Winter Palace

by T. Davis Bunn

  * * *

  She asked not to have to accompany him to the airport. Jeffrey found he understood. Her love was a very intense, very personal matter. She did not want this first farewell of their married life to be done in public.

  A final hug, a caress, a kiss, a look, a word, and he was out on the street, flagging a passing taxi, feeling enormously excited and tremendously forlorn. Jeffrey gave the driver his Heathrow terminal, sat back surrounded by his cases, and knew a keening sorrow that left his insides as hollow as an empty well.

  The driver granted him a much-needed silence until they were leaving the motorway at the Heathrow exit. Then he asked, “Where you off to today, then?”

  Jeffrey cleared a rusty throat and replied, “Cracow.”

  The driver pushed his battered cap aside and scratched a scalp wired with a few gray hairs. “Amazing what’s tucked away in odd corners of this old world, ain’t it? All these places right out of the spy books, now you can just hop on over. That’s democracy at work for you. Here, and all them new Russian states.”

  “They’re not Russian anymore.”

  “No, well, I wouldn’t put it past them Russkies to want it all back one day. You ever visited over there?”

  “I’m going to the Ukraine for the first time later this week.”

  “That so? Ukraine, Georgia, Uzbekistan—they made a right mess of the Olympics, all them new countries. And them names, enough to make a body think it’s a different planet. Up till not long ago, Lithuania wasn’t nothing more to me than an unlucky ship.”

  The driver pulled up in front of his terminal. “Here you are, then. Hope you get back safe and all in one piece. From the sounds of it, there won’t be no holiday camp waiting for you.”

  * * *

  As soon as the plane lifted from the tarmac, Jeffrey pulled Katya’s envelope from his coat pocket and opened it. Inside was a card featuring a solemn little girl dressed in crinoline and ribbons, her tumbling black curls framing a pair of great dark eyes. Her chubby hand offered out a single red rose.

  Jeffrey blinked hard, opened the card, read, “You love me. That knowledge is enough to carry me over any time, any distance, any worry, any event. Take care, my love. You carry my heart with you. Katya.”

  Jeffrey pressed the card to his chest and turned unseeing eyes toward the airplane window.

  * * *

  Gregor greeted him at the Cracow airport with, “The weather is somewhat unpleasant, I fear.”

  Jeffrey carried his suitcase in one hand and his jacket in his other as he followed Gregor’s swaying gait out of the terminal. “It’s like a steam bath out here.”

  “The longest and harshest heat wave Poland has seen in two hundred years,” Gregor agreed. “And it’s much worse across the border.”

  “Thanks for the encouragement.” He dumped his satchel into the back of the little plastic car. “Still driving the same old Rolls, I see.”

  “It is adequate for my needs,” Gregor replied. “As to the weather, I take it as long as I can stand, then I find urgent work at one of my country orphanages. The heat is as bad, but the air is much sweeter.”

  Their business in Poland progressed on the well-oiled wheels of experience and mutual confidence. Jeffrey threw himself into his tasks with single-minded purpose, using work to soothe the inner ache as best he could. Within forty-eight hours the antiques were purchased, the required paperwork was completed, and the moment of Jeffrey’s departure was upon them.

  That afternoon, they stood before Gregor’s apartment building and waited for Olya, Yussef’s wife, to arrive. Gregor told him a little of what he would find across the border. “The Soviets were even less respectful of privacy than the Polish Communists. Their internal spy network was far more vigilant, even savage. And personal wealth has been illegal for far longer.”

  “So I will be buying mostly small items,” Jeffrey concluded.

  “Items easy to secret away,” Gregor agreed. “That is, unless you deal with former Party officials. They of course seized all the privileges of any ruling despot.”

  “What can you tell me about the Ukraine itself?”

  “Lvov and its surroundings were a part of Poland for almost five hundred years,” Gregor explained, “but little evidence remains today. The borders have shifted back and forth, and when Stalin annexed this territory to the Soviet Union after World War II, he immediately began his program of Russification.”

  “I’ve heard that term,” Jeffrey said.

  “Many have, but few can fathom the horrors it involved. Entire towns were emptied overnight, Poles and Jews and Ukrainians all treated with equal brutality. These former citizens were shipped to Siberia or Samarkand or the borderlands of Mongolia, and replaced by Russians brought in and ordered to make the area their home. Any sign of their former heritage was stripped away. Patriotism to any land save the Soviet Union became a crime of sedition, punished by years of forced labor. As a matter of fact, some of Yussef’s family were Ukrainians who had lived for centuries on Polish soil. Perhaps you can hear from him a little of what transpired.”

  “Yussef is Polish?”

  “No, our young man is pure-blooded Ukrainian, as much as anyone can be in a land that has known only glimmers of nationhood for over seven hundred years. But his mother’s family called Poland home for many generations. His mother has passed away, but her sister—Yussef’s aunt—will be working as your interpreter, I believe. She has been someone quite important to Yussef—a sort of lifetime tutor, I gather, from the little I have been told.”

  “Sounds like you’ve spent some time with Yussef.”

  “Quite a bit,” Gregor agreed. “The young man fascinates me. I fear I have tried his wife’s patience quite severely.”

  Jeffrey recalled the hard-faced woman he had met at the outdoor market that previous winter. Five minutes of translating into Polish for Yussef, from which Katya had translated into English, had brought her to a boil. “That must not have taken long.”

  “No, Olya is not a woman given to idle talk,” Gregor agreed. “In any case, Yussef has remained both independent and principled in a land which has striven to quash such qualities. He could never have been admitted to university, as he vehemently opposed the Communist Party. So this aunt has tried to teach him, and by all indications she has done quite a good job.”

  “I have to admit,” Jeffrey said, “he did not seem so impressive when I first met him.”

  “Do not underestimate our young man,” Gregor urged him. “He has been shaped by a world totally alien to your own. Yet he has managed to hold on to both his honesty and his personal integrity in the face of pressures you can scarcely imagine. He is also most intelligent. He reads and, what is more, he remembers.”

  “A scruffy intellectual.”

  “If you travel this world long enough,” Gregor replied, “you will find that the light of learning burns in the strangest of hearts. I urge you to look beyond the exterior and take full measure of this man.”

  “I’ll try,” Jeffrey assured him. “So when do we get started?”

  “It’s all arranged,” Gregor said. “You will stay this night in Rzeszow, then at dawn cross the border and begin your journey.”

  My journey. “Rzeszow is a border town?”

  “No, it is a good eighty kilometers from the Ukraine. But Przemyśl, the nearest town to the border station of Medyka, is no longer safe. It has become a campsite for newly arrived Russians and Ukrainians. Those who come over for the first time are said to be the most dangerous, because they do not know how to handle the sudden freedom. All the food they can afford is available. And the liquor. There are constant brawls, with some unfortunate found stabbed in the gutter almost every morning.”

  Gregor shook his head. “Przemyśl sounds like the Polish word that means to think again, or to consider very seriously. Some say it was an ancient warning given to all who crossed the border into the Kingdom of Rus.”

  “Sounds as if it still applies toda
y.”

  “Indeed it does. So you shall stay in Rzeszow, where you should be able to have a safe night’s rest.”

  “Should?”

  The old gentleman was unnaturally somber. “Such things as should be taken for granted in this world are no longer certain. Not here. Not now.”

  “It’s not safe to be around these traders?” Jeffrey was immensely glad Katya was not around to hear it.

  “The men and women who make their living through such international trade live in a gray world,” Gregor replied. “What they do is technically illegal, but at the same time the old Communist laws are dropping like trees in a forest being logged. What the traders do is too profitable and too necessary for either the Ukrainian or the Russian officials to close down, so their answer is to squeeze and squeeze and then squeeze even more. The Ukrainian border officials charge fifty dollars for an entry-exit visa. Keep in mind that the current average monthly salary in the former Soviet lands is twelve dollars. Only someone involved in a highly lucrative trading activity could afford to pay such sums just to cross a border. The border guards know this and demand even more in bribes.”

  “A life that doesn’t attract the best kind of person,” Jeffrey surmised.

  “Pirates, most of them,” Gregor agreed. “Our young friend Yussef is truly one of a kind.”

  Jeffrey caught sight of Olya driving a battered automobile up the street. She approached in a cloud of oily fumes and ratchety noise. He said, “His wife more than makes up for it.”

  Gregor waved in her direction and hummed a denial. “Olya chose a man with heart. There is much to be said for a person who is capable of realizing her own weaknesses. It is a rare quality, especially in such a land as hers.”

  Jeffrey watched as the stone-faced woman pulled into a parking space and cut off the motor. He found himself wishing for a chance to see the world through Gregor’s eyes. Just once. Just long enough to know what it meant to have the man’s wisdom.

  “I told them you have only one week,” Gregor continued. “I would rather that Yussef worked you hard for a shorter period than expose you to danger for a longer time.”

  “What danger?”

  “Nothing certain, no specific thing you can put your finger on. Just too many problems, political and economic and social, that could become explosive without warning.” Gregor saw Jeffrey’s worried expression and smiled. “Take comfort that Yussef agrees both that you should be safe and that one week will be sufficient this time.”

  This time. “You trust them, then.”

  “So much that I am willing to place your life in their hands,” Gregor replied soberly. “Still, I shall not cease to worry nor pray until you have safely returned.”

  Olya climbed from the ancient car, stomped over, greeted Jeffrey with a curt nod, and poured out a torrent of words that sounded horribly slurred to Jeffrey’s ears. Gregor responded in a most courtly manner, bowing and murmuring assent every few moments.

  When the woman stopped and turned in dismissal, Gregor said mildly, “You and Olya’s husband will alight from the car at the Polish-Ukrainian border and cross by foot. There will be someone to meet you on the other side, I assume Yussef’s aunt. Olya will cross over with the car.”

  “Alone?”

  “The wait on the Polish side is well-patrolled and not too long. Only two days, she informs me.”

  “And on the other side, coming back into Poland?”

  “Ah. That would depend on whether or not you are a rabbit, as they call the first-timer. A professional will know whom to bribe and how much and should pass through in six or seven days. A rabbit may wait as long as two weeks and still not pass through.”

  Crossing the Ukrainian border by foot did not appeal to Jeffrey in the least. “What about just taking a train?”

  “The border wait would be longer than going over by foot, at least nine hours,” Gregor replied. “This is another holdover from the Communist days. The tracks are different gauges, you see. The Soviets in their wisdom decided that, rather than allowing passengers to change trains and possibly escape detection, they would seal all compartments and then change the train’s wheels.”

  “On every train?”

  Gregor nodded. “And every international border crossing. Yussef’s ways may seem very strange to you at times, my young friend, but I urge you to trust his judgment. He has had a lifetime’s experience at surviving inhuman conditions.”

  Jeffrey risked a brief inspection of the hard lines upon Olya’s face, the determined cast to her eyes, the focused tension that bordered on constant fury. “I hear you.”

  Gregor patted his arm. “If you will take one additional word of advice.”

  “Anything.”

  “Do not fall ill,” Gregor said in utter seriousness. “You would do well to guard your health wherever possible. To test the Russian medical system with an emergency would truly be gambling with the rest of your life.”

  “Katya’s already warned me about the water.”

  “Heed her words well. Drink nothing that has not been taken from a bottle opened before your own eyes or boiled twice within your own sight. And eat only what appears truly clean. And take nothing—”

  “You’re about to get me worried,” Jeffrey protested.

  “Better frightened than ill.”

  Olya barked out an impatient word. Gregor smiled and offered his hand. “You go with my prayers surrounding you, my boy. Take care and return as you are now, only richer. Especially in wisdom.”

  Chapter 16

  The road to Rzeszow was decorated with horse-drawn hay wagons and roadside fruit and vegetable stands. The villages were a stream of tired sameness. Forty years of Communist rule, and the Nazis before them, had ground out all charm and individual character. Summertime greenery added splashes of color to the occasional relic of bygone glories—a palace, a vast cathedral, a stolid ministry outpost. All suffered from universal neglect.

  Yet everywhere, even in the smallest of villages, were signs of new wealth—satellite dishes sprouting from gray-faced apartment buildings like strange metal flowers, houses under construction, lighted storefronts, billboards, Western cars, fresh paint. They stuck out like beacons of hope for a tired and drained people.

  Between the villages, fields bustled with haymaking. Whole families gathered for the task. Grandmothers stood surrounded by tumbling piles of happy infants. Vast spreads of food and drink anchored white swatches of cloth. Crowds of boys and girls labored around horse-drawn rigs while their elders tended machine-driven equipment. Heavily laden carts were pushed and pulled toward distant barns.

  On the outskirts of Rzeszow, great black crows began to flock in the freshly cut fields. Their beaks were the largest Jeffrey had ever seen, fully as broad as his hand and almost as long. Olya noticed the direction of his gaze, and said, “Russki.” She then clasped hands to her throat and made choking sounds. Jeffrey recalled Gregor’s words about a drought and nodded his understanding. The birds had been driven West by thirst.

  Their hotel was a concrete clone of the high-rise hotels all over Poland. The foyer was vast and gloomy and lined with fake marble, the lighting distant and dim, the air stuffy and perfumed with cheap disinfectant. As Jeffrey signed in, a bus pulled up outside and disgorged a milling stream of dirty, exhausted passengers. Again Olya offered her single word of explanation—Russki. The bus idled outside the entrance, dusty and swaying in time to the diesel’s unmuffled clatter. The vehicle listed to one side. The windows were cracked and stuck half-open, the curtains knotted out of the way. Passengers wearily moved toward the reception desk, free hands kneading overworked backs.

  The elevator was loud and cranky and the size of a small closet. Outside his room, Yussef pantomimed for Jeffrey to wash thoroughly. Jeffrey recalled the stories of Russian drought and complied.

  Dinner was taken in silence, save for short spurts of conversation between Yussef and Olya. When their food arrived, they ate with great appetite but little gusto.
Jeffrey had a mental image of them storing up reserves against leaner times ahead.

  When they were finished, he bid them good-night and retired to the cramped confines of his room. He lay in the darkness listening to the sounds of violent revelry that echoed up and down the hallway. Finally he fell asleep, hungry for the feel of his wife’s loving arms.

  * * *

  They started very early the next morning. Each Polish village on the way to the border had its market, and at each either Yussef or Olya pointed and announced, Russki. The markets sprouted wherever space was available—on stairs leading to a church, along a wall, in tiny triangular parks, in the middle of parking lots, even on traffic islands. Each vendor sat or squatted before a patch of bright fabric and displayed what he or she had to sell. It was never very much. A few handmade sweaters. Some swatches of cloth. Bottles of shampoo or individual cigarettes or perhaps a liter or two of vodka.

  Boredom fought with the heat for domination of the borderlands. A seven-kilometer line of trucks and cars sweltered under a cloudless sky. Olya drove them up to the first fencing and waited while Jeffrey and Yussef pulled their bags from the trunk. She then bid her husband a curt farewell, and deftly swung the car back around to return to the end of the line. Piles of refuse lined the roadside, and bodies sprawled wherever could be found a fraction of shade. Kerchiefed babchas tended scrawny children sucking from soda bottles fitted with rubber nipples. Little wooden huts played old disco hits and plied a booming trade in soft drinks and Western snacks. Beefy truck drivers in filthy T-shirts and shorts celebrated successful entries into Poland with beers drained in one long sweaty swallow.

  The border crossing came in four stages. First was a stop at the outpost where arriving trucks and cars had to show their proper documents. Jeffrey and Yussef joined the line of heavily burdened pedestrians and walked on through. Then came the Polish station, a brief glimpse of shade and sultry breeze before the guards passed them along. As they departed, the officer who had inspected his passport muttered something to his neighbor and nodded toward Jeffrey. An American crossing the border on foot. Jeffrey felt eyes on his back as he walked toward the Ukrainian station.