldly he said, ‘He was mistaken. Intimacy between Wehrmacht personnel and Slavic females is forbidden.’

  Molineux noisily cleared his throat, drawing glances. He gestured an apology and coughed.

  ‘Except in your brothels, evidently,’ Trubetzkaya said.

  ‘That I wouldn’t know,’ Metz said.

  ‘And rules are broken, aren’t they?’

  ‘Not by men under my command.’

  ‘Oh? Where do you recruit such paragons?’

  ‘It’s not a question of recruitment, gnädige Frau, but of leadership. Führung,’ he repeated, clearly savouring the word. ‘Now, kindly brief your staff. You will then join us on a tour of inspection.’

  She seemed to bridle at this, and Bauer feared she would refuse, but then she turned to her staff and explained that they were to ignore the ‘fascist occupiers’ and keep caring for Yasnaya Polyana until the Red Army returned. This wouldn’t be long, she said. ‘Watch your mouths, though,’ she continued, and startled Bauer by pointing at him. ‘The one with the big nose is like your pony, Tikhon Vassilyvich: he can’t speak Russian but understands it a little.’ Her compatriots roared with laughter at this, especially Tikhon Vassilyvich, a big man with a fleecy beard and a forehead as wrinkled as a ram’s.

  Metz demanded to know what had been said, and Bauer told him it was nothing. The merriment died away. In the silence a crow cawed, and as if in response Trubetzkaya ordered her staff to go about their work. Some dispersed along paths and narrow lanes between the trees, while others entered the main house, which in daylight looked brighter, less manorial than Bauer had expected. Stone walls painted white, a green metal roof, wooden fretwork on the porch.