‘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.’