A Man Without Breath

At the SSMA we found Alok Dyakov in a busy ward full of Russians in which the beds were only a few centimetres apart; unlike German wards in the hospital this one was noisy and understaffed. Wearing a threadbare white gown which had the effect of making him seem abnormally clean, and with a bandage on his head, Dyakov was sitting up in bed, largely recovered and full of penitence for his behaviour of the previous night. The ward nurse turned out to be Tanya. She met my eyes warily a couple of times while she had a brief conversation with Ines and then left the three of us alone. I didn’t say anything to either of them about what I knew of Tanya’s past – now that I’d seen the conditions she was working in I was almost sorry that I’d helped Lieutenant Voss to put an end to her other source of income.

‘Sir,’ said Dyakov, grasping my hand – he would have kissed it I think if I hadn’t pulled it away, ‘I am very sorry for what happened last night. I am a stupid pyanitsa.’

‘Don’t apologize,’ I said. ‘It was me who hit you.’

‘Was it? I don’t remember. I don’t remember nothing. Ya se bye protiven.’ Instinctively he touched the side of his skull carefully and winced. ‘You hit me pretty good, sir. Bashka bolit. I don’t know which gives me the biggest headache now. The vodka or whatever you hit me with. But I deserved it. And thank you, sir. Thank you very much.’

‘For what?’

‘For not shooting me, of course.’ He pulled a face. ‘Red Army, NKVD, they would have shot drunken man with gun for sure, sir. No hesitation. I make sure it won’t happen again. I apologize for making so much trouble. I will tell this to Colonel Ahrens, too.’

‘Marusya,’ I said. ‘The kitchen maid at the castle. She was worried about you, Dyakov. And so was the field marshal.’

‘Yes? The field marshal, too? Pizdato. He will give me my job back? As his Putzer? There’s hope for me?’

‘I’d say there’s a very good chance, yes.’

Dyakov breathed a loud sigh of relief that made me glad I wasn’t about to light a cigarette. Then he laughed, loudly. ‘Then I am very lucky fellow.’

‘This is Dr Kramsta,’ I told him. ‘She’s going to take a look at you and see that you’re all right.’

‘Really, he should have a radiograph,’ she murmured. ‘The machine is working all right, but according to the nurse there are no plates to make an image on.’

‘Head as hard as that?’ I grinned. ‘I doubt a radiograph would get through the bone.’

Dyakov thought that was funny. ‘Dyakov – he’s not so easy to kill, eh?’

Ines sat down on the edge of Dyakov’s bed and inspected his skull and then his eyes, ears and nose before testing his reflexes and then pronouncing him to be in no immediate danger.

‘Does that mean I can leave this place?’ asked Dyakov.

‘If it was anyone and anywhere else I’d advise them to stay in bed and rest for a few days. But here.’ She smiled thinly and glanced around as a man down the ward started to shout very loudly. ‘Yes, you can leave. I think things would be a lot more congenial for you at Krasny Bor.’

Dyakov kissed her hand, and when we left him he was still thanking us.

‘You sure he’s all right?’ I asked.

‘Are you asking as someone who’s worried about him or yourself?’

‘Myself, of course.’

‘I think your neck is safe enough for the moment,’ she told me.

‘Well, that’s a relief.’

We went down to the basement, to the hospital morgue where Dr Berruguete’s body, still fully clothed and occupying the same grimy, blood-stained stretcher that had been used to carry him out of the wood at Krasny Bor, was lying upon the floor. There were other bodies, too, and these were stacked on some cheap wooden shelves like so many cans of beans. When we arrived in the room, she held us quiet for a moment with a hand near my mouth.

‘Oh, my God,’ she murmured slowly.

There was a porcelain dissecting table, heavily stained and looking as if it had been recently occupied, with a length of rubber hose attached to a tap, and a drain. The room was congealed with artificial light that turned green on the cracked wall tiles and glinted on Ines Kramsta’s surgical instruments as, shaking her head, she laid them out methodically like so many cards in a lethal game of patience. The place stank like an abattoir – with each breath you felt you were inhaling something hazardous, an effect that was enhanced by the buzz of the occasional airborne insect and the humidity that you could feel underfoot.

‘They haven’t even washed the body,’ she said, dismissively. ‘What kind of a damn hospital is this, anyway?’

‘The Russian kind,’ I said. ‘The doing-its-best-in-a-war kind. The no-one-really-gives-a-damn kind. Take your pick.’

‘I thought I saw some dreadful hospitals in Spain, during the civil war,’ she said. ‘That ward upstairs was a zoo. But this – this really is the reptile house.’

‘You were in Spain?’ I asked, innocently. ‘During the civil war?’