IV Affannoso

Clasping his hands in front of him, the minister droned, “Vater unser, Der Du bist im Himmel…”

Katherina glanced around at the circle of people gathered at the grave. She recognized all of them: her father’s colleagues from the hospital where he had worked on Fridays, musician friends, various neighbors. None was called Florian. A man stood off in the distance, elderly and distinguished, but was not part of the funeral party and he wandered among the other tombstones.

Katherina had debated briefly whether to invite people at all to the interment. There was something so archaic about a public burial. But she also decided that ceremony and a symbolic joining of friends’ hands negated some of death’s terrifying arbitrariness. Besides, not to have a public service with parson and prayer would have suggested shame at her father’s suicide. She was not ashamed. Suicide was a tragedy, not a sin. They were not in the middle ages.

Pious Catholics that they were, Tomasz and Casimira had lowered their heads and closed their eyes during the prayer, moving their lips along with the pastor’s recitation. But Katherina did not pray for her father and knew she would not meet him in the hereafter. The only part of him that “lived after” was that part that lived in her. When she brooded, listening to music, a bit of him nestled in her mind. She felt her gentle mother too, whenever she was girlish or fussed over small soft things, but mostly it was her father whom she could sense looking out at the world through her eyes. Yet now she wrestled with the contradiction, that she could sense him that way and yet not know him.

“…denn Dein ist das Reich und die Kraft und die Herrlichkeit in Ewigkeit. Amen. ” The minister finished, and the men donned their hats again against the increasing wind. The pallbearers stepped forward quickly and took hold of the ropes to lower the casket into the ground.

When it reached the bottom of the pit and the ropes were drawn out, Katherina limped on cold feet to the pile of sod. Snow had begun to fall during the ceremony and the pile was already covered with a dusting of powder. The handful she grasped was a mixture of dirt and ice. She leaned out over the grave and murmured to the coffin, “Who were you, then? ” She crumbled the dirt through her fingers and shuddered as the heavier lumps thumped onto the casket lid.

The snow became heavier, and crystals soon covered the casket in the grave pit. Katherina shivered with the cold and with the thought of her father being consigned to so awful a place. She called up childhood memories of him, the bulwark of their little family.

He had been attentive, though given to bouts of melancholy, which he often cured by listening to music. Throughout her childhood, he had taken her and her mother to concerts, cultivating her taste in music. Curious, she recalled for the first time in years that the terrible sickness had struck her at the opera. Though it had happened twenty years before, she remembered now precisely that it was Gounod’s Faust.

It was a strange evening. As the three of them took the Strassenbahn to the opera house, her father talked about the libretto, rambling on about guilt and retribution. Faust, he said, was the story of all ambition. Nothing good was ever gained without payment. And everything could be taken away again. “Like that, ” he said, and snapped his fingers for emphasis. The warning made no sense to her then, but it had stayed with her.

Someone coughed, signaling that the ceremony was over. The others all had thrown down their handfuls of sod, and the gravediggers had arrived with their shovels to finish the job. She thanked the minister, shook hands mutely with all the visitors, and began the walk back to the car with Tomasz and Casimira.

She touched the gardener’s sleeve. “Tomasz, did my father know anyone named Florian? Someone he might have quarreled with, or who might have visited him recently? ”

Tomasz thought for a moment. “Not that I recall. ’Course he might’ve had friends we didn’t know. Not many people visited. He was kind of, you know, solitary. ”

Katherina shivered again, numb from standing in the cold and from the emotional strain. As she left the cemetery grasping Casimira’s arm, she glanced around to see if the distinguished-looking stranger had found the tombstone he was looking for, but he had disappeared.

Tomasz and Casimira followed her into the house, wiping damp shoes on the mat in the entryway. “Shall I make tea, dear? ” Casimira asked.

Katherina understood that the offer was simply a way to delay leaving her alone, but, in fact, she did not feel like talking. There would be things to discuss in the coming days: whether and when she might move back permanently, how to finance the continued maintenance, when to meet with the lawyer. But not now. The shock of a family suicide had dissipated, and fatigue had dulled her mourning. Now she felt something else, the hint of anger. It had nibbled at the back of her mind while she made the funeral arrangements, but now she felt cheated, doubly bereft, for Sergei Marow had both died and robbed his daughter of himself. A stranger lay in the family plot, someone who’d had a different name, worn a different uniform, done battlefront surgery on Russian heroes.

And yet, she was intrigued. Who was Sergei Marovsky? Was he someone she might have liked? There was only one way to find out.

Casimira still stood with the kettle in her hand, waiting for an answer.

“Oh, no, thank you. I’d really like to be alone for a while. I’ll be fine. ” Katherina kissed her on the cheek and nudged her gently toward the door.

Strange how there are different kinds of quiet, she thought. Her father’s house was not just soundless now, it also held no expectation of sound. He would not stride through the door with the mail or stand in front of her talking, jingling the change in his pocket, as he liked to do. She remembered that about him now, that he sometimes played with coins, rubbing his fingers over them absentmindedly, as if reassuring himself that he had them. He was otherwise neutral about money, neither a big spender nor particularly thrifty. He simply seemed to be glad that there was money in the house to take care of things. Did that attitude come from the postwar years, when trade was the main currency?

It was as good a reason as any to see what his journal would say about him. She made her own tea, then took up her post on the sofa with a blanket over her legs and resumed her reading.

March 1, 1943

So this is what I’ll be doing for a while, at least until they decide they have no need for traitors and cowards. For now, I serve the commander and that protects me from suspicion. When his hands get bad, he summons me. I take him clean gloves and wash his sores. When they start to heal, he sends me back to surgery. The others were wary of me for a while, but now they let me do my job. They don’t seem to think I will desert at the first opportunity. They’re right. What would be the point?

But I have constant nightmares, all variations on the same thing. Last night it was Zharptitsa, flying over the frozen steppes, tossed by the wind. I tried to catch him, to save him from the cold, but he disappeared into the snowstorm. I knew he would soon freeze, far away from me, and his beautiful wings would lie open and rigid on the snow. I fell to my knees, crying. When I woke up, I ached from the sorrow.

March 15, 1943

I finally have a uniform, after a month of living in a padded jacket from a dead Russian infantryman. The supply lines have opened up again so not only do we have fresh bandages and antiseptic, but I have a new gymnasterka tunic, complete with epaulets, medical corps insignias, and the rank of corporal. Probably the only corporal in the Red Army performing surgery. Best of all, I replaced my old wool cap—held by a scarf tied under my chin—with a thick ushanka. What a relief to be able to pull the flaps down when I’m outside. First time in weeks my ears are warm.

As a doctor, I can usually stay indoors. But in the deadly cold outside, civilians or German POWs work in burial parties to gather the corpses that are lying all over the city. The work parties carry them on sleds or in handcarts and stack them by the roadside. Almost all of the horses have been slaughtered for food, but a few camels are left to harness for the job. The ground is still too hard to dig new graves, but the anti-tank ditches dug last summer are good for burying the dead. Already there are signs of typhus among the work teams.

The Allies have promised ambulances, but for now we have only old city busses, outfitted to carry wounded. For warmth, they have little metal stoves stoked with scraps of wood, and they all smoke terribly. The wounded men not only suffer from the lurching of the busses over the horrendous roads, they choke on the air inside. Better than freezing, but only a little.

April 5, 1943

The spring thaw has started and everything’s turned to mud. Less fighting now since nobody can move artillery on either side. Russian troops are slogging toward Kursk and our medical team is packing up to follow them.

Still don’t sleep well, no matter how tired I am. Nightmares, again and again. Of birds, of children, of beautiful things that I’ve let die.

May 22, 1943

The Stalin propaganda is in full force. Everyone has forgotten the purges of the ’30s and the millions who died. Now everyone parrots “the Stalinist strategy” and “the military genius of Stalin” as the cause of every victory. The younger men seem proud to be one of “Stalin’s soldiers” and hungry for the new medals and distinctions. It’s the older ones who sense that their entire generation has been sacrificed. But all of them are brave, almost suicidal in their courage. The men are talking about a battle where sixty tanks puttied up all their openings and forded a river underwater.

June 14, 1943

Red Army medicine is not as good as in the German field hospitals. Only the lightly wounded are saved. The Russians cry for their mothers just like the Germans did. The ones who can still fight are bitter, hungry for vengeance, and there is an almost universal hatred of the German invaders. Fortunately, my Russian conceals the fact that I was one of them. But the hour of vengeance is beginning and the Allies are already wreaking havoc on Germany’s industrial areas. The radio reports heavy bombing raids on the Ruhr, on Cologne, Mainz, Frankfurt. Germany is lost. How many will die before Hitler’s government understands this?

Fewer nightmares now. It must be the warm weather, the disappearance of snow.

July 28, 1943

Hamburg has been heavily bombed and there are reports that the Allies have begun raids on Berlin. My home, my family. All that I thought would stay safe while I was at the front. Has our house been hit? No way to know. And if it hasn’t been hit yet, they’ll be back again. The Allied bombers control the skies.

August 20, 1943

In Kursk now, treating the wounded from the great tank battle.

I thought Stalingrad had hardened me, but this was a different sort of horror. A soldier doesn’t shrink from the thought of death from gun or explosion. But no one imagines being crushed under a churning tank tread. The battlefield is a butcher’s block, with scraps of meat that a day ago were men. It was no better to die by fire inside the tanks either, the still-living ones pulled out without faces or hands. Fortunately we still have morphine for them.

The commissars have called the battle a great victory for Russia.

September 17, 1943

Most of the field medics are women, and they are unbelievably tough. In Stalingrad I saw them carry wounded men on their backs. Not much like the German Mä dels, who are supposed to stay home and bear children for the Fü hrer.

There is a shortage of cotton for bandages. We manage at the field hospital by tearing up bed linen and boiling it, but the medics at the front can’t do that. They’re re-using bandages and sometimes even moss or linden tree shavings as absorbent. Infection is rampant.

Italy has capitulated. Italian faschisti in the German-held territories will be put to work for the Germans. Doctors like me, working for new masters, treating soldiers of a different nationality.

What was the reason for this war? I can’t remember.

Katherina set the journal aside and rubbed her face. She wanted to read on but her eyes burned, and though she read and reread the last page, her sleep-starved mind wandered off each time in the same place. Revelations overwhelmed her, and every new entry brought as many questions as answers. What was Zharptitsa? A bird, obviously, but why did losing it cause a soldier to break down and cry?

Why the large gaps between the entries? Presumably he was simply too busy at the surgeon’s table to have the leisure to write. She knew that 1943 was a decisive year in which the German army was slowly pushed back toward the homeland. Embedded with the Russians as he was, did he think of that as defeat or victory? Did he care who would win the war?

Katherina was nodding off, but she did not want to go upstairs. Her childhood room, across from her father’s empty bedroom, seemed even more desolate than the living room. She also could not bear to lie in the darkness and so she tilted the shade on the lamp away from her and left it burning, a sphere of comfort in the night.

Her sleep was troubled. The light shining on her face and the narrow sofa cushions kept her in shallow sleep, and she dreamed fitfully. Scenes came to her in patches, fraught with anxiety. Her father, in Russian uniform, seen in the distance through wind-blown snow. She struggled toward him with weighted feet, as he disappeared into a long black line of men winding toward the horizon. Then something fluttered in the snow just ahead of her and she clambered toward it. A bird, she thought with horror, with broken wings. But no, it was a glove, a black gauntlet, lifted slightly by the wind. She woke, shivering, in the unheated living room, her blanket on the floor.

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