Dancing Under the Red Star (19 page)

The first man spoke: “Citizen Werner…” As soon as I heard the term
citizen,
I knew he was my enemy and I was his victim. Under normal circumstances, his greeting would have been “Comrade Werner.”

“You are under arrest.” I didn’t grasp what he meant at first; it didn’t entirely sink in. This was like the nightmare when you can’t run or scream. He glared at me, pointing to a spot on the floor, and barked, “Now stand right here and don’t move.”

The two of them began to search the room, tearing up the bedcovers, dumping out boxes, turning everything upside down. I tried to talk to them. “Bu-but what did I do? What is this all about? I didn’t do anything! I am innocent,” I pleaded. They paid no attention to a word I said and continued to ransack our apartment, looking high and low and for what…I had no idea. I had nothing of interest to them, nothing at all.

I looked at Mama. Her normally reserved features were twisted with anger and fear. She cried, “What are you looking for? There is nothing here that concerns you. My daughter is innocent. She hasn’t done a thing! Can’t you just leave us alone? Haven’t you done enough damage already?” Again the strangers gave no sign of having heard her. An awful feeling of déjà vu came over me. This was just like the day seven and a half years earlier when they had taken Papa.

I was more concerned for Mama than for myself. First they had taken away her loving husband and now her only child, her daughter—me. It was more than a person should have to bear. I would gladly have died for her right there if it could have spared her from suffering.

But me? I was outraged. Didn’t they know that I was, I mean,
I am
an American citizen, from Detroit? That I have been a champion swimmer and track star right here in Gorky? That I could be an acrobat or a ballerina and could eventually become a doctor? That I had dug trenches to protect our city and had loved a Russian pilot? Didn’t they understand or care?

One of the thugs said to Mama, “You can pack her a small bag—just some underwear, a few clothes, a toothbrush, and a comb. That is all.” Mama had been trying hard to control herself, but now she began to shudder and cry. As she stumbled and collapsed over the couch, I ran to hold her. With my arms around her limp body, I held my face to her cheek, trying to revive her. The younger man tried to push me away rather gently. It was a small but discernible act of compassion.

“She’ll be okay,” the younger one said in an apparent attempt to comfort me as I tended to my mother. He didn’t want to be here, I could tell; it was written all over his face and in his eyes. I kept asking, “Why am I being arrested?” And the older man, who had been issuing the commands, responded arrogantly in a stern, unfeeling voice, “Don’t worry. You will soon find out.”

Mama was sitting upright now, her head back, her eyes blankly staring at the ceiling. The NKVD men completed their search, finding nothing of a “suspicious or controversial nature,” so they filled out a form and had it witnessed by our downstairs neighbor. She was an American from New York whose husband had also been arrested but then released after several years of imprisonment. Getting her signature was strictly a formality, carried out only because they felt like it.

The walls seemed to be closing in around me. I was short of breath, suffocating.

The older NKVD man stuffed the form into his coat. Then he seized my wrist. They allowed Mama to hug me one last time. She was sick with fright but more composed now. I kissed her with completely numb lips, saying, as my father had, “Don’t worry. I’ll be back soon. I promise.”

Mama looked straight at me and spoke in a voice that combined confidence and concern. “I know you will, Maidie. God is good, and God is faithful. I will be here, waiting and praying for you, until I die. Don’t ever forget that!”

Holding me tightly by the wrists, the two led me outside to the parked car. And just like my father before me, I was locked in the backseat and driven into the malevolent Soviet unknown.

They took me to a jail in Gorky for political prisoners, called the Vorobyo’vka, which had a dreadful reputation. Everyone knew about it. I was taken into a large room where a female guard, a supervisor, immediately ordered me to undress. She was a stumpy, crude sort of woman who enjoyed her duties far too much. She gave me an extensive physical examination, including all body cavities and private parts. “Now bend over,” she demanded, grinning, paying more attention to some areas of my body than was necessary. I was shivering from head to toe, furious, entirely helpless. She took my watch and ring, removed all of my hairpins, examined my clothes, and removed all belts, zippers, elastic, and even shoestrings. I had nothing left on my person that I hadn’t come into this world with. I felt like garbage.

I stood there humiliated, my hair hanging down my back, my underwear at my ankles (with no elastic waistband), and my shoes without ties. My tooth powder, which had been in a cardboard box, was dumped into my handkerchief. She left me a few cigarettes but confiscated my matches. All Russians smoked as regularly as breathing, so cigarettes were not considered impermissible items—even for prisoners.

Demoralized and naked, I was marched to a tiny cell at the end of a long, winding corridor. It was windowless, damp, dreadfully cold, and gray. There was no bed or chair, just a slimy, narrow wooden bench built into the moldy wall. The bench was more like a shelf, just long enough for me to sit sideways with my knees bent up to my chest. The floor was a wooden platform, with slats, through which I could see water below. I thought,
Well, it won’t be long now; I won’t last long in here
. A guard slammed the heavy steel-grated cell door, and I was left alone with my thoughts.

I thought of my dear helpless father. I wondered if he was also in a place like this one or maybe even worse. Was he still alive? I doubted it. I thought about his many luminous dreams and his shattered hopes about life in Russia. Did Papa know God? Did he find any comfort in faith or hope? I didn’t know the nature of his relationship with his Maker, but I prayed that Papa knew the same God that Mama did.

I thought about God myself. Was there a God? If so, who was he? How could he have allowed all this misery? Had he totally abandoned our helpless family? Had he forsaken me? Would I live to see my precious mama again? And now that I was a political prisoner, what would become of me?

We were not political people by any stretch of the imagination. We had no formal agenda in Russia, nothing other than Papa’s desire to live an ordinary, peaceful life with his family. We were ordinary folk, Americans, who had unwittingly walked into a trap, a lifelong disaster for which there seemed to be no remedy. Would I ever get another chance at a new beginning? I prayed, “God, if you’re here, please help me.”

About five o’clock someone opened the door and gave me a cup of hot water, a lump of sugar, and a piece of bread. I couldn’t eat, but I drank the water. They also lit a cigarette for me. Now I only thought about my mama’s situation, her not knowing where I was or what was happening to me. It was a living nightmare for me, thinking of the horror my mama must be feeling.

Later that morning I discovered that this was not my cell at all; it was the entryway to the prison’s bathhouse. A guard opened my door and ordered, “Gather your belongings now, Citizen Werner, and follow me.” He led me down the hall and up a flight of stairs to a regular cell. It was furnished with two cots that folded up into the wall, a night table for two, two chairs, and a large wooden pail with a lid, conspicuous even in the corner. The walls were dark gray, and there was one tiny barred window, nearly covered by a metal shield outside, so I could see only a minute patch of the gray Russian sky. Everything to me was gray: this prison, Russia, my thoughts, my heart.

An elderly woman dressed entirely in black was the other occupant of the cell. She was kneeling on the floor, hunched over as if in prayer or some other form of devout communication. When I tried to talk to her, she seemed to be chanting something under her breath. Her demeanor was very odd; everything about her seemed to carry an eerie glint of otherworldliness. There was something frightening about her eyes. They had an evil, petrified look about them. I thought that she might be a gypsy or maybe a witch. She said her name was Anastasia.

I understood the misery that someone else might feel in this wretched place. I tried to speak with her, but she was unresponsive. Perhaps this old woman was demon possessed; I was very uncomfortable in her presence.
Spirit knows spirit.

When the guard left, I put away my clothes but was not permitted to lie down. As I learned all too quickly, there would be no lying around during the day, except for one hour after lunch. That was the rule, and it was strictly enforced. I asked Anastasia how I could get to the bathroom. Without looking up at me from her stooping position on the floor, she jerked her head toward the wooden pail in the corner. This vulgar thing called a
parasha
nearly made me heave; the smell was absolutely sickening.

The cell door had a small spy hole about halfway up so that the guards could watch us at all times. Depending on the guard, every three minutes or so, we would hear the cover of the spy hole slowly slide open. I always pretended not to notice, but I knew when eyes were watching me.

Some guards had a quiet, creepy way of sneaking along the corridor; others marched along clanging their heels as loudly as possible. But we did have a few guards who didn’t seem to go out of their way to make our lives more difficult or miserable than they already were. They were a nice departure from the norm. I learned to appreciate the simple things that made prison life more bearable.

I quickly became familiar with the different guards and their ways and could usually anticipate their moves. I actually became very good at predicting the human (or inhuman) behavior of specific individuals. It was almost funny to me sometimes to see how conventional these people were. Hardly anything shocked me: I had learned to expect the unexpected. At a mere twenty-four years of age, I was already unfazed by most of the lunacy around me.

Later that same morning I was summoned upstairs for my first interrogation. I was ordered to hold my hands behind my back, and the guard gripped my wrists and pushed me down the corridor. I was instructed what to do if we met anyone approaching from the other direction: I was to stop immediately and face the wall with my eyes shut so I would not accidentally recognize another prisoner or be recognized by them. This was standard prison protocol. If prisoners ever met face to face, the guards would panic, and you didn’t want to be the offending party of such a serious procedural breach.

I was pushed into a little gray office, furnished with the barest essentials. It was the first of many such offices I would enter. The only noteworthy things in this room were a man and a desk. He sat with his hands calmly folded on the desktop. He was neither impressive nor intimidating, but he was an officer of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD). He asked my name and address and very carefully wrote them down, as if taking pains to avoid a mistake. He then handed me a paper, which listed my accusations under specific paragraph numbers of the Soviet criminal code. The numbers were unfamiliar to me, so I very politely asked for an explanation.

He appeared to be intelligent, tranquil, and collected, as he courteously pointed out, “Article #58-6 is espionage, and Article #58-10 is anti-Soviet propaganda.” Espionage? In my drab, unassuming life? This was certainly overly dramatic. I erupted in uncontrollable laughter when I heard this preposterous accusation. Really, I laughed out loud, perhaps partly from shock but mostly at the sheer absurdity of the charges. I could tell it wasn’t the response the officer was expecting. But it was natural and unrehearsed. What else could I have done?
Espionage, right! As if I had spent my time perfecting the art of gathering intelligence!

He waited for me to finish, coolly licked his lips, and serenely said, “What is so funny? Why are you laughing?”

I told him, “Those charges are utterly ridiculous. What else can I do but laugh?”

His eyes peered kindly into mine as he responded, “Well, then, suit yourself and have a good laugh, because soon you will not be laughing.”

The officer’s name was Fidoli. He was Russian but had a superb command of the English language. We spoke mainly in Russian, but every once in a while, he would throw in a statement or two in English, I think to let me know how articulate he was and to make sure I was paying attention. Strangely enough, I liked him. He had a certain gentleness I admired and respected, regardless of what he did for a living. Fidoli could have passed for a kindly English professor at an American university, I thought. He told me that this was just an initial get-acquainted session. There would be more. Then I was escorted back to my cell.

My orientation to the world of prisons was only beginning. The Soviet system of prisons and forced-labor camps was established in 1919, but it was not until the early 1930s that the camp population reached significant numbers. By 1934 the Gulag, or Main Directorate for Corrective Labor Camps throughout Russia, then under the command of the NKVD, had several million inmates. Prisoners included murderers, thieves, and other common criminals along with political and religious dissenters. And I was there, a prisoner of the political variety, along with Anastasia.