The Blameless Dead Quotes

“He guessed the NKVD didn’t even know that Waffen-SS men could be identified by the blood-group tattoos on the underside of their left arms, usually near the armpit. Richter didn’t have one. He’d been classed as a non-combatant, as he’d said, at least for a portion of the war. He decided it could be weeks before they found out who he was.
But Volsky’s confidence appeared to have been restored too, now. He said, ‘And the vat of incense?’
‘I had the incense brought from the remnants of a Christmas smoker factory. Silly little hollow figurines invented by toymakers in the Ore Mountains. Cone incense burns down inside the figurines and the smoke emerges from the open mouths. There was a glut of them,’ Richter said, truthfully. ‘Berliners were shocked and saddened after Stalingrad. But they lost the will to celebrate after the Battle of Kursk. They knew the Red Army was coming. The puerile little incense smokers were redundant, together with the incense they were to hold. Except it didn’t go to waste. The vat was taken from a merchant’s house. It’s from Hong Kong, I think.’
Volsky leaned back in his chair. He said, ‘Why go to all the trouble?’
That’s a good question, Richter thought.
He stifled a smile. ‘To mask the smell.”
― Gary Haynes, The Blameless Dead

“The old man walked over to his sandalwood bookshelves. He couldn’t decide whether to read Balzac or Voltaire. Clotilde de Lusignan or Micromégas. His forefinger hovered over both the hardback books before he plumped instead for the eroticism of Goethe’s Roman Elegies. The old man had amassed a lifetime of learning. The killings aside, he led an oddly monastic life.”
― Gary Haynes, The Blameless Dead

“It had had a fragrant element, reminding him of a regular childhood experience, a memory that reverberated like the chimes of a prayer bell inside his head. For a few moments, he pictured the old Orthodox church that had dominated his remote Russian village. The bearded priest was swinging the elaborate incense-burner, suspended from gold-plated chains. It had been the same odour. Hadn’t it? He blinked, shook his head. He couldn’t make sense of that.
He decided, with an odd lack of enthusiasm, that he’d imagined it. The effects of the war played tricks of the mind, of the senses. Looking over his shoulder, he counted all seven of his men as they emerged from the remnants of the four-storey civic office building.
A few muddied documents were scattered on the ground, stamped with the official Nazi Party eagle, its head turned to the left, and an emblem he failed to recognize, but which looked to him like a decorative wheel, with a geometrical design of squares at its centre. Even a blackened flag had survived the bomb damage. Hanging beneath a crumbling windowsill, the swastika flapped against the bullet-ridden façade, the movement both panicky and defiant, Pavel thought.
His men were conscripts. A few still wore their padded khaki jackets and mustard-yellow blouses. Most, their green field tunics and forage caps. All the clothing was lice-ridden and smeared with soft ash. Months of exposure to frozen winds had darkened their skins and narrowed their eyes. They’d been engaged in hazardous reconnaissance missions. They’d slept rough and had existed on a diet of raw husks and dried horsemeat. Haggard and weary now, he reckoned they’d aged well beyond their years.”
― Gary Haynes, The Blameless Dead

“He bent over, flipped open the brass clasps. It had been decades since he’d seen her, so long, in fact, that he sometimes wondered if that time had been imagined. But when he took out the black and white photograph, marred and fading, beneath his old military uniform, it was if it had all happened a few days before.
 ”
― Gary Haynes, The Blameless Dead

“He wound down the window and looked out at the forest, just to be sure, a habit from days long gone. The slight breeze rippled through the darkened treetops. Nothing more. Satisfied, he inhaled the scent of the pines, his nostrils flaring. The smell of citrus orange mixed with tinges of vanilla and ammonia evoked memories, as it always did. He was overcome by a sense of regret so profound that he felt unable to move or speak.”
― Gary Haynes, The Blameless Dead

“Now that little outburst just then was frustration, I’ll admit that much,’ Hockey said. ‘It is both vain and naïve to think that you can judge a person based on a few words spoken, as if the intricacy of their mind can be reduced to a rapid categorization, or worse, a type.”
― Gary Haynes, The Blameless Dead

“His men were conscripts. A few still wore their padded khaki jackets and mustard-yellow blouses. Most, their green field tunics and forage caps. All the clothing was lice-ridden and smeared with soft ash. Months of exposure to frozen winds had darkened their skins and narrowed their eyes. They’d been engaged in hazardous reconnaissance missions. They’d slept rough and had existed on a diet of raw husks and dried horse meat.”
― Gary Haynes, The Blameless Dead