Tin Sky Read online

  Ben Pastor, born in Italy, became a US citizen after moving to Texas. She lived for thirty years in the United States, working as a university professor in Illinois, Ohio and Vermont, and presently spends part of the year in her native country. Tin Sky is the fourth in the Martin Bora series and follows on from the success of Lumen, Liar Moon and A Dark Song of Blood, also published by Bitter Lemon Press. Ben Pastor is the author of other novels including the highly acclaimed The Water Thief and The Fire Waker, and is considered one of the most talented writers in the field of historical fiction. In 2008 she won the prestigious Premio Zaragoza for best historical fiction.

  Also available from Bitter Lemon Press by Ben Pastor:

  Lumen

  Liar Moon

  A Dark Song of Blood

  BITTER LEMON PRESS

  First published in the United Kingdom in 2015 by

  Bitter Lemon Press, 47 Wilmington Square, London WC1X 2ET

  www.bitterlemonpress.com

  Copyright © 2012 by Ben Pastor

  This edition published in agreement with Piergiorgio Nicolazzini Literary Agency (PNLA)

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without written permission of the publisher.

  The moral rights of Ben Pastor have been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988

  A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library

  eBook ISBN 978-1-908524-52-2

  Typeset by Tetragon, London

  To Isaak Babel and his silence

  Contents

  Main Characters

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  MAIN CHARACTERS

  von Bentivegni, Eccard, Colonel, chief of Abwehr central office

  Bernoulli, Kaspar, Judge, German Army War Crimes Bureau

  Bora, Martin-Heinz, Major, German Army

  Kostya, POW and Bora’s Ukrainian orderly

  Lattmann, Bruno, Abwehr officer

  Malinovskaya, Larisa Vasilievna, Russian soprano

  von Manstein, Erich, Field Marshal, Commander, Army Group Don

  Mantau, Odilo, Gestapo Captain

  Mayr, Hans, Colonel, German Sanitary Corps

  Nagel, Master Sergeant, German Army

  Nitichenko, Victor Panteleievich, Orthodox priest

  Platonov, Gleb, Soviet Lieutenant General and POW

  von Salomon, Benno, Lieutenant Colonel, 161st Infantry Division (ID)

  Scherer, Jochen, Panzer Corps officer

  Selina Nikolayevna; Avrora Glebovna, Platonov’s wife and daughter

  Stark, Alfred Lothar, District Commissioner for Occupied Territories

  Tarasov, Taras Lukjanovitch, retired accountant

  Tibyetsky, Ghenrikh “Khan”, Russian Tank Corps commander

  Weller, Arnim Anton, non-com, Sanitary Corps

  The unpredictable wins, the obvious loses.

  SUN TZU

  Prologue

  MONDAY 3 MAY 1943, MEREFA, KHARKOV OBLAST, NORTH-EASTERN UKRAINE

  He had to listen. He had to go out and listen.

  From Merefa to the river, as the bird flies, it was less than twenty-five kilometres. By the country lanes (there was hardly anything else but those around) and if you wanted to avoid villages and towns, the distance meant a zigzag now at right angles, now curvy and oblique, around ditches and ravines scarring the earth, eastwards and south. Birds filled the ravines; forgotten and devastated farms at the bottom let birds nest in their ruins, inside their charred ceiling beams. You heard the birdsong come as if from below the earth, as if birds of the afterworld were singing sweetly, or mermaids were calling with treacherous insistence. Then you reached the edge, and down the grassy or chalky slope five or fifty metres below you stood or lay the carcass of a hut with bent poles and rotten straw and broken windows, full of birds that went on singing despite your presence. Russian birds, Ukrainian birds would have had to give up singing long ago had they fallen silent every time an army had rumbled or stolen through in the past two, ten, hundred or hundreds of years. And the same applied to the wind, and the gurgle and chuckle of water in the river as it bent in and out, looping the bank.

  Martin Bora stared at the map, elbows on it, chin resting on his hands. That he had to go out and listen, and not only for military reasons, was all he was actually capable (or willing) to think of for the moment. The itinerary to a place – not a town or a collective farm or isolated house but a solitary place – stared back at him as a thin broken line on the off-white network of numbered squares. Here Merefa, a small town now a suburb of Kharkov, with its shrine to the Virgin of Oseryan at the end of a westbound lane; there the Donets they called “northern” in these parts, fringed with woods wherever war hadn’t razed them to the ground, still swollen with the receding spring flood that here and there had made lakes and bogs of the low-lying fields. In between, the zigzag of dusty paths, landmines, booby traps, the less than occasional sharpshooter: the hair-raising unwritten geography he had to add in pencil when he knew enough about it, for himself and others. But also a singular peace of mind across those kilometres, with death that sounded like a skylark or a rustle in the bushes, pure and unalloyed as he was pure and unalloyed these days, after Stalingrad had tempered him, freed him of all dross. Or so he thought; so he hoped.

  It was warm already. The sky resembled the pale tin ceiling of an old building; occasional rainless clouds across it mimicked the pattern on the tin sheet. Below it, the living moved, and the dead lay still. The dead found in the small woods called Krasny Yar numbered five by now. Peasants, Russians; Bora knew little more about the story. He thought of them because his eyes met the name Krasny Yar on the map, written in Cyrillic and printed over in Latin letters. He was going nowhere near there, but not for the reasons the Ukrainian priest bellowed about; there was no more a devil in the woods than there was real hope of winning this war, even though as a Catholic and a German officer Bora believed both in the devil and in the final victory.

  He stood to gather his gear in the one-floored schoolhouse he shared with his Ukrainian orderly and a sentry. It was the right place to spend part of his days: modest and unmarked, in case Russian planes made it past the German-held Rogany airfield to strafe or bomb recognizable structures. More often than not, he’d go alone. No escort, not even a driver. He sedately collected field glasses, compass, map case, pencils; and then camera, rifle, ammunition, anything else he’d take along for the trip.

  Seeing the wedding band on his left hand surprised him for a fraction of a second. He’d started wearing it on the ring finger of that hand, contrary to German usage, because army vehicles and equipment often broke down in the Russian front’s dust or mud or snow, and he had to reach into tight greasy spaces to fix things. It was his resilient tie to life, that single gold band, being the link to Benedikta and all she meant to him. That she was angry at him for volunteering to go back to Russia after nearly dying there did not change matters between them. Her lovemaking before his departure proved that anger was love.

  It was part of the reason why he had to go out and listen.

  Wedding band and identification disc had to routinely be left behind. Bora removed them, entrusted them to the small safety of his trunk. He’d leave the large map here as well, and although he’d circled in red the wooded lot where dead peasants kept turning up, he wouldn’t even drive by there. No, no. There was no time to look into such things. Come June – July at the latest, if the da
te were, unwisely, further postponed – everything on this map and all its adjoining charts (Poltava, Kramatorskaya, Belgorod and on to Kursk) would be up for grabs again, and likely to be churned into extinction.

  Well, at least he wasn’t killed en route to the river. Snipers, partisans, a way of life (or death) for the lone German out in the Russian open, were only slightly less of a problem than they had been in Ukraine. In the partly wooded area south of Bespalovka, where his regiment-in-the-making had its camp, Bora left the army car and continued on horseback. From there on, no wheeled or tracked vehicle could venture safely. Ditches, bogs, canals, wet turf replaced solid ground. Russia made mounted troops useful again, precious again, and those who hadn’t accepted the conversion of their glorious First Division to the Panzer Corps, like Bora, after biding their time and bleeding themselves white in infantry units, saw their chance again. And so the old class of young decorated officers, the von Boeselagers, Douglas von Boras, Salm-Hordtmars and Sayn-Wittgensteins, all related one way or another, had high-quality regiments designed for them. Armed reconnaissance, guerrilla warfare and invaluable support on vehicle-unfriendly terrain meant danger, excitement, absolute love for tradition – and the possibility of going out and listening.

  Soon enough Bora was riding into a thicket of coppice – mostly birch, and willows further on, which peasants used for building and basket-weaving. Even the larger trees were new growth, planted long after the October Revolution. The trail was narrow, two feet across at most, less here and there where branches hung draped in fresh leaves. Boots, cavalry saddle, the horse’s flanks all became moist in the process; although it hadn’t rained, there was humidity in the air so close to the river. Even if he didn’t go out of his way to think, because feeling was much more useful at certain stages of reconnaissance, it came to Bora’s mind as he proceeded that it was in a shady area like this, circumscribed, that a few kilometres north of here those Russians had been mysteriously killed, culprit unknown. His orderly whispered of death by staves, blades, of eyes put out: killing such as peasant warfare had known five hundred years ago and more, and which conflict in today’s Russia was seeing once again.

  He rode on, alert but somehow unmindful of himself, wondering if here, too, there were corpses lying about. But after the Germans’ Second Coming to Kharkov, as he called it, it would be surprising if there weren’t. In March they’d fought tooth and nail over every square inch of territory, and if now the Donets could serve as a frontier between the opposing armies, it was only after they’d paid for each square foot of land with soldiers’ and hostages’ and prisoners’ blood.

  Where the birches gave way to willows, sky and water became visible beyond the tender green. Totila’s hoofs began to sink a little, but he was a patient, sure-footed animal and he kept going. Only the occasional sucking sound was produced as the horse’s shod hoofs pressed into or lifted out of the soft earth.

  Bora noiselessly parted the supple branches the minimum that was needed to advance. Eager to listen, he’d let the birdsong go through him for the last several minutes, thin sounds and chirping, warbling phrases that pierced him from side to side like sweet arrows. Soon the lap and purl of shallow water eddying and circling would be heard, where willows too thinned out and twiggy brushes, canes and reeds took their place. Bora dismounted and walked through the wet grass towards the riverbank. Stepping carefully (as if a landmine wouldn’t blow him to shreds the moment he touched it or tripped the wire), his eye fell on the delicate halves of a bluish eggshell at his feet. On one of the branches overhead, the young bird must have hatched recently: there were fragile smears of pale moisture still visible inside.

  Bora avoided crushing the shells under his boots. His Russian orderly came to mind, who’d started keeping hens for eggs. When I’m not around, Bora thought, he lets them scratch about by the row of graves by our outpost. Calls them droplets of his blood and his consolation on earth, because he’s a peasant at heart. Poor Kostya. Drafted when the war first began (if I think how I was playing the young embassy officer in Moscow as late as May two years ago, when my bags were already packed in East Prussia to attack the Soviet Union!), he hasn’t had time to fire a shot in anger. His entire regiment surrendered to the first German officer it met. He has a young wife in Kiev he worries about, is meek and good-hearted. Compared to him, I am a black soul.

  There was no clearing by the bank; leaves reached the water’s edge and tall canes bent this way and that to form a chain of broken canopies. Insects sparkled in the air like handfuls of gold dust over the slow current. Bora crouched where he could; he leant forward, dipped his fingers in the river and listened.

  It was a spot, unmarked on maps, nameless as far as he knew, like so many spots he’d stood on at the risk of dying, made precious by that possibility. Less than a square metre on the left bank of a river that flowed into the Don, capricious and meandering, getting lost, flooding. From the Don they’d all retreated as they’d retreated from Stalingrad. And across this lazy current sat the Russians. It was just a matter of listening. Inner quiet, slowing of the heart. The horse loosely tied and waiting in the back. Bora could feel every muscle tense or relax in the crouch, lungs taking in the marshy air less and less frequently. Closing his eyes, the small, nearly inaudible sounds around him became distinct – water streaming or making a whirlpool, birds singing far and near, tremulous leaves picking up the barest breath of wind, the horse’s lips ripping a green shoot from the ground. From the other bank, birds calling, men elsewhere or silent, engines absent or turned off, villages, farms, towns, army camps, homesteads empty or mortally quiet.

  Already in Stalingrad, towards the end, when all of them had grown close to madness one way or another, long pauses of stillness had become necessary to him. Bora grazed the water with his fingertips, listening. Each pore, each cell was a hearing organ, strained and yet giving itself up to whispers and silence alike. His entire life was present to him in these moments (boyhood bike rides, the sun on a doorway, holding hands with a girl, the Volga at Stalingrad, Dikta’s throat when he kissed her, a lizard, his stepfather in Leipzig, things not yet happened but just as present; anxiety come to a point too high to be felt, and turned to lack of sensation, a sublime void). Mosquitoes swarmed on his bare arms, flies bit, toads leapt in the mud. The sun rolled like a huge cart of fire across a tin ceiling, a tin sky.

  Bora opened his eyes. He estimated the width of the river at this point, its depth, the invisible but existent ford. Calmly he stood up, untied his horse, regained the saddle and paced into the water across the Donets, towards enemy lines.

  1

  The determination of the value of an object must be based not on its price, but rather on the utility it can bring.

  ST PETERSBURG PARADOX

  3 May 1943. Early afternoon, near Bespalovka.

  I write this diary entry after a fruitful and lively session with my regimental staff in the making. They didn’t like me going off on my own, but I know what I’m doing.

  Regarding my little foray, you’d think the Soviets would man the bank where there are shallows. We’ve been sitting for a couple of months staring at each other along this river. But it’s true that you can’t guard every blade of grass, stack of rocks and river bend. On the map, the woods on the Russian bank (flatter than ours, with bogs and false rivers where we have low cliffs) appear criss-crossed by a number of paths, actually overgrown now. Part of the tree cover has been blasted during the last battle (or the previous one; it’s been two years that we’ve been going back and forth), and during mud season the shell holes have become pools. Elsewhere it has dried up, but water keeps seeping through even at a good distance from the river’s edge. No tank, ours or theirs, is safely coming or going across for another month at least – that’s for sure.

  There’s a minuscule island in the middle of the ford, all trees and canes. Once I crossed over to it I had to dismount and wade to the opposite bank, stepping around carefully. The Russians are close by, and n
o mistake. Recently smoked papirosyi butts, the occasional tin can: not scouts, that much I know. We don’t leave evidence. On a hunch, even though everything was still (even the birds, which should have put me on the alert), I kept advancing, because across the woods, on the edge far from the bank, there used to be a village we razed the first time around. However little shelter the ruins may afford, I told myself, there’s a cemetery with a good fence around it, and if it’s regular troops manning the area, they have no doubt set up there. In fact, there they were. No dogs, which was lucky for me. Dogs would have smelt the stranger from a distance. A platoon busily working, without a sentry to keep an eye on the environs. What I saw and photographed was worth the trip, anyway, especially the 76 mm anti-aircraft or anti-tank gun.

  Returning, I don’t know what came into my head. In the woods facing the islet where I’d left Totila, there was an old woman gathering sticks, and instead of stealing past her, I stopped to give her a hand. Half-blind, she didn’t realize I was a German: only a soldier. She called me “little soldier”, even though I was twice her size and could have picked her up with one hand. She spoke Russian, so I assume she’s one of those moved in by the central government after the Ukrainians were starved off years ago. A witch from the old march tales, she seemed: in rags, bent over. That’s how they made up stories like Baba Yaga and her flying mortar, I thought. Next, she’ll show me her house on chicken legs, which you’re supposed to address so it’ll let you in. In fact, she only asked me if I were “one of the boys at the graveyard”, by which she meant the platoon I’d spied on. I boldly said that I was. She then grabbed a stick and tried to thrash me with it, the fool, cursing me out for digging in her yard “to bury all those metal pots”. Pots? Landmines, of course. It means they’re not planning to move soon, at any rate: otherwise they’d be clearing the terrain, not mining it. Do they expect our tanks to cross over the shallows before then? It seems the Soviets have been mining every inch of cultivated and fallow land in this section for weeks; the few peasants still around are in revolt. As – by her own admission – the old woman and the others keep gardening among the “pots”, it’s safe to suppose they’re anti-tank mines, or else they’d have been blown to smithereens. She was still ranting when I left.