by Joyce Wayne
Chapter Sixteen
Monday
September 3, 1945
Ottawa
At the last moment Svetlana Gouzenko, Igor’s wife, cancelled the Labour Day party. Their baby was sick with the colic and Svetlana claimed she wasn’t up to preparing an elaborate meal with a screaming child in her arms. After Fred Rose rang to ask if she could cover for the cipher clerk’s wife, Sybil bounded up the fire escape to give me the news. Sybil’s apartment was smaller than the cipher clerk’s, but she was flattered to be asked. Zsuzsa promised that their superior hospitality would make up for the lack of space.
I didn’t mind. What did it matter where the party was held? Gouzenko would defect in the early hours of the morning, if he obeyed Zabotin. We had one more night for things to remain as they were. I preferred not to spend it at Igor and Svetlana’s. I’d been to Somerset Street on the few occasions when Zabotin asked me to deliver messages to Gouzenko. It was a grimy mess, overflowing with the boy’s dirty nappies, discarded whisky bottles, piles of half-eaten candy bars and unfolded laundry.
I wondered if the rezident might have engineered the move away from their apartment to allow the couple time to prepare for their escape, or to entrap them if Gouzenko disobeyed him. If Gouzenko, who was now barred from the embassy, left his apartment with his wife and child in toe, Zabotin’s goons would pounce.
I arrived late to the party, after seven. It was sweltering in Sybil’s apartment and the humidity made it feel like a greenhouse. Vine was there, standing alone, in collared shirt and tie, which in public, he was never without. I tried to imagine him in a T-shirt, but it was a distorted picture at best. I stood in the doorway, admiring his smooth peach-like complexion. It was remarkable how little Vine had changed over the years. Even during an Ottawa heat wave, he didn’t wilt. It was only after he returned to Nesvicz that he became an old man.
Zabotin arrived after me, bold and colourful as a peacock, sporting a chest of medals awarded for the bravery. He was a war hero, severely wounded, who’d lived to experience the resurrection of the motherland.
Other comrades swarmed into the tight corners of the flat. Most were in attendance when Igor and Svetlana Gouzenko appeared. The crowd included Sam Carr, the labour leader and J.L. Cohen, known as “the people’s lawyer.” Tim Buck was in fine form and he slapped me on the back as soon as he saw the expression on my face. “You were always a worrier, Freda,” he said. “Don’t overthink it. We’re winning.”
These three men had driven up from Toronto. The Ottawa contingent included Kathleen Willsher, the English woman who worked in the British Embassy and regularly spied on the ambassador for the Soviets. Drew Pearson made an appearance. He was the American journalist who knew everyone in Ottawa that mattered and claimed he “got a kick out of his Commie friends.” In the far corner of the room was Mildred Macepeace, a cipher clerk at the Canadian foreign office. She was a devoted Communist who memorized the contents of the cryptograms wired to her boss, the Minister of External Affairs. Mildred never missed a Party event.
That night her fading blonde hair was tightly curled and her eyelids were covered with thick turquoise shadow, her eyelashes coated in midnight blue mascara. She wore a tight-fitting shift of mauve and green striped silk shantung, which I surmised, was to make her appear exotic and desirable. Mildred’s heart was set on Vine. I didn’t know how he felt about her. As usual, he was impossible to pin down.
The last to arrive was Fred Rose, straight from his Montreal constituency office. He’d brought Raymond Boyer along with him, the soft-spoken chemistry professor who’d figured out how to make RDX, an explosive that was more powerful than nitroglycerin. From Vine, I knew that Boyer was fast working out how to produce RDX in enormous quantities. His research was done at the McGill chemistry lab where he taught, but he sent his findings through Vine to Zabotin, who in turn had Gouzenko encrypt them for Moscow. If dynamite could shake steel until it blew up, RDX was capable of cutting through metal and pulverizing it. Until the Americans dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, the politburo thought the RDX formula was promising. After Hiroshima, Moscow dismissed Boyer, but he remained true to his mission, claiming to Vine that RDX was more humane than atomic destruction.
Sympathetic professors with thirds from Oxbridge were heavily represented at the Labour Day event. The academicians were helping to found Carleton University over on Colonel By Drive. They’d all read about the international brigades of socialists fighting during the Spanish Civil War for the anarchists, and they wished to do their bit for the Revolution. Zabotin couldn’t figure out how to make use of them since they were remarkably naïve English professors who specialized in Romantic poetry while coveting adventures as glorious as those they lectured about to their idolizing Canadians students.
Zabotin enjoyed their company, their deadly serious discussions about the imminent dictatorship of the proletariat. The rezident was particularly fond of Professor Roger Iron and his slender wife with the cherry-red manicured fingernails. In a moment of weakness, Zabotin once told me that her long powerful legs reminded him of Betty Grable’s, the American movie star. The Irons attended Soviet Embassy events whenever they were invited and sometimes ran as couriers for the GRU when no one else was available. In Ottawa, other power couples considered them a debonair duo.
A comparative literature professor from Berlin, Dietrich von Schloss, who’d been on the correct side of the war from the beginning and wished to see the Reds govern all of a divided Germany, pinned me against the wall, trying to extract my telephone number. The muscular Professor von Schloss, with the bulging sensitive lips, was slated to head the new German language department at Carleton University.
In truth, Charles Haines, the portly Assistant Dean of Arts at Carleton University, was more of interest to me than von Schloss. Haines was spying for the Americans and Zabotin suggested I befriend him. His grey stringy locks surrounded a beaming, friendly countenance. When he smiled I could see his nicotine-stained teeth.
“Isn’t it exciting that Harry Truman thinks Stalin is as evil as Hitler?” I asked Professor Haines. Men like Haines enjoyed a good pull on their leg.
“Oh, Miss Linton, how you jest! I prefer being on the winning side of history and I fear your moment may have passed.” The distinguished professor, who was sweating profusely, took a long drink from his tumbler of Canadian Club followed by a draw on his Cuban cigar.
I noticed he was wearing tan loafers without socks, unlike Professor von Schloss, who preferred tightly laced black brogues with diamond-patterned silk stockings. I brought Haines a plate laden with Zsuzsa’s veal rouladen and potato dumplings drenched in gravy, without once meeting von Schloss’ entreating gaze as I passed him by. When the German’s cool hand touched my arm, I pulled away. Professor Haines ate with abandon. He was more interested in his dinner than he was in me.
The young man I secretly found intriguing was a doctoral student in linguistics. Kent Hardman had recently returned from Havana, where he’d spent the summer improving his Spanish by working in the sugar cane fields with Cuban peasants. I knew him from Grierson’s operation at the Wartime Information Bureau, where the linguist frequently translated missives into Spanish for the comrades in the Caribbean. According to Grierson, Hardman also volunteered at a left-wing bookstore on Bank Street called Red Star Books.
I appreciated the way Hardman allowed his russet hair to flow down to his shoulders, as a poet would, and how his sea-green eyes peered directly into mine when we spoke. Hardman was telling me about Cuba, the corruption, the grinding poverty of the peasants, who he believed would eventually rise up against their oppressors. As we spoke I could feel two sets of eyes on me, Vine from one side of the room and Zabotin from the other. I wondered if they were jealous of the graduate student who’d captured my attention.
They needn’t have been alarmed. I understood Hardman. He was a New World thug. I turned to meet Vine and then Zabotin’s gaze. They were my landsmen, my countrymen from the old world. I
rolled my eyes and we silently agreed, as old friends often do. Hardman was the type of political monster we hadn’t encountered before: coldly ambitious and oddly detached, while we’d wished to save our own skins at the same time as rescuing the world. Russia meant something to us. Zabotin couldn’t match Hardman’s need to destroy whatever he touched. He was a walking time bomb: a loner, no family and no real connections. When he had a girl, she never lasted long. After a few months, he was on to the next, each woman like a small Caribbean island waiting to be plundered.
In the crowded apartment, I couldn’t help being curious about this young man as I watched Hardman chatting with Gouzenko. Gouzenko pointed to the brown over-stuffed handbag he’d left by his wife’s feet, but Hardman turned up his nose at the cipher clerk.
Instead Hardman walked toward me and extended his hand. “Labour Day, Miss Linton, the People’s Day. In ten years—less than ten—I expect we’ll witness a display of Communist military might on Wellington Street, right in front of the Parliament Buildings. When we take the country.”
“I’d love to think so, but how exactly are we going to manage that, Mr. Hardman?” I inquired. “Taking the country, that is.”
“Well, armed struggle of course.”
“Led by the Communist Party, no doubt,” I said.
I thought about how Hardman was the type who might thrive under Stalin’s rule. He was the kind of political animal the Party could promote. Maybe it needed him. In 1945, Stalin wanted only one thing: the bomb. Without his own atomic weapon, he’d be under constant threat from the American military. What the Soviets needed weren’t Russian patriots, or idealists, but scientists, technocrats and more yes-men. I was thirty-eight, but my time was over. I recalled the girl I had seen at the Canadian National Exhibition, who’d been shot out of canon and how she landed on her feet. I was so young when I watched her bounce safely onto a net inside the stadium. I’d been thrilled. I wanted to be her. No longer.
I looked around the room that night and shuddered. Sybil had invited two displaced persons from the camps, survivors from Auschwitz, a brother and sister, both mathematicians. They’d snuck into Canada after the liberation. The two kept thanking Sybil and anyone else who’d allow them to tug at their sleeves. Before the war in Berlin, they’d been members of the Communist Party and they were Jews, so they were twice cursed.
I understood that Canadian immigration policy limited the number of Jews entering the country. It was Preston Ellery, in fact, who had pleaded with the government to allow in more. That’s what it was like after the war. People’s loyalties were divided. Ellery was a good man; he’d never have betrayed his country without a heartfelt explanation. He aided the Soviets when the Nazis were winning the war. Now we were all stuck with the choices we’d made before or during the war. Even me, who’d never thought about what joining the Party would eventually mean or how I’d end up in an airless flat in Ottawa on the last sultry night of the summer wondering if a cipher clerk from the Soviet Embassy could destroy my life.
Before dinner, Fred Rose led the group in singing the Soviet National Anthem and then the Communist “Internationale.” Mildred Macepeace was moved, trying to hide her tears behind her dainty handkerchief. Zabotin drank to Stalin’s health with a double shot of vodka as the platters of smoked fish, herring, trout and salmon, were sent around the room. Roast brisket and chicken came next, followed by potato puddings and mounds of peppered, vinegary coleslaw. We all ate so much in the suffocating heat, except Igor and Svetlana, who didn’t touch a morsel. They sat, side by side in silence, their thighs touching, Svetlana’s large handbag at her feet. She was heavily pregnant and looked as if she might faint. I brought her a cold glass of water.
“You don’t look well,” I said as I handed her the glass. “Don’t feel you must stay. No one will mind if you leave.”
“Thank you, that’s very kind,” she said.
“Put an ice pack on the back of your neck when you get home.” I touched her forehead. “You are feverish. Go home.”
The Gouzenkos rose form their seats, excusing themselves, speaking in Russian. When Svetlana approached Drew Pearson, she pushed her handbag at him, but Pearson withdrew and turned away. Igor saluted his boss, Zabotin, and strangely his wife did the same. Zabotin raised his mutilated hand to his temple, and they were gone.
After the couple departed, I removed the white lace collar that accented my dress. The night was so humid. I sunk into Svetlana’s place near an open window. I could feel the lingering heat of her body. From the window, I noticed Zsuzsa, ignoring the crowd, tending to her flower garden as the evening light faded to a sultry grey haze. In her sixties, she was still beautiful, a small woman with pearly skin, slender shoulders and dainty narrow feet.
In her garden, there were yellow roses in second bloom, purple delphiniums, pink hollyhocks and white asters. She watered her plants after the sun set, and tonight was no different. A limestone birdbath sat in the middle of the garden and I could detect the shards of heat lightening illuminating the miniature stone statues of frogs and chipmunks that Zsuzsa had hidden among the tall flower stalks. In a strange country, she had made this place her sanctuary. Like her, we were all displaced people, refugees from Europe with its conflagration of war and revolution.
A flash of lightening illuminated the garden. Soon it would thunderstorm and the earth would be drenched. From my seat near the window, I could see the electricity reflected in the glass eyes of the enchanting limestone animals. Roger Iron’s wife suggested that the party move to the garden where the air was cooler. Hardman followed her, admiring her slim hips and muscular legs.
“More music,” Zabotin ordered. “Louder!” He was drinking and appeared out of control. But I understood him, knowing that it was a performance. If asked, no one at the party would believe that Zabotin had allowed, no encouraged, Gouzenko to expose the Soviet plan to steal atomic secrets from the West that very night.
Sybil lifted the top of the record player nestled inside its wooden compartment. From outside, I could see through a mesh screen to the green tubes burning brightly inside the box. Carefully, she pulled a disc from its paper sleeve to play the Concerto de Arunjuez. I watched Sybil’s expression of pure longing and knew she was dreaming that Fred Rose would spend the night with her and not return to Montreal before daybreak. If I were a true friend I would have offered them my apartment. It would be their final night of tranquility together for many years.
The music wafted through the living room. I continued to sit beside the window, where Vine joined me, leaving Mildred Macepeace to wait impatiently for him. He rarely sat still at parties or even at meetings, preferring to find a corner where he could stand and fidget and observe.
I didn’t care who saw us. I leaned my head against Vine’s shoulder and he kissed me, tenderly on the neck, as he hadn’t done in years, not since we’d lived together in Toronto on Beaconsfield. His lips were cool. We clung to each other in silence for what seemed an exceedingly long time. Finally Vine rose, took my hand and led me to the garden where Zabotin was holding forth on Stalin’s new five-year plan. In the rezident’s presence, Vine stood back and disappeared into the shadows of the treed yard. I followed him out of loyalty, for old time’s sake.
In my way, I cared deeply for them both, Vine and Zabotin, although it’s hard to imagine how I could. These two men from my village. The three of us were all that remained. When I did return to the East, I discovered that not one Jew who’d lived in the shtetl on the day the Nazis invaded was alive. Nesvicz had become their graveyard.
Across the night sky, a great billowing cloud hung low above the trees. My view was of a menacing sky turning to the blackest of blue. Lightening shot across the heavens like an elaborate map charting the pathways of an ancient city. Rain pounded the earth. The music from the record player grew faint. From the building next door I could hear the CBC blaring on the radio. The announcer was informing us that a tornado had been spotted in the Ottawa Valley. It was
heading our way and we were instructed to take cover if it reached the outer limits of the city.
I, who had managed to survive each maelstrom I’d encountered, considered what it would be like to be caught in a tornado, twisted and broken by the velocity of the storm. Each of us destroyed by the churning funnel’s natural might. What would the destruction look like? Zabotin, the war hero, with his uniform torn open to reveal his scarred chest. Sybil and Fred locked in a terrified embrace. Vine and I, mangled by the storm and bloodied by the debris. Would it be easier, to expire that way? Was it better than what we were about to endure if Gouzenko followed through with his plans on the night Zabotin intended to save the world?
I returned to the flat. The lights flickered and went out. The air turned cold as the wind died down. Vine stayed by my side until the storm passed. Then he disappeared. When the power returned, an announcer on the radio said the tornado warning was over. The sharp scent of pine needles from the bush at the edge of the city filled the air. The CBC played a rousing fiddle tune from the backwoods. I dreamed of the silvery vodka never running dry or the music never coming to an end. I suddenly felt like I ought not to leave Zsuzsa’s sanctuary on Florence Street. If we could remain exactly as were, mummified, the world would be kind to us, might absolve us for our inglorious betrayals, or offer us the time to forgive ourselves. But I was wrong. By morning, our lives were to be turned upside down, and I realized that I’d been right. A tornado would have been preferable.
