The Last Secret, page 12
Ewa glanced up. “It was once a grand salon in a Jewish house, converted to a clinic after fucking Nazis sent the family to a concentration camp.”
The smell of antiseptic and chloroform drifted in sunlight that poured through high windows, illuminating rows of narrow, white metal beds and a large wooden cross that had been hung above the door. Some of the other patients were propped up on pillows; others lay motionless beneath their blankets. Fragments of memory coalesced in Savka’s mind—the panicked, resolute expression of her son as he was dragged away by the NKVD, lost to her. And the impossible task laid out by two entirely different parties, both demanding her obedience:
Spy on your husband to get your son back.
Kill your Russian handler to prove you are not a spy.
She remembered collapsing near Mama’s barn in Deremnytsia after Kuzak and Natalka had released her. “Mama, Lilia…” She turned her throbbing head, recalling their worried faces as they carried her inside. “How long have I been here?”
“Two weeks.”
“But, how…”
“You have Dr. Humeniuk to thank,” Ewa said, scraping her chair closer. “He told us your mother stood on the road that runs through your village, calling for a medic among the refugees, and he put up his hand. He agreed to see you and told them you were dying—obviously whoever dug out the bullet and stitched your wound didn’t sterilize their instrument, and infection set in. Your family surrendered you to save your life.” She laughed. “Do you know the doctor’s wife reluctantly parted with an antique washstand to make room for you in their cart?”
“A cart?” Ewa’s words triggered a kaleidoscope of memories—waking in sudden lucid moments to starlight, and feeling rain on her face, the mutter of distant voices and cart wheels turning, the smell of woodsmoke in her nostrils and broth being spooned into her as she lay in a fever of confusion. Ewa told her how Dr. Humeniuk had hoped to bargain for sulfa and opium from Polish partisans as they journeyed west for six weeks, retreating from the Soviets advancing to Berlin. But he hadn’t been successful, and her infection had worsened.
Savka’s hopes soared. “The war is over?” Soon she would see Marko, and they would find Taras.
“Over?” Ewa said. “Far from it. Red Army shits are marching on Stanislav in west Ukraine. They’ll be here before spring.”
Savka turned her head away, crushed. Deremnytsia had been taken. And here she was, no better than one of those Red Army shits, safe and sound in a stolen Jewish house while her son was in the hands of monsters. “Mama,” she whispered. “Lilia, Sofiy…” Had Marko sent papers in time, as he promised he would? If he hadn’t, it was possible they’d been raped and beaten to death by Soviet soldiers in Ukraine. She had to go back and find them. Savka threw back the covers and got her bare feet on the floor, but the room spun, and she wavered.
“What are you doing?” the nurse cried, leaping up.
“I must find Taras…Mama, Lilia…”
“You’re too weak,” Ewa soothed, easing her back. “And anyway, you’d have to be crazy to enter a war zone when you’re pregnant. Think of the baby.”
Savka blinked with incomprehension. “What did you say?”
Ewa smiled as she tucked her back into bed. “We’re not sure of course, but Dr. Humeniuk said you didn’t have a monthly on the road.”
Stunned, Savka placed a hand on her stomach. She remembered Marko’s words the last time she saw him: God willing, let us make another child. Had one of their prayers finally been answered?
Ewa glanced down at her own stomach. “I’m pregnant too.”
“I can’t possibly…,” Savka insisted, not really listening as Ewa chattered of how they’d receive extra rations, but her happiness at the prospect of another life growing inside her was swallowed by thoughts of Taras. Almost two months she’d been close to death, two months that her son had suffered elsewhere. Captive and alone. He is safe, in a dacha, she convinced herself, to avoid thinking of the alternative. That Lieutenant Belyakov might have sent Taras to a prison in Moscow or…a thirteen-year-old boy in the Gulag? Anything but that.
Savka remembered Kuzak’s pistol and tried to raise her head. “Where are my things?”
The nurse bent to pull her rucksack out from under the bed. “It’s all here—what you arrived with.”
Savka dragged it to her across the blanket and pawed through the contents, her fingers grazing the silk slip Marko had given her, and Baba’s korali wedding necklace. “Where is it?”
“What?”
Savka licked her dry lips. “Where is my…” she searched for the Polish word “…gun?”
Ewa looked surprised. “Why would you have a gun?”
Savka frowned. “It was mine and it’s gone.” She felt grateful to this Dr. Humeniuk for saving her life and her baby’s, yet there were too many questions left unanswered. Did Mama and Lilia know what had happened to Taras? She wondered if she’d told them about her encounter in the bunker before passing out. And where was her gun? The secrets in Savka’s head floated in jumbled chaos.
Ewa sat back, arms crossed, regarding her with interest. “Perhaps you can tell me how you were shot.”
“I would tell you,” Savka said, staring down at her hands resting on the blanket. “But I can’t remember a thing.” Another lie. She could remember well enough what had happened, but to relate the story of how she’d been captured and betrayed twice made it all too real. And she was not ready to face the truth—the NKVD officer would never find her here. Nor would the underground. She refused to let herself feel relieved and safe when her son was not. How could Taras be gone when she could still feel his head against her shoulder and the warmth of his smile?
Ewa leaned forward. “I can see you’ve not had an easy war. Where’s your husband? Mine was in the Polish Home Army. He was shot like a dog in the street in ’41, by German spies.” She ran a reluctant hand over her belly. “I used to go out with my little girl, Maja, late at night, looking for food, but a German patrol finally cornered us two months ago. They stole my Maja, and a Nazi prick is the father of this child,” she said through gritted teeth. “Hitler despises the Poles, but he’s not above stealing our blonde, blue-eyed children to bring up as good Germans. Or impregnating Polish women. This is why I want to kill some Huns.”
“You kill Huns, I’ll kill Soviets.”
Ewa sat back and crowed, “I knew I would like you.” She prattled on about how Savka was welcome to stay in her flat as long as she liked. “The Krauts hunt women at night,” she was saying. “It won’t matter if we’re pregnant…”
Savka stared in disbelief. How did Ewa speak so casually when she’d recently been raped by Nazis and lost her daughter to their Lebensborn program? She wasn’t sure if she could trust this tough Polish nurse who had extended a generous welcome to her, a stateless, homeless, possibly pregnant Ukrainian woman, but she knew she had no choice. She was alone in this world, and she and Ewa were united in grief and in war, a Pole and a Ukrainian meeting across the divide to fight their common enemy.
15
JEANIE
Salt Spring Island
december 5, 1972
“you didn’t tell me you were one of the last people to see Marko Kovacs,” I say, as Pat glances from Danek Rys to myself. You’re outnumbered, dear girl. “Mr. Kovacs disappeared off our ward,” I peer inquiringly at the newspaperman, “when was it? Thirteen years ago?”
Pat arrived fifteen minutes ago and she’s still out of breath from climbing the path to the headland. Scrambling out of her Jeep and gathering four paper grocery bags in her considerable arms, she had stopped suddenly on her way to the house, the way you might if you suddenly spotted a cougar or a bear. Head down, she continued, pretending she really hadn’t seen us, and took her time unpacking the groceries before curiosity got the better of her and she ventured out.
Danek stands a few feet above Pat on the headland, one boot up on a rock, looking down at her with mild distaste, as if he’s finally met the object of his quest and is disappointed by what he’s found. I think of the photograph of a sculpture I once saw in one of Aunt Suze’s art books, of the demigod Perseus, holding aloft the severed head of Medusa. If only.
When Pat sees me pull the kimono close around my body, she breaks into a smile, pointedly ignoring Mr. Rys. “Dear, what are you doing out here wearing that old thing? You should go back to the house. You’ll catch your death of cold.”
“You do know journalists can read police reports,” I say, leveling a stare at her. “Yet you told Mr. Rys when he called last night that you’d never heard of this Marko Kovacs.” Pat glances from the journalist to myself, and I feel a frisson of pleasure at her obvious discomfort.
“Please call me Dan,” he says, as Pat takes a step toward me, but I’m saved by a gust of wind that destroys her carefully hairspray-lacquered bangs. Futzing them back into place, she sends me a poisonous glare. I know she’ll find some way to punish me after Dan leaves. I glance at the journalist, firm in my resolve to keep him here as long as possible. Tuna is licking his fingers. My old dog doesn’t like strangers. He’s even surly to the landscaper, who Pat hires each year to trim the arbutus trees. I smile then notice Dan’s uncertain expression. He doesn’t look all that comfortable with my dog. Or life itself, for that matter. He has the features of a boxer, his nose broken long ago and healed slightly crooked. A face marked by trauma. As someone who bears her own disfigurement, I don’t let my eyes linger there or on the large, work-toughened hands, strange tattoos like hieroglyphs dancing across three of his fingers.
Danek Rys is a sign, an obvious, tragic wreck. God has turned his back on us both.
Pat erupts, “This is criminal! How did you get our address?”
He grips his pen, seemingly scratching her every word in his notebook. “Someone on the ferry gave it to me.”
“The ferry,” she says through clenched teeth.
“What joy it is, living on a small island,” I say cheerfully. “Everyone knows where you live.”
“Give me the name of your paper,” she demands. “I’m going to call your editor right now, tell him you’re harassing us.”
Instead of answering her, Dan turns to look at me. “Maybe Jeanie will tell the truth to your lies. Did you see a man, the night Marko Kovacs disappears? Maybe you hear something in the hallway?”
“The only men who came into my room were doctors,” I say, gazing back into his eyes, his razed features. I want to draw him. I want to paint him!
The rope, my carefully crafted hangman’s noose, still hangs from the tree branch above us, and a gust of wind blows it toward Pat. She swats it away without looking up, too busy taking in the columnist. Tapping a finger to her temple, she says, “Anything Jeanie says can’t be trusted. It’s the painkillers—screwed with her head.”
“Why did you say you had never heard of Marko Kovacs on the phone?” Dan asks her.
I rack my brain, trying to remember Pat’s half of the conversation last night, my memory working the jigsaw puzzle, pieces sometimes landing in their rightful places, other times flying off into the void.
What makes you think you can call this late?
No interviews. Out of the question.
Never heard of him.
“I’d forgotten his name,” Pat says simply. Then grabs my arm, adopting her stern nurse look. “This is too upsetting for you.” She digs in her fingernails. “Go back to the house.”
I try to object, but the look on her face is murderous. She’s left me little choice but to turn, the kimono swirling about my legs. Pat shoves me ahead on the path, while she hangs back, presumably to keep her conversation with the newspaperman private, but I close my eyes, ears out on stalks to hear every word.
16
SAVKA
Kraków, German General Government, Poland
june 28, 1944
ewa’s apartment was long and narrow, with a bricked-in fireplace and large windows at one end, overlooking Mikołajska Street, which, Savka had been told, had once been an ancient trade route that led straight to Kyiv. The flat was only a stone’s throw from Market Square, the very heart of Kraków, where Savka had just spent an hour lined up for her and Ewa’s meager weekly food allotment. She let herself into the flat, a cloth bag of rations slung over her arm. Kicking off her shoes at the door, she headed for the kitchen, luxuriating in the feel of the rich parquet floors—laid in a herringbone pattern—beneath her bare feet.
Now that Savka was no longer in Ukraine, her days of serving the underground were over. Ewa had given up nursing at the Red Cross clinic to work as a forger for the Freedom and Independence movement, an organization that supported the Polish government in exile, supplying resistance insurgents with false identity papers when it got too hot for them in Kraków. The job didn’t seem dangerous, but Ewa often disappeared for days at a time, leaving Savka alone with her ghosts.
She had just unpacked the last of their rations, wondering when Ewa might return from her latest assignment, when a voice called from the bedroom.
“What are you doing home?”
Although this was not Ewa’s usual welcome, Savka smiled and went to the bedroom door. “The lines weren’t as long as usual. I thought you were out…” She trailed off at the sight of Ewa, with one leg on the bed, in the act of rolling a stocking up the length of her calf. Bright spots of pink colored her friend’s pale cheeks. Ewa—who usually charged about in trousers and blouse and old boots—had slipped on a blue, crepe print dress and styled her flaxen hair into marcelled waves that made her look like an American film star.
Savka’s hand went to her own hair, which had begun to grow back surprisingly thick and wavy, like an unrepentant nun’s hair that had been freed from its wimple. She raised an eyebrow. “Where are you going?” Ewa looked stylish, as though she had a reason to dress. “Don’t tell me you have a secret lover.”
Ewa refused to meet Savka’s gaze. “I’m going to deliver papers,” she said, drawing the stocking up her thigh and fastening it to a garter belt.
“In that?” Savka asked, amused.
Ewa turned to examine herself in the wardrobe mirror. “I don’t even look five months pregnant.”
“I’m bloated as a cow already.” Savka’s laugh strangled in her throat. She’d sworn never to feel joy or happiness again, never to forget that each moment was a torment, each moment was a raw wound. But four months after leaving Deremnytsia and losing Taras to the Soviets, she still caught herself at odd moments, profaning his memory.
Her eyes filled with tears at the memory of her son’s smile. She treasured a moment from a summer’s night last year, going out in the dusk to find Taras in the garden among the flowers and carrots and staked green beans. “Come in, Tarasyku,” she’d called.
“Just one more page,” he begged.
She’d gazed back at him, his dear face illuminated by a single candle, immersed in a book. “Your eyes will cross with all this reading, and then what will I do with you?”
“Love me?” he said with a mischievous smile.
How I wish to be carried back to one such night as this, she thought, turning away before Ewa noticed her tears. “It’s too close to curfew. You’ll be arrested.” Savka had learned to talk to her friend as if she were a child, for even a child would not be so impulsive.
“Nonsense, piękna,” Ewa said, using her pet name for Savka. Beautiful. She began to apply pancake foundation to her face. “I’ll be home before then.”
“Where did you get powder?” Savka asked. Along with soap and shampoo, cosmetics were a luxury only to be found at a price on the black market. Ewa laughed and struck a match to light a cigarette, waiting for the match to burn down and cool before using the charcoal to line her eyes.
Shortly after moving in, Savka had finally shared a version of her story, one peppered with a careful lie—that Taras had been stolen by the Red Army. As much as she wanted to tell her friend the truth—that she’d been shot by the NKVD and made deals with the Soviet officer and Kuzak to save her son—she knew she couldn’t. Ewa reminded her too much of Natalka, the fierce banderivka—a mystifying mix of courage, gumption, and annoying hubris—and Savka knew she could not fully trust her. Not yet.
She went to the window, her hands roaming gratefully over her pregnant belly. Everything had been taken from her, except for this miracle, this baby that grew within her.
Late afternoon sun glanced off the red tile rooftops. Across the Vistula River, a spiral of smoke from Soviet army cooking fires curled ominously to the sky, more battalions joining them each day. There’d been news that the Fourteenth Division had suffered heavy losses in a battle at the front, but they’d pulled back and marched south into Slovenia. If Savka’s husband had died, she’d never know. And if he was alive, how would he find her after the war?
“Why are you so on edge?” Ewa asked.
Because the Red Army is camped on the other side of this river, Savka wanted to say. And I fear a certain NKVD officer is coming for me. It was unreasonable, of course. Lieutenant Belyakov had no idea where she’d gone. She imagined him showing up in Deremnytsia months ago and learning that she’d been taken by a refugee doctor. Kraków was facing a Soviet invasion, and once again, so was she, who’d so recently escaped the front with her life.
“With our luck,” she said, looking over her shoulder at Ewa, “we’ll go into labor in the middle of the Russian advance.”
“A new baby will make you forget Taras,” Ewa said thoughtlessly, exhaling a plume of smoke.
Savka’s throat went dry. “No new baby could make me forget my son.” There were too many mornings where she awoke shuddering in horror, Taras’s shouts in her ears. The Soviet officer had demanded she perform an impossible task—spy on your husband, or your son dies—but she took no relief in the fact she no longer must follow his orders. Taras was innocent, taken as a bargaining chip and now faced a lifetime in purgatory because Marko was gone, and with him, the reason for their son’s kidnapping. She’d lost Taras forever.
