The Leutnant reappeared in midafternoon. I was famished. He pointed to my kit and said, “The liaison is about to leave.” I followed him to an Opel equipped with chains and driven, strangely, by an officer. “Good luck,” the Leutnant said, saluting me.—“Happy Christmas,” I replied. Five of us had to pile into the car; with our coats, there was hardly any room and I felt as if I were suffocating. I leaned my head against the cold window and breathed onto it to defrost it. The car started up and left, jolting. The road, marked out by tactical signs nailed to posts, boards, and even to frozen horse legs, planted in the snow hoof-up, was slippery, and despite its chains, the Opel often skidded sideways; most of the time, the officer righted it adroitly, but sometimes it got buried in the snowdrifts and then we had to get out and push to free it. Pitomnik, I knew, was near the center of the Kessel, but the liaison wasn’t going directly to Stalingrad; it followed a capricious route, stopping off at various command posts; each time, officers got out of the car and others took their places; the wind had risen and it was becoming a snowstorm: we advanced slowly, as if we were feeling our way along. Finally the first ruins appeared, some brick chimneys, stumps of walls standing along the road. Between two blasts of wind I glimpsed a sign: ENTER STALINGRAD AT THE RISK OF DEATH. I turned to my neighbor: “Is that a joke?” He looked at me dully: “No. Why?” The road was descending a kind of cliff, snaking back and forth; at the bottom, the ruins of the city began: huge shattered buildings, burned, with gaping, blind windows. The roadway was strewn with debris, sometimes hastily cleared away so vehicles could thread their way through. The bomb craters hidden by the snow inflicted brutal jolts on the shock absorbers. On all sides flowed a chaos of wrecked cars, trucks, tanks, German and Russian intermingled, sometimes even embedded in each other. Here and there we passed a patrol or, to my surprise, civilians in rags, women especially, carrying buckets or bags. With a clanking of chains, the Opel crossed a long bridge repaired with prefabricated sections, over a railroad: below, hundreds of motionless train cars stretched out, covered with snow, intact or mangled by explosions. After the silence of the steppe, pierced only by the noise of the engine, the chains, and the wind, a constant racket reigned here, detonations more or less muffled, the abrupt barking of the PAKs, the crackle of machine guns. After the bridge, the car turned left, following the railroad and the abandoned freight trains. To our right a long bare park, completely treeless, emerged; beyond, more ruined buildings, dark, silent, their façades collapsed into the street, or else raised up against the sky like a stage set. The road skirted round the train station, a large building from the czarist era, once probably yellow and white; on the square, in front, a confusion of burned vehicles, torn to pieces by direct impacts, lay piled up, their twisted forms scarcely softened by the snow. The car set out on a long diagonal avenue: the noise of the gunfire intensified; in front, I could see puffs of black smoke but didn’t have the slightest idea where the front line could be. The avenue emerged onto an immense empty square, full of debris, surrounding a kind of park marked out by streetlights. The officer parked the car in front of a large building: at its corner, a peristyle in a half-circle with its columns riddled by gunfire, surmounted by large bay windows, empty and black; at the top, a flag with a swastika hung limply on a pole. “You’re here,” he said to me, lighting a cigarette. I extracted myself from the car, opened the trunk, and got out my kit. Some soldiers armed with submachine guns were standing under the peristyle but didn’t come forward. As soon as I closed the trunk, the Opel started up again, executed a rapid U-turn, and headed back up the avenue toward the train station, in a noisy clang of chains. I looked at the desolate square: in the center, a circle of children made of stone or plaster, probably the remnants of a fountain, seemed to be mocking the ruins all around. When I went toward the peristyle, the soldiers saluted me but barred my way; I saw with surprise that they were all wearing the white armband of the Hiwis. One of them asked me in bad German for my papers, and I held out my paybook. He examined it, returned it to me with a salute, and gave a brief order, in Ukrainian, to one of his comrades. He signed for me to follow. I climbed the steps between the columns, broken glass and stucco crackling beneath my boots, and entered the dark building through a wide opening without any doors. Just beyond stood a row of pink plastic mannequins dressed in varied attire: women’s dresses, blue work clothes, twill suits; the figures, some of their skulls smashed by bullets, were still smiling inanely, their hands raised or pointing in childish, unformed gestures. Behind them, in the darkness, stood shelves still full of household objects, shattered or overturned glass cases, counters covered with plaster and debris, display shelves of polka-dot dresses or bras. I followed the young Ukrainian through the aisles of this phantom store to a stairway guarded by two other Hiwis; on an order from my escort, they stood aside to let me pass. He led me down to a basement lit by the yellow, diffuse light of weak bulbs: hallways, rooms swarming with Wehrmacht officers and soldiers dressed in the most disparate uniforms, regulation coats, padded gray jackets, Russian greatcoats with German insignias. The farther in we went, the hotter, damper, heavier the air became; I was sweating profusely under my coat. We went down even more stairs, then crossed a large, high-ceilinged operations room lit by a chandelier overloaded with glass, with Louis XVI furniture and crystal glasses scattered among the maps and files; a crackling Mozart aria was emanating from a portable gramophone set on top of two crates of French wine. The officers were working in slippers, wearing casual slacks and even shorts; no one paid any attention to me. Beyond the room was another hallway, and I finally saw someone in an SS uniform: the Ukrainian left me there and the Untersturmführer led me to Möritz.

The Feldpolizeikommissar, a stocky bulldog with wire-rimmed glasses, wearing nothing more than a pair of pants with suspenders and a stained undershirt, welcomed me rather dryly: “It’s about time. I’ve been requesting someone for three weeks now. Ah well, Heil Hitler.” A heavy silver ring gleamed on his hand stretched almost to the level of the lightbulb hanging over his massive head. I recognized him vaguely: in Kiev, the Kommando worked closely with the Secret Feldpolizei; I must have crossed him in a hallway. “I received the assignment order just four days ago, Herr Kommissar. I couldn’t come any faster.”—“I’m not blaming you. It’s those damn bureaucrats. Have a seat.” I took off my shuba and my shapka, put them on my kit, and looked for a seat in the cluttered office. “As you know, I’m not an SS officer, and my group of the Geheime Feldpolizei is under the control of the AOK. But as a Kriminalrat of the Kripo, all branches of the police in the Kessel are under my command. It’s a rather delicate arrangement, but we understand each other. The Feldgendarmen take care of the executive tasks, or else my Ukrainians do it. I used to have eight hundred in all, but there’ve been some losses. They’re divided up between the two Kommandanturen, this one and another one south of the Tsaritsa. You are the only SD officer in the Kessel, so your jobs will be pretty varied. My Leiter IV will explain it all to you in detail. He’ll also take care of your logistics problems. He’s an SS-Sturmbannführer, so unless there’s an emergency, you’ll report to him and he’ll summarize it for me. Good luck.”

Coat and kit under my arm, I went back out into the hallway and found the Untersturmführer: “The Leiter IV, please?”—“This way.” I followed him to a little room cluttered with desks, papers, crates, files, with candles stuck on every available surface. An officer raised his head: it was Thomas. “Well,” he said happily, “it’s about time.” He got up, skirted round the table, and warmly shook my hand. I looked at him, speechless at first. Then I said: “But what are you doing here?” He spread his arms; as was his habit, he was impeccably turned out, freshly shaved, his hair combed with brilliantine, his tunic buttoned up to the neck, with all his decorations. “I volunteered, Max. What have you brought us to eat?” I opened my eyes wide: “To eat? Nothing, why?” His face took on a horrified expression: “You’ve just come from outside of Stalingrad and you haven’t brought anything to eat? You should be ashamed. Didn’t anyone explain to you the situation, here?” I bit my lip, I couldn’t tell if he was joking: “Actually, it didn’t occur to me. I told myself that the SS would have whatever they needed.” He briskly sat back down and his voice took on a mocking tone: “Find yourself a free crate. You should know that the SS controls neither the planes nor what they bring. We receive everything from the AOK, and they distribute our rations to us at the standard rate, which is, right now”—he searched his desk and pulled out a piece of paper—“two hundred grams of meat, usually horse, per man per day, two hundred grams of bread, and twenty grams of margarine or fat. Needless to say,” he went on as he put the paper down, “one could do with more.”—“You don’t look too badly off,” I remarked. “Yes, well, fortunately, some people are more provident than you. And also our Ukrainian boys are pretty resourceful, especially if you don’t ask them too many questions.” I pulled some cigarettes out of my jacket pocket and lit one. “At least,” I said, “I brought some smokes.”—“Ah! You see, you’re not such a simpleton. So, apparently you ran into some trouble with Bierkamp?”—“In a way, yes. A misunderstanding.” Thomas leaned forward a little and shook a finger: “Max, I’ve been telling you for years now to tend to your relations. One day it’ll end badly.” I made a vague gesture toward the door: “You could say it’s already ended badly. And also I should point out that you’re here too.”—“Here? It’s fine here, aside from the grub. Afterward, there will be promotions, decorations, e tutti quanti. We’ll be real heroes and we can parade our medals at the finest soirées. They’ll even forget your little troubles.”—“You seem to be omitting one detail: between you and your soirées, there are a few Soviet armies. Der Manstein kommt, but he hasn’t arrived yet.” Thomas made a scornful face: “You’re a defeatist, as always. What’s more, you’re not well informed: der Manstein isn’t coming anymore; he gave Hoth the order to retreat several hours ago. With the Italian front collapsing, they need him elsewhere. Otherwise we’ll lose Rostov. In any case, even if he had reached us, there wouldn’t have been an order to evacuate. And without orders, Paulus would never have budged. This whole business with Hoth, if you want my opinion, was just for show. So that Manstein could have a good conscience. And the Führer too, for that matter. All that’s to say that I never counted on Hoth. Give me a cigarette.” I handed him one and lit it for him. He exhaled for a long time and threw himself back on his chair: “The indispensable men, the specialists, will be evacuated just before the end. Möritz is on the list—me too, of course. Obviously, some will have to stay to the end to hold down the shop. That’s called being out of luck. The same goes for our Ukrainians: they’re screwed and they know it. It makes them mean, and they take their revenge in advance.”—“You could get yourself killed first. Or even when you leave: I saw that quite a few planes weren’t making it.” He smiled widely: “That, my friend, is an occupational hazard. You can also get yourself run over by a car when you’re crossing Prinz-Albrechtstrasse.”—“I’m happy to see you’ve lost none of your cynicism.”—“My dear Max, I’ve explained to you a hundred times that National Socialism is a jungle that functions according to strictly Darwinian principles. It’s the survival of the fittest or the cleverest. But you never want to recognize that.”—“Let’s just say that I have a different vision of things.”—“Yes, and look at the result: you’re in Stalingrad.”—“And you really asked to come here?”—“Before the encirclement, of course. Things didn’t seem to be going so badly in the beginning. And at the Group, it was getting rather dull. I had no desire to wake up as a KdS in some godforsaken hole in the Ukraine. Stalingrad offered interesting possibilities. And if I get out, it will have been worth it. Otherwise…” he laughed out loud. “C’est la vie.”—“Your optimism is admirable. And what about my own prospects?”—“You? That might be a little more complicated. If they sent you here, it’s because they don’t think you’re indispensable: you’ll agree with me on that. So for a place on the evacuation lists, I’ll see what I can do, but I can’t guarantee anything. Otherwise, you can always get yourself a Heimatschuss. Then we could manage to ship you out on priority. But be careful! Don’t get wounded too seriously; they only repatriate the ones who can be patched up to serve again. Speaking of which, we’re beginning to have quite a lot of experience with self-inflicted wounds. You should see what the guys invent, sometimes they’re very ingenious. Since the end of November, we’ve been shooting more of our own men than Russians. To encourage the others, as Voltaire once said about Admiral Byng.”—“But you’re not suggesting…” Thomas waved his hands: “No, no! Don’t be so gullible. I was just saying that because we were on the subject. Have you eaten?” I hadn’t thought about it since I had arrived in the city; my stomach grumbled. Thomas laughed. “Actually, not since this morning. In Pitomnik, they didn’t offer me anything.”—“People are losing all sense of hospitality. Come, let’s go put your things away. I had you bunk in my room, so I can keep an eye on you.”