A Man Without Breath by Philip Kerr Page B

station; it was a huge icing-cake of a place with four square corner towers and an enormous archway entrance. Like a lot of buildings in Smolensk it was painted green, and either green meant something significant in that part of Russia or green was the only colour of paint they’d had in the stores the last time anyone had thought of carrying out some building maintenance. Russia being Russia, I tended to subscribe to the second explanation.
    A little further down the road, I stopped to consult my map and then turned south down Bruckenstrasse, which sounded promising given that I needed to find a bridge to cross the river.
    According to the map the west and east bridges were destroyed, and that left three in the middle or, if you were a Russian, a log-raft passenger ferry that resembled something from my time at a boys’ summer camp on Rügen Island. On the north bank of the river I slowed the car as I came in sight of the local Kremlin – a fortress enclosing the centre of the ancient city of Smolensk. On a hilltop, behind the castellated red-brick walls built by Boris Godunov, stood the city’s cathedral with its distinctive pepper-pot domes and tall white walls, and looking to my eyes as ugly as an outsized wood-burning stove. At least now I could say that I’d seen it.
    I showed my papers to the military police guards at the checkpoint on the Peter and Paul bridge, asked for directions to the German Kommandatura, and was directed to go south on Hauptstrasse.
    ‘You can’t miss it, sir,’ said the bridge sentry. ‘It’s opposite Sparkassenstrasse. If you find yourself on Magazinstrasse, you’ll have gone too far.’
    ‘Are all Smolensk street names in German?’
    ‘Of course. Makes it a lot easier to get around, don’t you think?’
    ‘It certainly does if you’re German,’ I said.
    ‘Isn’t that what it’s all about, sir?’ The sentry grinned. ‘We’re trying to make it as much like home as possible.’
    ‘That’ll be the day.’
    I drove on, and in the shadow of the Kremlin wall on my right, I went along Hauptstrasse until I saw what was obviously the Kommandatura – a grey stone building with a pillared portico and several Nazi Party flags. An extensive series of German street pointers had been erected in the square in front of this building – many of them on a broken Soviet tank – but the general effect was not one of clarity of direction but confusion; a sentry stood in the middle of the pointers to help Germans make sense of their own signs. The red of the flags on the Kommandatura added an almost welcome splash of colour in a city that was as grey and green as a dead elephant. Underneath the flags a dozen or so soldiers were watching a boy, riding bareback on a spavined white horse, perform a few tricks with the nag. From time to time they would toss a few coins onto the cobbled street, where they were collected by an old man wearing a white cap and jacket who might have been some relation to the boy or possibly the horse. Seeing me, two of the soldiers came over as I pulled up and saluted.
    ‘Can’t leave it there, sir,’ said one. ‘Security. Best leave it around the corner on Kreuzstrasse, next to the local cinema. Always plenty of room there.’
    Three very ragged children – two boys and a girl, I think – watched me park the Tatra in front of some German propaganda posters that were almost as scruffy as they were. I’d seen some poor children in my time, but none as pooras these three urchins. Despite the cold all of them were barefoot and carrying foraging bags and mess tins. They looked as if they had to fend for themselves and were not having much success, although they appeared to be healthy enough. All of this looked a long way from the smiling faces and the soup bowls and the large loaves of bread depicted on the posters. Were their parents alive? Did they even have a roof over their heads? Was it any of my business? I felt a strong pang of regret as momentarily