Mephisto Aria Read Free Page A

of the years of occupation right after the war and, less often, about the air raids and the fires during the war itself. But now that she thought about it, she had never heard the men talk about the battlefront.
    And why should they? No one wanted to boast about fighting for National Socialism. In a global campaign that had become genocidal and had annihilated whole cities on both sides, individual acts of bravery held little meaning.
    But Stalingrad was different. The whole world spoke of Stalingrad in hushed tones. Stalingrad was Armageddon, a cataclysm where whole armies threw themselves at each other in the bitter winter of 1942–43, where men were reduced to savagery, to cannibalism, to daily hand-to-hand slaughter of the enemy. No matter that the German advance was one of pure aggression. To have survived Stalingrad was to have emerged from the mouth of hell and to have, in some sense, been purged of the national guilt.
    She got up to pace again, needing to think, circling the room, trailing her fingertips along the furniture. His oaken armoire stood in front of her. She opened the door cautiously, as if not wanting to disturb his spirit that still dwelled in the row of worn suit jackets, all brown or gray. The slightly shabby attire of an old man who no longer went out very much.
    To occupy idle, nervous hands, she removed the jackets and laid them on the rug in several piles. One pile for Tomasz—the two men were about the same size—one for charity, and the third to be discarded. A mournful job, and yet to do nothing but sit wondering would have been worse.
    A leather satchel lay on the bottom of the wardrobe. Old leather, cracked with age, but a handsome bag. Maybe she could rescue it with leather oil. She took hold of it, surprised at its weight, and dragged it out onto the floor.
    It was locked, but the lock was old and flimsy and she forced it easily with the point of a scissors. Dust flew up into her face as she pulled the two sides apart exposing a crumpled rucksack.
    She tilted the satchel on its side to slide the rucksack out and only then did she see the faded lettering on the side. Russian letters.
    War booty? Cellars and attics all over Germany held articles brought home from the front and then forgotten. She stared at it for a moment, as if it were a strange brown animal curled up at her feet, while on the record player Berlioz’ chorus lamented of damnation.
    Finally she knelt down and undid the rucksack’s buckles. The leather strap was dry and pieces of it crumbled to reddish-gray dust between her fingers. Something bulky and soft was inside, and she slid it out.
    A light brown tunic and dark trousers were neatly folded and tied around with a belt. The belt buckle held an unmistakable insignia, the hammer and sickle. She slipped the tunic out and unfolded it. A Russian soldier’s uniform. She stared, dumbfounded. The name stenciled onto the inner yoke of the tunic was Marovsky.
    Sergei Marovsky had been in the Red Army. Realization struck her and brought another wave of tears. If that was so, the pistol with which he had shot himself was probably his own.
    She glanced around the study, a room that now belonged to a stranger, and everything that was once familiar seemed to mock her. Even his music, which poured from his antiquated record player, seemed filled with mystery.
    She reached into the rucksack again. There was more.
    Under the uniform was a notebook held together by a frayed cotton cord. She broke the cord easily and leafed through the lined book, the sort that school children used. Its pages were covered with text, each section precisely dated, in her father’s neat script.
    The first entry was headed February 20, 1943. My god, she thought. Sergei Marovsky, who never said a word about the war and the occupation, had kept a journal.
    She set it aside carefully and peered at what had been tucked into the front. A few sheets of folded paper, with a string threaded in and out of the spine