“I found out that you were rotting there, in Siberia,” Rudi continued meanwhile. “It was me, who asked for you. You wouldn’t last long there, my good fellow. Here is the place to be. A veritable sanatorium, eh?”
He clapped Johann’s shoulder.
“They don’t let me write letters to my wife,” Johann said, finally finding his voice.
“Is that all?” Rudi’s dark brows shot up. “But that can be easily fixed. You’ll write to her right after Comrade Commissar speaks to you and I’ll personally mail it for you, how about that?”
The first uncertain smile broke on Johann’s gaunt face. He lowered himself onto a chair which Rudi had indicated for him. The commandant produced a bottle of vodka and three shot glasses from under the table and a few pieces of bread to go with it.
“Comrade Commissar proposes a toast for the unity.”
“That’s a good toast,” Johann agreed and downed his glass, biting into the offered bread. The portions here were much larger than in Siberia, but even if he wasn’t on the verge of starvation anymore, he was still constantly hungry, as the good stuff, like rare offerings of meat and sausage only went to the members of the League of German Officers. Everyone else had to make do with simple gruel until they came to their senses, that is. Such motivation produced terrific results, leaving only the most stubborn ones unbroken.
The strangest thing was that those stubborn ones weren’t Nazis by conviction at all; the most prominent Nazis all jumped ship as soon as it started sinking and were now just as ardent communists as they were national-socialists a mere few months ago. No, it was the idealists, the non-believers, the humanitarians, and the honest ones that were left, Johann together with them.
“Comrade Commissar wants you to tell him about your service. I told him that you were the highest scoring ace in history and he was simply delighted to have you here. He’s very much looking forward to hearing your story.”
Johann shifted his apprehensive gaze from one to another. So far it looked so innocent, so friendly and warm. He started speaking, slowly and unconvincingly. Hitlerjugend. Labor Service. Flying School. Afrika Korps. Willi. Mina…
“Can I please write to my wife and tell her that I’m alive?” he begged, pulling forward suddenly. It was that stupid vodka, damn it. He’d come here to demand and now look at him, sitting there, lips trembling, eyes brimming with tears, almost begging for a handout.
The commandant nodded, yes you can. Rudi was beaming, positively delighted, after the third glass of vodka. Grand fellows those NKVD commissars, didn’t I tell you?
He dropped his guard and allowed himself to believe them both. They were so kind and generous and he was so tired of everything.
“Would you like to return to flying?” the commissar asked, through Rudi, playing with his lighter. “We can organize that too. We can organize a lot of things. Your wife◦– we can take good care of her. Comrade Wiedmeyer’s family are under direct NKVD supervision in Germany. They’re getting rations that only our senior officers get. The entire country is starving, you see. Surely, you don’t want your wife to starve, together with your children?”
Rudi nodded a few times, stuffing the bread into his mouth. “It’s true. Not propaganda. There’s nothing to eat in Germany. They have their ration books, but those rations are miserable, I tell you. They can provide for your whole family, the NKVD.”
“And what do I have to do?”
“Nothing! Absolutely nothing! Just join the League.”
“Become a communist then.”
“No! Have you been listening to me at all? Am I a communist, you think?”
Johann threw a glare at Wiedmeyer, who was clearly on a short leg with the camp commandant. “You certainly fooled me, if you aren’t one.”
Wiedmeyer broke into belly-shaking laughter and waved his hand in front of himself. “No one makes you actually believe all that crap you agree to. It’s a formality, like when we had to go through that Hitlerjugend affair! Did you believe in all that? No. But you had to do it, so you agreed.”
“As soon as I was free to make my own decisions, I made one. I was never a member of the Party then and won’t become a member of another Party now.”
“Don’t be daft, Johann! Look at the whole picture; as a member of the League, I’ll be able to go to Germany soon! My family is taken care of and I will return to them alive when the time comes. They guarantee us job positions upon our return◦– good ones; administrative positions!◦– and it will be us, who will eventually rebuild Germany from the ashes. Don’t you want the same?”
Johann stared in front of himself for a very long moment. “Can I please write that letter now?”
“Just say that you will agree to think about it.”
Johann shot Rudi a glare.
“He won’t send it, unless you say it,” Rudi almost whispered, lowering his eyes.
“I will think about it.”
The commissar shook his hand.
THIRTY-ONE
The Soviet Union. The Gulag, 1945-1951
Hearing the steps behind the door of the bunker, Johann wondered half-heartedly if it was going to be Rudi or the Soviet commissar today. After he declined the NKVD’s proposition, a Russian political officer took charge of him, hoping to succeed where a German Wiedmeyer hadn’t. Johann didn’t care for this new one’s threats so much; Rudi had already mailed his letter to Mina a month ago and therefore, he could sleep peacefully, even though on the dirt floor and in a four by six cell with no light in it.
“Still being an obstinate ass, Brandt?”
The Russian then; not Rudi. Rudi came with cigarettes and coaxing. The Russian◦– with mocking torrents of abuse.
Johann shielded his eyes from the bright light, which poured into the cell.
“Damn, it stinks in here!” The commissar screwed up his face. “Don’t you want to go outside and enjoy some fresh air? Why do you so stubbornly refuse to live like a normal human being?”
“I would. If your government didn’t violate your own Lenin’s principles, I would have long been home with my family. But it seems you only use his postulates when it suits you,” Johann barked back.
The commissar seemed taken aback. “You know Lenin’s works?”
“Yes, I have read all of them.” He did, out of curiosity, when Wiedmeyer defied him with logic and asked, how could he reject something he knew nothing about. So, Johann read them all. Now, he knew exactly what he was rejecting. “You perverted his ideology and still call yourselves communists. You should be ashamed of yourselves.”
The commissar sneered and extracted something out of his pocket. It was an envelope; no, a few of them. “Look what I have here. Your wife Mina writes to you so ardently, every week. It’s bad luck that you can’t read them though, or reply anything back. Such bad luck.”
He tsked several times. Johann stared at the letters without blinking. It was Mina’s handwriting. And the stamp, it was a Berlin one, too. The commissar waved them in front of Johann’s nose as though teasing a dog with a meaty bone. “I bet you’d like to know how your sons are doing. Well? Aren’t you curious?”
Johann forced himself to turn away from him.
“You fascists are indeed heartless bastards!” The commissar exclaimed, turning on his heel. “To not even care one bit for your own wife and children!”