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Chapter Twenty
He had felt extremely relieved to be sitting in that coach, to be off on a mission, to be away from Anya for a while. His impotence problem had not been solved. The last time they tried to make love was the early morning of December 28. Then, the following day, Tatiana Adreevna died. Anya had been very busy between working at the Red Rooster, and going over to 120 Novokirovskaya to stay with Sasha; or to help the Dumatskoys' with various matters pertaining to the wake, the funeral. When Anya learned from the note Drugo had left for her on the bathroom sink of their apartment, that he was leaving Moscow on business for a few days, possibly a week, going to Ufa, a distance to the east of about 500 miles -- her reaction was a genuine sigh of relief. She, too, was glad to be free of the unbearable tension that was between them. She was used to the great distance he often had to travel. She always worried, knowing that his work was dangerous, whatever it was. We will talk, work it out, solve this matter when he returns,"Anya reasoned. Right now, I've got to give all my energy to Zina, Dmitri and Sasha. They need me. Anya had thought and thought about the probable causes for the problems with her husband until she was too exhausted to think. Now, I just want to stop thinking about it. I'm not worried. We love each other. We want to have a baby together. It will be all right. Tatiana Andreevna was scheduled to be buried at noon that day in the little St. Mikhail church cemetery at Bauman Park. By that time, the train Drugo was riding on was not even at Mogilev, still about 47 miles from Minsk. Tatiana had been laid out in the sitting room of the Dumatskoy apartment in the traditional fashion. On the wooden table, she was covered by a white muslin sheet. In her yellowing fingers lay the icon of the Mother of God. Five tall vases with a few roses in each, and the spluttering of a newly-lit Lampadkha circled the dead woman. All night of December 29th, in the true Russian Orthodox fashion, the Psalter was read over her. Drugo had paid his respects that evening. Drugo woke up around 12:45 p.m. Lice were crawling all over his clothes, and throughout his hair. He rubbed his eyes. A foul taste was in his mouth. He reached into his vest pocket and pulled out his watch and noticed the time. "Tatiana was in the ground," he thought. Drugo's seat was on the aisle. He went towards the back of the coach to the sanitary room. He had to hold on to each backrest as he went, in order not to lose his balance and fall. The ride in the coach was just that bumpy and unstable. When he got back to his seat, the young man across the aisle from him, and then in turn, the older man sitting next to him, both tried to engage Drugo in conversation. Drugo would have none of it. He ignored them. He simply wanted to sit and smoke. He began to chain-smoke and soon finished one pack. He tore open another. He could lean a little forward and see out the window to his right. He would need to buy more cigarettes, and get something to eat when the train stopped at Minsk. Drugo had gone back to the Little Tea Shoppe on Trubnaya Place to meet Comrade Flobov on Saturday, the 29th, the day after he got his orders to liquidate the German intellectual, Holtz. Drugo was handed a phony passport. He was to travel to Germany under the name of Konstantin Konstantinovich Pshenitsin. His occupation was listed as grain dealer for the Soviet Agricultural Division, Moscow District. No biography of the "Target" was provided for Drugo. That was standard procedure. The less an agent knew, the less information he could provide the enemy if he was arrested and interrogated. Drugo simply was given the addresses for Holtz: his office on the campus of Marburg University, and his house in town. About 11:30 p.m., about 31 miles east of Warsaw, in the Polish countryside, the train began to slow its speed gradually until it finally came to a complete stop. There was some time before the passengers in Drugo's coach found out what was causing the delay. "Cows!" someone yelled. "They sleep at night! They had to be driven here!" People were shouting all over the coach, and things became quite comical. "How? How did they get here? What the devil!? Stupid cows, tried to escape to freedom, and end up on the railroad tracks!" People began howling. Drugo had an amused look on his face. Then he went to the front of the coach and asked the conductor to let him go outside for a time to get some air. Other people followed. Many were drunk and chasing cows, and harassing the bewildered Polish authorities who were trying to restore order. As it turned out, rustlers were attempting to secretly move a small herd from one farm to another. Things somehow got out of hand, directions became problematic. The result: cows on tracks. Someone in the small Polish railroad station had fortunately alerted the oncoming Russian train, and the disaster of plowing into the animals and having railroad cars jump tracks, or worse, was averted. Drugo tramped around in the snow in his military boots a little distance from the tracks. It was a clear and frosty night. The Milky Way spread across the middle of the sky in a creamy stream of shimmering light from the zenith to the horizon. Drugo didn't know the names of any constellations or stars, except the Big Dipper and the North Star, but he did know the Milky Way when he saw it. It was taught to him when he first went hunting, when he was 12 years old in the woods around his village, northeast of Moscow. He usually hunted with his father and two older brothers. His oldest brother, 17 year-old Mikhail, on one such outing had accidentally shot and killed another hunter. Drugo remembered seeing the unfortunate man's bloodied and shattered backbone and neck, and how he twisted convulsively for some moments before expiring. Drugo and Mikhail had reached the body first, and stood staring at the man while he breathed his last. Drugo remembered the weird smile on Mikhail's lips. Then, Drugo began to smile, too. Finally, the delay caused by the Polish cows was over. There had also been a delay when the train crossed the border into Poland while the train's passengers were asked to show their passports. The same kind of delay would occur when the train reached the German/Polish border. There was still about 300 miles to go until Drugo reached Marburg. Relaxed from his walk in the cold night air, and from the recollection from his childhood, Drugo smoked plenty of cigarettes, closed his eyes, and fell asleep. Drugo had a dream. The Madonna and Child were in a room filled with burning candles. A window was open and the wind blew snow and extinguished all the candles but one. Heat left the room. Drugo, in the dream, stood by the door as the heat departed the room. The cold reigned. The Child began to freeze. The Madonna cried, and begged the one remaining lit candle to save the Child. Drugo watched, frozen, immobile, and powerless to intervene. The burning candle, a bird, a vulture - flew out of the room through the window, flapping its wings furiously in a show of might. Drugo held his hands over his ears, the noise was so loud. Drugo watched in horror. The Madonna cried. The Child froze. When he awoke, he had no immediate memory of the dream, except seeing the moment in his mind when the Baby froze, itŐs blue face twisted horribly. Drugo's hands were shaking. He fumbled for his watch. It was only 4:31 a.m. He was terribly afraid. He needed to talk to someone. Everyone on the train would be awakened, and asked to show their proper credentials. Drugo was glad. He would take the opportunity to talk to someone: the man to his left across the aisle, or the man to the right sitting next to him. He would talk about grain trading, the beauty of Germany, the war - anything! He didn't want to think anymore about that dream. He remembered one more thing about the dream, as the members of the German Border Patrol were coming down the aisle asking people to show their passports: The huge vulture just as it was about to fly out the window, turned its hideous head toward where Drugo was standing at the door. "It growled and hissed at me like a rabid dog!" Drugo shouted out loud. The man to his left across the aisle, and the man to the right next to Drugo both woke with a start. Drugo breathed heavily. He looked around him apologetically. His lips twisted into a scary attempt at a smile. "Just a dream, nothing more!" Drugo said. Just after noon, on January 3rd, the train pulled into the Marburg Station. Drugo had been ready to deboard for some time. He spent the last hour standing on the observation platform of the train's caboose, watching the German countryside recede from him, thinking about his mission and how he might expedite matters. He first had to find a room where he could sleep. Then he planned to find out where Holtz lived in the town, and then go to the university and locate Holtz's office. Marburg was a small medieval town built on the side of a hill. Stone quarried from that hill was used to build the castle, the town, the churches and the university. Over 30,000 people lived in Marburg; over half of them were students. Marburg's historical and intellectual grandeur was lost on Ivan Drugo. Unknown to him were the likes of Elizabeth of Hungary, who lived in the castle on top the hill at the beginning of the thirteenth century, and who, soon after her death was canonized a saint. On his way back to his native Italy, Giordano Bruno, philosopher and mathematician, lectured at the University on his new theories of astronomy. And when he returned home to Italy, he was burned at the stake. The Brothers Grimm studied law there; and the great Russian thinker, Mikhail Lomonosov, spent five years there studying with Leibniz's disciple, Christian Wolff in the second decade of the 18th Century. Drugo left the railroad station, crossed a stone bridge over the river Lahn and found an inn where he made arrangements to stay. He then set out through the narrow streets and found the address of Holtz's residence. As he approached the university area, the streets grew more and more twisted as they hugged the side of the hill. They hung on the steep slopes as if they were about to fall. The buildings seemed to swirl in a spiral arranged one below the other. Cellars blended into roofs. Drugo, who hadn't eaten for some time, and suffering from the effects of bad sleep and a 1,100-mile train ride began to feel a sudden rush of vertigo as he raised his head to look up. His balance and coordination were in jeopardy. Towers of the university buildings pointed upward in a whirl toward the castle spinning like a top on the dizzying height of the zenith on the hill. A flock of pigeons suddenly flew out of the belfry of the church to his right. They flew helter-skelter, most directly at him, as if they were attacking. The others buzzed around his head like a vicious swarm of wasps. Drugo felt himself losing balance. The beating of the bird's wings all about him was cacophonous. The noise was the final act of Drugo's play. He flailed his arms about him to keep the birds away. He swayed, then he vomited, then he stumbled. The curtain was falling. Everything for Drugo went black and blank. He fell to the stone pavement with a terrible thud. Forward to Chapter Twenty-One Back to Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three | Chapter Four |Chapter Five
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t 6:47 AM, 35 minutes later than scheduled, a train pulled out of the Kiev station bound for Minsk. Ivan Drugo was on that train. He would be making a trip to Warsaw, Berlin, and Marburg, Germany. The nearly 1,100-mile journey from Moscow to Marburg could take over 24 hours to complete, with slow going over difficult terrain, delays, switching cars, and changing engines. Drugo threw his bundle up onto the rack, and took his seat in a third-class coach. Every seat was taken. Amid the general hubbub of the crowded coach, the smells, the cold, Drugo fell asleep within minutes.