The Last Secret, page 10
“There are always books, always a paper trail.” I say this with conviction, trying to hide the doubt in my words. What do I know about accounting and paper trails? This is why I’m a patsy. “You’ve turned my studio into a workhouse, then you complain we never have money. You’re a liar.” Pat is silent, her mouth so tight, her lips have disappeared. With sudden, intense clarity, I realize the truth: She’s taken advantage of me since the beginning, telling me I’m useless, but all the while using me to line her pockets. “You told me I’m a lousy artist who sells the odd painting.”
I want nothing more than to throw Pat out of Gladsheim, then have her arrested for fraud, but as a tear slides down my face, the reality of my situation hits me square in the gut. I can’t really punish Pat, because, for better or worse I need her. She’s all I’ve got.
Pat blinks, solid as a rock in a Japanese garden. “Did you really think this place runs itself?” She gestures to my studio. “That I work for free?”
My anger flares again and I grab some large brushes—that she so helpfully cleaned last night—and throw them across the room. Then I pick up a palette knife, still loaded with paint, and wing it at Pat’s head. She ducks, cursing, and I hold up my hands. “Do these look twisted and contracted? I’m going to turn up at this show and tell my agent, this…this art dealer Octavius Karbuz, that you’ve been forcing me to work, while feeding me lies that my paintings rarely sell. And pocketing the proceeds.” I rub my face in disbelief. Now I understand her stylish new threads. She fancies herself a sophisticated member of the international art world. Jesus, Pat!
She smirks at me. “You want to go to Brussels? For your opening?” My heart leaps into my throat, but I know the too-familiar glint in her eye. “You think you’ll be able to travel to Europe?”
“I don’t have the money for that. But you do.”
“You can’t even behave in a room full of morons,” she snorts. “Remember what happened at your show in Vancouver? You got drunk and made a fool of yourself.”
“You can’t stop me from going to Brussels.” I snatch the invitation off the floor and tap it against my hand. “Octavius Karbuz has called my new show The Great Return. How prophetic. I might perform a few miracles—turn water into wine, or—”
Pat finally snaps, closing the distance between us. I can smell coffee on her breath. “What would you do if your plane crashed and was engulfed by flames?” she says. I start so violently my heart seems to stop. Swallowing tears and dread, I wait for my heart to resume its slow, ponderous thud. Why does she always win? Like a dog rolling over in submission to its master, I bend my head, almost feeling the heat of the fire she threatens. “I’m adjusting your medications again. You’re acting crazy.” She yanks up her sleeve and thrusts her arm out, which is still melodramatically bandaged, as if she suffered a major injury.
My anger simmers on low—much like her morals—for daring to bring this up. I force myself to ask after it politely. “Does it still hurt?” And I mean that, I’m sorry. It was horrible of me, truly ruthless. Three weeks ago, Pat had been cooking us dinner and rattling on about how Tuna needed to be put down, concluding her diatribe with a woefully cheerful threat to borrow a shotgun from the neighbor and do it herself. Some hopeless part of me broke. Had I sensed this scam she’s got going? One moment I was at the kitchen table working on one of the mixed media collages I do for fun, and the next I was on Pat like a banshee, forgetting I still had my blunt-nosed craft scissors in hand. The three-inch-long wound bled for so long, Pat feared an artery had been cut. She’d howled needlessly as she ran around the kitchen, a towel held to the injury, before finally stitching and dressing it herself.
Now my rage ebbs, replaced by a wave of instantaneous, crashing grief. “Is this why you’re locking me in at night—afraid I’ll scissor you to death?”
“I could have bled out in minutes. You’ll stay locked in your room until you can prove to me you haven’t gone insane.”
“You can’t lock me in my room,” I say quietly. “This is my house.”
“Poor wittle Jeanie get mad?” She widens her eyes and sticks out her lower lip, like a maniac.
Despite my thick sweater, I’m suddenly chilled to the core. “Let me come with you to Vancouver next week. I’ll prove to you that I can leave this island and fly to Europe for my show.”
Pat sucks at her teeth for a moment, considering. “You think you’re famous because you’re a brilliant artist?” she says. “You’ve only sold paintings because your accident makes you collectible. If you go to this showing, any showing, people will stare at you and whisper. They’re not interested in what you paint—they want to see what you look like. They want to know exactly what happened that night.”
For a split second I feel crushed, believing her, and my hand flies to my throat, yanking at the collar of my sweatshirt in case any scars might be on display. I force myself to speak. “I may not remember what happened that night…I may look like this now, but I know Michael loved me—”
“Love?” she laughs in my face. “Michael was simply dragged back to what he’d dismissed as a romp behind the bushes the moment his parents found out Sleeping Beauty was in the family way.”
Her words land on me like a cannonball. I think of that warm night in the woods. How I’d loved every minute—the sweaty, heated communion of our hormonally charged teenage bodies, the tender moments afterward when Michael held me in his arms. “So beautiful,” he’d whispered, stroking my hair. When I told him I was pregnant, he was shocked, but it hadn’t taken him all that long to come back with a marriage proposal.
I’d felt so lovely wearing the wedding dress Aunt Suze sewed for me, a confected bodice of French lace and a ballet-style tulle skirt modelled after Audrey Hepburn’s frock in the film, Funny Face—the fetching bateau neckline, the elbow-length gloves. I’d swept down that church aisle to Charpentier’s Te Deum, a knocked-up seventeen year old, positive that the boy twitching at the altar was a Disney prince. I never saw him again after that night. Our relationship had been built upon the shaky foundations of teenage lust and supremely unfortunate timing.
“What if I was in a car accident,” Pat says. “What then? Who takes care of you? Who goes to Vancouver three times a year to buy your paints and canvas? Who prepares these canvases, cleans your bloody brushes, and makes you grilled cheese sandwiches?” She pauses, glowering at me from beneath her over-plucked eyebrows. “I have to do it all because you’re afraid of fire.”
I recoil as if she’d just pointed a gun at me and threatened to pull the trigger. “Kay will do it,” I say meekly. “I asked if she’d be my caregiver. She’s probably on the next ferry.” But I know that Kay likely missed my last letter and is on her way to another, far more exotic place than Salt Spring Island.
I expect Pat to be knocked back on her heels at the mention of Kay replacing her, but her eyes flicker ominously. I’m overcome with a desire to run straight to the window and jump. Anything to escape.
“Kay has better things to do,” she says, with an edge to her voice I haven’t heard before. “She’s probably halfway to South America, or some other third world country.”
“South America is a continent.”
Pat swipes her hand, dismissing me. “I’m going to town now, and you’ll behave and paint like a good girl. It’s a commission, you know, so make it a cool scene.” Then she picks up the broken abstract canvas. Before slithering out the door, she glances back and chucks her final spear.
“It ain’t art unless it sells.”
12
SAVKA
Carpathian Mountains, Reichskommissariat Ukraine
march 3, 1944
“what did the nkvd officer say to you in the forest, Mama?”
Savka’s eyes shot open, expecting to find herself buried in snow, but instead she felt a narrow plank bed beneath her, and a smelly blanket wrapped around her against the dampness of a stifling dungeon. She lifted her head quickly, setting her brain on a spin. Taras, she thought in confusion. Where are you?
When she attempted to rise, pain shot through her arm and a sharp wave of nausea rose in her throat. Her initial astonishment that she’d survived a gunshot wound was quickly replaced by excruciating pain in her chest and the chill of winter creeping through OUN propaganda posters that had been tacked up on the earthen walls.
A single candle burned on an overturned wooden box in the shadowy corner. Someone was there. “I will ask you again. Why were you in the forest, Savka?” She’d met Kuzak several times in the village last summer, when insurgents came down for supplies, but she startled when he stepped out of the shadows into a dim arc of light, absently stroking his horseshoe-shaped moustache. His usually pleasant features were arranged in a scowl.
Someone had rolled her coat for a pillow, and she eased her head down upon it, her chest and shoulder throbbing. It all came back to her like a nightmare. She and Taras had been hunted down in the forest. Not only had she lost her son, she’d been shot and ordered to spy on her own husband by the NKVD officer who’d taken Taras away. Lieutenant Belyakov. His name was burned into her memory. As he’d predicted, Kuzak’s insurgents had found her unconscious and bleeding. They’d saved her life. And she was in their bunker. Her skin crawling, Savka’s fingers clutched at the blanket. Drawing it down, she tried to move her right arm, but it was pinned firmly to her side by a triangle sling. Carefully she touched the dressing over the bullet wound in her chest, thankfully close enough to her shoulder that it had missed her right lung. As her eyes adjusted to the dim light, she noticed her rucksack on another low bench in the corner. It was open, and all the things she and Taras had packed were strewn on the ground. Tarasyku, Tarasyku! When she opened her mouth, a sob escaped her lips. “Slava Ukraini,” she said, staring up at the low earthen ceiling above her head. Her voice was so feeble, the greeting came out a hoarse whisper. She waited for the customary response, but Kuzak said nothing. His silence lashed her like a whip. Glory to Ukraine and the reply, Heroiam Slava, Glory to the Heroes, was the standard underground salute. It was not a good sign that he refused to give it.
She felt hot, delirious, and she struggled to keep herself from retching. Her wound was most likely infected, but she turned away from Kuzak, turned her head to the wall, picturing her son on a troop train bound for the Soviet Union, starving and afraid. Lieutenant Belyakov said he would keep Taras safe. Surely, her son had been taken to a Moscow safe house or a dacha in the Russian countryside, yet she knew he was terrified, too young to be without the protection of his mother.
Whatever medication the underground had given her—possibly one of the opium tablets Natalka had stolen—left her head cloudy and unable to focus, yet the last words of Lieutenant Belyakov rang in her ears:
If you do what we say, you will see your son again. Do what we order, and we will give him back.
“Where’s Taras?” she said, forcing herself to look at Kuzak. If he didn’t believe her story, he’d order her shot and left to rot in the woods.
The underground leader regarded her with a calculating expression. “You were alone.”
She let her eyes widen. Somehow, the insurgents had brought her here, hopefully removed the bullet, and cleaned and dressed her wound, yet she had to keep the facts straight. She must live, must obey Belyakov, or she would never see Taras again. These underground insurgents weren’t stupid. Savka had placed them firmly in peril—how careless to let herself be shot, to allow her son to be taken by the NKVD. “Is Taras dead?” A low noise of anguish. “Tell me.”
“We found you two days ago.” Kuzak frowned, arms crossed over his chest. “You would have bled to death if we hadn’t heard the gunshot. You’ve had a fever.” Someone ducked their head and came through the doorway. Savka tensed in anticipation of the dreaded Natalka, but it was a male insurgent, his face in shadow. Kuzak gestured to him. “Bohdan saved your life.”
Bohdan. Only four days after she’d bandaged his wound in the forest, he’d found the strength to dig out a bullet from her chest. Experimentally, she lifted the fingers of her right hand. They were numb, and she feared nerve damage. “A…partisan shot me,” she insisted.
Bohdan and Kuzak exchanged a look. “Couldn’t have been partisans,” Kuzak said, his face etched with concern. “Those cowards slunk out of the forest before the SS unit arrived. You were shot by the NKVD.”
“If they shot you, they questioned you,” Bohdan added, defiantly, obviously suspicious that she was misleading them.
For a dizzying moment, she feared she might faint if she continued lying to these men. “I blacked out, I can’t remember…” Tears rolled down her cheeks at the memory of Taras being led away, his frightened face as he twisted to look back at her. “They took my son!”
Kuzak watched her cry for a few moments. “Why didn’t they take you—interrogate and torture you?”
The word torture lingered in the musty air. Savka closed her eyes to shut out the image of Taras in a Russian jail cell, beaten and starved. She opened them, alarmed to see Bohdan limping toward her cot. Candlelight glowed through a pair of large ears that stuck out from his head.
“What information were they after?” He had a heavy beard and moustache—why hadn’t she noticed when she treated him in the forest?—and his mouth curved in a mocking smile. “Did you give it to them?”
“I was unconscious, I tell you.”
“Did they know you were Roman’s wife?”
“No,” she said, wiping away tears. At one time, she prided herself on honesty. The underground demanded it. She’d failed to aid the struggle, to help Ukraine. Now she was forced to lie to save herself. “Roman said he will soon desert with men and weapons—”
Bohdan’s smile had disappeared. “You’re now seksoty, admit it.”
“I’m a courier, not a collaborator,” she declared. “Roman had a shtafeta for you, telling you to stay in the bunker. Taras and I destroyed it—before I was shot.”
“Stay in the bunker?” Kuzak snorted. “Roman’s belly is full of SS rations, while we starve.”
Bohdan scowled at her. “Get up,” he demanded.
The thought of standing sent her into a panic. “I need more opium.”
“We gave you the last one yesterday.” Bohdan peeled back the blanket.
Her trousers had ridden up around her knees and frigid air hit her bare lower legs and feet. When she tried to move, pain shot through her. How would she get Taras back from the NKVD?
Kuzak had gone through the door and Bohdan yanked her out of bed, turning to throw her things into her rucksack. She swayed, the ground cold beneath her feet. Bohdan jerked his head, still holding her arm, and she awkwardly pulled on her wool socks, boots, and coat with one hand, gathered her bag to follow him. She passed through the doorway in time to see Kuzak climb out of the hole—not two feet across—that led outside. The main room of the bunker was small—she could have walked its length in seven steps—and it was filled with box upon box of what must have been encrypted files.
“Hello, you little coward.”
A silent figure crouched like a spider near the dugout hole. Natalka, her dark hair now in two long plaits and tied with ratty pieces of leather. Savka could not read her blank expression. Had the banderivka argued for her earlier? She got her answer when Natalka leapt up and grabbed her, tied a blindfold tightly over her eyes, and gave her a shove up and out into the forest.
* * *
savka’s blindfold was clumsily untied to bright sun that filtered through the branches of towering beech trees in the forest clearing, turning drops of moisture in the air into diamond-like shards that dazzled her eyes. For the last hour, Kuzak and Natalka had dragged her down the same trail she and Taras had climbed only days ago, Savka stumbling blindly, unable to see anything below her blindfold except the tips of her boots.
She blinked rapidly and Kuzak came into focus, standing directly in front of her, levelling a small pistol he’d just taken out of his belt. He remained so still beside Natalka, he might have been a marble statue.
Startled, she glanced at the banderivka, who nudged Savka with her Papasha submachine gun, positioning her for Kuzak to take aim and fire a single shot at her head. Panic flashed through her. Did Natalka not remember how she’d put her life in danger to save Bohdan? “Sestra,” Savka begged her, “you can’t let this happen.”
“Coward,” Natalka said, stepping back. “You’ve been turned, admit it.”
Savka retched violently, bent double, then straightened and wiped the sick from her mouth. There would be no gratitude from Natalka, no sisterhood intervention. The wind brought a strong smell of wet tree trunks and sap, and a waft of body odor from one of the insurgents. Shivering and stifling sobs, her chaotic thoughts tried to land on alternative outcomes to her situation. But there were none. She was in the worst possible predicament: Kuzak believed she’d been turned by the NKVD.
“Why did Roman not give you a gun to kill yourself and your son,” he demanded, tightening his grip on the pistol, “in the event you were caught?”
“He didn’t think partisans would be in the forest,” she said immediately, because it was the truth. The trip down the mountain had sapped her remaining strength, but she found the courage to take a few steps toward Kuzak. “I would never agree to be a Soviet spy.” The sun shone bright through the trees, but not enough to warm her, and she concentrated on her breath—in and out, struggling to keep her composure. Some part of her longed to give up, close her eyes, bend her head to let Kuzak take his shot, or allow Natalka to press the trigger on her Papasha and unleash a punishing round of Soviet bullets. Perhaps she deserved death. A fitting end for a useless woman who let her child be stolen. Kuzak closed the distance between them, his eyes not leaving hers, holding the gun at waist level. She could smell the wet wool from either his scarf, or her own coat. “You’re mistaken,” she insisted. “They left me for dead.”
