Red Army Spies and the Blackrobes Trilogy

by Patrick Trese

  He walked back to the table where Herb Coogan was sketching a diagram on his yellow notepad.

  “May I add to that?” he asked. Herb handed him the pad and pencil and Father Samozvanyetz sat down next to him.

  “The door was here,” he said, adding some lines to the diagram. “It was made of steel and it was locked and bolted from the outside. Right about eye level, there was a peephole with a cover that the guards swung aside when they wanted to look inside my cell. I could not move the cover from my side of the door, so I was not able to look outside into the corridor.

  “Over here on this wall, directly opposite the door, was a large window frame with steel bars up and down, like this.” He made a quick sketch on the pad. “There was no glass. The window had been covered, from the outside, by a sheet of tin so that no sunlight, or darkness either, could get into the cell. All illumination came from the bare light bulb hanging from the ceiling right above here. It stayed lit all the time, day and night.

  “The four walls and the ceiling were covered with whitewash. On this wall, to the right as you face the door, in a recess behind a grill, there was a radiator that produced more noise than heat.

  “Along the other wall was my bed. The head of the bed was flush up against the wall with the sealed window. It was a simple, wooden bed with a thin mattress, sheets, a pillow and a second blanket in winter. After a while, it was not too uncomfortable.”

  He drew a small circle in the corner of the room to the right of the door. “Over here,” he said, “was the parasha, a bucket with a lid.”

  Father Samozvanyetz pushed the pad and pencil down the table to Herb Coogan. “Such were my accommodations at Hotel Lubianka,” he said. “My guards were mostly women or old men. They kept changing. They were neither cruel nor kind. They were just businesslike, matter-of-fact, indifferent. They had orders not to speak to me any more than was absolutely necessary, and I did not try to tempt them into conversation.

  “At first, it made no difference to me that women were watching me while I used the parasha or while I took a shower on those days when it was permitted. But, when I was coming back to life, the scrutiny of the female guards began to bother me. I realized that was a sign of progress. I had begun coming back when I realized that the bell somewhere outside the prison marked the passage of time. After I learned how to use the bell, I realized that time was a weapon the prison was using against me. You see?

  “A prisoner was supposed to be only vaguely aware of time passing. He was to remain in his cell with its constant artificial light, to wonder when he would be released, to wonder when they would come for him, to wonder when he would be executed.

  “Had I not discovered that my bell precisely marked the passage of each quarter hour, I might have drifted back into that limbo of fear and allowed my hours and days and weeks and months to slip away. That’s the path to insanity that had been blocked by my bell.

  “I got the idea that I could use it to make my own time. I could construct a life for myself quite apart from the life to which I had been condemned. I could use the bell to create and regulate a life no guard would be able to observe through a peep-hole.”

  Father Samozvanyetz looked at the quiet middle-aged man sitting to Coogan’s left.

  “I don’t know how much you know about the Jesuit way of life, Professor Sloane. Quite simply, we’re supposed to be both active and contemplative.”

  “Part minister, part monk,” said Mitchell Sloane. “So I understand.”

  “Just so,” said Father Samozvanyetz. “Jesuits strive to maintain a balance between activity and contemplation. That’s something I was never able to do very well. So that young interrogator had easily caused me to fear not just death, but damnation. I had to admit that I was poorly prepared to face my uncertain future. Serving covertly as a priest in Russia, an active life for which I had trained so diligently was now an obvious impossibility. What I had to do now, to keep from going mad, was to embrace that very same contemplative life that I had so recklessly neglected. Now I was able to see that it was a matter of survival.

  “I had been lax in my spiritual practice. But I remembered what I’d heard and read. Enough, at least, to know that my goal was attainable. Others had gone before me: Trappists and Carmelites, Cistercians, Poor Clares. They all had found a way to live an interior life. With God’s help, so could I.

  “Lubianka was never intended to be a monastery or a hermitage, but the prison routine and the penitential diet seldom changed. I didn’t have to worry about what to eat or where to sleep or what to wear. All that had been decided for me. There was solitude and order.

  “What I had to do was to accept my cell as my proper place in the world. It was there that I could spend my remaining days, be they many or few. I could spend them in frustration, fear and despair. Or I could spend them in fasting, prayer and meditation—ad majorem Dei gloriam.

  “I had to convince myself that I hadn’t been placed in my cell in Lubianka by the Red Army or the NKVD. I was not there because of a traitor’s betrayal or some mistake of my own or by chance. It was God’s will that I be where I was. I was right where I was supposed to be. God had placed me there for a reason.

  “Esse. To be. I came to believe that ‘to be’ was my vocation.

  “My first task was to study the prison routine and impose a monastic schedule upon it. Each morning at that same time, which I finally calculated was five-thirty, prison bells tolled and guards shouted me awake.

  “I would rise, dress and make my bed while saying my morning prayers. The guard, most often a woman, would march me to the lavatory. It always smelled of carbolic acid. I would use the toilet, which was just a hole in the floor, and then wash myself in a large janitor’s sink. You know the kind?”

  He stretched out his arms. “A very big sink. In the same sink, I would wash out my parasha. Then, back to the cell. The church bell, which tolled just before I went to the lavatory, always tolled a few minutes after my return. Six o’clock. Time for my recitation of the Angelus.

  “When the bell tolled at six-fifteen, I would begin my morning meditation. On the dot, not one minute before, not one minute after. I would stop when the bell tolled at seven-fifteen, even if I felt like continuing.

  “Breakfast was served at seven-thirty. A guard would open the door and hand it to me. It was always the same. A piece of bread, always the same size and weight. Always a cup of boiling hot water with exactly one and one-half cubes of sugar. I could suck on the sugar or put it in the water. Always a big decision.

  “I was allowed to sit on my bed to eat my meals. I always did so. And I always said Grace before and after meals. While waiting for the guard to return for my metal plate and cup, I would begin my preparation for Mass.

  “I would start Mass at eight-fifteen and try to end at eight-forty-five. Standing with my back to the peep hole, I recited the prayers I had committed to memory before leaving Rome. On what I believed to be Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, I would say the Mass in Latin. Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, I would follow the Russian Rite. Sundays were special. With the help of an imaginary choir, I would silently sing High Mass in Latin one week, in Russian the next.

  “Then, after making my thanksgiving, I would go off with two companions for a long hike in the country. An imaginary ambulatio.”

  Father Samozvanyetz chuckled. “It was good to get out of the cell for a while. The weather was always the finest. Not too warm, not too cold. And I always had good company. At first, I didn’t walk too far. Just up into the hills and back. And, at first, I only went out with people I knew, men with whom I had studied in the Society. But then I found new companions.

  “One Sunday I would go hiking with Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas and listen to their ideas about God and Man. Other Sundays it would be General Grant and General Lee, Thomas Jefferson and George III, Francis Xavier and Francis of Assisi, Loyola and Lenin. I found I could walk with them as far as I wanted. I could hike to Niagara Falls, along t
he Nile, or along the Grand Canyon and still be home in time for the noon meal.

  “Weekday mornings were a problem. At first I tried to fill them up with another meditation. But that was beyond my capabilities. I kept drifting off. So I decided to teach in a high school, which was a part of the Jesuit life I’d missed because of my special studies in Rome.

  “Monday through Friday, after Mass, I would take a fifteen minute walk, six paces back and forth, to my imaginary high school where I taught Latin from nine to ten, mathematics from ten to eleven, Russian from eleven until noon. Most of my students were bright, but there were some slower ones who required special attention.

  “At noon, while walking back to my cell, I would recite the Angelus. Then I would make my Examen, thinking over how I had used the day up to that point. The Examen was an important tool in my survival. It helped me keep a grip on reality. It was all very well to use my imagination to create some sort of interior life for myself, but I had to examine myself regularly to make sure that I was not beginning to believe that the creatures of my imagination were real.

  “The mid-day meal was real enough, but not very substantial. The small bowl of fish soup was always delivered at thirty minutes after noon. It must have had some nutritional value, because I did not starve to death.

  “I soon learned to save some bread from breakfast to mop up the bottom of the bowl. Sometimes there were a few small bones and a few pellets of grain. Every now and then, they gave us cabbage soup. The evening meal came just after the Angelus at six. The suppertime bowl would always contain four tablespoons of barley or lentils or kasha. There would be another cup of hot water and the cube and a half of sugar. Not a grand meal but, once again, sufficient for a monk or a hermit.

  “After the noontime meal, to get back to my schedule, I would walk around the novitiate grounds and silently recite fifteen decades of the Rosary using my fingers instead of beads, saying the prayers slowly and deliberately. One day I would pray in English, the next day in Latin, the day after that in Russian.

  “When I finished, some of my brighter students would bring their chairs to my cell for my seminar on world literature. Together, we would examine in great detail every book that I could remember reading, and some I had only heard about. Sometimes, one of the authors whose work we were discussing joined our group. We always ended at four o’clock. Once everybody left, I would take a short stroll to clear my head and then spend another hour in meditation.

  “At five-thirty, I would walk to the main chapel to join my fellow Jesuits for the recitation of the Litanies. And then, instead of joining the others in the refectory, I would return to my cell for supper.

  “Every evening at seven o’clock I was taken for another walk, a real one this time, down the corridor to wash myself and clean out my parasha. Then I would be taken back to my cell. Time for recreation, just like relaxing with fellow monks in a monastery.

  “To tell you the truth, I found this the most difficult part of my regimen. I knew recreation was important. The mind needs to relax, as does the body. Otherwise, it will break down. But I had nothing to relax with except my mind. Idle daydreaming, I feared, might be too risky. It seemed safer to recall as many actual recreation periods as I could.

  “I began with the last one in Rome and worked my way back into the past. It didn’t matter if I couldn’t reconstruct specific conversations or remember the content of the puns and jokes. Sometimes, I did. But it was enough to recall the camaraderie and the laughter.

  “I found it a good idea to close out my recreation periods with music. Sometimes we’d have a community sing. A silent one, of course. Sometimes we’d put some records on the phonograph and listen to a band concert or a symphony.

  “Recreation ended precisely at nine o’clock. Prisoners had to be in bed by ten. I would use that final hour to make another Examen, prepare my points for my morning meditation and say my nighttime prayers. I went to bed at ten o’clock on the dot.

  “And that,” said Father Samozvanyetz, “was how I spent the next two years.”

  Herb Coogan chewed on his pencil for a moment and then said: “Saturday. You didn’t tell us what happened on Saturdays.”

  Father Samozvanyetz smiled. “Sports,” he said. “Baseball in the summer, football in the fall, hockey in the winter, basketball in the spring. Very orderly. But towards the middle of football season in 1941, by my reckoning, things began to change.

  “I began to hear sirens wailing outside the prison. I thought, for the first few nights, that I was just hearing air-raid drills, like the ones we had been having in Rome before I left. And that probably was true, at first.

  “Mind you, I had heard no news of any kind since my imprisonment, so I had no way of knowing that the war between Russia and Germany had begun. Nor did I know that most of the prisoners in Lubianka were being evacuated. And only much later, when I was in the camps, did I learn just how close the German armies had come to Moscow.

  “In October of 1941, an approximate date I was able to determine only much later, I was moved to a cell in the basement of Lubianka. I could no longer hear the sirens and I could no longer hear my church bell. Nor could I hear the war when it approached Moscow. But I could feel it.

  “Down in the bowels of the prison, I knew when the bombing began. I could hear nothing, but the walls and floor of my cell shuddered. The very foundations of the building vibrated with greater or lesser intensity depending on how close the bombs and shells exploded. It was terrifying to cower there and feel the impact without having any idea of what was really going on outside.

  “There were other prisoners in the cellar. I never saw them, but I could hear them. At least, I thought I could. From time to time during the air raids, I would hear cries of fright. But the sounds were very faint and I thought, at first, that I might be imagining things.

  “The guard I saw most often was an old man with a full white moustache who brought me my food in the evening and again in the morning. He looked like he might have been a sergeant-major in the Czar’s army. During the bombing or shelling, he had a positively ferocious demeanor. His eyes would flash with a war-like glare when he handed me my food and his moustache would bristle. But he was never unkind.

  “One night, when the bombardment felt especially heavy, he actually spoke to me. The old man, his eyes blazing, marched into my cell to retrieve my bowl. The cellar walls were quaking from the explosions. He said nothing, as usual, until he was leaving. He glanced up and down the corridor and then spoke in a savage whisper. ‘Stalin is in Moscow!’ he said proudly.

  “With that, he grinned and closed the cell door. I realized he was trying to give me the courage to endure the terrors of the night. Did he do the same for the other prisoners? I don’t know. I suppose he did. And it was indeed a bad night. The bombing lasted longer and seemed heavier than usual. But the old man served breakfast at the usual time, according to regulations.

  “The old sergeant-major entered my cell that morning more bellicose than ever. ‘Courage!’ he whispered to me. ‘God will protect us here. Moscow shall not fall!’

  “Quite impulsively, I whispered back. ‘God bless you for the gift of bread, my brave sergeant,’ I said. ‘Listen carefully. I am a priest. If I also had a thimbleful of wine and a fragment of bread, I could say Mass tonight for Holy Mother Russia.’

  “His eyes widened. He stumbled backwards out of my cell, slammed the door shut and shot the bolt with great force. I sank to the floor, bitterly disappointed.

  “But that evening, when the sergeant-major delivered my bowl of barley soup, my cup of hot water and my sugar, he gave me a small piece of bread and another cup with a small amount of wine. ‘I have told those I trust that you will say Mass tonight, Reverend Father,’ he said. ‘Listen for my signal. I will knock on your door three times when it is safe. Rap twice when you are about to begin and I will tell the others to start their prayers.’

  “And so, thanks to that guard, I was able to offer the holy sa
crifice of the Mass in the cellar of Lubianka surrounded by my unseen congregation. And not just that night, but on all those other nights when Moscow was under attack until early December, I think it was, when I was taken out of the cellar. I never saw that faithful old sergeant-major again.

  “I was returned to the very cell I had been in before, thank goodness, back to my bell and to my monastic routine. I don’t think the authorities ever learned of my underground Masses. At least, it was never mentioned in any subsequent interrogations. There were eight of them all told, quite routine, each one less frightening than the last.

  “Except for those sessions with the interrogators, I spent the rest of my time in Lubianka alone in that self-same cell. I have tried to calculate how long I was there. Not counting that initial comatose period when I had no sense of time, or the fifty-five days in the cellar during the bombing, I reckon that I was in solitary confinement for 1,934 days.”

  “That would be a little over five years,” said Mitchell Sloane.

  “Just so.” Father Samozvanyetz took a deep breath. “I believe we would all like some water now, if you would be so kind, Brother Krause.”

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  Herb Coogan sat listening to the rain beating against the retreat house windows. Brother Krause brought a pitcher of water and some glasses to the table. Herb took a few swallows and wiped his mouth with his hand. Mitchell Sloane caught his attention and Herb followed his eyes to the other side of the table where Father Beck sat, lost in thought. He looked back at Sloane and shrugged. He couldn’t tell what his old teacher had heard or what he was thinking.

  After the lunch break, Mitchell Sloane took Herb Coogan aside “What do you make of it so far?” he asked. “Father Beck seems to have heard something this morning that I didn’t hear.”

  “It all sounded credible to me,” said Coogan. “Father Beck seemed really impressed by the priest’s story, but you may be right.”

  “Maybe it was something that didn’t ring true about the religious stuff, you think? You’d know better than me, Herb. You’re a church-going Catholic, right? That’s not my area of expertise, to say the least.”