Reinholz sent two Orpos to summon Shabaev, and served tea to Weseloh; I telephoned the Ortskommandantur to arrange something with Voss, but he had gone out; they promised me he’d call me back when he returned. Reinholz, who like everyone else had heard about Jünger’s arrival, questioned Weseloh about the writer’s National Socialist convictions; Weseloh, obviously, didn’t know anything about it, but thought she had heard it said that he wasn’t a member of the Party. A little later on, Shabaev made his appearance: “Markel Avgadulovich,” he introduced himself. He wore traditional mountain garb and had an imposing beard and a firm, assured manner. He spoke Russian with a marked accent, but the Dolmetscher didn’t seem to have any trouble translating. Weseloh had him sit down and started the discussion in a language that none of us understood. “I know some dialects that are more or less close to Tat,” she said. “I’ll talk to him this way and I’ll explain it to you later.” I left them and went to have tea with Reinholz in another room. He spoke to me about the local situation; the Soviet successes around Stalingrad had stirred up a great deal of unease among the Kabards and the Balkars, and the partisans’ activities in the mountains were gathering strength again. The OKHG was planning soon to declare the district autonomous and, to put people’s minds at rest, was counting on dissolving the kolkhozes and sovkhozes in the mountain zone (the ones in the plains of the Baksan and the Terek, regarded as Russian, would be maintained) and on distributing the land to the natives. After an hour and a half, Weseloh reappeared: “The old man wants to show us their neighborhood and his house. Are you coming?”—“Of course. And you?” I asked Reinholz.—“I’ve already been. But you always eat well there.” He took an escort of three Orpos and drove us in a car to Shabaev’s home. The house, made of brick with a wide inner courtyard, was comprised of large bare rooms, without hallways. After asking us to remove our boots, Shabaev invited us to sit down on some uncomfortable cushions and two women spread a large piece of waxed canvas on the ground in front of us. Several children had slipped into the room and were huddled in a corner, looking at us with wide eyes and whispering and laughing among themselves. Shabaev sat down on a cushion facing us while a woman his age, her head wrapped in a colored scarf, served us tea. It was cold in the room and I kept my coat on. Shabaev said some words in his language. “He apologizes for the poor welcome,” Weseloh translated, “but they weren’t expecting us. His wife will prepare some tea for us. He has also invited some neighbors over so that we can talk together.”—“Tea,” Reinholz explained, “means eating till your belly explodes. I hope you’re hungry.” A little boy came in and said a few rapid phrases to Shabaev before running out again. “I didn’t understand that,” Weseloh said, annoyed. She exchanged some words with Shabaev. “He says that’s a neighbor’s son; they spoke in Kabard.” From the kitchen, a very pretty young woman in trousers and a scarf brought in some large round flatbread, which she set on the canvas. Then she and Shabaev’s wife set out bowls of yogurt, dried fruit, and bonbons in silver wrappers. Shabaev tore one of the breads and handed us pieces of it: it was still warm, crispy, delicious. Another old man in papakha and soft ankle boots came in and sat down next to Shabaev, then another. Shabaev introduced them. “He says the one on his left is a Muslim Tat,” Weseloh explained. “From the beginning, he’s been trying to tell me that only some Tats are Jewish. I’m going to question him.” She began a long exchange with the second old man. Vaguely bored, I nibbled at the bread and studied the room. The walls, bare of any decoration, seemed freshly whitewashed. The children were listening and examining us in silence. Shabaev’s wife and the young woman brought us some dishes of boiled mutton, with a garlic sauce and dumplings boiled in water. I started eating; Weseloh kept talking. Then they served ground chicken shashlik, which they heaped on one of the breads; Shabaev tore the other breads and handed the slices out for us to use as dishes, then with a long Caucasian knife, a kinzhal, served each of us some chunks from the skewer. They also brought us grape leaves stuffed with rice and meat. I preferred those to the boiled meat, and began eating with gusto; Reinholz imitated me, while Shabaev seemed to be chiding Weseloh, who wasn’t eating anything. Shabaev’s wife also came and sat down next to us to criticize Weseloh’s lack of appetite with large gestures. “Fräulein Doktor,” I said between mouthfuls, “can you ask them where they sleep?” Weseloh talked with Shabaev’s wife: “According to her,” she finally replied, “right here, on the ground, on the wooden floor.”—“In my opinion,” said Reinholz, “she’s lying.”—“She says that they used to have mattresses, but the Bolsheviks came and took everything away from them before the retreat.”—“That could be true,” I said to Reinholz; he was biting into his shashlik and contented himself with shrugging his shoulders. The young woman kept serving us more hot tea as we drank, following a curious technique: first she poured a black brew from a little teapot, then added hot water into it. When we had finished eating, the women took away the leftovers and removed the cloth; then Shabaev went out and returned with some men carrying instruments, whom he had sit along the wall, facing the corner with the children. “He says that now we are going to listen to traditional Tat music, and see their dances, to see that they’re the same as the other mountain peoples’,” Weseloh explained. The instruments included kinds of banjos with very long necks, called tar, others with shorter necks called saz—a Turkish word, Weseloh explained, in order to set her professional mind at rest—a clay pot into which you blow through a reed, and some hand drums. They played several pieces, and the young woman who had served us danced in front of us, quite modestly, but with extreme grace and suppleness. The men who didn’t play beat time with the percussionists. Other people came in and sat down or stood against the walls, women with long skirts with children between their legs, men in mountain garb, in old threadbare suits, or else in the smocks and caps of Soviet workers. One of the seated women was breastfeeding a baby, without concealing it at all; a young man took off his jacket and came to dance too. He was handsome, elegant, proud. The music and dances did resemble those of the Karachai, which I had seen in Kislovodsk; most of the pieces, with syncopated rhythms that fell strangely on my ears, were cheerful and exciting. One of the old musicians sang a long complaint, accompanied only by a banjo with two strings, which he struck with a plectrum. The food and the tea had plunged me into a peaceful, almost somnolent state; I let myself be carried away by the music and found this whole scene picturesque and these people very warm, very nice. When the music stopped, Shabaev gave a kind of speech that Weseloh didn’t translate; then they presented us with some gifts: a large oriental rug woven by hand for Weseloh, which two men unfolded in front of us before folding it back up, and some handsome finely worked kinzhali, in scabbards of dark wood and silver, for Reinholz and me. Weseloh also received some silver earrings and a ring from Shabaev’s wife. The whole crowd escorted us into the street, and Shabaev solemnly shook our hands: “He thanks us for having given him the chance to be able to show us Tat hospitality,” Weseloh curtly translated. “He apologizes for the poverty of the welcome, but says we have to blame the Bolsheviks, who stole everything from them.”

“What a circus!” she exclaimed in the car.—“That’s nothing compared to what they did for the commission from the Wehrmacht,” Reinholz commented.—“And those gifts!” she went on. “What are they thinking? That they can buy off SS officers? That’s really a Jewish tactic.” I didn’t say anything: Weseloh annoyed me, she seemed to have started out with her mind already made up; I didn’t think that was the right way to go about it. At the Sonderkommando offices, she explained that the old man with whom she had talked knew the Koran, the prayers, and Muslim customs well, but according to her, that didn’t prove anything. An orderly came in and addressed Reinholz: “There’s a phone call from the Ortskommandantur. They say that someone was asking for a Leutnant Voss.”—“Oh, that’s me,” I said. I followed the orderly into the communication room and took the receiver. An unknown voice spoke: “Are you the one that left a message for Leutnant Voss?”—“Yes,” I replied, perplexed.—“I’m sorry to tell you that he was wounded and won’t be able to call you back,” the man said. My throat suddenly tightened: “Is it serious?”—“Yes, pretty serious.”—“Where is he?”—“Here, at the medical station.”—“I’ll come.” I hung up and went back into the room where Weseloh and Reinholz were. “I have to go to the Ortskommandantur,” I said as I reached for my coat.—“What’s wrong?” Reinholz asked. My face must have been white; I quickly turned away. “I’ll be back soon,” I said as I went out.