by Joyce Wayne
Before the war, more than four thousand Jews resided in Nesvicz. Now the Jews had disappeared from our shtetl. We knew the Red Army managed to push back into Nazi-occupied territory in the Pale of Settlement, but that was all we were told. No one actually knew then how many Jews remained in our dark corner of Eastern Europe or the extent of the damage. In my mind, I could visualize Nesvicz as it had once been. A sleepy place hidden from the world by its quaint traditions, its own petty feuds, its own minuscule victories. Perhaps my family was among the survivors and I would be able to find them and bring them back to Canada with me.
From time to time, because of our shared homeland and because we understood each other’s disenchantment with the Revolution, Zabotin and I dared to partake in little jokes at the Bolsheviks’ expense. Secretly, to each other, after moments of passion, when I spread my black hair across his broad chest, we spoke in whispered tones of the appalling mess Stalin had made of the people’s regime. How could Lenin’s brilliant plan have gone so horribly wrong?
Zabotin could read my mind. “You wish to return to Europe, you silly woman.”
“I do,” I admitted. “However small the chance is to find my family, it’s worth the gamble.”
“Aren’t you finished with gambling?” he asked me.
“I’d hoped to be, to stay right here in Ottawa. But I can’t. It is my duty to find them, no matter the chances anyone is alive.”
Zabotin understood. He’d tried to save his own parents during the German invasion and failed.“ After Stalin and the Allies divide Europe, perhaps I could arrange it, a trip for you. Party business. I suppose you deserve it, after everything you’ve done for us.”
He’d admitted it, I thought to myself. After everything I’d done for the Party.
Now that the war was ending, I was down to a just few men: One high-placed director at the Wartime Information Bureau, a gentleman who didn’t resist. A few journalists covering the bickering in Parliament were still eager to accompany me to the Château Laurier or a dreary hotel room on the other side of the Ottawa River, in Hull. My work was slowing down. Zabotin could afford to send me back to Russia for a few months, perhaps for a year. It would take that long to find them, my family.
Instead of talking, he and I strolled along the canal and crossed the iron lift-bridge until we came upon a plain wooden bench in the little park at Kent Street. We sat together, drenched in the declining orange sun. A handsome couple, I suspect, if anyone cared to admire us.
Well-nourished boys in ball caps played catch. Young mothers wheeled their infants in canvas-quilted prams. We didn’t need to say a word. We were both thinking the same thing: the war had hardly touched these people.
Chapter Two
It was easily the loveliest day of the year. Surrounded by a million colours of green, only the tips of the tallest trees swayed in the rush of a gentle breeze. Birds were chirping, some insistent, others lackadaisical. A beam of light shone on the wide trunk of a white birch as if the hand of an angel was preparing the tree for the autumn certain to come. I broke off a perfectly shaped leaf from the ash tree beside us and pressed the caressing swatch of green against my cheek. A tiny bird with a blue breast and grey markings hopped before me. Grey squirrels romped from high branch to branch. How daring these little creatures were.
I wanted to be like the Canadians, and so did Zabotin: to be free of the demons of Nesvicz. Slowly, news was trickling out about what had happened when the Nazis invaded. Young mothers and their children, like the ones who shared the park with us, were hauled out of their homes and shot.
“You won’t find them,” Zabotin said, breaking the silence, sensing what I was thinking. “Nobody will, not even you. There are mass graves across Russia and Poland. What are you going to do? Dig them up?”
I might have accepted his brutal truth, but I couldn’t allow myself to give up before I even started. “There are records. Even the Soviets keep records of the dead.”
“You believe so?” Zabotin shook his head. “Nesvicz will end up on the Polish side of the border. No one remains to record the names of the dead.”
“Yes, but Poland will be Poland in name only, no matter how much the Poles wish to remain free,” I said. “There will be records of who died and where. Even if I must go to Germany to find the reports. No matter where Poland ends up, with us or the West, I’ll search for them.”
“Always one step ahead,” Zabotin said. “But this time you might be outsmarting yourself.”
How he knew me, this man, this Cossack count from my village. How utterly strange that we would end up sitting on a park bench in the capital of Canada, discussing the chances of discovering my lost family, or of finding the dead.
“Stay here with me, no?” he implored. “It’s safer. Don’t take so many chances. It’s not worth it. Not now.”
If I could love this man from minute to minute, day in and day out, not just when he held me in his arms, would my life be enveloped in happiness, just as we were encased by the glowing orange sun?
Zabotin stretched his long legs and raised the hem of his pants. “The sun. I love the sun. It makes me feel decadent.”
“I love it most in winter,” I said. “When the ground is white, frozen like thick glass, and the sun is as cold as the glistening moon.”
“Canada, it’s hardly a country, this place,” he said. “More a huge ice rink, where no one ever falls down. Not like at home.”
“I heard the prime minister speaks to his dead mother through a spiritualist,” I giggled. “Perhaps I could pose as Madame Blavatsky and entice him to tell me his secrets.”
For a moment, Zabotin thought I was serious. “What secrets?” he asked, but I remained silent. Then he said, “I wonder what the commissars would think if they could see us now? Beria, what would he do to us?” He clasped my hand in his good one, as I began to imagine out loud what Beria’s reaction would be.
“I bet he would think that you are doing your duty as the rezident at the embassy, diligently pumping me for information from my distinguished sources,” I told Zabotin. “He would think that you are feeding my vanity as a woman and my avarice as a Jew, fanning the flames with Swiss chocolates and French perfume now that the war is over. Molotov probably wonders if that bachelor Mackenzie King is a homosexual or if it’s worth trying to get me into 21 Sussex Drive, disguised as a palm reader.“
“Enough, Zabotin said. “Shame on you, Freda.”
“Beria would also wonder how you decide what trinkets to give me and which to present to your lovely wife,” I couldn’t resist adding.
Zabotin did not smile. Everyone at the embassy knew how entirely unhappy the couple were. At night the servants overheard Lydia, his wife, throwing figurines at him. Apparently one evening, she broke a statue of Lenin over Zabotin’s head.
“Don’t be smug,” he reminded me. “The world is a dangerous place for the likes of you and me. For months your feckless comrades haven’t brought me a single useful piece of information about the formula for the atomic bomb. Klaus Fuchs is giving us much more at Los Alamos than Nunn May is at Chalk River, even though security in New Mexico is ten times what it is here. If Harry Vine doesn’t come up with new equations very, very soon, I shall be re-called to Moscow. Where will you be then, my darling Freda?”
How could I answer? By putting Zabotin’s good hand between my legs or sticking my sweet tongue deep inside his mouth? Where would I be without him?
“Without you, Nikolai, I would be a withered leaf buffeted in a blustery winter storm. I would be nowhere,” I said.
For the last six years, along with doing my duty for the Party and the worldwide cause of socialism, I‘d been working as a correspondent for TASS, the Soviet news agency. The other Russian journalists knew who I really belonged to: the GRU, as a Soviet military intelligence operative run by Nikolai Zabotin. It was acceptable behaviour in our little newsroom. Everyone was doing his or her duty to defeat the Nazis and fortify the motherland. Even the Can
adian newsmen I drank beer with at the Press Club suspected me, but Russia had won the war on the Eastern Front. Canada and the Soviet Union would carry their hard-fought victory into this new post-war world. We would be the best of friends.
The TASS office was in the same building on Slater Street as the Wartime Information Bureau, a grey concrete structure not unlike the apartment buildings Stalin built in Moscow before the war. My post was to stay close to John Grierson, the director and top man at the bureau, to ensure that his documentaries in support of the Soviet Union were revered by the Centre.
As I looked over at Zabotin’s fine profile, I knew how quickly I could be betrayed by a twist of his wrist. Although a naturalized Canadian, it would take little effort to deport me to Eastern Europe within days. Without a Canadian passport, I would be sent to a displaced person’s camp or back to my village. But who would be there to meet me in Nesvicz? Ghosts.
“I want you to attend the party at Gouzenko’s on Monday night,” Zabotin said in his official voice.
How I’d wished to keep it informal between us that early evening under the simmering orange sun. “Must we talk about that grubby little cipher clerk Gouzenko and this Labour Day affair for the Party faithful?”
During embassy soirees in winter, the Soviets kept expenses down by ordering that the heat in the public rooms stay so low that we needed to wear our coats during the coldest months. But not Gouzenko. He was always sweating. On a typical day, Igor Gouzenko wore a tightly cut, permanently wrinkled, shiny suit. And when he removed his shoes to dance the kazotskys, there were holes in his yellowed socks.
“Why is it at the Gouzenkos’ stuffy little apartment on Somerset? It’s such a dreary place,” I said. ”Why there and not at the embassy?”
“Igor is an amusing fellow,” said Zabotin. “I don’t wish to host a celebration in the embassy. Too many eyes on us. Why not enjoy ourselves for once?”
“Are you hoping to catch Gouzenko out? Has he broken the rules and displeased you?” I asked. There was always a possibility with Zabotin, always a motive or a directive from the GRU in Moscow that prompted his behaviour. Besides, I’d never liked Gouzenko. His ingratiating manner was fraudulent. If Zabotin had already decided to turn on Gouzenko, I wouldn’t be the one to stop him.
“Lydia’s in bed with a migraine. The drapes have been drawn for days,” he informed me. “She longs to return to Moscow.”
“How sad for Lydia. And for you.” My lover was tall, more than six feet, and I often felt that he towered over me like the Zabotin castle had haunted me during my childhood in Nesvicz. “Must we deceive ourselves so, Nikolai? Why do you never talk about the past? About the village?”
“We have no past, my dear. Only the present,” he replied and looked away.
Zabotin checked his watch and scanned the little park where we sat. The orange sun was beginning its slow descent in the sky and a cooling breeze was coming off the resplendent Ottawa River, only a few kilometres to the north. Soon it would be autumn. At night there was a chill in the air. I’d covered myself with a woollen blanket the night before last, rather than the crocheted throw I’d kept on my bed all summer. By October, the city would be sprinkled with sparkling white snow, the children dressed in plaid wool coats and brown leather galoshes, ready to play. For me it would soon be the same ethereal smell of the cold, the same snow-light in the air from the blue snow squeaking underfoot. If I made it to the winter, I must buy myself a pair of flat-soled boots to guard against slipping on the ice.
“Yesterday the GRU ordered me to send Gouzenko home. Wednesday, a week from today, is his last day in the cipher room. Thursday morning he and his wife and their child will be on a plane to Moscow,” Zabotin said, turning toward me again. He’d been calculating whether to tell me about Gouzenko’s misfortune or allow me to find out on my own.
“What has he done? Why so quickly?”
“Exactly. You tell me why so quickly? Last time the Director asked for him back, I persuaded Moscow to allow me to keep him here. I enjoy the little fellow. He’s jolly. A quick study too, as the Americans say.”
“I’ve never liked him. To me, he is nothing,” I replied. “If he didn’t flatter you, you’d have complied with the Centre’s orders earlier. You should send Gouzenko back immediately.” I was worried for Zabotin. He was above the law in his own mind, playing tricks with the Director and his henchmen back home, enjoying himself to the fullest in Ottawa. I was terrified that he would pay for his insouciance.
“So harsh, my darling.” But I could tell that Zabotin was concerned. We knew each other that well, knew the face of trouble. If it came to pass that Zabotin was recalled to Moscow, as he never tired of reminding me, I’d be at the mercy of his replacement at the embassy. “I’ve also been cabled from Moscow to organize materials on the bomb,” he said. “The Director wants the technical process, drawings and calculations for making an atomic bomb. He wants an actual sample of plutonium. He won’t wait any longer, now that the Americans have used it. That’s why I’m sending your Harry Vine to Chalk River. Perhaps the Canadian scientists might finally have come up with the equation or at least copied enough of it from the Americans for our physicists to make sense of it in Moscow. This time Alan Nunn May must deliver the goods. No more stalling. Only a one gram sample of plutonium will satisfy Moscow.”
The few boys loafing about in the park in the encroaching twilight were nonchalantly rolling cigarettes.
“Will you still ask Gouzenko to encrypt the messages you transmit about Nunn May’s findings? Are you certain you can trust him? Who takes the sample back to Moscow, Gouzenko or Vine?” I didn’t want Vine involved, any more than I wished Zabotin to be in trouble with the Centre. Although the two men disliked each other, I believed then, as I do now in Chernobyl, that my feelings for them held us together and protected us. We needed each other.
“Why do you insist on asking about Nunn May and his plutonium if you don’t wish to be in harm’s way? I’ve already told you more than you need to know.” Zabotin was fidgeting. “These scientists are prima donnas. Unreliable. Fussy. Nunn May is working for us, and it makes him edgy. He’s English, he has no scruples and is unlike Klaus Fuchs at Los Alamos. Fuchs saw first hand what the Nazis did to Germany, to his own parents. His father was tortured and his mother committed suicide. The German is more reliable.”
I was surprised that Zabotin would speak so openly about Klaus Fuchs. He was the GRU’s main source at Los Alamos. In June, on Zabotin’s orders, Vine had travelled to New Mexico to meet with Fuchs outside the confines of the Manhattan Project’s grounds. After he returned, Vine informed me that the formula was complete; the Americans were prepared to drop the bomb on the Japanese, on twelve more cities, if that’s what it took to make them surrender unconditionally. Fuchs sent drawings of how to build the bomb with Vine who handed it over to Zabotin upon his return to Ottawa. Now Zabotin was claiming he needed more—a sample of plutonium and exact instructions about how to ignite it. Only then would the package satisfy Moscow. Finally the Soviets would be able to make their own bomb.
Although I should have paid more attention to Zabotin’s words—he was cursing Nunn May and the British for their elusive ways—my mind began to wander. I couldn’t face thinking about how close the Soviets were to making the bomb and what they might do with it once they had it. I didn’t want to recall the pictures of the destruction in Hiroshima. If Moscow acted without hesitation, as the US had, there would be no end to the destruction.
I forced myself to consider lighter subjects. That is what I did to try to remain sane.
I had yet to meet Nunn May, but I liked British men, their fine manners and well-cut suits. The ones I knew had attended Oxford or Cambridge. They could recite Wordsworth and the war poet Wilfred Owen, and when they did, their defenses came down. It was easier and more pleasant seducing an Englishman than it was a White Russian, although I’d known plenty of both. The English were lazy lovers, they took their time, unlike my Russi
ans, the ones who I knew in my bones. Always in a hurry, the Russians.
Zabotin sat, not talking, reviewing his options. If he failed to gather the intelligence on the bomb that the Director wanted, he was certain to be recalled to Moscow, imprisoned in the Lubyanka for failing to deliver the formula for the A-bomb.
When Zabotin noticed that I wasn’t paying attention to him, he shook his gloved hand in the air as much to remind himself as me that it was best to stop talking about highly classified operations. Quickly he brought my fingers to his mouth once again and kissed them.
The temperature was dropping.
I pulled away. I was suddenly chilled and my spine tingled. “If only there was a safe place for ghosts to congregate.”
Zabotin placed his gloved hand on my breast.
“You are delicious. How do the red-blooded Yankees say it? All the fellas are crazy about you, even when you talk nonsense.”
I brushed his arm away, careful not to hurt his wounded hand. Zabotin was obsessed with Americans and their suggestive phrases. Their languorous ways, lingering around the bar at the Château Laurier, where international spies and foreign diplomats congregated in Ottawa after dark. That was what he enjoyed most about his posting.
And if I was being truthful, it’s what I found best about being in Ottawa during the war. It wasn’t the safety, although I celebrated that. It was being caught in the drama of how the war would end. I savoured the feeling that I was a part of the battle in the greatest confrontation of history. It made me feel important and less helpless. I didn’t want it to end in humiliation or failure, with our circle of operatives disbanded, or worse, punished for our crimes. If Stalin dropped an atomic bomb on innocent civilians, it was only a matter of time before we, the Soviet operatives and illegals, would be blamed.
I’d never intended it to go so far. I don’t think any of my Canadian comrades did. Vine and I became involved with the Party because we believed we were on the right side of history. After Nesvicz, after Vine and I arrived in Canada, we wanted more, we no longer wished to be the little people of the Pale. Life in Canada showed me that our shtetl had been untouched by modern times. There were dybbuks and evil spirits that haunted the corners of our crookedly constructed rooms back home. When I became a Canadian, I stopped believing in devils. Or at least, I thought I had outrun their evil eye until the war was over and I learned of the extermination camps, of the mass graves.
