“I do not believe you,” the man said, but didn’t pull his hand from Zhenya’s.
“I will show you.” Zhenya stood, pressed the man’s hand to his chest, then released it. He waved an arm, and two young men, nearly boys, stepped forward from the wall.
“We are students, training to be doctors,” they said in unison. “We will keep our great nation healthy. But to learn, we must eat. We cannot save lives without bread to eat.”
Milly leaned against the rough plaster wall and watched as pairs of men took their places representing urban professions and beseeching the peasant for his harvest.
When they all finished, Zhenya turned back to the peasant, who now hung his head and covered his eyes.
“You see, comrade? Together we will build socialism, and a better future for all. Today, we need your grain. Tomorrow, we triumph!”
Zhenya raised his fist and lifted his square chin, then one by one, the men in the chorus followed suit. Finally the peasant stood straight, raised his fist, then doubled over in a coughing fit.
“What the hell, Anatoly?” A uniformed officer stepped toward the prisoner. “We finally had this perfect! And you fucked it up, you goat.” The guard closed his fist, but then he looked toward Milly and relaxed his fingers open again.
“Do it again,” the guard said, then turned back to take his place against the wall.
Milly sunk to the floor and pulled her knees up under her skirt. She was tempted to rest her forehead against her legs, but she didn’t want to offend Zhenya. His face glowed as he puffed his cheeks out to stretch the muscles and then wiggled his eyebrows. She suppressed a giggle. He was taking this so seriously. Perhaps, she realized with a frown, because it was serious. Impressing the guards here was how Zhenya demonstrated good behavior, and thus how he shortened his sentence. She should have understood that more quickly, and she pinched her thigh in punishment.
Two run-throughs later, the guard finally nodded his satisfaction and dismissed the rehearsal. Zhenya came to crouch down in front of Milly, and he placed his hands on her knees.
“We did well, didn’t we?” he said, his eyes glittering. His forehead was damp with a fine sheen of sweat, and a lock of golden hair pressed moist against his skin. The warmth of his hand radiated through the cotton covering her knee, and she shivered.
“Perfect, darling.”
He stood and extended a hand to pull her up, which she accepted.
“They let me act here. I’m the star, did you see? And I perform best with my Milly baby watching.” His cheeks reddened and he looked down at the floor, then looked up at her earnestly. “It’s almost better than the opera.”
“You could always do better than hold the queen’s train.”
She kissed the back of his hand, and he squeezed her fingers.
“I think I should stay here,” she said in English. “I have a letter to deliver to the commissar, I’m going by today. Whaddya think?” She grasped both of his hands. “We could live like the revolutionaries did in the tsarist prisons. Men with their little wifeys in their own cottages.” She had surprised herself how easily, once here, she succumbed to Borodin’s vision for her. Or, how thirsty she was to drink in Zhenya’s attention.
Zhenya’s face grew somber, and he looked down at their clasped hands, then at her.
“But you need money. How would we live here? You cannot work.”
She released her grasp and waved a dismissive hand.
“I could still file stories, I’m sure. What American reader wouldn’t want to learn about the Siberian taiga?”
Zhenya took a step back.
“You can’t write about this.”
Behind him, two prisoners were waiting. In the drab uniforms Milly had first thought they all looked alike, but now, after a few days, she found herself more attuned to the details of the men’s faces. These two she had seen with Zhenya at meals, and they were both frowning slightly as they waited for him.
“I wouldn’t write anything to put you at risk,” Milly continued. “Zhenya, don’t you want to be together?”
He threw his arms around her.
“Yes, Milly baby, yes. You will ask him. You can work miracles, I have seen them. You managed to come here.”
Milly stepped back.
“I thought that was your work. Or they let everyone visit.”
Zhenya shook his head. “It was you.”
Milly frowned but said nothing.
“Time for chores,” one of the men behind Zhenya said.
“Latrines today,” added the other.
Zhenya patted Milly’s hand. “You do not want this experience. Deliver your letter. See what you can do.” Then he gave her a kiss on the cheek and followed the two prisoners out the other side of the room.
Milly walked slowly back to the commissar’s office, listening to the sounds of the camp as she did. Hammers on nails, men speaking in low voices, guards barking the occasional reprimand. Above, two dark birds cut across the blue sky, and Milly lifted her fingers to her cheek to touch the skin tightening with a few days’ light sunburn. There was an order here that almost gave the impression of peace, and she hadn’t found the misery she had expected. If only she could spend two months with a pen and a pile of notebooks. Or better, a reliable typewriter. She would walk around and type up her impressions and slowly she would make sense of the place as meaning accumulated. She shook her head. The authorities would never permit that sort of freedom. At best, she could stay here with Zhenya and write a novel, or try again at that discarded book about the clown. They could be a couple in a way that had eluded them in Moscow, and she could help him prove his good behavior. The wrongness of the charges. Surely he wanted that.
Wanted her.
Dust from the unpaved lane swirled up as a truck loaded with boxes rumbled past, and Milly coughed. She hoped she wasn’t catching whatever illness that other prisoner had; she had been feeling run-down even before arriving. She coughed again as she walked up the porch steps to the commander’s hut, indistinguishable from the rest of the wooden buildings except for being a little smaller than the common buildings and for having freshly painted shutters by the two front windows.
Milly knocked on the door and then, after a pause, opened it. Someday she was going to catch someone in the act of something scandalous when she did that.
The secretary looked up from his typewriter and scowled.
“You again?”
“Good morning. I’m here to deliver a letter.” She waved her piece of paper. “In person.”
“You may wait.” The secretary gestured with a crabbed hand at the same lonely chair Milly had spent the previous afternoon shifting her weight in.
She readied a snappy retort, but she knew not to, not if she hoped to get the commander’s time. She sat. She would give the commander an hour.
One hour later, on the dot, according to the wall clock with faded strawberries painted on its wood face, Milly stood and pushed open the door to the commander’s office. The secretary sputtered behind her.
The thin door swung open soundlessly, and inside was a simple room with a broad-chested man sitting hunched over a table, which, judging from the papers strewn across it, served as his desk. Behind him hung portraits, printed on yellowing paper, of Stalin and Lenin, and in the corner was a hulking woodstove. Otherwise, the room was bare. It must get frigid during the winter without any carpets or window treatments.
The man was sleeping, Milly realized. She found a single chair against the wall and pulled it toward the table. His eyes snapped open.
“What the hell?” He glowered at her, then wiped his mouth against his sleeve.
“Commander.” Milly sat in front of him. “I’m sorry to wake you.” She thought about blaming the secretary for sending her in, but decided against it. “I have to leave tomorrow, but I wanted to see you. To thank you. This camp—it’s not what I expected. The men are doing good work, and they seem content.”
She was laying it on a li
ttle thick, but this was more or less true. She was surprised at how content Zhenya seemed, at least, even if some of the other men didn’t exude the same glow of satisfaction that he did.
The commander said nothing, but he sat up a little straighter in his chair and adjusted his collar.
“I’ve heard from the other women that sometimes wives can receive permission to stay too. Stay in the nearby cabins, with their husbands. I would like this. I would even stay in the camp, if necessary. I’d be a good influence on Zhenya.”
The commander frowned, and Milly pressed her fingers to her forehead. She had forgotten everything she planned to say, including her own introduction, and now she’d stumbled straight into the middle of her argument. The room seemed to tremble a little, like her mother’s aspic.
“Hell. Here’s the letter. My husband is Evgeni Konstantinov, and I am petitioning to stay with him. I can support myself”—she hoped that was true—“and would be a contribution to the camp.”
The commander did not touch the folded paper, which was nudged up against a messy stack on the table as Milly pushed it toward him.
“Camp life is not for dilettantes,” he said, pronouncing the last word slowly, though whether in mockery or caution Milly could not tell.
“I am serious. I have lived in Russia for over three years now. I am accustomed.”
“Not to our winters.”
The air in the room was warm, but at his sharp pronouncement, Milly rubbed her hands against her arms.
“I’m tough.”
He shook his head.
Milly stood, pushed the chair back to its place against the wall, and left. When she passed the scowling secretary on the way out, Milly told him where she was staying, so he could direct the commander’s response.
That evening, Milly sat next to Zhenya in the cavernous dining hall, which echoed with the murmured conversation of over two hundred men. Milly had brought her own food—two hard loafs of bread from Moscow and cheese and carrots purchased at the train station here—but still Zhenya insisted she try a sip of his chicken soup.
“Isn’t it good?” he said, his eyes wide like a boy’s.
“Yes,” Milly lied. The soup tasted like onion and water, with a smear of chicken grease. She wanted to ask if Zhenya had been hungry this spring, and if that was why her discerning husband was now eagerly slurping down his yellow broth. But she didn’t dare, for his sake. He wanted her to believe in his happiness, and it seemed true enough. Her barbed inquiries would weaken him.
They took a walk around the compound that night, but there were men everywhere. Once, Milly tried to nudge Zhenya down a shadowed alley between two long dormitory buildings. Her pulse pounded between her thighs as she thought of his caresses, the touches that she yearned for, but another prisoner saw them and called out a greeting. They continued on the main lane.
“I would stay here and be your wife,” she said.
“I wish you could.” He squeezed her hand.
“I would work to make you happy.”
“Milly baby, you do make me happy.” Zhenya paused, and looked up at the stars struggling through the white summer night. “But I am also happy with me. With other people.”
She tugged at his arm, pulling him closer.
“I don’t understand.”
He sighed. “Neither do I.”
“Are you happy here?” The question seemed fantastical, and she asked it partly out of anger.
He placed his hands on her shoulders and looked at her. In the low summer light, his long lashes looked like those of a movie star.
“Here I can see who I am better than I have before. The life is hard. Hard. But I have the acting, the other men, your letters. These things make me happy. Each day, I am glad to be alive.”
“So you don’t want me to stay with you?” She clutched her hands together. He wanted her letters, he had said.
“Milly!” He pulled her into a hug. “Of course I want my Milly baby here. You are a flame. I cannot resist.”
He kissed her gently on the lips, and then walked her to the compound gate.
When she returned to her little cabin, Milly found her letter shoved under the door. On the exterior, visible as soon as she lit her oil lamp, was one large word.
“Denied.”
21
SEPTEMBER 1934
ON THE NINE-DAY train ride back to Moscow, someone stole Milly’s red satin slippers, a gift from her friends in San Francisco on the day she had boarded the train for New York. Gained on one train ride, lost on another. She tried to be philosophical about the loss, but as the countryside bounced by and her toes tingled against the cold floor, she merely felt lonely. And when she reached Moscow, the long journey had worn her to a nub. She fell sick. So painfully, miserably sick that Borodin gave her one long look as she sat coughing at her desk, turned to the secretary, and told her to call the Writers Union. Within twenty minutes Borodin had arranged for Milly to have a room in the Writers Rest House, and within an hour he was ushering her out of the office with instructions on how to get there the next day.
The house was hewn out of the same forest that surrounded it, only a few hours outside of Moscow, and Milly sat at the window in her small room watching the rain fall across the bowing pine trees. In the room next door, an old poet tapped her cane against the wooden floor, and Milly tried to ignore the rhythm as she stared at the typewriter in front of her. Of course, each room had a typewriter. A narrow bed, a table, a typewriter, and not much more. Much like Milly’s mind, she thought, and jabbed at the letter H.
She had dumped her basket of unanswered letters into her suitcase when she rushed, sick and aching, out of Moscow. But now, two weeks into her prescribed four-week stay, she had answered all of them. The only person she hadn’t written yet was Zhenya.
When he had said farewell to her at the gate, Milly’s throat tightened and her eyes burned with unshed tears while he whispered into her hair that she was his beautiful baby. His voice trembled. But when he released her, she happened to catch a glimpse over his shoulder at the man standing behind Zhenya. Looking at him like Zhenya was a precious gemstone set out on a table, where anyone might pick him up.
Milly understood.
Now, staring at the rain, she understood all of it. That Zhenya loved her and wanted to be the man she saw, but that he could never leave behind the men he loved. She had tried so hard not to see that truth.
She pulled the cover over the typewriter and stood, though her hips complained a little at the motion. She had two choices, live or not live. She took a breath and looked out of the window. Outside, the rain whispered at the trees. Any manner of dying that she knew of would hurt, hurt like hell. Better to run from her pain, bury it like the forest floor under a bed of pine needles. If she didn’t feel like living, at least she could fake life long enough until some of her spirit came back to her.
She went and knocked on the door of Andrei, an NKVD officer—as the OGPU now called themselves, though they remained secret police nonetheless—who had nothing to do with writing but had somehow maneuvered his way into a month-long convalescence at the home after his appendectomy.
“Wake up, lazy bones,” she called through the door in English. “It’s three in the afternoon, you should be dancing,” she added in Russian.
The door opened, and the sleep-lined face of a sixty-some-year-old man blinked back at her. He gave a shy smile.
“Or you should be learning billiards,” he said.
“No, it’s my turn to be the teacher. I’ve got the fox-trot record, no time to waste. Ditch that bathrobe and meet me in the lounge.” She didn’t feel like dancing, but it was better than the quiet of billiards or the tomb of her quarters.
He laughed, then closed the door.
He was nothing more than a way to pass the time. Maybe she’d even sleep with him, if she could muster the energy. A tumble would probably do her good. At least if she danced, she didn’t have to think about Zhenya. Or the lonely lacuna
awaiting her in Moscow.
MILLY STOOD IN the lobby of the Moscow movie theater and stared at the popcorn inside the square glass contraption. She was glad it smelled burnt, since she didn’t have the money to buy a bag, but she liked to listen as the kernels burst into life. A few patrons lined up to buy the bags, possibly for the experience, but most of the people filed straight through the lobby to the theater entrance. She hadn’t seen a movie since coming back from the rest house, and she had thought she’d wanted to see Lieutenant Kizhe. But now she didn’t feel like anything except hiding. She didn’t want to be here.
She wiggled her toes in her boots, warming her feet, and glanced around the gold-lit room. No sign of Victor. He was the one who had asked to meet, and since she couldn’t bear to meet him at the Bolshoi like he had suggested, he agreed to go to the movies. Maybe he liked that this was the theater Zhenya had once worked in, while Milly had hoped that by arranging to see a film, she could get out of talking to him at any length. She had somehow lost, she felt. She was disgraced, and here was a man who had loved her husband, come now to rub her face in it. She didn’t even have the courage to stand him up.
No, that wasn’t right. She walked up to the poster for Lieutenant Kizhe and stared at the missing face of the dancing tsarist military uniform. Victor had no intentions of lording anything over her. Still, she felt defeated.
The lobby quieted, and from behind the closed theater doors came the horns that heralded the beginning of the newsreel. She didn’t mind missing that, the menacing news coming from Germany and the depressing scenes of poverty in the United States. She looked down at her ticket, and her stomach tightened. He had probably thought to meet her outside the theater. Maybe he didn’t have the rubles to buy his own ticket. She stuffed hers into her pocket and tightened the wool scarf around her neck.
But before she made it to the theater’s glass doors, Victor burst in, red cheeked and panting. His face skipped into a wide smile, and he swept his worker’s cap off his head, almost a courtly greeting but not too obviously so to any casual observers. That would be bourgeois.
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