The Last Secret, page 16
I stand in front of my easel and take a breath. I’ve learned this commission is for a financier in Paris, and I have no idea what to give him. When I begin framing a new composition, it’s always with an art teacher’s voice in my head: This is how you find your focal point, this is how you position islands to ocean to sky… I flip through some sketches and find a drawing I once did of a sweet little cove on Wallace Island when Pat took me out in the kayak. This will do. Taking up a 4H graphite pencil, I reluctantly begin sketching. Somehow, my pencil leaps out of my hands and hits the floor, its lead fracturing to bits.
Now this is a sign, I think. Paint what you really want, Jeanie. I head to my drying racks. Skimming through, I find a canvas that I underpainted a long while ago, when I still worked with oils. After setting it on my easel, I let my hands move of their own volition, squeezing oil paint onto my palette, and dancing a brush across the canvas. Danek Rys has become my muse. He whispers in my ear, and I lose all track of time as I layer these paints, these colors—how can I have used them so mindlessly on landscapes I didn’t really want to paint!—alizarin crimson is my life’s blood. Lapis lazuli becomes the transcendent shade of Dan’s fine eyes. He’s here with me, in this room, closer than my own soul.
Each painting I’ve begun in my life was for someone else, in hopes it might pass the grade—and with Pat’s long shadow haunting me, in hopes it might sell. Paint like this work will soon hang in the bloody Guggenheim, she’d often say, adding, even though it never will, just to keep me in line. Before this moment, I’ve cobbled together images, painting in the dark. There’s nothing of me in those landscapes.
The sun-drenched morning passes, and an androgynous form takes shape on my canvas as shadows slant sideways through the studio windows. It’s the journalist, his eyes staring into mine. He has awakened something in me, a holy and sacred thing I thought long consumed. As my brushes move across the canvas, the leviathan, the monster that has long held my dark, unknowable heart, finally releases it, and a strange sensation rises to meet me.
“Everything I’ve painted before this moment was a lie,” I whisper, tears swimming down my face.
All I can think of is Dan Rys: I see him running toward me on the headland, and later, walking slowly up the driveway after Pat told him to leave, one long glance over his shoulder at me in the window. When all three of us came down the path from the headland, I knew she would rip the note with his phone number out of my hands as she wrestled me through the front door and harangued him in private. But Pat had no idea that I rushed to the kitchen and tore a piece of paper from a notepad on the counter near the phone. I scribbled his number on it, hoping I had remembered it right. Then I stood at the window and listened to her feed him lies. If he believed any of those slanderous falsehoods—about me and my relationship with Pat—I’d never see Dan again.
I paint well past noon, composing a figure pieced together in cubes, the face indistinct, the eyes at different levels—almost Picasso-like in its construction. Awash with reverence, I step back and observe Danek Rys. “Please let this not be a fleeting moment,” I breathe, “but a gift that no one, not even Pat, can take away.”
Famished, I plunk my brushes in a jar of turpentine and head to the house for lunch, Tuna dawdling behind me. The weather has held; there’s not a cloud to be seen. It’s crisp, even cold, but the sun is a welcome gift. The house feels damp, and I bundle into a sweater and knit hat, picking up one of the white medication cups Pat has so thoughtfully lined up like soldiers on the kitchen counter. I immediately trash the orange pill, then down the rest with a gulp of water and remove a scrap of paper from the pocket of my overalls—Dan’s telephone number. For the past four days, I’ve kept it with me during the day and under my mattress at night.
His haunted face floats before my eyes. I want to charge to the phone and dial his number. But what would I say? I miss you? I don’t miss my mother, the person I once wanted more than anything in the world to love me, yet she somehow didn’t. I dearly miss Aunt Suze and Kay. And another cherished soul—my baby, who would have been fourteen years old this January. I hardly know Mr. Rys, yet I miss him as much as I do my daughter—for I knew she was a girl right from the start.
My heart hurts at the thought of who she might have been today. Would she like swimming in the ocean? Would she love to paint, like me? I blink back tears and take a breath. Time to occupy my mind with something else, I think and slip Kay’s last letter out of my sweater pocket to reread, savoring details of camp life in the jungles of Africa. I wonder where she is now and if she ever thinks about me—but I know that I probably never cross her mind; that she’s already settled in a new clinic or hospital in Bangladesh or Ethiopia, settled into a new life.
Brushing away tears, I clasp the letter to my heart. “I need you, Kay.”
I stare down at the orange pills marked SKF T76 in the other medication cups, glowing like radioactive waste material. What are they for?
I must see those pill bottles.
20
SAVKA
Kraków, Polish People’s Republic
august 1947
through the window of the flat, Savka stared down at the man on the sidewalk directly across the street from their building. Spotting her, he lifted his hand in an insolent wave, his black hair curling from beneath a wide-brimmed fedora. Comrade Ilyin. Over the past seven months, he’d taken turns with Yeleshev, Belyakov’s other man—who’d also been with him that fateful day in the Carpathians—to linger in doorways or pace at the corner, smoking and watching to ensure she didn’t escape Poland. After Belyakov had turned up at their apartment in January, he’d ordered her to wait until Marko and his division had been shipped to England, and as the months passed without further word from her handler, Savka often watched his men watching her like hawks.
Sweat was gathering under her arms, and she fanned herself with a newspaper, lifting damp hair off her neck. A heat wave had descended on Kraków, and even this early in the morning, the city was wreathed in a scorched haze, the sun blazing down and wilting those who dared wander the streets. If Ewa were home, she would come up behind Savka and whisper, “These beasts can’t stand out there forever.” Savka had resisted Ewa’s plan to flee Kraków for Berlin. Belyakov held Taras, and if he found out she’d escaped, Savka was certain she’d lose her son.
Until she’d received Marko’s first letter from Rimini.
After Belyakov’s visit, Savka had written to tell her husband how she’d escaped Ukraine and was hiding in Poland with their daughter. His reply had come within weeks, followed by others, and his letters and Ewa’s forged exit visas were in her purse on the kitchen table, along with the small gun Kuzak had given her.
She stuck her head into the bedroom to check on Zoya and Paweł, who were playing quietly with wooden blocks, then she glanced toward the door of the flat where two small suitcases stood, packed and ready for them to leave at any moment. Irritable and impatient in the growing humidity, she took out Marko’s most recent letter, unfolding it to read his hurried scrawl, and seeking reassurance that escape was her best option.
Savka—
I remain devastated that you lost Taras. Unforgivable. How could you survive while our son was taken by the NKVD?
Every moment I grieve his loss.
The British are committed to protecting our division from the Soviets. We are getting out of here soon. When I arrive in England, they will help me send a message to Kuzak. He will discover where Taras is being held and launch a rescue.
We will bring back our son.
Your husband,
Marko
A tear dropped on the page, blurring his words. “Soon you will know Kuzak is dead,” she whispered. “And that I killed him—”
The door to the flat flew open, and Ewa burst in, breathless from racing up the stairs. “That gorgeous beast isn’t there,” she shouted. “He’s not there.” Savka rushed to the window. The sidewalk was indeed empty, save for a few people walking along Mikołajska Street toward the market. She and Ewa mobilized, moving around the flat in a frenzy, stuffing slices of rye they’d toasted this morning, and a few more clothes into their suitcases. Once their bags were packed, they bolted with the children to the station, leaving behind their life in Kraków with nothing but a few furtive glances over their shoulders.
But on the train to Berlin, Savka could not let her guard down, nor shake a sense of foreboding, even as Ewa sucked at cigarette after cigarette and winked at her through a cloud of smoke that rose in ribbons to the ceiling of their third-class compartment. Paweł was occupied, playing a game of jacks on the floor of the carriage, but Zoya was tugging at her mother’s coat, wanting something to eat. “In a moment, darling,” Savka said, her eyes on Ewa and the new jaunty red felt beret that she wore angled down over one eye. Savka thought it looked expensive but would not begrudge her friend a luxury.
Savka had just handed Zoya a slice of toasted rye when the door slid open, and she jumped in her seat. “Papers!” A Soviet conductor glared down at the women, his hand out. She tried to smile, to act naturally, as she fished the exit visas out of her handbag. The conductor glanced at her photograph. “Savka Ivanets.” He looked up to study her and Zoya, who had slid to the floor to join Paweł in his game, the toast still clutched in her hand. “Your daughter?” Savka nodded without a word, holding her breath.
After the conductor reviewed Zoya’s visa, he turned to Ewa and examined hers and Paweł’s with a frown. Finally satisfied, he handed them back and left the carriage. Savka gratefully exhaled.
Ewa clasped her hand, stroking each of her fingers. “We did it, Savka,” she said, her eyes gleaming with excitement.
Savka looked out the window and allowed herself a sigh of relief. When Belyakov had shown up seven months ago, his order for her to spy on Marko in England sent her into a deep depression, but now her heart soared with quiet elation. With Ewa’s help, she and Zoya had escaped the clutches of her Russian controller. Every blast of the locomotive’s whistle brought her closer to freedom, closer to her husband. And perhaps to Taras.
But something still niggled. How had they escaped so easily?
“Bye-bye Belyakov.” Ewa zipped her hand in the air. “Bzzzt! You will see, soon he will be erased from your memory, Savka. Zoya will lead a normal life—and finally meet her father.” Ewa glanced at her. “Why the long face?”
“One of Belyakov’s men has been out there every day,” Savka fretted. “Why would Ilyin suddenly leave without Yeleshev taking his place?”
“Maybe he’s got a girlfriend,” Ewa said with a shrug. “Oh, Ilyin, Ilyin,” she cooed, her eyes closed, and a dreamy expression on her face.
Savka frowned. “What are you doing?” Sometimes Ewa’s joking irritated her.
“Kissing that magnificent creature,” she said with a naughty, schoolgirl’s grin. “Don’t tell me you wouldn’t kiss him, given the chance.”
“Stop it.” Savka’s gut cramped. It was Ilyin who, on Belyakov’s orders, had shot her that day in the Carpathian Forest. She could never imagine kissing that monster.
Their train had just crossed the frontier between Poland and Germany. Savka had never been this far west. Leaving the Polish People’s Republic was exhilarating and distressing, for it meant leaving Ukraine behind forever. A Soviet exit visa was a one-way ticket. She watched German village after German village pass with a feeling of dread growing in her chest, and thought of her father and brother, working in this strange country during the war. What had become of them? She’d likely never know.
Ewa took her hand again, eyeing her impassively, and for a moment Savka felt dizzy under her friend’s gaze.
“You must breathe, Savka,” Ewa said, giddy amusement stealing around the corners of her mouth.
“I will breathe when we’re safe in Berlin.” Savka smiled reluctantly. The sun was high overhead, the heat oppressive even with the window down. She gazed at the miles of farmer’s fields flying by. Two years after the war had ended, eastern Europe was still struggling to recover, but the wheat would soon be ready for harvest.
The train approached a station and slowed, whistling to a stop, black smoke drifting past their window. Some passengers disembarked, others boarded. She and Ewa had been lucky to have the compartment to themselves, but with the train now at capacity an older woman opened the door, searching for a seat. Savka and Ewa lifted the children to their laps.
Zoya had been quieter than usual on the long trip, as if she knew that she and her mother were running for their lives, but as the train gained speed again, she turned and gazed up at her with those beautiful dark eyes. “Where are we going, Mama?”
Savka hugged her dear, small body close. “Somewhere safe, my love,” she said, “where you and Paweł can make friends and play.”
“What a lovely child,” the new passenger remarked, as Zoya shyly ducked her head. “She must look like her father.”
Her daughter resembled neither her nor Marko. Savka was certain that when her husband met Zoya for the first time, he’d sweep her into his arms and tell them stories of an aunt or great grandmother who had such dark, wavy hair.
Several hours later, the train rolled through the outskirts of Berlin. Inside the compartment, the air seemed to heat another few degrees. Savka held a now sleeping Zoya, even as a chill of anticipation ran over her skin like a rat. Berlin. How many times had she heard the name of this city drop from the mouths of Nazi soldiers in her village? Berlin, home to the Reichstag, to Hitler and his minions, who’d raged across Europe, leaving it in ashes.
Ewa lit another cigarette and smoked pensively, staring out the window. Savka noticed her friend’s hands were shaking. Approaching the birthplace of her rapists, how could they not? “Over three hundred Allied bombing runs,” Ewa smirked, “and not one of them managed to kill that bastard Hitler.” The new passenger, obviously a German, quickly looked away. As Ewa blundered on, relating how Germany had been carved up by the Allies—the Americans and British holding West Berlin, the Soviets occupying the eastern part of the city—Savka watched the destruction pass by their train window. Buildings were bombed to shadows of their former selves; they resembled drawings she’d seen of Roman ruins, ceilings blown out, insides reduced to rubble. Two years after the end of the war, only the outer brick structures remained standing.
The train slowed as it came into the station, and Savka closed her eyes with the conviction that here was one of the supreme moments of her life. Freedom at last. When she opened them, the German passenger had already left and Ewa was standing to take down her bag from the overhead compartment.
“We did it,” Savka whispered. “How can I ever thank you?”
Ewa leaned to kiss her cheek, then rubbed off the lipstick mark she’d left there, smiling. “Give me your little gun, piękna. Police will stop you at checkpoints. If they find it…” she trailed off.
Savka fumbled in her handbag for Kuzak’s pistol and handed it over to her friend. “What if you’re stopped…” But Ewa had already gathered up Paweł and turned, leaving the carriage so quickly, Savka had to scramble with Zoya to catch up.
* * *
it was early evening when they got off the train. Years later, Savka would often think of how she and Zoya descended the narrow steps to the platform, Savka—her dress sticking to her legs from the humidity—trying to keep her daughter from being crushed by the crowd on the platform as she searched for Ewa and young Paweł. She spotted the top of Ewa’s red hat bobbing toward the street and recalled Ewa saying that her friend would be waiting in a car to take them to the apartment. Savka followed, diving headlong into the tidal current of disembarking passengers, dragging Zoya behind her, the travel bag under her arm.
But other passengers streamed forward in a crush to board the train, and it seemed impossible to reach the street. Savka was consumed by a sudden, aching exhaustion after almost seven hours on the train. Years later, she would remember her pulse quickening, the smell of engine grease and coal steam, and the sweat of passengers being greeted by friends or family. She would remember the feeling of being watched, and the sudden crystal-clear directive from somewhere inside her:
Run.
Someone grasped her by the elbow and she turned to find a man dressed in an overcoat, his face shadowed by the wide brim of his hat. Terror gripped her and she tried to pull away, but another man had already snatched up Zoya and their suitcase, moving toward the street.
“No,” she screamed as they dragged her through the station. “Zoya!” Savka would rather die than lose her daughter the way she’d lost Taras. She scratched and fought like an animal, shouting into the crowd for help, but people silently passed her, tight-lipped and eyes down. What’s happening? Where the hell is Ewa?
Out on the street, a black car was waiting at the curb. Savka was thrown roughly into the back while a crying and frightened Zoya was deposited in the front passenger seat. One man climbed in next to Savka and the other got behind the wheel, steering the car onto the busy street.
“My papers are in order,” Savka said in stilted German, her voice shaking so much she could barely form the words. “You can’t detain me.” The man next to her finally turned to look at her, and her blood chilled. It was Yeleshev, the second of Belyakov’s deputies. Savka’s old wound burned hot with memory. She flicked her eyes to the driver next to her sobbing daughter. As he wove expertly through traffic, he turned his head to steer the car down a wide boulevard, and Savka took in his profile. Ilyin. They found me. Devastated, she looked out the window and stared with dumb incomprehension at the passing tableau. Most of the trees had been destroyed, leaving only a few leaning precariously, scorched black by fire or the heat of bomb blasts. Battered light standards hung over the bomb-damaged street like ghouls. Under a large banner of Stalin that flew from the top of a broken statue in the center of the boulevard, a work crew of women in a long assembly line moved a rubble pile, piece by piece, from the street.
