Katsenelenbogen listened to him absent-mindedly.
'That's all very true. That's how it will be. All you need add is that once this radiant dossier has been gathered together, you'll be brought here, to the big house, and beaten up the same as always.'
He looked searchingly at Krymov. He couldn't understand how a man with Krymov's yellow, sallow face, a man with hollow sunken eyes and clots of black blood on his chin, could possibly be smiling so calmly and happily.
44
Paulus's adjutant, Colonel Adam, was standing in front of an open suitcase. His batman, Ritter, was squatting on the floor and sorting through piles of underwear that had been spread out on newspapers. They had spent the night burning papers in the field-marshal's office. They had even burnt Paulus's own large map, something Adam looked on as a sacred relic of the war.
Paulus hadn't slept at all that night. He had refused his morning coffee and had watched Adam's comings and goings with complete indifference. From time to time he got up and walked about the room, picking his way through the files of papers awaiting cremation. The canvas-backed maps proved hard to burn; they choked up the grate and had to be cleared out with a poker.
Each time Ritter opened the door of the stove, Paulus stretched out his hands to the fire. Adam had thrown a greatcoat over Paulus's shoulders, but he had shaken it off irritably. Adam had had to hang it up again on the peg.
Did Paulus imagine he was already in Siberia, warming his hands at the fire together with all the other soldiers, wilderness ahead of him, wilderness behind?
'I ordered Ritter to put plenty of warm underclothes in your suitcase,' said Adam. 'When we were children and we tried to imagine the Last Judgment, we were wrong. It's got nothing to do with fire and blazing coals.'
General Schmidt had called round twice during the night. The cables had all been cut and the telephones had fallen silent.
From the moment they had first been encircled, Paulus had seen very clearly that his forces would be unable to fight. All the conditions – tactical, psychological, meteorological and technical – that had determined his success during the summer were now absent; the pluses had turned into minuses. He had reported to Hitler that, in his opinion, the 6th Army should break through the encircling forces to the South-West, in liaison with Manstein, and form a corridor for the evacuation of the troops; they would have to reconcile themselves to the loss of a large part of their heavy armaments.
On 24 December Yeremenko had defeated Manstein's forces near the Myshovka River; from that moment it had been obvious to anyone that further resistance in Stalingrad was impossible. Only one man had disputed this. He had begun referring to the 6th Army as the advance post of a front that stretched from the White Sea to the Terek; he had renamed it 'Fortress Stalingrad'. Meanwhile the staff at Army Headquarters had begun referring to it as a camp for armed prisoners-of-war.
Paulus had sent another coded message to the effect that there was still some possibility of a break-out. He had expected a terrible outburst of fury: no one had ever dared contradict the Supreme Commander twice. He had heard the story of how Hitler, in a rage, had once torn the Knight's Cross from Field-Marshal Rundstedt's chest; Brauchitsch, who witnessed this scene, had apparently had a heart attack. The Fuhrer was not someone to trifle with.
On 31 January Paulus had finally received an answer: the announcement of his promotion to the rank of Field-Marshal. He had made one more attempt to prove his point – and been awarded the highest decoration of the Reich: the Knight's Cross with oak leaves.
It gradually dawned on him that Hitler was treating him as a dead man: it had been a posthumous promotion, a posthumous award of the Knight's Cross. His existence now served only one purpose: to create a heroic image of the defender of Stalingrad. The official propaganda had made saints and martyrs of the hundreds of thousands of men under his command. They were alive, boiling their horsemeat, hunting down the last Stalingrad dogs, catching magpies in the steppes, crushing lice, smoking cigarettes made from nothing but twists of paper; meanwhile the State radio stations played solemn funeral music in honour of these still living heroes.
They were alive, blowing on their red fingers, wiping the snot from their noses, thinking about the chances of stealing something to eat, shamming illness, surrendering to the enemy or warming themselves on a Russian woman in a cellar; meanwhile, over the airwaves, choirs of little boys and girls were singing, 'They died so that Germany could live.' Only if the State should perish could these men be reborn to the sins and wonders of everyday life.
Everything had happened precisely as Paulus had predicted. This sense of his own rightness, confirmed by the absolute destruction of his army, was painful to live with. At the same time, in spite of himself, it gave him a kind of tired satisfaction, a reinforced sense of his own worth.
Thoughts he had suppressed during his days of glory now came back to him.
Keitel and Jodl had called Hitler the divine Fuhrer. Goebbels had declared that Hitler's tragedy was that the war offered him no opponent worthy of his own genius. Zeitzler, on the other hand, had told him how Hitler had once asked him to straighten the line of the front on the grounds that its curves offended his aesthetic sensibilities. And what about his mad, neurotic, refusal to advance on Moscow? And the sudden failure of will that had led him to call a halt to the advance on Leningrad? It was only a fear of losing face that made him insist so fanatically on the defence of Stalingrad.
Now everything was as clear as daylight.
But clarity can be very terrifying. He could have refused to obey the order. Hitler would have had him executed, but he would have saved the lives of his men. Yes, he had seen many people look at him with reproach.
He could have saved his army!
But he was afraid of Hitler, afraid for his own skin!
Chalb, the chief of the SD at Headquarters, had flown to Berlin the other day. He had made some confused remark to the effect that the Fiihrer had revealed himself to be too great even for the German people. Yes… Yes… Of course…
Demagogy, nothing but demagogy…
Adam turned on the radio. The initial crackle of interference was succeeded by music: Germany was lamenting the dead of Stalingrad. The music had a strange power. Maybe the myth created by the Fiihrer would mean more for the people and for battles to come than the lives of the lice-ridden, frostbitten wrecks that had once been his men? Maybe the Fuhrer's logic was not a logic that could be understood merely from reading orders, poring over maps and drawing up schedules?
Perhaps the aura of martyrdom to which Hitler had condemned the 6th Army would bestow a new existence on Paulus and his soldiers, allowing them to participate in the future of Germany?
It wasn't a matter of pencils, calculating-machines and slide-rules. This Quartermaster-General worked according to a different logic, different criteria.
Adam, dear, faithful Adam: the purest souls are constantly and inevitably a prey to doubt. The world is always dominated by limited men, men with an unshakeable conviction of their own Tightness. The purest souls never take great decisions or hold sway over States.
'They're coming!' shouted Adam. He ordered Ritter to put the open suitcase out of the way and then straightened his uniform.
There were holes in the heels of the socks Ritter had just thrown into the case. What troubled Ritter was not that a careless and anxious Paulus might wear these socks, but that the holes might be glimpsed by hostile Russian eyes.