Second Fiddle (8 page)

“I’ve heard some pretty crazy rumors at the consulate about how things are in the Soviet Union these days,” Vivian said. “The
Morgenpost
says there won’t be enough apartments or even barracks for the soldiers to live in once they get home.”

I picked up a stone and skipped it three hops across the
slow-moving surface of the Spree. We were quiet for a few minutes, and I could hear Arvo struggling with the clothes. “Thank you,” Arvo called when he was done changing. We climbed back up the riverbank to where he was sitting. He looked much less pathetic in men’s clothes.

Giselle’s PE clothes were folded in a tidy pile. He was turning over his uniform and smoothing it out so the other side would dry. “You have a name?” he said to me.

“Yes—” Vivian barged in. She introduced herself and Giselle and then me.

“Thank you,” Arvo said, looking at each of us in turn. “Thank you for food and clothing and very much thank you for medicine. I am much better now.”

He did look a lot better. He wasn’t so pale, and he didn’t guard his body stiffly like people do when they are in pain. Codeine must be pretty amazing stuff. No wonder Mom kept it locked up.

“What happened to you?” I said. “Why were those men trying to kill you? We saw the whole thing; they were officers.”

“You are needing whole story. Please sit down.”

Giselle picked up her PE clothes and made a cushion of them to sit on a boulder, and Vivian and I sat side by side on an old railroad tie. Arvo folded the army towels and put them under his foot to elevate it.

“First thing you girls learn in school about the Soviet Union is that we are your enemy. It is not true. We are our
own enemy. I am no Russian. Estonia is my home. I am alone in the Soviet Army. I am the only one from Estonia in Berlin, and they hate me for it. They spit in my food. They steal my letters to my family and the money I send to them. They never speak to me but to curse. For years I took this as a blind man takes the dark. It has always been so for Soviet soldiers who are not Russian. But I can see now. With the glasnost there is truth about our history in our own newspapers. We didn’t ask the Russians to come; they conquered us.”

“Everyone knows that!” Vivian said.

“Really? Everyone?” I said. Vivi had a talent for making me feel like a second grader.

“Yeah, well, everyone who’s read ahead in the high school western civ book.”

“It’s the whole reason we’re here in Germany,” Giselle added. “To keep you Soviets from gobbling up Germany and Denmark and all the rest of these little countries.”

“This is all news in Estonia, in the whole Soviet Union,” Arvo said. “Our history books said the whole world was longing to be Communist. There would only be peace and freedom when the whole world was Communist.”

“Seriously?” I said. “Because even I know that’s a lie.”

“Now we all know. Last summer we made the Baltic Way, a chain of two million people who held hands from my city, Tallinn, to Riga to Vilnius—six hundred kilometers. We
stood together in a line to ask for independence. We are almost free, and I want to be home in my own country when we are finally free. Home …”

And then he stopped, because he was almost going to cry. And I thought, I love my country the same as anyone, but there isn’t any place in America that’s home to me. And then I thought, Never mind that he was almost murdered yesterday; Arvo’s a lucky man.

He turned to Giselle and said, “It is because of your Martin Luther King and Gandhi, too. We read about them, and we try not to seek revenge on our Russian neighbors who stole our houses and jobs and cars. We try to stand up for justice with no violence. I want to be there. I want to be with my family making my country free.”

“Can’t you get a transfer?” Giselle said. “You’re just a translator. They could get someone else to do your work.”

“Is not so easy,” Arvo said. “I asked the only officer who was ever kind to me, but he said no. Then the lieutenants you saw on the bridge punished me for asking to go home.” He pushed up his shirtsleeve. There were clusters of round pink scars up and down his arm that were still puffy and new. “Cigarettes,” Arvo said.

I wrapped my arms around my knees and hugged them to my chest, but I couldn’t look away. “They tortured you?” I said. “Why? My dad would go to jail if he did this to a soldier of his. He’d go to jail even if he did this to an enemy soldier.”

“Three days ago they changed their minds. They said I could go and serve my last years of duty in Estonia.”

“But there was a catch,” Vivian said.

“A catch?”

“You had to do something for them, something bad,” Vivi said.

“Yes, I must carry a package on a train to Istanbul and then to Baghdad, a dangerous package, too dangerous for their own Russians to carry.”

“Like a bomb?” I said.

“A poison. A gas. If it broke open, it would kill everyone for kilometers in every direction.”

“Oh my gosh,” I said. “We have to tell my dad.”

“We have to tell
my
dad,” Giselle said. “Poison gas—on the train—that’s crazy!”

“No!” Arvo shouted. “Please! No.” He quieted his voice and looked up at the bridge and then back at the road. “I tried. I told them two days ago.”

“How? Who did you tell?” Giselle barged in.

“I am translator. I have radio. I contacted the American army. They promised to help. I traded my freedom for their poison gas. But I was betrayed. My officers found out, and they beat me. If not for you angels, I would be a dead man.”

“The HAZMAT trucks at the motor pool last night and the overtime at the hospital—that was all for you,” I said. “Arvo, you have to come back to Zehlendorf with us. They’re looking for you! They’ll be so glad we found you!”

“No, listen to me! They betrayed me. You angels, what do you know of the world? There is a spy, a Soviet spy. Bring me to the Americans, and he will know!”

“So?” Giselle said. “We aren’t going to give you to him. You’ll be fine. We’ll keep you safe.”

“I am nothing. If I go with you, they will know. They will find my mother and sister. They will make them suffer.”

“What?” Vivi said.

“In the Soviet Union people disappear. A car comes in the night, and people are gone forever.”

“Like to Siberia? Like in the movies?”

“Yes, just like that. Please, my sister is a schoolgirl like you. How could I let something—anything—happen to her?”

Arvo looked at me, and he had that worried wrinkle in his forehead just like Tyler gets. I spent about two seconds imagining my brothers in Siberia.

“I won’t tell,” I said. “I promise.”

I looked at Vivian, and she slowly nodded her head, but Giselle was still thinking.

“Look, I know Communism is bad, but how can you be this bad to your own people? It doesn’t make sense,” she said.

“Communism written down in books seems very sensible,” Arvo said. “Everyone gives what they are able to give. Everyone gets what they need. No one is rich, but no one is poor. It seems like a good idea. But it doesn’t work! There is corruption from the smallest town to the largest city. A few
men in power live like kings and the rest of us are the paupers of the world.” He looked from Giselle to me to Vivian. “How can I make you understand? America is a charmed country. You have laws
and
policemen who obey the laws. You have grocery stores
and
food in them all the time. You can read whatever book or newspaper you choose.” He paused and looked at the ground. “You can say the truth and not be afraid. Do you know the price of that?”

“They would actually put your family in jail if we brought you to the American army base?” Giselle said.

“I could name one hundred people from the neighborhood where I grew up. Gone. Not to jail—to hard labor, to the mines.”

The mines. I shuddered. The mines were the reason Dad left West Virginia and joined the army. They were the reason I don’t have a grandpa. “Giselle—please!” I said.

She searched Arvo’s face, and I couldn’t guess what she was thinking. Between the split and swollen lip and the two black eyes, he was not the most reliable-looking person. But then Giselle looked at me.

“I promise,” she said, and I hugged her.

Arvo breathed in deeply and put his hand over his heart. “Thank you. Thank you. I will hide. I will hide like the Forest Brothers from the old days.”

“Forest Brothers? What are you talking about?” Vivi said.

“The Forest Brothers are the Estonian Robin Hood.
They hid in the woods, and they fought for our freedom. My foot will get better, and I will find a path to get home even if I have to walk the whole way.”

“How?” Giselle said. “You don’t have money; you don’t have a passport, a map, a clue. You’ve got nothing.”

Arvo sat up a little straighter even though I could tell it hurt him to do it. He looked Giselle in the eye in a way people don’t when she’s sounding bossy and said, “I have myself. That is not nothing.”

Something about the way he said that simple thing tugged at me.

“You’ve got us,” I said. “We’ll help.”

walked back toward the Brandenburg Gate. My violin case felt odd with no weight in it, and we were unusually quiet. The golden afternoon light on the buildings along Unter den Linden made them seem a little less grimy than yesterday. You could see from the fancy brickwork that it had once been the upscale part of town. That made it even more depressing to see all the empty storefronts and shabby upstairs apartments. It was the middle of rush hour, and the thought of spending almost an hour crammed into a commuter train with a bunch of crabby people in suits wasn’t very appealing.

“Let’s walk through the Tiergarten and catch the S-Bahn home on the far side,” I said.

Vivi nodded, and Giselle led the way under the Brandenburg Gate, across the traffic-packed Ebertstrasse, and into the long shady blocks of the park. We walked through the south side of the Tiergarten, past the playground and the goldfish pond. We could still hear the rush-hour traffic, but
there was shade and grass and, best of all, no one to overhear us.

“What are we going to do about Arvo?” Vivian said quietly. “Do you think he’ll be okay on his own?”

“We have to help him,” I said. I swung my empty backpack off my shoulder and took out the box of Tic Tacs. “It doesn’t matter if his broken foot gets better—without money and a passport, he’s stuck.” I handed the candy to Vivi. She waved it away, but Giselle took some.

“I don’t know,” Giselle said, popping the Tic Tacs into her mouth. “He said he’d be fine. What if that story he told us isn’t true? What if he’s a criminal or something? And what if it’s against the law for us to help him? My dad would freak if I broke the law.”

“I wish there was someplace safe we could take him,” Vivian said. “But I think he’s right about whoever helps him needing to give him back to the Soviet army. If we don’t help him escape secretly, I don’t think anyone else will.”

I thought about Arvo sitting under that bridge with nothing but the little bit of food and clothes we gave him. My mind jumped to Tyler because Arvo was a lot like him, all serious. What if Tyler was hurt and alone in some other country far from home where no one knew how smart and kind he was or that he was afraid of the dark? I hadn’t even thought to bring Arvo a flashlight.

“We can’t just leave him there,” I said. “Not when he doesn’t have anyone else.” I paused while a group of moms
with strollers passed us on their way to the playground. “Maybe we can’t get him all the way to Estonia, but there has to be a way to get him out of East Berlin.”

Vivian swerved right, onto a path that led to the busy street with the Siegessäule in the middle and the big golden lady on the top of the pillar. Lots of tourists were out taking pictures, and there were sausage vendors all around. She went to the newspaper stand.

“Eine Zeitung, bitte,”
she said.

Vivian brought back the
Berliner Morgenpost
and scanned the headlines. “I wonder if anyone has reported about this.”

“What?” I said. I glanced over Vivian’s shoulder. “No one knows he’s there. How could it be in the paper?”

Vivian flipped through the first dozen pages. “Arvo is missing from his unit, right? The Russians who threw him off the bridge think he’s dead, but everyone else must think he ran away.”