Dancing Under the Red Star (29 page)

We always collected old toothbrushes as well. By shaving off the remaining bristles and sharpening the handles with an emery wheel in the tool shop, we made some very effective knives for everyone in the group, not for weapons, but for practical, non-threatening purposes. These knives would not cut wood but were fine for spreading butter or lard on bread, when we were fortunate enough to have it, and for other little tasks. I also made some very fine mascara from coal soot and laundry soap. It’s truly amazing what can be improvised when necessity meets motivation.

Improvisation, expression, camaraderie, joy: we all gave much and received much as members of the Cultural Brigade, the official name given to our group. Some of the women assigned to the work brigades believed that we had a softer life, but when they witnessed our sweating during our ballet practices and rehearsals, they gained a whole new perspective. In fact, after watching us, they almost unanimously confessed that they would rather dig ditches! The truth was that rehearsing was
work
, hard, exhausting work. We never goofed around. We worked and worked and then worked some more, extremely hard, day in and day out. Maybe it did not feel like work to me because of my love for ballet.

After rehearsing for hours and days on end, we would stage our official performances late in the evening. Our audience consisted mainly of the officials and the prison guards, but occasionally some of the other prisoners were allowed to watch. Once in a while we would travel to the nearby men’s camps to perform for their officials as well.

Then, one day, one of those unforeseen detours caught us all off guard. There was an abrupt change in our camp leadership; a new commander arrived. He took a dim view of what he called our “nonworking brigade.” I had secretly wondered just how long our troupe would last, but now our brigade was ordered to join the others and “carry our workload” within the camp. To quote this new commander’s cynical view of our theatrical work, we could “no longer take it easy and dance our life away.” Any future dramatic preparation would have to be done strictly on our own time, after our mandatory work was finished. “If you want to quit [your drama], you can do that too,” was the loud and clear message we received from him.

I had formerly been assigned to a construction brigade, which generally did more physically demanding work than other brigades. Now, in addition to those requirements, I was given the job of hauling water to the kitchen in a horse-drawn cart. Beyond that, I was to clear all the snow and ice from the boardwalks. That alone was steady work; winter lasted forever in northern Siberia—at least nine months of the year. Our former Cultural Brigade now had to keep all the barracks freshly whitewashed, which was a never-ending job. These new work demands drained us and left us with absolutely nothing except maybe time to sleep. We had neither the strength nor the time for ballet practices, much less the energy to perform. Theatrics? Who cared about dancing now? At night we just fell into our bunks.

Soon the other prisoners rose up in protest—a small revolt—that our stage performances had been discontinued. Our dramatic work had brought momentary joy and entertainment to many others in the camp. Theater provided a mental and emotional escape when physical escape was out of the question. The protesters made such noise and resistance that they actually persuaded the new camp hierarchy to let us dance again! For the nearly seven years I spent in the camp at Inta, the Cultural Brigade continued to create a breath of air and hope in the Gulag.

Seventeen

ACTRESSES

O
ur theatrical group lived and worked in very close quarters. We came to know one another very well and shared many stressful and disturbing experiences, in addition to our performances and celebrations. I will never forget two of our members who asserted themselves most forcefully.

Natasha was a young Ukrainian woman who stood out as distinct from everyone else in the group. She was always very tense, which we ascribed to her unhappy, tormented childhood. She had no family to speak of. During her time in the camp, she had no contact with anyone from her past, and she didn’t receive any material help from anyone else. It was therefore extremely difficult for her to cope with camp life; we all thought she was hungry most of the time. Her situation demonstrated the vital role families played in the prisoners’ survival in the camps. But we could not have asked for a more devoted and loyal member of our group. Natasha was talented in both song and dance, and because of her height and build, she often played some of the male characters in our presentations.

When it came to rehearsals, she was one of our most staunchly dedicated and disciplined members. Unless forcibly restrained elsewhere, she would always be found working at her craft. The rewards of her practicing were evident when Natasha and I danced a lovely duet from the ballet
Stone Flower
and also one of the Polovetsian dances from
Prince Igor.

But Natasha was also highly volatile, with an unpredictable temper and a short fuse. Quite suddenly, out of nowhere, she could become violent. One summer she became especially upset with the producers of our upcoming show because they could not find her a suitable role. At the time she was assigned to one of worst jobs in the camp—driving a horse and wagon to haul the refuse from the latrines to a designated dumping spot. One particular day, enraged with the leaders of our group, she tore onto the stage during full rehearsals at high noon. She threw a bucket of
the stuff
all over the producers, then stormed off. It was shocking, disgusting—and really funny. Despite the dreadful reality around us, I don’t think I had ever laughed so hard in my life! I hope Natasha enjoyed it too, because she was immediately incarcerated, then transferred to another camp, and we never saw her again. Years later we heard that she was in a central Asian camp in the Kazakh ASSR, leading an entertainment group there. But no one in our camp ever forgot the day that a prisoner seized the initiative and made her own drama right in front of us.

A very pretty English girl named Betty also worked her way into our entertainment group. She had marvelous blond hair and a very nice voice, and she was a wonderful dancer, but most of us thought she was too fragile to handle our demanding rehearsal and performance schedules. One day she showed us what a false impression we had.

I don’t know how or where she became pregnant. Women prisoners fraternized with the male guards, but Betty just didn’t seem the type. However it had happened, she did not want to be pregnant, mainly for fear of losing her position in the Cultural Brigade. She felt that if she had to leave the group, she would never survive the hard labor of a work brigade. Evidently that was her only reason for not wanting to have the baby. She was right about one thing: if the prison officials had discovered that she was pregnant, she would have been expelled from the group.

Among our dancers was a girl named Valya, who offered to help Betty. She said she’d had some experience in performing abortions. As a teenager, she had often accompanied her mother, a doctor, in doing abortions to supplement their income. Valya convinced Betty that she knew exactly how to go about it.

It was a very hot summer day. I was lying on my bunk, resting an ankle I had recently sprained during a show. Other members were also lying about the barracks, reading, sewing, talking, or just napping. Since the guards habitually entered our barracks several times a day, without notice and during our most private times, Valya put two girls at the door as lookout.

Betty’s bunk was just two away from mine. I knew what was about to happen.

“Betty,” I said, “do you know what you’re doing? Have you thought this through?” Betty said nothing; she simply ignored me.

Then Tamara, who seemed more upset than anyone else, quickly spoke up. “It’s a life, Betty! It’s a baby. It’s yours. There are other kinds of work you can do, you know? The brigade isn’t everything.”

Betty coldly snapped, “Shut up, Tammy. It’s none of your business! Who asked you anyway?”

Tamara got up in a rage and stormed out of the barracks, knocking the door nearly off its hinges. I didn’t know what to do. I was terrified and speechless, and most of the other girls looked either disdainful or sad. A few were noticeably angry but did nothing to interfere as the situation unfolded.

Apparently, the day before, Valya had concocted a potion for Betty to take, and she was now starting to feel its effects. She was beginning to experience severe pain and contractions, and this went on for several hours. Her contractions became more painful and frequent, but Betty never made a single sound. At the end of our barracks lived another small working brigade of women, and Betty didn’t want them to know what was happening. She didn’t want to run the risk of getting caught or being turned in. I was in awful distress about what was happening, but there wasn’t anything I could do about it. I put my head under my pillow.

Valya was trying to comfort Betty, giving her a rag to chew on when her pains became unbearable. Then one of the lookouts suddenly came in and whispered, “Shhhh… The guards are next door!” They were in the barracks beside ours, which meant we would be their next stop. Instantly, everyone in our brigade made a great show of singing and talking loudly to drown out sounds that might come from Betty’s corner bunk.

We were extremely tense, but surprisingly, the guards did not stop this time or harass us as they usually did.
Why was that?
I didn’t understand. But they soon left, and there were no more interruptions. Maybe there should have been. Nevertheless, Betty and Valya went ahead and did what they did.

The baby appeared. It was a girl and looked well formed, at least five months along. Betty had worn a tight-fitting garment the entire time, effectively concealing her condition, not only from the camp authorities and our group leaders, but also from Valya, who said that she had been misled into believing that Betty was only two months along.

As we watched, horrified, Valya smothered the baby before it could make a sound. Everyone in the room helplessly looked on in shock at the murder happening before our eyes.

Sonya, another German dancer in our group, helped Valya conceal the dead baby and bury her in a construction site next door. Several years later, quite by accident, the little skeleton was discovered, but no one ever reported Betty or Valya. I was scared out of my wits that day, and I don’t know why I didn’t do anything about it.
Dear God, please have mercy on us all!

Things were never quite the same in our brigade after that. We never discussed it, but everyone knew something terrible had taken place, and people were now very different. Everybody had an opinion, but I think our hearts were just broken. Even at that time, before I had a developed consciousness of the divine sanctity of that baby’s life and when I generally believed in the woman’s right to choose, Betty’s decision and actions horrified me. I knew it was wrong, but we were not able to talk her out of it. It was her choice, but I had a strong sense that it wasn’t what God wanted.

Betty recovered remarkably well and continued with her normal activities in our group almost as if nothing had happened. But I sensed something different about her, although she never said anything else about the abortion. I saw that it was hard for her to pretend that everything was all right. I knew she was faking it, that she was now very different inside, though not in an outwardly remorseful or shameful way. She just seemed more lifeless than she used to be. Her actions seemed the same as always, but her spirit was not. The life in her eyes had vanished. Something else inside of Betty had died…along with her baby.

I guess I should have shown compassion and forgiven Betty for what she had done. But the truth is, I never liked her after that. I avoided her. Her situation had made me intensely aware of my own wasted femininity, these years of deprivation. I had never wanted any man but Nikolai, but I was forcefully reminded that I’d never even had a chance to meet someone else. Now I knew how much I longed to be a mother, to have a husband, to be part of a family again. But I was helpless. I don’t recall having ever said another word to Betty, or she to me.