The Girl They Left Behind

by Roxanne Veletzos

  “I know other things, too,” he went on, undeterred. “I know how much you loved those gold-and-ruby earrings your father gave you when you were seven, that you read Anna Karenina at least a dozen times, that you do not like stuffed peppers no matter how well your mother prepares them, that your special hiding place when you were little was underneath your father’s desk at the store. I know that your favorite day of the year was Christmas Eve, when he took you and your cousins for a sleigh ride on Kiseleff. I know how you looked at me when I left your house that day, after your father was released from prison. You were fourteen, Natalia, fourteen, and I was still a relatively young man with unshakable convictions.”

  Tears were streaming down her face. She hated herself for not being able to hold them back, to control her emotions. How was he able to do that, to bring everything back with such startling precision? She’d tried so hard to forget that other life, to lock it away in a place where it would no longer disturb her. It had not been easy, but somewhere along the way, she had managed to do it. She’d buried those memories until he’d come along uninvited and let them all out into the light. Until with his words alone, he’d resurrected what had been long dead.

  She opened her mouth to speak but could say nothing. Instead, she just stood there shaking her head, not bothering to wipe the tears from her eyes, until Victor reached out and traced his thumb lightly over her cheek. It felt like a jolt of electricity. Something dissolved inside her, softened the shell around her pounding, miserable heart. Against her own will, she leaned her face into the soft leather of his glove, and he drew her near, slowly, cautiously, until her forehead rested against his chest. He pulled her closer still, until she could hear the thumping of his heart through the layer of his coat.

  “Let’s go somewhere, let’s get warm,” he said, resting his chin on top of her head, but she could not answer, could not move.

  I want to stay like this forever, Victor, she wanted to say. I want to stay like this and listen to your beating heart, your cruel, misguided, merciless heart.

  39

  HE WAS THERE AGAIN THE next day, leaning up against a silver Volga, a Soviet luxury car reserved for diplomats and high-ranking state officials. When she came out of the windowless warehouse talking with a few of her coworkers, she tried not to smile, but despite her best intentions, she raised her hand. It was an instinctive gesture, and it happened before she had a chance to consider that he might take it as an invitation.

  In an instant, he was at the bottom of the steps, his gaze searing through her as she came down the rest of the way. Behind them, two girls halted their descent and watched them with unconcealed curiosity. She heard their hushed words, their stifled giggles, as Victor reached out and slid off her headscarf, then traced his fingers lightly over her hair, taking in the whole of her face. Embarrassed, she pushed him away a little. He laughed then, a soft chuckle that made her feel adolescent, unsophisticated.

  “Hello, Talia,” he whispered, smiling in a way that made the crinkles around his eyes more pronounced.

  “Hello, Victor.”

  Without asking, he reached out and took her backpack. This time, she did not object, and they began walking. Despite the cold, she felt as though she was burning up. Another night, walking with him side by side with no destination, the leaves tinged with frost crunching under their feet.

  “I have something to tell you,” he said after a while. They stopped in front of a poorly lit café with a torn awning. Inside, a couple of old men were sharing a drink at the bar. There were no other customers.

  “Would you like something to eat?” he asked.

  Natalia shook her head no. The thought of food was distinctly uninviting. Her stomach was tied up in knots, much, it seemed, like every cell in her body.

  “A drink, then.”

  It was not a question. It was a statement. Without a reply, he opened the door and stood aside, waiting for her to step in. As usual, his self-assuredness unnerved her, the way he assumed that she would do whatever he said, as if there was no other option. The bells above the door tinkled faintly as a portly middle-aged man in a white apron bounded up to the doorway.

  “Victor Dimitrov, what a pleasure!”

  “Hello, my friend. Glad to see you are open this evening.”

  “Your table is always ready for you. Please, this way.”

  The man’s lips remained stretched in a smile that seemed frozen, exposing his prominent reddish gums. As he ushered them in, past the bar and the cluster of empty tables, Natalia caught his long, appraising glance, and she suddenly shrank within herself, wondering if other women in Victor’s company had traversed this wooden floor that was badly in need of waxing.

  They were shown to a roomy candlelit table at the back of the room, where she sat down stiffly in one of the two chairs. She’d insisted on pulling it out for herself, but now that she was seated, she didn’t know what to do with her hands. At the bar, the men looked half-drunk and engrossed in conversation, completely unaware of their presence. One of them leaned over the other’s shoulder to say something or steady himself, and they both laughed heartily.

  “You don’t have to worry,” Victor said, sensing her discomfort. “I don’t bring anyone here. Least of all my wife.”

  Ah, his wife. The mere mention of her was enough to halt her breath. There were things she did not want to hear about, that she wasn’t ready for. She did not know what hurt more just now, the mention of his wife or the other women, the ones he presumably did not bring here. Did his wife know? Did she ignore his indiscretions? A bitter wave of jealously rose in Natalia’s throat as she imagined her sleeping next to him, her ivory skin and shimmering blond waves under his touch. She imagined the others, too, the ones with whom he also shared a piece of himself, all but his imprisoned, guarded heart.

  I am less than that, she thought. I am only a glimpse of his past, a reminder of his bygone youth.

  Rising slowly, she picked up her bag.

  “Talia, where are you going?”

  She stood in front of him, feeling light-headed, trying to extricate the right words. Good-bye, Victor, was what she needed to say but could not. She just stood there paralyzed, fighting her tears, gritting her teeth.

  “Victor, I don’t know what I’m doing here,” she managed after a few moments. “I really need to go. I must get home.”

  “No. You cannot leave now.”

  Before she could take a step away, he reached out and grabbed her wrist. It was a gentle grip, imploring more than forceful, but its suddenness frightened her nonetheless. Moving back to her chair, she sat down as the waiter returned with a water carafe and two empty glasses, which he placed ceremoniously on the table.

  “Two vodkas. Your best, please,” Victor said, his gaze not leaving her face, and the waiter nodded and vanished again in a hurry.

  “Talia, I really need to talk to you,” he began when they were alone. “I wanted to explain . . .”

  She closed her eyes then, not so much to hide her torment as to show him that she did not want to hear it. Don’t say anything, Victor, she wanted to beg him. Don’t apologize or explain things away. Do not diminish what seeing you again has meant to me.

  “It isn’t necessary. We’ve gone over it, and I wish you’d just—”

  “Talia, do you know who Ivan Vasilovich is?”

  Of course, she knew who he was. He was a prominent Soviet official, one of the first Russian military attachés to install himself in the Royal Palace after King Michael’s abdication. In those chaotic early days, when the young monarch was stripped of his citizenship as well as his properties and forced into exile, Ivan Vasilovich had proclaimed himself minister of internal affairs. He was responsible for arresting and deporting thousands of people, for wiping out the king’s entire cabinet virtually overnight.

  “Yes, I do. I know about all the great things he has done for our country. He is in the history books. The revised ones, at least. What about him?”

  �
�Katia is his daughter.”

  He paused to extract a pack of cigarettes and matches from his breast pocket. As he lit one, leaning his elbow on the table, his face hardened a little, and for an instant, she regretted her sarcasm.

  “A great man, indeed,” Victor said. “An accomplished, dedicated man. Very spirited. So spirited, in fact, that he went home to his villa on Kiseleff every night and beat his wife and daughter senseless. He used a crowbar once, a fireplace iron, an empty whiskey bottle, but most of the time, he resorted to the metal buckle of his military belt. Of course, I did not know any of this when I began working for him at the ministry. I met Katia sometime later when she came to our office to drop off his wallet one morning. She was wearing a shawl over a sleeveless dress, and when she handed me his wallet in the reception area, it slipped off her shoulder. That was when I first saw the bruises.”

  The cigarette twisted in his fingers restlessly. He stared at the lit tip before taking another drag. The waiter arrived, set down the two glasses of vodka, and went back to the bar.

  “Ivan Vasilovich wouldn’t let her out of his sight. He brought her along on every trip we took, to Warsaw and Sofia and back to their hometown of Leningrad. I went on those trips, as did his entire staff, on trains where we would occupy all the available cars. We became quick friends, Katia and I. One night, I heard her crying in the corridor of the sleeper compartment, right outside my own door. I slipped outside, asked her if she wanted to share some of my vodka.

  “There was a boy in her life, she told me. He was a medical student, the son of a peasant, whom her father ironically did not approve of. He had greater plans for her, it seemed. The problem—as she spelled out to me with such pathos—was that this boy was the love of her life. She could not imagine a future without him. In fact, her precise words were that she would not live without him, and something in the way she said it, so resolutely, made me shudder. A moment later, she reached for my flask and took a large swig from it. ‘Don’t worry, it’s only life,’ was what she said before she went back to her compartment.

  “A week later, I stopped by their home on Kiseleff to drop off some papers. It was late when she opened the door, and at first I did not recognize her. Her entire face was a purple bruise, her eyes swollen, one of them entirely shut. ‘He found out,’ was all she said. ‘He is sending me to a boarding school, back in Moscow.’

  “ ‘When?’ I asked, shocked to see her in such a state. ‘In a week,’ she told me. There was something about her that broke my heart as I reached out and took her hand. I looked at her beautiful, desecrated face, and I said, ‘Katia, come by the office tomorrow. There’s something I want to talk to you about.’

  “Three days later, I returned to their home with a bouquet of flowers, an enormous box of chocolates for her mother, and the best Russian vodka I could find for her father. He greeted me in the doorway with great enthusiasm, seemed genuinely happy to see me. ‘Come in, my boy,’ he said. ‘Katia told me you would be coming by.’

  “ ‘Yes, sir,’ I replied solemnly. ‘There is something of great importance I would like to discuss.’ ”

  Victor paused to reach for his vodka glass and took a good gulp. He was no longer looking at Natalia; he was staring at the blank wall behind her.

  “Two months later, we were married. A grand wedding with five hundred people in attendance. Every dignitary, every government official and military attaché was there—you can imagine. We danced in the ballroom of the Athenaeum Palace, which her father had secured for the occasion. We smiled at each other and cut the first piece of our seven-tiered cake as everyone cheered and raised their glasses filled with the best champagne delivered from France. Later that night, after our car dropped us off at the new villa that was our wedding present, she changed out of her gown while I poured myself a tall drink.

  “As I stared into the flames of our marble fireplace, she came up behind me, quiet as a cat, stunning in a black dress. She put her arms around me, rested her chin on my shoulder. We stayed like that for a while, Katia and I, and I knew what we were both thinking. She was free, free to be with her doctor, and I had an undeniably bright future ahead of me. We had both gotten what we wanted. ‘I love you, Victor,’ she whispered in my ear. ‘I’m going now. Don’t wait up for me.’ Then she kissed my cheek and flew out the door.”

  Natalia watched him crush his cigarette in the ashtray and throw back the remnants of his vodka in one shot.

  “And that’s how it’s been, Talia, between my wife and me for the past five years.”

  For a while, they were both quiet, the silence between them crowded with so many things unspoken. Victor reached across the table and took her hand. She tried to pull it away, but his determined grip, the weight of his fingers, held it in place. Slowly, he raised her palm to his face, and there it was, the warmth of his skin, the moist softness of his lips underneath the trace of stubble.

  “Look at me,” he said, but she could not, afraid he would see in her eyes what she no longer had the strength to conceal. But already his glance was penetrating right through her fissuring mask, and she thought, I cannot stop him, there are no barriers he cannot break, it is my soul that he wants. When at last she raised her eyes to him, he smiled, a hopeful, knowing smile, and everything around them disappeared.

  40

  IN THE COMMUNAL BATHROOM DOWN the hall, Natalia gently placed her bag in the corner and flicked on the lights. Washing her hands underneath the trickle of cold water, she examined her image in the tarnished mirror. Her face was flushed but really no different from this morning. So much had changed since then. She had never felt more different, more altered, yet none of it showed. Still the same green eyes that slanted a little at the outer corners, the same long auburn hair, so thick that it had become an annoyance to wash. The same fading beauty mark at the top of her left cheekbone. Still the same face that somehow had managed to blossom despite the years of poverty, the despair that clung about her like the damp, thick air of a midsummer storm.

  It wasn’t until recently that Natalia had come to see that she was, in fact, pretty. She was not beautiful in a blatant, indisputable way like her cousin Lidia, but she possessed a kind of appeal that was less intimidating, more approachable, the kind of attractiveness that drew boys to her instead of causing them to flush red and run for the hills. But it wasn’t until she’d stood face-to-face with Victor that she’d seen it so plainly. She had seen it through his eyes.

  When did you become so beautiful, Talia Let me look at you. Just let me just look at you.

  No, there was nothing there to betray the revolution inside her heart.

  Quietly, she tiptoed back to her room, leaving her shoes outside the door. Not turning on the lights, she went to the armoire and dug inside for her nightgown, then changed in complete darkness, careful not to make a sound. When she fell backward onto the embroidered cover of the davenport, she stretched her arms out wide, as wide as she could, like a bird in flight. Her eyes traveled up, toward the invisible ceiling. It took her a moment to realize that she was smiling in the dark.

  Even now, alone with her thoughts, she could not steady the beating of her heart. Who was he? Who was this Victor who had reentered her life as suddenly as he had left it all those years ago? It didn’t matter. She did not want to know about his life, his ambition, his pain, his loves, his deeds. She didn’t want to think about all that had happened in the years that stretched between them like an unconquerable abyss.

  What do you know of my life? he’d said to her that afternoon when somehow he spotted her from the café terrace. What do you know of the things I’ve seen? Well, she knew more than enough. She had heard about what people of his kind did in cold blood. How many arrests was he responsible for? How many deportations to forced-labor camps, to Siberia? Was his face the last those poor prisoners saw before they were turned to the wall?

  The thought cut through her, making her shiver. But even as her mind recoiled in terror, her heart was already r
unning ahead, galloping, leaving the rest of her behind. The heart takes what it wants, it sees no reason, she’d read somewhere or heard someone say. Well, if that was true, she wished she could tear it out of her chest, smash it to pieces, let the blood flow out of her, her blood that was poisoned with him.

  But it would be of no use. He would not stop coming to see her no matter how many insults she hurled his way. He was a man for whom no obstacle was enough, a man who took what he wanted, whenever he wanted, not bothering to ask permission. Well, I am not his for the taking, she thought. I am not an amusement, a diversion, a pretty girl who trades herself for his protection.

  And yet, and yet.

  Hours later, as early dawn trickled in through her window, casting a sliver of light on the threadbare rug, Natalia had still not slept. She felt as though she’d never sleep again, as a thousand images of Victor flooded her, jumbled and out of order, causing her to careen from exhilaration to distress and then back again in the course of a second. She was too tired to fight them, too tired to keep them at bay, so she let them wash over her like waters from a broken dam, she let them pull her out to sea, drowning her in their wake.

  Victor. Victor of long ago, Victor on the street, calling out her name. Victor’s eyes, his sadness, his steps close behind. His regret in the palm of her hand. Victor in a threadbare shirt in a heated argument with her father at the dining-room table. Victor in the leather coat of his youth, tall, powerful, breathtaking. Victor’s gloved hand, wiping away her tears, whispering, Let’s go someplace warm. And later, Victor’s face quivering in her hands, quiet, silent, intent. His breath against her cheek, obliterating all, obliterating the past and the future, obliterating all but that one single moment.

  There had once been a glorious summer day, a day before the war. She could smell the freshly cut grass, she could feel the sun’s rays on her pale skin, the shorn blades tickling her feet in her mother’s garden. He was there alongside her father at the wooden picnic table, and they were having a cognac, poured plentifully into tiny snifters. Her father had whispered something in his ear, something that was meant for just the two of them, and Victor threw his head back and laughed. From the corner of her eye, she had watched him shyly, for she was a mere girl, and he was a man in the best years of his life. She could still hear that laughter, robust and unrestrained, rolling in waves over her mother’s rosebushes. And his voice, which had felt to her like home.