The Tolstoy Estate Page 4

  ‘You will start by taking us here,’ Metz told Trubetzkaya, brandishing the guide to the estate and pointing at one of the buildings.

  ‘The Volkonsky House,’ she said.

  ‘Until we find a better name, yes.’

  She said nothing to this, only beckoned them to follow, then set off so quickly they had to trot to catch up. For about a hundred metres they strode after her along what Bauer took to be the main drive, before turning right onto a footpath through a narrow orchard. This led to the Volkonsky House, a long but mostly single-storey building, painted white like the Tolstoy House and with the same metal roofing in green. From upstairs windows in the central two-storey section, a pair of corpsmen were roping a red cross banner over the entrance.

  Metz gestured at the building. ‘Gentleman, our hospital.’

  The entrance hall was polished and echoing, and like the vestibule of the Tolstoy House it contained a stack of furniture. Metz pointed at it. ‘Caught napping?’ he asked Trubetzkaya.

  She shrugged. ‘All the important objects are gone.’

  Metz chuckled. ‘There’s nothing here of value?’

  ‘Not especially.’

  ‘The great man’s chattels aren’t all sacred?’

  ‘He was a man and, as you say, a great one. Not a god.’

  ‘Then if I were to take out my pistol, like so,’ he said, ‘and aim it at this armoire, you wouldn’t be concerned?’

  ‘Only for your sanity.’

  Bauer glanced at Siegfried Weidemann, trying to assess what their second in command was making of Metz’s behaviour. Weidemann’s winged, owlish eyebrows were perhaps a little raised, but otherwise his expression was neutral.

  ‘But I forgot,’ Metz said, still threatening the armoire with his P38, ‘you Bolsheviks only believe in the material realm. To you this is merely wood and glue, not an object of veneration.’

  ‘It’s Soviet government property and I’d thank you not to damage it.’

  ‘Ha!’ Metz cried, as if she’d conceded some essential point. He reholstered his weapon and, still smirking, proceeded into the entrance hall. Directly ahead of them was a large double doorway and through it a high-ceilinged room that Bauer guessed must have once been a ballroom and which Metz announced was to function as a reception room for the wounded. A linking doorway led into a smaller but still spacious room that overnight had been turned into an operating theatre, with a trestle table running the length of one wall, arrayed with instruments, dressing canisters, plaster of Paris, bottles of saline and plasma, stethoscopes, a sphygmomanometer, two paraffin stoves. Four pairs of sawhorses stood ready to take patients’ stretchers, two of them topped with operating lamps, beside them cylinders of oxygen and ether. Bauer gazed in amazement at the wide doorways, polished floorboards, off-white plaster walls and towering windows.

  ‘Optimal,’ Metz murmured, ‘optimal.’

  ‘A step up from the hovels we’ve had to work in,’ Molineux agreed.

  It was as if the Volkonsky House had been purpose-built as a hospital. Down its central axis ran a corridor that led to a series of large rooms, ideal for wards. Already the first of these contained rows of camp beds, fully made, while in a room across the corridor two corpsmen were setting up an X-ray machine.

  ‘Katerina Dmitrievna,’ said Molineux, clasping an estate guide like a conscientious tourist, ‘what was this place?’

  ‘Childhood home of Tolstoy’s mother and her father, Count Volkonsky. The estate’s oldest building.’

  A memory of War and Peace came to Bauer – more of an impression, really – of an old count and his daughter in a country house.

  ‘How fascinating,’ said Molineux, who Bauer noted had his own knack for remembering Russian names. ‘Why didn’t Tolstoy live here? It’s so much grander than the other place.’

  ‘There’s your answer,’ she replied. ‘He wanted a home. In his day this building housed servants and guests.’

  And latterly its acting head custodian, Bauer thought.

  They went upstairs, which was less extensive than the ground floor but big enough for Metz to have assigned rooms for Weidemann’s clerical staff, the pharmacy and Hirsch’s dental surgery.

  ‘Talk about luxury,’ Molineux said. ‘When the time comes, we won’t want to leave.’

  ‘When the time comes, you won’t have a choice,’ Trubetzkaya said.

  Molineux sighed. ‘How true, Katerina Dmitrievna, how true! The life of a military man is never his own. Go here, go there, they say. We take our pleasures where we can.’

  ‘Where are your nurses?’ she asked Metz.

  Metz looked puzzled by the question, and Bauer explained on his behalf: ‘Female nurses aren’t permitted this close to the front.’

  Trubetzkaya looked contemptuous. ‘Your German girls can’t take the sound of guns?’

  ‘The front is no place for a woman,’ Metz said.

  ‘Men of fighting age deployed as nurses – my God, you will certainly lose this war. The front is no place for anyone, Herr Oberstleutnant, but Soviet women do their duty on or near it every day.’

  ‘Katerina Dmitrievna,’ Molineux said, ‘is it true the Soviet airforce has lady pilots?’

  ‘Several of them aces, yes.’

  ‘I can well believe it. God in heaven. That’s how I’d like to go if I could choose: caught in the cross-hairs of a lipsticked fly girl.’

  ‘Captain, enough,’ Metz said, turning back to Trubetzkaya. ‘Next, the barracks,’ he said, pointing on the map at the Kusminsky Wing, which was situated near the Tolstoy House but approached along a separate drive.

  On the way there they caught glimpses of the ridge behind the estate, not especially high but close and densely wooded – the site of Tolstoy’s grave, remembered Bauer. When the opportunity arose he would visit the great man, who would perhaps overlook the circumstances and regard him less as an invader than a reader.

  ‘Why “wing”?’ Molineux asked Trubetzkaya as they approached the barracks. Like the main house it had two storeys, and though less broad it was built in an identical style. Outside it there were corpsmen assembling for what was sure to be a long and arduous day.

  ‘Both it and the main house were once wings of one building,’ Trubetzkaya said.

  ‘Which burned?’ Metz asked.

  ‘Which Tolstoy lost at cards,’ she said.

  From Molineux came a hoot of joy.

  Bauer said, ‘I wouldn’t haven’t guessed he was a gambler. Not from his work. Dostoyevsky yes, but not Tolstoy.’

  ‘He was young at the time,’ Trubetzkaya said. ‘On campaign in the Crimea. Seeing off the French and the English.’

  ‘A difficult debt to collect,’ Molineux said.

  ‘Stone by stone, I suppose,’ Metz said. He climbed the front steps. ‘These people like to take wealth not make it.’

  Molineux nodded at Trubetzkaya. ‘I bet this one’s speciality is stealing hearts.’

  ‘Captain, I won’t have any more tomfoolery,’ Metz said. To Trubetzkaya he went on, ‘We will now look inside.’

  They entered the Kusminsky Wing, which resembled the Tolstoy House inside as well as out, though with their enlisted men in residence the central staircase was busier, its mess hall raucous with talk and scraping chairs. At some washing-up tubs by the door Karl Pflieger and another of Bauer’s theatre assistants, Yuri Demchak, a Ukrainian volunteer, were cheerfully trading vile insults.

  Perhaps noticing his accent, Trubetzkaya pointed at Demchak and demanded to know who he was, just as the room fell quiet and the men came to attention.

  ‘One of our Hiwis,’ Metz said into the silence.

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Hilfswilliger. A countryman of yours who’s been wise enough to join us. A clever fellow, isn’t that right, Bauer?’

  ‘That’s right, sir. He is.’

  Demchak was still standing at attention, his face expressionless. Young, blond, with matinee-idol looks only partially marred by a crude cleft-lip re
pair. Trubetzkaya turned to him and hissed a single word at him in Russian, to which he reacted with a furious look.

  ‘Ismennik,’ she repeated.

  Demchak looked wildly to Metz.

  ‘German!’ the lieutenant colonel snapped at Trubetzkaya. ‘You will speak to us in German.’

  ‘Who’s she?’ Demchak asked.

  Bauer had never seen the young Ukrainian so heated. ‘We’ll deal with this, Private. In fact, you may go now.’

  ‘He goes nowhere,’ Metz said, then turned to Trubetzkaya. ‘Listen here, Frau, I don’t know what any of that was about, but if you interfere with one of my men again I’ll have you sent to a camp, understood?’

  ‘I understand you perfectly,’ she said.

  ‘Good. Then we can continue.’

  The inspection party left the mess and followed Metz up the stairs.

  ‘My God,’ Molineux whispered stagily to Trubetzkaya, ‘what on earth did you just call our Hiwi?’

  ‘A traitor.’

  ‘How very tactless of you.’

  ‘I was stating a fact.’

  ‘Good Lord, we can’t have you lobbing facts about – our defences are stretched enough as it is.’

  Metz entered a room converted into a dormitory and immediately demanded that the windows be opened.

  ‘So tell me, Katerina Dmitrievna,’ Molineux went on, ‘how did you get to be so fearsome?’

  ‘Breeding. The same way you came by your manners.’

  Molineux clutched his heart as if shot. ‘You wound me, madam, most grievously you wound me.’

  ‘Not grievously enough.’

  Molineux chortled, slapped his hands together and turned to Bauer. ‘Hear that? “Not grievously enough.” Sensational! We’re going to have so much fun here, I’m certain of it.’

  * * *

  The first casualties arrived shortly after midday, ferried by ambulance and lorry to the Volkonsky House. Those able to walk were helped inside by drivers and nursing attendants, while the badly wounded were brought in on stretchers. Soon the reception room was crammed with pale and muddy men: the walking wounded on bench seats along the walls; stretcher cases on the floor, so that Bauer was forced to tread gingerly between rows of bloodied and bandaged men, some with jagged entry wounds, others badly burned or with bones protruding from lacerated skin. Though the room’s windows were ajar, the air inside already stank of vomit and faeces and sweat, as well as cordite from spent munitions.

  In tandem with Metz, and with the help of their respective operating assistants, Bauer set about identifying which men to transfuse, which to X-ray and which to operate on without delay. In the scramble Pflieger collided with one of Metz’s men and swore, and swiftly Winkel stepped between them. ‘Take it easy, lads. There’s plenty for all.’

  Some of the wounded were moaning but most of them were silent, either from stoicism, unconsciousness or the approach of death. Several were past medical help, and in order to spare others from having to watch them die, Bauer ordered Pflieger and Yuri Demchak, the Hiwi, to take them to a curtained-off corner of the room. Men were gazing at Bauer, some expectantly, others imploringly, and two or three with something like accusation in their eyes, as if he were personally responsible for all this mayhem and pain. In response he donned a mask of doctorly calm, inwardly registering sights and smells and sounds that he had never grown used to, only learned to set aside. Every casualty had received first aid of some kind, either on the front line or at the dressing station in Malevka, and on a string around his neck each wore a field medical card that recorded not only the nature of his wounds but also, with the aid of two perforated strips, their severity: both strips retained for a light wound, one detached for something serious, both removed if the risk of death was high. On the floor there were many men whose cards lacked both strips.

  By the doorway that led into the operating room the transfusions officer, Lieutenant Hans Zöllner, was infusing several patients with saline and blood. The anti-vampire, Molineux called him. Excessively nice. Zöllner was twenty-three, sandy-haired, athletically built, open-faced and by nature optimistic, the type of officer you wanted at your side when casualties came in. Bauer turned to him now for a report on the condition of his patients. Most were ready for surgery, Zöllner said. Among them Bauer found a grenadier with mortar wounds to the abdomen. His record showed he was eighteen years old, but he looked closer to sixteen, a fair-haired boy who appeared never to have shaved. He was conscious, staring up from his stretcher with grey-blue eyes. Bauer examined his abdomen and found two separate wounds, one leaking faeces, the other a mixture of oatmeal and lentils. There were no exit wounds. Involuntarily he glanced at Winkel, who imperceptibly shrugged and looked away. Bauer re-examined the boy’s card, frowning to himself. Occasionally Metz would chide him for selecting a patient who probably couldn’t be saved, and in all likelihood this boy would be one of them.

  ‘Doctor, am I going to die?’ the boy asked, his accent Low German, educated. It was a common question, one to which Bauer usually answered no, or on rare occasions dodged, but this time before he could reply the boy said, ‘I only ask because I’m thirsty, you see, very, very thirsty, and the medics say I can’t take any water.’

  ‘It’s true you can’t have water before surgery.’

  ‘But if I’m going to die anyway? It’s all right, doctor, I understand – so many have to die. It’s just that I want water so badly.’

  ‘We’re operating,’ he said, then in a gentler tone added, ‘You’re going to survive.’

  ‘You’re in good hands,’ Pflieger reassured him. ‘You’re going home! Just think of all those pretty nurses at your beck and call.’

  The boy turned from them and stared instead at the ceiling. ‘I’ve never made love to a woman.’

  There was a brief pause, then Bauer said grimly, ‘You will.’ He motioned Pflieger and Demchak to pick up the patient’s stretcher, then followed them into the operating room. There he introduced the boy to Hirsch and explained that the lieutenant would anaesthetise him. The boy said nothing, and to reassure him Bauer pressed his hand and told him he was going to be fine, the placebo of optimism better than truth – for Bauer’s own sake as much as the patient’s.

  Metz appeared, handed over his first patient to Molineux, and, as Bauer had expected, raised an eyebrow at the severity of the boy’s wounds. While Metz might quibble about individual cases, he too selected patients in extremis, even if this meant operating for hours on men who either succumbed on the table or died not long afterwards.

  At the preoperative table Hirsch was botching the insertion of the boy’s cannula, spattering blood on the floor. His hands were visibly shaking. Presumably he was more assured doing dental work, Bauer thought, while praying he would never have to discover this for himself. The boy was luckily in no state to notice what was happening to him.

  Bauer turned away, put on his scrubs and soaped his hands. Of course, from a military point of view it would have been more logical to operate first on men with moderate wounds, since the length of time these patients had to wait for surgery often led to complications that hampered their recovery, delaying their eventual redeployment to the front; yet there was a deeper, psychological reason for operating first on patients like the young grenadier, since men fought more courageously if they knew beforehand that every effort would be made to save their lives if they were wounded. And sometimes there was a miracle – the patient who survived when ninety-nine others would have died – and then Bauer experienced a kind of thrill, free of ego, or almost, since his own role was often secondary: in fact it was luck or the patient’s will to survive that had allowed him to save a life that to people at home might mean everything.

  Finally Hirsch succeeded in getting the cannula in, and with a small dose of Pentothal put the boy under. Swiftly Pflieger and Demchak cut off what remained of his uniform then proceeded to clean and shave around the wounds. Bauer took the opportunity to return to the reception room and sel
ect a second patient and, by the time he returned, the boy was under drapes on the operating table, his abdomen bare and illuminated, an ether mask cupping his face. Pflieger and Demchak were standing by, and at the head of the stretcher sat Hirsch. Bauer glanced enviously at the other operating table, where Molineux occupied the corresponding seat. It wasn’t Hirsch’s fault he had to do a job for which he was untrained, but it was hard not to resent his apparent inability to learn. The cannula was the least of it. Too often Bauer had found himself probing muscles that twitched from too light an anaesthetic or, alternatively, dealing with a patient whose vital signs were suppressed by too much ether. Supposedly Metz had asked the medical command for a proper anaesthetist, but Bauer suspected him of not pressing hard enough, or even of boasting that they could do without.

  From the sideboard on which their equipment was arrayed Bauer took a pair of latex gloves and put them on, then from the instrument tray he selected a scalpel. He approached the patient. Of the two wounds, the one to the colon was more dangerous, and it was here he would begin. He breathed deeply, not only to steady himself but also to take a moment to recall that the material he was about to work on was an individual, irreplaceable to himself and almost certainly to others. That was the point of all this equipment, this activity. Of the roughly two hundred and fifty men in the battalion, nearly half were tasked in one way or another with getting the wounded onto an operating table, so that he and Metz could save their lives. This was his instant, his moment to act. He positioned his scalpel. And cut.

  FOUR

  On their fourth night at the estate Bauer slept even worse than usual, half aware he was cold but never quite cold enough to put clothes on over his underwear or to shut the window at the foot of his bed, which by agreement with Molineux he had left ajar. When he did sleep he dreamed – mazy epics of hiding and running and eventually of being buried alive. He woke early and sensed a weight on his legs, reached over his blankets and felt a layer of snow.