The Last Secret, page 15
“You have no choice. Do you want to end up in the Gulag?” Savka tried to keep the frustration out of her voice but was unsuccessful. “You would never see your son again.”
Ewa nodded and took Paweł’s hand. Together they all headed toward Planty Park. After her son was born, Ewa had fallen in love with being a mother again and vowed to protect Paweł the way she’d been unable to protect her daughter. She’d decided to lay low and do less perilous work for the Polish resistance, which had gone even further underground.
Pigeons flew up before them and light was already failing, the streetlamps starting to wink on along the wide, snowy pathways. In summer, the plane and beech trees formed a glorious canopy high above, but now they stood silent, leafless, frozen in winter slumber.
Paweł raced ahead along the path, Zoya squealing with delight as she attempted to catch him. Savka stopped to remove a pack of cigarettes from her coat pocket. She lighted two, and handed one to Ewa, who took it, glowering at several people who were hurrying past, coming from the polls in numb defeat. The strangers glanced back at her, for everyone noticed beautiful Ewa. “Stalin got his wish today.” She exhaled a stream of smoke. “The West has abandoned us.”
“Keep it down,” Savka warned. “Stalin has agents in every organization—he penetrated the Ukrainian underground. He can penetrate yours.” Her fingers trembled as she lifted the cigarette to her lips and inhaled. In her mind flashed a vision of the NKVD breaking down their apartment door and dragging Ewa away. The image was quickly replaced by a whisper of memory from Lieutenant Belyakov on that dreadful day on the mountain when Taras was taken from her.
We have been piecing together information on all of you.
Ewa dropped her voice. “They’re arresting any Pole they like, without provocation.” She watched Paweł and Zoya, jostling each other playfully, then turned to look at Savka. “Thousands are disappearing quietly—voters and opposition candidates, either murdered by the NKVD or sent to Siberia.”
Savka’s breath rose in clouds of vapor in the cold air, Belyakov’s voice ringing in her head again. Did you think your husband’s visit to you of late went unnoticed?
Ewa stared at her. “Look at you, shaking like a rabbit.” She paused. “Why did you come out with the children?”
“I worried about you. Where have you been?”
“Getting something,” Ewa said mysteriously. She took off after the children, who shrieked as they scooped up snow and threw clumsily rolled snowballs at each other.
Savka took a final drag on her cigarette and followed, her heart settling on an even, careful beat. Ewa’s vague pronouncements were troubling, but it at least took her mind off the NKVD officer. Savka caught up to Zoya and bent to pull her daughter’s hat down over her dark curls. When she straightened, she started at the sight of a man in a long coat leaning on a light standard near them, reading a newspaper. From this distance, he seemed tall enough to be Lieutenant Belyakov’s soldier, Yeleshev, and perhaps handsome enough to be the other one, Ilyin. But her fears were allayed when a woman came up the path toward him. The man slipped his arm around her waist and the couple made off toward Market Square, unaware that Savka stood rooted to the spot, hardly breathing and her spine still tingling with dread.
“Don’t worry,” Ewa said lightly over her shoulder, “your Russian handler has forgotten you.”
Savka ground the cigarette butt under the heel of her boot. “Quiet.” Her voice held a warning: Say no more. She would often tell Ewa, in the privacy of their flat, how vividly the NKVD officer still haunted her—why was her friend speaking so freely about it now? Paweł and Zoya were roughhousing in the snow, and Savka pulled her daughter away. They didn’t need attention drawn to them. She straightened and looked at Ewa. “Why are you being so cruel?”
Ewa passed a hand over her eyes. “I’m sorry, Savka. I just can’t believe my country is going to these red dogs,” she said in a savage whisper. “The Kraków I love is dead.”
Savka forgave Ewa, as she always did. “You mustn’t do anything rash.”
Ewa scowled, flicking away ash from her cigarette. “I will do something rash—leave Poland forever.” She took out a handful of folded documents from her coat pocket and showed them to Savka. “Forged USSR exit visas—for us and our children, piękna,” Ewa said with a secretive smile.
Savka let out a relieved sigh. As much as she trusted Ewa, sometimes she worried that one day her friend would tire of her and demand Savka and Zoya leave the flat. These papers quieted those fears. The four of them would always be a family.
“We’ll flee to Germany—even to America,” Ewa said excitedly. Then she slipped two sets of papers into the pocket of Savka’s coat and scanned the park, making sure that no one was watching them. “We’ll take the train to Allied-occupied Berlin,” she continued, satisfied they were safe. “A friend has an apartment there.”
Savka blinked in surprise. “Is there room for all of us?” It was dangerous to brandish forged papers and talk of escape from a Soviet state. They could be stopped at any time and searched.
“We will make room,” Ewa said, her eyes burning with enthusiasm. “And somehow…somehow I will find Maja, and you will find Taras.”
They walked in the direction of home, snow crunching under their boots, and Savka squeezed Zoya’s mittened hand, looping her other arm through Ewa’s, who excitedly laid plans for their new life. Her friend was a true warrior and had the means and connections to get her and Zoya out. Savka was confident that, one day, she would find Mama and Lilia, and Taras.
Savka looked back. No one was following them. After three years of worry, she finally allowed herself to breathe a sigh of relief. Soon she would leave the Polish People’s Republic, and the NKVD officer would never find her.
* * *
an hour later, Savka and Ewa stood in the hallway of their apartment building, the children loudly chattering after their mad dash up three flights of stairs. Ewa turned the key in the lock and opened the door, stepping aside, allowing Savka to usher Zoya in ahead of her. Savka staggered back into the corridor at the sight of a shadowed figure sitting at the kitchen table.
“Hello Savka.”
She stifled a scream as the shadow smiled and she registered his face. Lieutenant Belyakov.
Fear hummed down Savka’s legs, as Ewa crowded in behind her with Paweł. They exchanged a terrified glance. “How did you find me?” she whispered, the Russian words like ashes in her mouth.
Belyakov grinned. “No one escapes me, Savka.”
She had not seen the officer since he stole Taras, and yet here he was on the same day Ewa had given her newly forged exit visas.
Ewa pushed past her and the children, who stared, instinctively fearful of this strange man. “How did you get in here, you troll,” she shouted in surprisingly good Russian. “She’s suffered enough, can’t you see?” The lieutenant studied her, his lip curled in distaste. “Savka still cannot raise her arm without sharp pain in her shoulder,” Ewa cried. “You know nothing of her nightmares!”
Savka sent her a look of gratitude. Thank God for Ewa. How long had it been since someone had defended her?
For a moment, Belyakov’s full lower lip and cleft chin made him appear kind, even genial. But this illusion was dispelled the moment he opened his mouth. “Do not speak to me of suffering.” He buckled under a wet cough that ended with a disturbing gabble in his throat. Belyakov got to his feet and moved about the room, picking up their few possessions, and turning them over. She’d forgotten how small he was—she and Ewa towered over him—yet he gave the impression he might strike at any moment. Finally, he turned his gaze to her.
“You are looking well, my pretty bird. The food is good in Kraków.”
Emboldened by Ewa’s presence, Savka demanded, “Where is my son?”
Belyakov regarded her for a few moments before responding. “Safe.”
Thankful tears filled her eyes. She doubted anything else Belyakov might tell her, but she’d gratefully accept news that Taras was safe.
Ewa stepped toward him. “Her husband is dead. You have no more need of her—give back her son.”
Belyakov sprang at her like a cat and Ewa shrank back with a gasp. He stood in the center of the room, his eyes now on Savka, who’d inched toward the kitchen, hoping to slip a knife out of the drawer. She might never have this chance again. “Your husband is alive,” the lieutenant said. “I found him in a British prisoner of war camp in Italy.”
Savka’s vision blurred and she let out an involuntary cry. Marko was alive? She had mourned him so thoroughly over the past three years, it seemed impossible. Zoya echoed her cry with one of her own, looking up at her mother with wide eyes. Ewa quickly gathered the frightened children and ushered them into the bedroom. When they were alone, Belyakov walked slowly toward her until he stood only a few feet away. “You have nothing to say, Savka? I thought you would be pleased to hear Marko is alive.”
“I am,” she whispered. But she wouldn’t let herself believe this Soviet. “He’s in Italy?” All this time, Savka had thought she’d escaped Belyakov, the spider, when, all along, she’d been suspended in his web, until he decided to crawl down and eat her. But now she must remain calm, she had to outwit and placate him, until she and Ewa and the children could escape. She thought of Kuzak’s pistol that she and Ewa agreed should be kept in the false bottom of the dresser drawer, taking it out only if Soviets came bursting through the door. Savka tried to send Ewa a silent message: Get the gun—shoot this Russian in the head, but she could hear her friend reading a book to the children in the bedroom, her voice too loud and tremulous.
Belyakov regarded her with a quizzical twitch of his lips, as if he were conducting an experiment and taking note of its effect on his subject. “A survivor, your Marko,” he remarked. “The Fourteenth Waffen-SS Division slipped away from the front to the uprising in Slovenia and then to Austria. They surrendered in May ’45 and were sent to a POW camp in Italy.” Belyakov removed his blue-and-red cap and ran a hand through his dark hair. “Your Roman god of a husband has been there all this time.”
Roman god? It seemed an odd phrase for him to use. Unless—like everyone who met Marko—Belyakov had become obsessed with her husband’s height and good looks. “You’ve seen him, haven’t you—in the prison camp?”
Surprise flitted across Belyakov’s features. “I interrogated him, da, but the British imperialists blocked our every effort to repatriate him.” He stood as close to her as he had that day in the forest three years ago. Savka noticed Belyakov had gray hair at his temples and hoped she might have put a few of them there herself. Several fingers of his right hand were twisted and crooked at the second joints, she observed with satisfaction, remembering the sour taste in her mouth and his crazed shout as she bit down hard on them after she’d been shot. He turned away in frustration and strolled to the kitchen window, hands folded behind his back. “At Yalta, the Allies promised Stalin they would help us pursue these men to the ends of the earth, but instead they protect him.”
“Repatriate?” Savka forced a laugh. “You would ship Marko to Siberia or shoot him.” Belyakov turned to look at her and she resisted the urge to touch her pocket. He couldn’t find out about the two exit visas, not before she discovered what had happened to Taras.
The Russian’s voice cut through her thoughts. “There are consequences to actions, wouldn’t you agree?”
“Yes.” She leaned against the counter, bracing herself for the worst. Where was Ewa with the gun?
“Your husband has committed a crime against the Soviet state and must be punished for treason.”
“He’s in a prisoner of war camp—that’s punishment enough.”
“The British have let them form choirs and orchestras,” Belyakov said before collapsing into a spasm of coughing, a bleak sputter of phlegm in his lungs. Hands trembling, he pulled a pewter flask from his pocket and unscrewed the lid before taking a long pull. Recovered, yet clearly agitated, he slipped it back into his pocket. “The men are staging theatrical performances,” he said, now fiddling with his field cap. “Your husband flourishes, eats better food than you and I do, and breathes the healing air of the Adriatic Sea. He is not suffering.”
The floorboards in the hallway creaked and Savka turned to see Ewa in the bedroom doorway, staring at the NKVD officer. “What more do you want of her?” she asked, her voice dripping acid. Savka glanced down at her friend’s hand. Empty. Why hadn’t she taken out the gun?
Belyakov did not take his eyes from Savka. “The imperialists will soon move Marko and his division to England, to work in their fields. The British wish to keep these traitors out of Soviet hands and MI-6 plans to recruit the Ukrainian officers. You will write to your husband, tell him you escaped Ukraine with the clothes on your back.”
“Marko sent me and Taras to a bunker in the mountains to wait out the war. You think he did not hear from Kuzak—even in this prisoner of war camp—that he suspects me of being turned into a Soviet spy?”
“Do not concern yourself with Kuzak.”
Savka’s heart plummeted at the sight of Belyakov’s sly smile. “Why?”
“A unit of NKVD agents was sent to exterminate the vermin. Kuzak died with your name on his lips.”
“Not the entire bunker.”
“Every rat in the hole.”
She thought of the lion-hearted Natalka lying dead in the snow. “How could you kill a woman in cold blood?”
Belyakov’s eyes narrowed. “There was no woman in that bunker.” He coughed. “We had to ensure your husband would never know Kuzak took you in or learned of the deal he made with you,” he said, regarding her with a cold detachment that destroyed every last vestige of confidence she’d built for herself in Kraków. “Did you not think I knew those bandits ordered you to kill me?”
Suddenly Zoya appeared behind Ewa, clutching her doll, and Savka glared at Belyakov. “When Marko learns that Taras was stolen by the NKVD and I somehow turned up safe and pregnant in Kraków, he’ll know the Soviets turned me on the mountain.”
“You were at it like rabbits when Marko came to the house, yes?” Belyakov’s tongue flicked over his lips. There was something in his eyes she didn’t like, as if he’d imagined, in great detail, how she and her husband had come together that night in Deremnytsia. The Lieutenant gestured toward Zoya. “And here is the residue of that union. Marko sent his dear pregnant wife and his son on a fool’s errand into enemy territory. You were shot by NKVD, left for dead, your son spirited away. A doctor took you to Kraków to save your life. There is nothing to doubt.”
“Marko’s not stupid. He’ll suspect the NKVD hold Taras as a bargaining chip,” she said, desperate to squirm her way out of the corner he’d backed her into. “He will suspect me.” She paused. “But if you release our son, I’ll consider your request.”
Belyakov scratched briefly at the top of his head. He had long nails, remarkably clean, and she pictured him carefully scraping under them to remove the dirt and blood of his interrogations at the end of each day. He finally spoke. “I cannot release your son. That is beyond my control.”
“Where is he?” Savka’s voice rose in a howl.
“Safe.” Belyakov smiled and glanced again at Zoya. Savka crossed the room and stepped in front of her daughter, as if she could somehow protect her from the Russian’s gaze. But Belyakov reached around her and stroked the child’s soft cheek with his thumb. “She is beautiful, like her mother. Will she be as obedient?” Savka nodded, afraid if she said anything, she would scream.
In an instant, Ewa was there with a hard push to Belyakov’s shoulder. Savka held her breath as Belyakov lurched, then, just as quick as Ewa had been, he struck her—one quick slap that sent her sprawling. He dusted off his tunic, straightening the buttons, and looked up at Savka with a glint in his eye. “You are one of the lucky ones—you are alive.” Belyakov opened the door and glanced back at her clutching Zoya, ignoring Ewa, her cheek still red from his slap. “I will be in touch when I receive intelligence that Marko and his division are being moved to England. Do your job well, Savka, and you will see your son again.”
The moment he was gone, Zoya began to cry softly into her doll’s dress. Savka held her, feeling the frantic beat of her daughter’s heart. Yet another of her children had borne witness to the cruelty of Lieutenant Belyakov. Ewa reached to embrace Savka, but she shrugged her off. “Why didn’t you take out the gun and shoot him?” she demanded.
Ewa let her arms drop. “Think, Savka. You almost have Taras back. If I had killed this Soviet, you would have lost your son forever.”
Savka closed her eyes briefly, anger overcome by gratitude for her friend. Ewa was right—they must do nothing to threaten her reunion with Taras. She turned to stare at the closed front door. Belyakov was in Kraków as an undertaker, raising her from the dead, conjuring her from a deep and pitiless grave. How naive of her to think she could escape his bondage.
19
JEANIE
Salt Spring Island
december 9, 1972
a wintry sun beams through the skylight in my studio where I stand before the canvas on my easel—a canvas that Pat has despoiled yet again with her ham-handed attempt at underpainting. She left for Vancouver this morning in her usual dramatic leave-taking, reminding me ad nauseam how to conduct myself in her absence, but also making sure I had my marching orders: Get that landscape commission done. Her brake lights had hardly disappeared through the trees when I dragged myself out to my studio, Tuna at my heels, too depressed at the thought of completing this picture by Christmas.
You’d think I would enjoy seeing the back of her, but not quite. In our early days on Salt Spring, when I rebelled and made Pat angry, she would take off for days, leaving me alone, unable to care for myself—just to show me how much I needed her. Deep in my mind are shameful memories of me ransacking the medicine cabinet in her bathroom—only to find she’d taken every last one of my medications. How could a nurse do that, leaving her patient to a nightmare of chronic pain? I’d taken to bed in a haze of agony, curled up in the fetal position. Only when I was hungry or thirsty did I try to get to the kitchen, falling down the stairs in a pathetic display worthy of a heroin addict. She knows I’ll behave. I’ll do anything to avoid that terrible pain and withdrawal. Not only is Pat my caregiver, she’s my drug dealer.
