But her tone had changed in recent weeks, as had the imaginary recipient of her correspondence. Now she knew whom she was writing to, and knew that she was the one producing the words.
I’m so happy you’re slowly regaining your interest in food, drink, and even laughter. It is a pity that all of the progress you’ve made seems to disappear when you gaze at that locket, although I understand. She was beautiful and you loved her. I have no experience of that kind of love, I’ve only read about it, but I can see it in your one good eye and bet that I could even find it if I dove into your empty socket and swam all the way to your heart. What foolish things occur to me! You would think me mad if you read these things. Would you be afraid? I don’t think so. You would give me your faraway smile and then cast me aside, as you do when you catch me spying on you as you sleep, or eat, or gaze out the window at the snow, lost in thought.
Yes, you would laugh if I told you that I’m jealous of Irina, that pretty woman who stole your joy. Did you know that I don’t tell Velichko everything you say? I don’t translate your insults, or your rage against those who sent you to the gulag. I’m prudent for you, because you can’t be. I also don’t tell him about your feelings for that woman and her daughter, the lovely things you come out with that sound as if a poet had written them for you. And the reason I don’t is that I choke on my own envy and sorrow, and it’s very confusing because at night I spend hours weeping and don’t know why. Is this love? I cannot know, for I have never been in love, although many my age are already mothers. But there is one thing I know for certain: I will erase the memory of Irina. She is dead and I am alive and I will bring you back to shore.
Caterina read those letters each night. Sometimes they made her laugh; other times she drifted off to sleep feeling melancholic and overcome by a sense of futility. Day after day, as she returned to the flight academy to take care of Elías, her feelings grew, taking shape in her mind and her heart. She loved that young man, and the feeling couldn’t be expressed in words that only novelists or poets could write. She felt it in her breath when he was close, in the way she let a hand brush against him and pretended it had been accidental, in the dreams she had when she thought of him at night. There was no doubt, she knew it now. And she had to let him know, unconditionally.
Elías was allowed to take a walk each morning, out to an old loading bay. He was not, however, allowed to go beyond the crumbling wall, and Srolov kept an eye on him from a distance. You couldn’t say the two of them had become friends over the course of those weeks, but Velichko’s assistant had proved himself to be a discreet and patient guardian, as well as efficient. Under his care, and that of the girl who came each morning, Elías’s health had improved quickly. He had clean clothes to wear, cigarettes, a little vodka, and hot food. For the time being he was not permitted pen and paper, or anything to read that was not the official press.
The girl would walk behind him, jumping into the depressions his feet made in the snow. Her own small feet swam in Elías’s footprints, and this seemed to amuse her. She’d leap from one to the next, giggling. The truth was, despite almost all of her time being devoted to solemn matters, she was simply a girl who didn’t want to have to grow up quite yet. Elías knew that she was sixteen and an orphan, the only child of an Osoaviakhim test pilot who’d crashed a prototype into the Volga and a tractor factory worker who had hanged herself from a crane shortly after her husband’s death. The girl’s name was Caterina and she spoke a smattering of Spanish because for several months her father had been flight instructor to a group of Spanish pilots sent by the Republic to learn to fly Russian fighter planes. She liked Spaniards, she said. They were carefree, slightly mischievous, and willing to take chances. They never took anything too seriously, not even their own lives: Two of the pilots on the course had died while trying to execute overly risky maneuvers. With the change of government in Spain, the students had been forced to return home immediately, but before leaving they had given her the sheepskin-lined bomber jacket she was wearing that morning, as well as a new name: Esperanza, which meant “hope.”
“Why Esperanza?”
She shrugged and crinkled her freckled nose impishly.
“They said they’d be back one day, and by then I would be old enough to marry one of them. I was their esperanza, their hope.”
“Any one of them in particular?”
“No. Any of them would do. I’d like to go to Spain.”
“Well, then, Esperanza it is.”
She smiled and turned her head to look back at Srolov in his gray coat, pacing back and forth like a dog on a chain, not letting them out of his sight.
“They still haven’t decided what they’re going to do with you, have they?”
Elías took a long drag on the cigarette he was smoking and raised his head to look over the wall surrounding the esplanade. For the first time in three days it had stopped snowing, but the sun was nowhere to be seen. On the other side of the wall were the brick façades of more industrial warehouses, and from time to time a barge horn pierced the air.
“I guess not.”
It had been three days since Velichko finished his declaration. They had gone over it together dozens of times, edited it, added as many names as possible—those of any deportees, guards, or officers Elías could remember. In addition, the instructor had contacted the Spanish embassy to verify Elías’s membership in the Spanish Communist Party and family history. Finally, when he had all of the necessary documentation, including proof of Elías’s stay at the Government Building and the false declaration he’d signed before being deported, Velichko set off with a laconic proclamation: “Time to see how much weight the truth carries.”
Elías was no longer worried about the future. At first he’d thought that the wait would kill him, but all he felt now was calm indifference. It was something he’d begun to experience out on the steppe, or even earlier—perhaps it had started with Claude’s tragic death. It wasn’t resignation but it wasn’t the cruel, homicidal coldness of Igor Stern either. It was more like a hole inside him, like he’d been shot in the soul and was bleeding, and the hole had become a deep, dark, solid void. The parts of Elías that could still feel pain or fear or even love had been severed and hung in the silence like useless appendages. There was no longer any bitterness or reproach. He had come to understand that the immensity of what he’d been through had happened to thousands of others, not just in the Soviet Union but all over the world, everywhere humans beings lived. And he knew that it would continue to happen to thousands more, maybe millions. People would die for no reason, or for absurd reasons; they would cling to flags, to hymns, to trenches. They would kill, bite, destroy anything in their path in order to stay alive. And that was neither good nor bad.
He glanced over at Esperanza. The pilot’s jacket was too big for her, and so were her eyes, trying to take everything in at once, before she’d grown enough to do so. Maybe she and those like her had a chance; maybe those who were still innocent would manage to find a point of balance. The Spanish pilots who had named her Esperanza were smart. It was always easier to fight for a pretty face and warm heart than for an ethereal concept like glory or homeland.
Elías thought back warmly to the day when Ramón, a childhood friend from Mieres, had accidentally killed a chicken in his father’s yard. They’d been playing cowboys and Indians; Ramón was always the Indian, Elías the cowboy. He ran around as Ramón tried to shoot him with arrows made of reeds and bottle caps that had been flattened with a rock. Without meaning to, Ramón hit a chicken with one, impaling its neck. The two boys had frozen, dumbfounded at the trail of blood flowing from the animal. They looked at each other in panic. It hadn’t even occurred to them that the arrow could have hurt them. Without a word they buried the chicken and kept their stubborn silence days later when Ramón’s father realized the animal was missing. Out of solidarity, neither of them said a word, remaining stoic despite the
beatings they received from their fathers. Years later, Elías bumped into Ramón at the Student Residence in Madrid. His childhood friend had joined CEDA, the Spanish Confederation of the Autonomous Right, which meant they should have been at each other’s throats. But they remembered the chicken incident and reminisced about their heroic resistance, neither one ratting out the other.
“You could have said it was me, saved yourself a thrashing.”
Elías nodded. “But you were my friend, which means we both killed the chicken. We did it together.” They laughed and, to the great consternation of their opposing factions, resumed an old friendship. It would last, provided they avoided politics.
Srolov’s voice made Elías turn on his heels. Esperanza gazed down in distress at the swirl of snow at her feet, as though it was a fork in the path that left her unsure which way to turn. Standing beside Velichko’s assistant were two men in thick brown coats, civilian clothes. There was no need for them to identify themselves as police; it was patently obvious from their demeanor. They’d come for him. Elías shuddered briefly. Then he looked up and saw something spectacular: a blade of glass, and then another, and another, the three of them swirling up in the air in formation, making a triangle, pirouetting in the air as though dangling from invisible threads. He reached out a hand, not to catch it but as if to fly off with it, to be carried outside those walls.
“You’ll be back.”
Elías looked at the girl. She calmly smoothed her hair, her expression unbefitting a girl her age.
“Or maybe not,” he said.
Esperanza nodded. “You have to take me with you. I decided to pick you over those pilots. I’m going to marry you; although, of course, I’m not giving up the jacket.”
Elías was about to laugh and then stopped, mouth half open. She was absolutely serious.
Without a word, one of the officers opened the back door of the car—one of the OGPU’s infamous “black crows.” He hardly glanced at Elías, showing not the slightest curiosity as he simply jutted out his chin and slammed the door as soon as Elías had gotten in and placed his feet firmly on the floor, hands on the fabric seat.
He didn’t ask where they were going. He knew there was no point. The driver quickly turned onto a road running parallel to the docks along the river. Elías recognized some of the sites he’d worked at only a few months prior. It was as though ten years had gone by: Progress on the Great Canal continued at a frenetic pace, a swarm of thousands of industrious hands toiling away. There was nothing and no one they would stop for. Nothing.
The road led to one of Moscow’s eastern thoroughfares, and from there they took a bypass that took them to Gorky Avenue, Red Square, and the Kremlin. The car, however, turned off at a fork leading east. A few miles later they turned onto yet another road, where Elías saw a sign indicating that they were headed to Barvikha Sanatorium, some fifteen miles from Moscow.
“Why are you taking me there?”
One of the officers sensed his uneasiness and gave a twisted smile in the rearview mirror. Elías recovered quickly and held the thug’s gaze until the man wiped the stupid grin from his face.
The sanatorium comprised several buildings, all of which formed part of the Kremlin medical center. Some were redbrick and had hundreds of windows, others were gray and semiconcealed among clusters of leafy trees. There was a large snow-covered esplanade in front of the administration building, with a decorative fountain in the middle, now dry. In general the place had a rather sad air about it, and this was only heightened by the cawing crows up on the highest window ledges. Elías didn’t move until the police opened his door. They quickly boxed him in between their burly shoulders but used no restraints, as if they were more escorts than guards.
Inside, the main building was attractive and inviting, with wood-paneled walls and a heated floor that warmed the soles of one’s shoes. Elías was astonished at the opulence of the foyer, its contrast with the building’s somber exterior. The high ceilings had enormous chandeliers that threw off crisp, sparkling light, increasing the sense of spaciousness and complementing the polished, impossibly white marble floors. A grandiose staircase led to the upper floors, but the police took him to an elevator on the right. They went directly to the tenth floor, and on the way up Elías recalled that he’d once had a similar tour of opulence, on the lower floors of an elegant palace where he was led to a majestic chamber to sign his own confession in exchange for a glass of water.
Perhaps this trip was going to be the same, he thought. But his attitude certainly would not be. And he was no longer thirsty.
The elevator shuddered slightly and came to a halt, its doors opening from the outside. The first officer got out, followed by Elías, and the other officer went back downstairs. A sign told him that this was the Oral Medicine wing. The officer pointed to a group of three people who stood chatting off to the right, at the end of a long hall.
“Go to those men.”
Without understanding what this was all about, Elías obeyed. His pulse quickened slightly and his palms started to sweat, despite his supposed indifference.
On recognizing one of the men as Instructor Velichko, his heart began to race. Velichko was with a stocky woman who looked to be about seventy years old and wore a rather manly gray suit, and a man whose back was to Elías.
Velichko was the first to see him and beckoned Elías over with a hand.
“This is Elías Gil.”
The man, who wore a tight-fitting jacket, greeted Elías somewhat defiantly.
“You have caused me more than one headache, comrade. Do you know who I am?” he asked in crisp Spanish, with a slightly Andalusian accent.
For once, Elías opened his only eye in boyish wonder, which was both moving and comical at the same time. Any Spanish Communist knew who José Díaz was—general secretary of the Spanish Communist Party since 1932. They exchanged a brief, firm handshake.
Velichko stiffened, visibly nervous as he reverently introduced the woman: “Comrade Nadezhda Krupskaya.”
She gave him a wise look from behind round glasses. Her white hair was very short and her lips had the disenchanted look of all those who remain in contact with power for too long. The woman was Lenin’s widow, and despite her differences with Stalin—these were an open secret—in the end she was still one of the most important women in the Soviet Union.
“Is everything you say in this report true?”
Her voice was neither gentle nor patient. More like the bark of someone making plain that they will not tolerate a single false step on a matter of such grave importance. Elías’s boyish expression disappeared, stifled by that tone.
“To the best of my knowledge, everything it says is entirely accurate.”
Nadezhda Krupskaya stared at him until he felt the full weight of history she carried on her shoulders. Deportations, exile, war, conspiracies to seize power, conspiracies to hold on to it, at the behest of a man who was not always up to the task. And still she remained faithful, loyal to the dream to the end.
“This is not the way we behave,” she murmured slowly.
She wasn’t asking forgiveness. She wanted Elías to accept it. It wasn’t the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics that had done this to Elías, it wasn’t the Bolsheviks who’d sent him to the gulag, wasn’t the Party that had made him lose an eye. It wasn’t the revolution that had taken Irina from him. It was a few specific men. The idea had to be preserved at all costs. She was demanding that he understand this.
Elías nodded. The old woman relaxed her cheek muscles, which could have been seen as a historic smile, though it was not. This was the closest Elías was going to get to any expression of sympathy.
“Arsenievich Velichko’s uncle served my husband loyally and helped me on the education plan. He has given me the report and I have read it carefully.” She showed no sign of the devastating effect it had had on her. “And I
have come to a conclusion: It must not be made public, under any circumstances.”
Elías stared in disillusioned shock, but she took no pity.
“If this were to become known, the most immediate consequence would be your execution.”
The old woman turned to José Díaz and shook his hand with slightly more warmth. “You will explain to him.”
Díaz crinkled his eyes, laughing as he brought one hand to his belly. “If this ulcer doesn’t kill me, Spain will.”
The woman gave him a teasing look. “Or one of the husbands of the many women you bed.”
Díaz gave a roguish look and walked Lenin’s widow to the elevator. Three police officers who had been standing unobtrusively in the background—her security—stepped forward.
Díaz motioned Elías over. “I need a smoke and it’s a pleasant morning. Let’s take a walk through the grounds.”
José Díaz was a passionate, headstrong man, and in his eyes—dark as his rakishly disheveled hair—you could still see signs of the boy from Seville who’d started off as a baker. But he was also coldly analytical and had rare organizational skills. All of these qualities combined had led to his becoming general secretary of the Spanish Communist Party, after successfully orchestrating the strikes that followed José Sanjurjo’s attempted coup in 1932. He walked slowly, bent slightly forward, and Elías thought he caught a grimace of pain as the man brought a hand to his stomach. When they came to a clearing in the pines, Díaz stopped at a bronze sculpture of Stalin, giving it a matter-of-fact glance.
A Million Drops Page 31