Dancing Under the Red Star (35 page)

His eyes snapped up. He looked at me coldly. Then he answered calmly but cynically, “You will never find out where his body is. Now what else can I do for you today, Citizen Werner?” I was stunned and scared too, so I backed off. I saw I was pressing my luck.

According to the legal regulations and provisions of my final release from Inta—with my child—my mother had to sign certain sponsorship documents on my behalf, verifying Gorky residence. This would officially allow us unrestricted travel back to Gorky. So Mama made a return trip to Inta to sign the papers.

After a frantic farewell to Günter, Kostya, Tamara, Eleonora, and her husband at the railway station, Mama and I managed to secure two seats, quite a distance from each other, and then settled down for the night. Baby Karl traveled well, and three uneventful days and nights later, we happily arrived at our destination, our home in Gorky. Though Gorky was not America, it was familiar and felt more secure to me than anything I’d known in a long time. I was flooded with hope for the future. Those years hadn’t robbed me of the promise and the expectancy that still flourished within. Not today! I was a person of potential. This was who God made me to be. It felt like a new day, a new beginning, the best new beginning I had ever felt. This day was even more meaningful to me than the day I was released.

My first few days in Gorky were spent reacquainting myself with my former friends and surroundings and the neighborhood I had known so well. It hadn’t changed much in eleven years; it just seemed smaller and shabbier. And I was glad to see the Oka River once again, the scene of so many happy memories. That’s where I grew up. That’s where I would talk for hours with my wonderful friend, Sanya Dubcek. That’s where a certain lifeguard taught me certain things, where I first fell in love with my Nikolai. Many memories came swiftly rushing back. Yes, I knew the Oka.

Twenty-Two

APPEAL TO NIKITA

O
ur new life in Gorky was very simple but deeply pleasing to me. Helping Mama in the household routines and making do with our few resources seemed relaxing after the crushing pressures of Siberia. I took Karl out for many walks, at all hours of the day or night, in his secondhand buggy. I’d set him out to nap in the outer hallway of our building, where the air was fresh. Our neighbors thought that was rather strange, but I had no fear. Things seemed very safe here now, without the perpetual anxiety of life under Stalin. Everything seemed perfectly normal to me. Then one day I moved Karl and his buggy into the hallway for his usual afternoon nap, peeking out the door now and then to check on him. When I looked out the door for about the third time, he was gone. The carriage was still there, but it was empty. I rushed outside, flew down the stairs, and knocked on all the doors like a crazy woman. No Karlie!

I climbed the stairs toward the apartment, thinking I was going to die and absolutely hating myself.
How could I have done this?
I thought.
How could I have been so stupid, so neglectful?
I sat down in the hallway and wept hysterically.

Suddenly I heard a woman coming down the steps from her apartment on the floor above. She was holding my Karlie and saying, “I couldn’t resist taking your baby just to show my husband how adorable he is.”

Relief and fury poured over me. Relief won out, however, because I didn’t beat that woman to death right then and there. I thought,
Lady, don’t you know how dangerous I am? Don’t you know I could have killed you right now with my bare hands, just for doing something so stupid? Don’t you know that I’ve just spent nine years in a Siberian death camp? Don’t you know?
I didn’t say these words, and when I cooled off later, I didn’t even mean them. But I felt like that, and with murderous looks, I grabbed my baby out of her arms and ran back into my apartment. I held Karl tightly and kissed him feverishly, as though I couldn’t get enough, until he began to cry. I was probably more frightened about losing him than about anything else in my life, including my terrifying Gulag years.

Günter sent us enough money to provide a relatively good living, supplying most of our needs. The stores in Gorky were much better stocked than they were in Inta, and for the first time in many years I saw fresh eggs, milk, good meat, and vegetables! I nursed Karl, so he received the full benefit of this much-improved diet. He was a delightful baby, and I adored him. All of our friends and neighbors loved him too and enjoyed holding and playing with him. Of course, Mama was exceedingly proud. I only wished that Papa were here to see him too.

It was very difficult for Günter to remain in Inta without us. Faithful financial support was one thing; a faithful marriage was another. So when the baby was about four months of age, Günter and I decided that I should return to Inta. Some friends of ours were leaving on an extended vacation for two months, and they wanted someone to take care of their small apartment in their absence. It was only a room and a primitive kitchen, but to us it seemed luxurious. It had many windows, and I thought this little place would be perfect for us, if it were ours, if only the elements of a good marriage were also in place. It was still a daily struggle for us to get along, but we lived in the little dwelling as if it were our own, until it began to feel like it was.

Then, quite mysteriously, Karl became ill one night, with a very high temperature. We rushed him to the hospital, where they determined he had a rapidly developing case of pneumonia and dysentery. Since I was a nursing mother, the common Soviet hospital protocol of that day allowed me to remain in the hospital with him, in a bed right beside his crib. He was indeed very ill, and I didn’t understand the nature of his sickness. I was puzzled, but I believed that he would soon be well. God had seen me through so much. Surely he would help my son through this infirmity. We stayed there, under decent medical care, until he was transferred to a nearby hospital that specialized in contagious diseases. There we stayed for an entire month. When he was discharged and we were told that he was healed, I was determined to get him out of Inta, where he had contracted these diseases. We promptly left for Gorky.

No sooner had we returned than Karlie’s symptoms suddenly reappeared. I spent another month in the hospital with a very sick baby. The sudden severe sicknesses, the shots and the medicine, the constant supervision, all changed him into a very nervous little fellow. When he was released, despite my best motherly intentions and caring, he chronically cried throughout the nights. Mother and I were completely worn out by this persistent new condition, and we could only sleep during the day’s rare moments when Karl also slept.

My baby was physically troubled by something, but I didn’t know what it was. I didn’t know what to do for him, so I just held him, sang to him, and lovingly tried to rock him back to sleep as often as he’d let me. Nothing else seemed to work.

Mama and I continued to seek information about my father’s fate. After yet another request to the authorities, on May 29, 1956, we finally received a death certificate. This document stated that dysentery was the official cause of his death. Purportedly, he had died on August 25, 1942, more than three years before my arrest. The notification and the cause of Papa’s death did not shock me, because many years earlier, I had already arrived at the certainty that he was gone. It was my heart, more than my head, that already knew the truth of the matter. What was now so harrowing and so difficult for me to believe was the reported time of death. Under other circumstances, I wouldn’t have paid such close attention to the time of death. But I had paid dearly, with many years of my own life, simply for inquiring about the fate of my father.

Had Mama and I been notified of Papa’s death at the time it occurred—August 1942—or at least shortly thereafter, there’s a reasonable chance I would have never been arrested. I felt that the only reason for my arrest was my persistent curiosity about my father’s fate. We couldn’t find out anything on our own, and no one was rushing to help us—neither the government nor the Ford Motor Company. That’s why I unofficially solicited aid from Leslie and Mac, to obtain outside help in determining Papa’s whereabouts. Had I known that my father was already dead, my course of action would have been entirely different. My unanswered question would have been answered, leaving me no urgency to inquire further, other than what would be routinely expected for the grieving family of the deceased. It was my not knowing that got me arrested and ultimately convicted.

The date of his death was reported as August 25, 1942. The location where he died was left blank. I was outraged. I determined to try to clear my father’s name. As I had done in my own case, I wrote a lengthy appeal to the Moscow Military Tribunal, the MVD. I stated all the known facts of my father’s life and respectfully requested a formal review of his case.

Months later I received a document dated December 11, 1956: Carl Werner’s arrest and subsequent conviction—by a troika (three judges) of the NKVD (People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs) on November 3, 1938—was now “overturned for lack of evidence.” He was posthumously declared pardoned. We finally knew that Papa had been held in jail for five months before being sentenced and that he died four years and five months after his initial arrest. And for what? The state that had destroyed him now declared him innocent.

I accepted bitterly that nothing good could result from additional inquiries. In my own interest and in the interest of my loved ones, I chose from that time forward to be silent.

In 1957 a new step in international diplomacy changed our lives forever. West German chancellor Konrad Adenauer visited Moscow to discuss with Nikita Khrushchev the possibility of establishing a war prisoner exchange agreement. This covenant would repatriate all German and Russian POWs. When the agreement was ratified, thousands of surviving German prisoners in Russia surged with hope. Günter would be directly affected. With urgency and great excitement, we discussed these new possibilities by mail.

We knew that he would be allowed to return to his native Germany. This was wonderful! But how could he get out of Russia with his American family and mother-in-law? I would have to go to Moscow and request permission from the government for our small family to immigrate legally, with my husband, to East Germany. It would be my job to convince them.

I traveled to Moscow, leaving Karl at home with my mother. I arranged to stay with my friend Mara, formerly from the camps at Inta. She understood my current predicament and wanted to help. At the appointed location in Moscow, in a cold, dreary gray office building, I spent many nervous hours waiting in many rooms for someone, anyone, to listen to my case. Finally I was called to the central office of the MVD. I stated my request to immigrate to East Germany with my husband, son, and mother.

I can still hear the precise words of the man in uniform: “What, may I ask, has caused you, dear citizen, to believe and work so hard for something you know is impossible for us to grant you?”

When I humbly asked, “Why is this impossible?” he smugly responded, “We do not at this time consider it appropriate to permit you to leave the country.”

I had known in my heart they would not approve. I was deeply disappointed and weary of these futile appeals. My father and I were both officially pardoned, but that made no difference. Downcast and weary, I spent the evening discussing my current situation with some other friends, also from Inta, now living in Moscow. They were sympathetic and actually encouraging. In fact, a friend suggested a wonderful new approach to my dilemma.

He simply said, “Why don’t you just try to bypass this bureaucracy altogether? Why not write a letter directly to the prime minister? Yeah, why not? It couldn’t hurt. Compose a good letter, directly from you to Nikita Khrushchev! Tell him of your troubled background, your false arrest, your many years at the camps, and appeal to his sense of honor and comradeship. Margaret, you never know. Perhaps that would work. Stranger things have happened.”

I saw no downside to this advice. At worst, Khrushchev would read and ignore my letter. More likely, it would never get to him at all, a busy man, insulated with go-betweens and buffers at the Kremlin. I doubted he would read a letter from a former political prisoner or be interested in some Americans hard-luck story, but I said, “Maybe you’re right. What could it hurt?”