“You seem to contemplate whether you have to tell me something?”
She locked eyes with Godyastchev. “Yes. To ask why I am here?”
“I’ll answer your question later. Now, tell me how often you go to church? You are a protestant. Right?”
“I’m an atheist.”
“And your father?”
“He doesn’t go to a church either.”
“Going to a prayer service and being religious are two different things, you know?”
“He is not religious. Allow me to ask you again why all this questioning?”
“Easy, easy, Comrade Kriegshammer. Here, I ask questions.” His voice didn’t betray any irritation. “Are you acquainted with Petrushev and Ginzberg?”
“Not in person. But I’ve heard they were—”
“Yes, arrested. They disseminated anti-Soviet propaganda. By any chance, have you noticed who of your fellow students were in contact with them?”
She knew what he was getting at. “No,” she said, at the same time recalling how, on several occasions, she had spotted Rita talking to Ginzberg.
“Well.” He pushed a piece of paper across the table. “Here, you sign that you won’t divulge any information about our conversation.” He waited till she read the document and wrote her signature, then on a slip of paper, which he tore from his notepad, he scribbled something. “This is my phone number in case you have any information to share.” He looked at her from behind his glasses. She guessed she recognized something like approval as though he was sure that was not their first and last conversation. “You may go, Comrade Kriegshammer.”
Ulya breathed a sigh of relief and hastened to the auditorium, urged by the school bell ringing.
“I had to fight off people to keep a reserved place in the cafeteria. Where have you been?” Rita whispered as she moved aside to let Ulya take her place beside her on the bench in the lecture hall.
“I wasn’t hungry and went out to have a gulp of fresh air.”
“Attention, comrade students!” The lecturer banged the pulpit with his baton. “Today we continue on the topic of the political economy of Socialism. As our leader Comrade Stalin said in his speech at . . .”
But the lecture wasn’t on Ulya’s mind. The talk with the NKVD senior lieutenant left an unpleasant residue. What, do they expect me to become a stoolie? In my own family? Or denounce my fellow students? And instantly an unsettling thought surfaced. What has Rita in common with Ginzberg?
Her friend nudged Ulya. “Hey, stop daydreaming.”
“I’ll look at your notes later.” With her photographic memory, she could allow herself to be distracted.
“Next time, you make the notes,” Rita scoffed.
While making her way to the ferry after the last lecture, Ulya felt a strange presence over her, like a cloud or a shadow. She could not help but look around while hastening to the pier yet saw only the usual citizens—the students like herself; young mothers with prams or with older children; men and women rushing on their business; teenagers, noisy and carefree.
On the boat, crossing to her town on the opposite shore of the Volga River, Ulya peered into the swamp-green waves being cut by the smart vessel for a while, before turning her gaze to the passengers. Her eyes scanned them to read their ever-somber faces. Today, those were mostly familiar people: the elderly woman with a wicker basket covered with an embroidered cotton cloth had new shoes, which seemed to trouble her since she tried to kick them off her heels; the fidgeting teenager with his ever unkempt starch shirt seemed uncomfortable with his shaved head, now and again touching it with his hands as though wondering where his hair had gone; and the old, pockmarked man of about fifty. She would prefer not to have him staring at her with his deep set, shifty eyes, lewdly licking his lips till wet.
Who were all these people? What was on their minds? How did they feel about Lenin and Stalin? Did they idolize them? Why did some citizens disappear without a trace, while others seemed to justify the actions of the authorities? Even glorified it—at least as the newspaper articles and radio broadcasts claimed. Did she belong to the latter? The arrest of two Komsomol members from her course was the first instance that cast a cloud of doubt over her. No. No. No. She snapped at herself mentally. How could she ever question the rightness of the Soviet power? No doubt, they committed some punishable crime.
2
Natasha
September 3, 1938
Vitebsk, a city in the Socialist Soviet Republic of Byelorussia, about 1200 km north west from Saratov
Natasha was among the last to slip through the Machine Tool Plant’s checkpoint, taking a risk at being stopped and then reprimanded in public for coming late to work. In the women’s locker room, she changed into her overalls and stepped through the door into the vast hall of the workshop. At the entrance, a group of her female colleagues discussed something in hushed voices, nudging each other, suppressed peals of laughter coming from them.
“Natasha, come here.” Elvira waved her hand. “We have news for you.”
Natasha threw a pointed look at the clock above the door with hands nearing seven. “What happened?”
“Have you seen the new Komsomol secretary? Eyes he has! Big!” Her own eyes expanded. “Brown like chocolate.”
“And a handsome one,” one woman added.
“Not without a flaw,” another giggled.
“Shut the hell up, Halina, a slight limp doesn’t spoil a man,” Elvira retorted.
“And why is the news for me?” Natasha knit her brows.
“But you are the only one who is single.” Someone heaved a sigh.
“Pfui. I’m done with men.” Stepan’s image flashed in Natasha’s mind. His forget-me-not flower eyes, his mouth with its constant smirk but so sweet and ravishing when he kissed her, his strong arms crushing her every time they made—She almost choked at the recollection. A year had passed since that late summer evening in 1937, but the ache of that day crept back into her chest.
A voice jerked her from her musings. “What’s wrong with you?” Kirillov aka Pavlovich, their best turner, stared at Natasha.
She loathed the ever-present look of sorrow in his eyes. The man of her father’s age, with the large family—children from two to twenty and his ever-pregnant wife—what did he want of her?
“I’m fine.” She spoke over her shoulder in reply. While she headed to her milling lathe, she felt the gaze of Anton, their sixteen-year-old apprentice, and turned to see his habitual smirk. Like Stepan’s. Again, her chest grew heavy with a familiar ache.
“Ah Pavlovich, Pavlovich. The old geezer. Can’t take his eyes off you.” Anton peered at Natasha and the smirk slowly vanished from his face. “Are you all right?”
“Mind your business.” She turned to her lathe and pressed the button. The machine’s chattering with occasional little squeaks lulled her into the memory, which still pressed on her heart. For the hundredth time, she saw in her mind the stamped envelope on the kitchen table as she entered the house that day. She still could recall her feeling of excitement—The letter! From Stepan!—and see herself grab the kitchen knife and with the tip of its blade get underneath the paper where it stuck out and with a jerk, open it. A double folded piece of paper fell on the floor. She picked it up and froze for an instant before unfolding it, confident it was the so long-awaited proposal, the logical result of her three-year-long and faithful relationship with Stepan. She could swear to God she did not kiss another man even once in those years. But now, she would prefer not to remember how she was sweating and panting in the thrilled anticipation as she opened the letter.
Natasha! I know it’s not honorable of me, but the only excuse I can find for myself is that you must remember I have never made any promises.
Her facial muscles contracted in ache as she thought back to how she sank onto the chair and whispered to herself, “Why? Was I not a good lover for you?” and how tears rolled down her cheeks. And how painful it was to agree that Lyuba, a
prude friend of hers, was not at all wrong when she warned her against Stepan.
“Hey, Natasha!” She jerked at Pavlovich’s cry. “You manufacture defective tiles.”
She switched off the power and peered at the metal swarf that had accumulated on the floor around her feet then at the tiles, which were drilled asymmetrically.
“Let me have them. Otherwise, the foreman will penalize you.”
Without saying a word, she turned on the lathe, and, willing herself to stop ruminating the past, returned her attention to her work.
3
Ulya
September 20, 1938
Saratov, Engels
There was something familiar in the young man’s figure in a military uniform strolling in front of her. “Gleb!” In several steps, she closed the distance between them before he fully turned.
“Ulya!” He wrapped his arms around her shoulders.
She stiffened, overtaken by an unfamiliar feeling like repulsion. “Haven’t seen you for ages.”
“Yeh, recently graduated from a military school. Came to spend several days with my mother and in hopes of meeting you and all the guys. How are you, girl?” Holding her at arm’s length, he studied her face. “In the three years since I last saw you, you’ve developed into a pretty young woman. Look at you, now you are taller than I. When I left, you were up to here.” He raised his right hand up to his forehead.
“Well.” She examined his uniform. “A tank man?”
He nodded in agreement. It didn’t escape her attention that his jaw tensed, and a cloud seemed to appear on his face, then vanished. “You tell me about yourself. My mother wrote you study at the Saratov University. Law School?”
“Yes.”
They reached the fence to their “enclosed” yard formed by the semidetached and little detached houses, and Gleb opened the gate for her. “Let me have lunch with Mama and maybe in the evening we can meet?”
“Under our tree?”
“But where else?”
At six in the evening, she bumped into her father on the threshold. “I am in, and you are out. Where to?”
“Gleb is here. To visit his mother. Did you know he studied at a tank school? He looks so fancy and beautiful in his uniform. I am to meet him under our tree.” As she was about to turn the doorknob, she saw her father’s eyebrows drawing together.
“You better—”
“Better what?”
“Ulya, you are a grown-up person and smart enough to understand some things.” He touched his chin, looking downward as though contemplating how to continue. “Never mind. You go. Go.”
“No, Vati—Dad. What things?”
Looking away, after a moment’s consideration, he said, “Gleb’s father was executed.”
“Justified? Was he an enemy of the people? Like the ones who are now being arrested?”
“Ulya! Stop. I beg you not to doubt the decisions of the Party.”
“I don’t.”
“Please, don’t discuss it with anybody, even with . . . people you think you trust.”
“I won’t, Vati.” She waited till he disappeared into his study and stepped through the door.
Gleb was already at their meeting place. His eyes lit up when he saw her approaching.
Before sitting at the plank table across from him, she reached up to rip a dry, brown lilac stalk and brought it to her face.
He stroked the smoothness of the table. “Tell me, Ulya, how was it here after I left? I missed you.”
“I missed you too. Especially that after you left, they drafted Wolfy and like you, he never showed up; Otto’s parents moved to Saratov, and he dropped off the map. I don’t even know his new address. Only Arkashka is still here. For some time, we used to meet to talk, to play a game of cards, yet after he was appointed to his plant’s first Komsomol secretary, I don’t see him often.”
“I see.” Gleb’s mouth twisted. “What a great time we had. For me, it will always be associated with this tree and the things we’ve done. We, the bunch of bandits.”
They went on reminiscing about their youngsters’ pranks, interrupting each other with, “Do you remember . . .?” “But how about . . .?” “Can you imagine . . .?”
Recalling an episode many years ago, Ulya chuckled.
“What?”
“Remember how once we sat on the branches and Wolfy made himself comfortable in the elbow of the limbs? And how one branch broke, and he fell off and couldn’t play cards until his fractures healed?”
“We all rocked with laughter but you.” For an instant, Gleb’s expression darkened. “That was the best time in my life . . . before they came to take my father.”
Ulya stretched her hand and put it on Gleb’s.
“Did you know?”
Her eyes meeting his, she bobbed her head.
“How have they ever accepted me into the military school, I wonder?”
“But why wouldn’t they?”
He let his hand slide from under hers. “Don’t you see what is happening in the country? Mass repressions. Family members of the detainees are often deprived of their rights.” After a moment’s silence, he added, “My father was a real Bolshevik, fought in the Civil War.”
“Do you think his—” she stopped, not finding a word—“was it unjust?”
“Yes, indeed. His offense, if an offense it was, was that during one of his lectures, he said the German people were strong and their army properly equipped. Was it a crime?” There was something unstated in his eyes. “But for them, of course . . . it was.”
She recognized the bridled anger in his voice, which he tempered with visible effort. “Just for that?” A forced smile that did not part his lips told her he regretted what he had said.
“By the way, how is your father? Still the chief editor of Nachrichten?”
“Yes, he is, and all is well.” She told Gleb about her father and her studies and how much she was looking forward to working as a legal consultant after her graduation, craving to tell him about her conversation with the NKVD man. No, she better not. Her rational mind reminded her she had signed the non-disclosure agreement.
“Gle-eb!” Polina Abramovna’s voice interrupted their strained silence.
“I should go.” He got up. “Good night.”
She saw him taking two steps toward his house then stop. “Busy tomorrow?”
“I have lectures till four.”
“And after the lectures? Let’s go somewhere together.”
“At four ten, at the University entrance then.” Watching him close the door behind him, she heard a little voice inside her head warning that she, perhaps, should have found a reason for not seeing him again. Was Gleb one of those guys the senior lieutenant Godyastchev was interested in? And at once, she rejected the unworthy thought. Even if . . . Why punish the son for the sins of the father?
The next day, in an instant she was outside, she spotted Gleb pacing along the sidewalk before the entrance. In civilian attire, no one would distinguish him from other students who crowded for a smoke, bumming cigarettes from each other, or hastening away from the building.
He greeted her on the bottom of the stairs. “Here, the tickets to the circus. Begins at six.” Gleb waved two bluish strips of paper in front of her face, slipping his other arm through Ulya’s.
To free herself from the uncomfortable feeling, she offered to stop for a glass of frizzy water and asked for a cherry syrup. A little later, they walked on through the center of the city, talking and laughing, and Ulya couldn’t remember when she felt herself so much at ease with another human being. Even her best friend, Rita, was sometimes annoying with her incessant, meaningless girls’ chatting.
Watching elephants, tigers, the clown, talking dogs, and the tightrope walkers, Ulya thought how enjoyable it could be away from her textbooks, the shooting stand exercises, parachute jumping, and ceaseless doubts that plagued her mind after the senior lieutenant Godyastchev questioned her. Or interrogated her?
They returned to Engels on the last boat and then sat for another hour under the tree talking, Gleb chain smoking. He entertained her with stories of his tanks and how claustrophobic he first felt inside, about his friend Slava and a “Komsomol stoolie” who was planted in the flat they rented after being promoted to lieutenant. He laughed at it, but all of a sudden stopped, his face acquiring that touch of grief she’d noticed in him before.
“Why are you so sad, Gleb?”
He answered in such a low voice she had to strain to make out the words. “I have a foreboding.”
“Can you tell me more?”
He didn’t answer, just shook his head.
Maybe, he needs time to learn to trust me, she realized and resolved to wait.
The following days, she kept thinking of him and now, ironing her and her father’s shirts, she again caught herself wondering what it was he didn’t want to share with her.
A knock interrupted her reflections, and how unexpected it was that Gleb stood at the threshold. “I’m leaving for my place of service. I came to say goodbye.”
“Will you write to me?”
He took her hands in his. “I will. But if you don’t hear from me for a long time, know either they did it to me, or I did it to myself.”
He pulled her into his embrace then spun around and made toward the exit.
Caught off guard, facing the closed door, she said, “Gleb.”
4
Natasha
September 20, 1938
Vitebsk
“Dear comrades! Attention!” The plant’s new Komsomol secretary held his right hand up.
The noise lessened just a bit.
“Let me open our meeting and start by introducing myself. Sergey Vladimirovich Posokhov. I was the second secretary at the Minsk University until recently, and I am glad now we can work together to strengthen the Komsomol and for the well-being of our folk and our socialist country . . .”
The Road to Liberation: Trials and Triumphs of WWII Page 64
