Outside, night was falling, and it was very cold. I had gone by foot; in my haste I had forgotten my shapka; soon I began shivering. I walked quickly and almost slipped on a sheet of black ice; I managed to catch hold of a streetlight, but I hurt my arm. The cold gripped my bare head; my fingers, buried in my pockets, went numb. I felt long shudders pass through my body. I had underestimated the distance to the Ortskommandantur: when I got there it was pitch-dark and I was trembling like a leaf. I asked for an operations officer. “Are you the one I spoke to?” he asked when he arrived at the entryway where I was vainly trying to warm myself. “Yes. What’s happened?”—“We’re not really sure yet. Some mountain men brought him back in an ox cart. He was in a Kabard aul, in the south. According to the witnesses, he was going into houses and questioning people about their language. One of the neighbors thinks he must have been alone with a young woman and the father surprised them. They heard some gunshots: when they came in, they found the Leutnant wounded and the girl dead. The father had disappeared. So they brought him here. Of course, that’s what they tell us. We’ll have to open an investigation.”—“How is he?”—“Not well, I’m afraid. He got shot in the stomach.”—“Can I see him?” The officer hesitated, examined my face with undisguised curiosity. “This affair doesn’t concern the SS,” he said finally.—“He’s a friend.” He wavered another instant, then said abruptly: “In that case, come along. But I warn you, he’s in bad shape.”

He brought me through some hallways freshly painted gray and pale green to a large room where some sick and lightly wounded were lying in a row of beds. I didn’t see Voss. A doctor, a slightly stained white smock over his uniform, came toward us: “Yes?”—“He wants to see Leutnant Voss,” explained the operations officer, pointing to me. “I’ll leave you here,” he said. “I have work to do.”—“Thank you,” I said.—“Come along,” said the doctor. “We’ve isolated him.” He took me to a door in the back of the room. “Can I talk to him?” I asked.—“He won’t hear you,” the doctor replied. He opened the door and had me go in before him. Voss was lying under a sheet, his face damp, a little green. His eyes were closed and he was groaning softly. I went up to him. “Voss,” I said. There was no reaction. Yet the sounds kept coming from his mouth, not really groans, but rather articulate though incomprehensible sounds, like a child babbling—the translation, in a private and mysterious language, of what was going on inside him. I turned to the doctor: “Will he make it?” The doctor shook his head: “I don’t even understand how he made it this far. We couldn’t operate, it wouldn’t do any good.” I turned back to Voss. The sounds continued uninterruptedly, a description beyond language of his agony. It chilled me, I had trouble breathing, as in a dream where someone is talking and you don’t understand. But here there was nothing to understand. I pushed back a lock of hair that had fallen onto his eyelid. He opened his eyes and stared at me, but these eyes were empty of all recognition. He had reached that private, closed space from which you never return to the surface, but from which he hadn’t sunk deeper yet. Like an animal, his body was struggling with what was happening to him, and these sounds—that’s what they were, too, animal sounds. From time to time the sounds broke off so he could pant, sucking air through his teeth with an almost liquid noise. Then it began again. I looked at the doctor: “He’s suffering. Can’t you give him some morphine?” The doctor looked annoyed: “We’ve already given him some.”—“Yes, but he needs more.” I stared at him straight in the eyes; he hesitated, tapped his teeth with a fingernail. “I’m almost out of it,” he said finally. “We had to send all our stock to Millerovo for the Sixth Army. I have to keep what I have for cases that are still operable. Anyway, he’s going to die soon.” I kept staring at him. “You have no authority to give me orders,” he added.—“I’m not giving you an order, I’m asking you,” I said coldly. He blanched. “All right, Hauptsturmführer. You’re right…. I’ll give him some.” I didn’t move, didn’t smile. “Do it now. I’ll watch.” A brief tic twisted the doctor’s lips. He went out. I watched Voss: the strange, terrifying sounds, forming almost by themselves, kept coming out of his mouth, which was working convulsively. An ancient voice, come from the beginning of time; but if it was a language, it wasn’t saying anything, and expressed only its own disappearance. The doctor returned with a syringe, uncovered Voss’s arm, tapped to make the vein appear, and gave him the injection. Little by little the sounds spaced out, his breathing calmed down. His eyes had closed. Now and then another block of sounds came, like a final buoy thrown overboard. The doctor had gone out. I gently touched Voss’s cheek with the back of my fingers, and went out too. The doctor was bustling about with a manner that expressed both annoyance and resentment. I thanked him briefly, then clicked my heels and raised my arm. The doctor didn’t return my salute and I went out without a word.

A car from the Wehrmacht took me back to the Sonderkommando. I found Weseloh and Reinholz there still in midconversation, Reinholz arguing in favor of a Turkish origin of the Bergjuden. He paused when he saw me: “Ah, Hauptsturmführer. We were wondering what you were doing. I’ve had some quarters prepared for you. It’s too late for you to go back.”—“In any case,” Weseloh said, “I’ll have to stay here a few days, to continue my investigations.”—“I’m going back to Pyatigorsk tonight,” I said in a flat voice. “I have work to do. There aren’t any partisans around here and I can drive at night.” Reinholz shrugged his shoulders: “That’s against the Group’s instructions, Hauptsturmführer, but do as you please.”—“I’ll entrust Dr. Weseloh to you. Call me if you need anything.” Weseloh, her legs crossed on her wooden chair, looked perfectly at ease and happy with her adventure; my departure left her indifferent. “Thank you for your help, Hauptsturmführer,” she said. “By the way, could I see this Dr. Voss?” I was already on the threshold, shapka in hand. “No.” I didn’t wait for her reaction and went out. My driver seemed rather unhappy at the idea of driving at night, but he didn’t insist when I repeated my order in a sharper tone. The trip took a long time: Lemper, the driver, drove very slowly because of the black ice. Outside the narrow halo from the headlights, half covered because of enemy aircraft, we couldn’t see anything; from time to time, a military checkpoint rose up out of the darkness in front of us. I fiddled distractedly with the kinzhal that Shabaev had given me; I smoked cigarette after cigarette, and looked out at the vast empty night without thinking.

The investigation confirmed what the villagers had said about the death of Leutnant Dr. Voss. In the house where the tragedy occurred they found his notebook, bloodstained and filled with Kabard consonants and grammatical notations. The girl’s mother, hysterical, swore she had not seen her husband again since the incident; according to her neighbors, he had probably fled into the mountains with the murder weapon, an old hunting rifle, to turn abrek, as they say in the Caucasus, or to join a band of partisans. A few days later, a delegation of elders from the village came to see General von Mackensen: they solemnly presented their apologies in the name of the aul, reaffirmed their profound friendship for the German army, and set down a pile of carpets, sheepskins, and jewelry, which they offered to the dead man’s family. They swore they would find the murderer themselves and kill him or hand him over; the few able-bodied men remaining in the aul, they asserted, had left to search the mountains. They feared reprisals: von Mackensen reassured them, promising there would be no collective punishment. I knew that Shadov had talked about this with Köstring. The army burned down the guilty man’s house, and promulgated a new general order reiterating the prohibitions of fraternizing with mountain women, then promptly closed the case.