Dancing Under the Red Star (32 page)

One nasty, cold, damp evening, about two thousand of us were anxiously awaiting to enter the building to see the current film. Then the hated Lieutenant Igor came forth, saying that he wanted to see us lined up in parade formation. Underneath his carefully maintained military facade beat the heart of a common Blatnoi, a street thug. No one was surprised or alarmed by his actions; his cruelty had become expected. So we gathered in parade formation as ordered and then just stood there—for two hours. When Igor finally returned, he said, “You can all go back to your barracks now; it is well past curfew.” We couldn’t see the movie the next day either, because he had already ordered it to be returned.

About this time, we once again lost our camp commandant, this one a fairly pleasant man, who was transferred to another camp in Siberia. Taking his place was a very strict young colonel, a disciplinarian, who, like a few before him, decided to clamp down on the so-called freedoms we enjoyed. He too was determined that our Cultural Brigade be usefully employed for the benefit of the entire camp. And he also professed to be a patron of the arts and regularly sat through many of our rehearsals, which he seemed to thoroughly enjoy. Later it became clear that his motivation was more compulsive and lustful than artistic: he had an insatiable desire for one of our dancers—Liza, from somewhere in Austria. She was very young and petite, beautiful, with a dark complexion, dark hair, and dark eyes.

I was suspicious of this new commandant when he called me into his office one day. Evidently my friend Tamara had told him that I had some knowledge of drafting. “Please sit down, comrade,” he said in a cynical voice. “I hear you have some drafting experience, and I hear you used to work for Yuri. Is that correct?”

“Yes,” I said, “I worked with him on the Gorky prison designs.”

“That is fantastic,” he responded. “Then you should be able to do this for me with no problem.”

I questioned his motives, but I followed his lead; I had no choice. It was possible he was sincere. He told me to render a drawing for him of an old, discarded lathe, lying outside in the yard. It was a simple task, except that it was the dead of winter, and the temperatures were as low as −50°F. By the end of the week, with my hands and every other part of me frozen to the core, I presented him with a fairly well-executed drawing. He was clearly impressed with my work, and I now had a new job.

I became the draftsman for a small construction group. We worked in a tiny but nicely decorated building in a remote area of the camp. It was generally very quiet there, warm and peaceful, and all things considered, I was relatively happy with these new circumstances. Somehow I was adopted by a stray calico cat, which lived under the building and followed me around wherever I went. One day when I ventured into the building’s basement, I was surprised to see that she had given birth to a litter of nine or ten kittens. Soon they too were following me everywhere I went. I grew very fond of these cute little kittens and took care of them until I had to leave the camp.

Pets were officially outlawed in the camp, but we never gave that directive too much consideration. Tamara, our ballet teacher, avidly loved animals. A dog would have been harder to conceal, so she managed to acquire a flea-bitten, disreputable-looking white male cat with only one ear. She adopted him and named him Pirate and always shared her food with him. Tamara hid him in the hothouse, a small private shack near the barracks, while she did her work assignments. She loved that cat.

Some of the other girls and I adopted a stray pup, a hound, whom we nurtured, petted constantly, and loved very much. Whenever he saw us coming, he wagged his tail wildly and jumped up in the air with all four feet, charming us until we had no choice but to feed him. What did we name him? I can’t remember. But one day he was missing. The puppy was generally right where we expected him to be, but not today. I had an uneasy feeling in my stomach about this. I suspected something was wrong but didn’t want to admit it. We thought he might have wandered into another barracks looking for scraps and handouts, as he regularly did. We looked everywhere, throughout the entire camp, but he was nowhere to be found. We were puzzled. There wasn’t anywhere else he could have gone, and he had never disappeared like this before.

Then Talia came running into the barracks, weeping and terribly distraught. “What’s wrong, Talia?” we asked.

“Come,” she said.

She led us to a field on the outskirts of camp, where we learned the sickening truth of the matter. Someone had strung our dog up a tree by his front paws with some rope, left him hanging there, and used him for target practice. We were heartbroken and outraged about the suffering of this poor little puppy that loved us so much. We had strong suspicions of who had done this dastardly thing, but we couldn’t prove it. I knew it was one of the night guards who patrolled our barracks, but I didn’t dare confront him. Without saying a word, he made sure we all knew he did it. In the deepest desires of our hearts, we all wanted to tie him to the same tree and do the same to him.
Oh, what evil lies in the hearts of men!

Not long after that incident, one of the kind women guards brought us a big, fluffy white cat, which we called Bella, after a friend of mine. This cat spent practically all of its time on our stage, next to the oven, which was at the rear of the platform. She was well behaved and, as if instinctively knowing the protocol, never strayed onto the stage during a performance; she always waited until the show was over. She’d mingle with us during rehearsals but, oddly enough, never during an actual show. We could never quite figure out how that cat was so smart. When Bella delivered a huge litter of kittens, we found willing and welcoming homes for them all in the other barracks.

Perhaps the gradual softening of Russia’s hard line in the days after Stalin was allowing us to soften a bit too, to take into our hearts the little creatures we could not afford to notice when all our energies were devoted to day-to-day survival.

Twenty

NOT QUITE FREEDOM

N
ineteen fifty-three. I had been in Siberia since 1946. One beautiful summer day a uniformed stranger summoned me from my work outside the barracks. He ordered me to pack my things because I was “going on a trip.” There was a chance I would be back, but it wasn’t certain. “The van will be leaving in thirty minutes. Do not be late! You have been requested in Gorky.”

What?
I thought.
Why Gorky? Why now?
But I didn’t argue. Mama was in Gorky, so I hurriedly gathered my things.

But how could I possibly leave in just thirty minutes? I had spent many years here; I had made intimate, lifelong friendships in this camp. “At least give me a couple of hours to see everybody, to say good-bye as I should,” I pleaded. But it was no use.

The official repeated, “Thirty minutes—that’s all. Be ready!” Quickly I gathered my odds and ends and threw them into my bags. Then I sprinted through the camp, trying to find everybody. Where was Tamara? Eleonora? I had to see her first. And where was Olga and Sonya and…oh, where was everyone?

Some of my friends were on their daily assignments in their work brigades, and I would not be able to find them in time. The van would leave, and I had to be on it. I would not see them one more time, bid them farewell, look into their eyes, hug them tightly, or cry with them just once more. We had formed an indefinable closeness, relationships that would surely endure no matter what else happened to us. I loved these women! Why did I have to leave so abruptly now? I couldn’t say the things I needed to say, the things they needed to hear from me, the things you say only in private.

Would I return? There was no way of knowing. If this was a step closer to my mother and my freedom, then I was more than ready to go. But what if this was only a temporary derailment, another detour to another labor camp? That would make no sense. But I had no choice; I would be leaving in minutes.

I said my tearful good-byes to the few friends I was able to find. Tears ran down our faces as I kissed and hugged my closest comrades, and then I was ordered into the back of a dingy, beat-up white van, and we pulled out of camp. I tried my best not to look back, not to cry. Again I was told that we were going to Gorky. Sorrow and anxiety made the trip an emotionally agonizing three days, but it passed without incident. I focused on the possibility of seeing Mama again, though I had no idea how long I’d be in Gorky or even why I was going there.

I was taken back to Gorky’s well-known Vorobyo’vka, where I’d been imprisoned when I was first arrested in 1945. I was placed in a solitary cell without explanation. And I was terrified all over again. I had heard the horror stories; I had already lived through some of them. I knew what could be expected and what had happened to countless others in similar circumstances. But why was I being sent back here
now
just as my official sentence and term of imprisonment were approaching their end?

No one knew why these people in the Soviet system did what they did. Trying to figure that out put you in an endless sea of unanswerable questions. Mystification and mayhem, bonded with darkness, operated every day in Russian life. The less time I spent considering why, the more tolerable it was for me. Simple resignation was better than trying to figure out something that made no sense. I no longer wondered
why.
I was only concerned with
how
and more so with
when.

I was left alone in a dark cell for an entire day. I was given water and nothing else. Late in the day a guard came down the corridor and opened my cell. He didn’t cuff me or harass me. He just said, “Up, now! Come with me.”

He led me to an interrogation room, the same one I had visited many times before, years earlier. It looked the same as it always had. An official came in and told me to sit down. Someone would be in to see me shortly.

“Okay,” I said, “but let me ask you something. Do you happen to know a man named Fidoli?”

The man said, “Yes, I do…I did. Fidoli died just last year. Why do you ask?”

I slumped in my hard chair and said, “Oh, it’s nothing. I just wondered if he was still here.” Sadness came over me. I remembered my former interrogator quite well. There was something about Fidoli that I always liked, although he was clearly on the other side. I thought about Fidoli often. I recalled that special conversation we once had, and I wondered if his life had changed with the passing of the years. Specifically, I wondered if he had met God before he died.

The man left the room, and I was briefly alone again. I had no idea whom I was waiting for, but I considered the possibility that the purpose for my trip to Gorky was so the MVD could use me to recruit my mother as an informer. That wasn’t far-fetched, and I knew this had happened to others. Why else would I be here? For them to contemplate such an unethical plan made me burn with indignation.

Another official led me into another room. In the drab little office stood a table overflowing with assorted food and fruits. It was a bountiful buffet, more than I had seen for years. And sitting by the smorgasbord of delectable food was my own mama! But she did not look comfortable. She was tense and pale, as if someone were holding a gun to her back. Her face was downcast and sullen, almost ashamed; she looked absolutely miserable. I could tell the scene was staged.

And I thought,
Now if this doesn’t take all
. It was like honey on a bear trap, nothing but a setup. Did they really think we were going to buy this routine simply because we were hungry? Did they expect to use Mama to sell me this tainted bill of goods? Oh, these people, these schemes! They thought too highly of themselves. But the sordid trap was overshadowed by the fact that Mama was here with me. I felt agony coupled with pure outrage as I saw, even from across the room, the pain on her face. I ran to her as she stood up, and we embraced tightly, as if our lives depended on it. We didn’t speak. Nothing needed explanation; we both knew what was happening.

The MVD officer who had led me to this rendezvous left Mama and me alone for a while. We knew their sleazy tactics. I could almost see the wheels turning in their minds. They wanted us to enjoy their food, but we didn’t touch it. I thank God for giving us the will to withstand the outlandish temptation. I whispered very faintly to Mama, “We must be very careful to speak quietly. They might have the room bugged. They might be listening.”

“Okay, Maidie,” she whispered back. I told her why I suspected they had brought her here, but she was way ahead of me. She already knew.

In whispers, my mother told me that she had been approached by the MVD in her home. She had refused to help them, saying her frail health and advanced age would keep her from being of any benefit to them. We continued our quiet conversation, not touching the incredible ocean of food surrounding us, not paying attention to the delicious smells filling our nostrils. I was also able to tell her about some of the improvements in my life in camp, allaying her worries. In just a few minutes, we both became fairly settled. We knew what we had to do.