“Do they sell toothpaste in the commissary?” I asked.
“Sometimes. Usually the guards buy it all. But I got lucky. But now someone stole it.”
“It was probably Timofei or Yegor,” I whispered. “They’re the ones doing all of the stealing of rubles in this barracks. I heard that zeks like them—you know, actual hardened criminals—are being asked to do some of the policing for the NKVD. This has them feeling empowered to steal what they want from us politicals, as they know we can’t say or do anything about it. They take what they want.”
“Shit!” said Max. “And they already feed the criminals more than us politicals. I’m going to go find them.”
“You must have a death wish. I can tell you exactly where they are. They’re in the south corner beside the toilet room playing cards with those other eight, as always. Don’t you know this?”
“Yes,” he said. “I meant I’m going to go find them . . . as in . . . confront them. I’m going now.”
“Do you speak Russian? Because that’s all they understand.”
“No,” he said.
“I didn’t think so. Good luck, Max.”
He walked away and I shut my eyes again, letting the chatter and clinking throughout the barracks put me to sleep. These had once been the sorts of noises that kept me from sleeping, but now, on each night, after having simply survived the day, it all sounded like soothing rain. I knew this must also have been the case for James because he was already sound asleep up above me.
Having earlier sloshed the last bit of hot water around in my mouth to wash it, I lay there rubbing my teeth with my finger, trying to get the gunk off with my nail. A man’s gums and teeth rotting was a forgone conclusion in Stalin’s prisons. I was just trying to keep mine from eventually falling out. So far they were fine.
About an hour later I felt a tap on my arm. I opened my eyes to see Lovett standing there stone-faced. It scared me, so I jumped up. I knew I wasn’t dreaming, though.
“Easy, Bronzeville!” he said, many of his front teeth missing. “It’s just me.”
“My God!” I said, shocked as could be.
I rolled out of bed and stood. Both of us stared at each other. We were overcome with joy, pain, sadness, and disbelief. I felt tears forming in my eyes and could see some welling up in his, prompting both of us to break down and embrace. We must have stood there hugging for a good minute. My friend, like me, was much skinnier now, his beard bushy, specks of gray in his full head of nappy hair, a far cry from the slick, bald look he’d previously sported.
“What happened to your ear?” I said, both of us speaking English.
“One of those evil, murdering motherfuckers on the ship from Vladivostok bit half of it off when I tried to stop him from killing an Estonian comrade of mine. And his bite worked. He and his partner still wound up killing him. Beat him with their bare fists over a ration of fuckin’ black bread. Hell . . . at least I tried.”
“Biting is all they do in the prisons,” I said, showing him my thumb and webbing. “With no knives or other weapons available on the ships or in the barracks, teeth might as well be switchblades.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Don’t get me wrong,” I said, “More than once I’ve seen one zek kill another with a hammer or saw. But teeth have caused by far the most injuries.”
“Speaking of teeth,” he said, opening his mouth and touching his upper and lower gums, “another thing that happened to me when I first left Kazakhstan for Vladivostok was the guards decided I wasn’t moving fast enough to board the train, so they took a baton to my mouth and knocked most of my front teeth out, as you can see. My lips were split open real good, too, but they had a nurse stitch me up right there on the train before we departed. Had ’em removed in Vladivostok.”
I shook my head with disappointment, and again we stood there holding our words, trying to let this stunning set of circumstances settle in. He looked up at James sleeping and half smiled. Then he looked down and past me like he was transfixed on something not present.
“How long ago were you arrested?” I said.
“Too damn long ago,” he said, snapping to.
I leaned over and touched the new zek, Roy.
“Yeah,” he said, opening his eyes.
“Excuse me, Roy. But would you mind taking my middle bunk for a while? I desperately need to sit and talk to my other American friend here. I’d really appreciate it.”
“Of course,” said Roy, rolling out of bed and hopping up to my spot. In the forty-eight hours he’d been here, the two of us had shown nothing but respect for each other.
“Thank you,” I said, Lovett and I sitting on his bed.
“Sure is good to see another colored face,” said Lovett, both of us shaking our heads in disbelief.
“I tried for almost two years to find out from B when I could see you after you left Moscow in late 1935. But she kept telling me she had lost touch with you. It was as if your wife had been hurt by you.”
“Na,” he said. “The entire thing was a lie. That night we met you and Loretta at the Foreign Workers’ Club, we had already received some bad news.”
“Come again.”
“About a week before that night, I’d been at that same club and had gotten into an argument with a couple of CPUSA members about that damn Langston Hughes book of all things. A book entitled, The Ways of White Folks. I had claimed that the book did too much pandering to white people. Well, Hughes is a hero to the Soviet Union, just like Robeson. Somebody in the audience reported my diatribe to the blue tops. Subsequently, they paid me a visit the next day and branded me a ‘counterrevolutionary’ right there on the spot. They visited B and me every day during the course of that next week, asking all sorts of questions.”
“That’s hardly enough to get you arrested,” I said. “Bitching about a damn book by an American!”
“That was just the tip of the iceberg, Bronzeville. They kept questioning me until they found out I was a close friend to Karl Radek, a man the State was also beginning to investigate. So when I met y’all that night, I hadn’t been sentenced to the Sevvostlag labor camp yet. I had only been told to leave Moscow and find work in, of all places, Alma-Ata, a small town in faraway Kazakhstan, until the State could sort out just exactly what Radek’s crimes were. I was exiled. B was ordered to remain in Moscow. The blue tops had granted me one final wish: to say good-bye to several friends during the course of that last day. We saved you two for last. They’d also ordered us not to tell a soul where I was being exiled. It pained me to lie to you both. No choice!”
“I’m thinking back to that night,” I said. “You two seemed so happy and certain of your plan.”
“The fear those blue tops put into you will make you believe your own lie, Bronzeville. Make you happy to just still be breathing! That’s what you saw that night. And B was also just glad to see me still alive.”
“When did you get arrested and sent here?” I said.
“Well, part of my story I told y’all that night turned out to be true. I did end up teaching chemistry and boxing, just in Alma-Ata, not Kuybyshev. Then I was sent to another town in Kazakhstan named Semipalatinsk.”
“Did you and B ever meet halfway like you’d said you would?”
“No,” he said. “I never saw her again.”
“I’ll be damned!”
“I’d been in exile under the watchful eye of NKVD officials for two and a half years before they finally arrested me on May 8th of this year and sentenced me to five years hard labor here at Sevvostlag. That’s when they’d claimed that I, like Karl Radek, was a Trotskyist. NKVD told me they’d had a big show trial for Radek.”
“Yes,” I said. “It was all over the papers for months. He was sentenced to ten years in prison. The papers, particularly Izvestia, made it appear as though his crimes were fact, that he’d been justly charged with complicity in plots against the State.”
Lovett shook his head. “I’m sure I was found to be one of
his close confidants. The list of men associated with Radek is far too long. I’m sure they’ve all met similar fates. Radek is a damn good man.”
“Are you a Trotskyist?” I whispered in his ear.
“Shit, I’m an American,” he said. “Just like you.”
His words shook me. Of course! All he’d ever been was an American seeking to live a life of dignity.
“Am I a Trotskyist?” he whispered, looking around. “Much more so than a filthy Stalinist. That’s for sure. And it’s no crime.”
“Don’t worry about these other zeks,” I said, surveying the barracks. “Most speak no English, and the Americans who do are completely with us in our opinions. Trust me! We are all loyal to one another. We have to be.”
“How could we not be,” he said, looking up at the streaming lights. “They hang these bulbs like Christmas lights. They ever turn ’em off at night?”
“No,” I said. “One thing I’ve learned, they never leave zeks here alone in the dark.”
“Does that guard out front ever leave?” he said.
“Only when he comes in here and makes the rounds.”
“I see.”
“Did they assign you to this barrack?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Good. I had it arranged. Commander Koskinen is responsible.”
“Thank you, Bronzeville.”
“Of course. Question. You told me they arrested you back in May. Where have you been for these past few months?”
“They had me working at this state farm not too far from here called Dukcha. Just temporarily! Had me doing all kinds of experimental fertilization work for twenty hours a day. Lots of work with trying to help breed farm animals, too! All of their experimenting is failing. Can’t grow shit in Siberia for more than a month, and that’s only in the summer! Can’t keep damn calves alive in this frozen land, either! They ship cows in, try to acclimatize them and have them breed. Then think their offspring can survive through the long, frigid winters. Foolish! Can’t happen!”
“Of course not,” I said.
“As soon as they found out I had a background in studying fish breeding, I was sent there. Guess they thought I might be a magic nigga! They quickly found out I wasn’t. After only two weeks they had my behind tilling soil through the rest of the summer. Shit was like quicksand. The lot of us damn near died ten times a day from exhaustion. And, as you can see, I’ve barely eaten. Now that I’m here and the State’s newest band of scientists is in place there, I’m likely headed to the mines very soon. These new scientists are apparently all Soviets and equipped with some mysterious groundbreaking methods. Please! It ain’t nothin’ but a bunch of damn pseudoscience. But enough about me! How in God’s name did you two end up in here?”
“You mean us four,” I said. “They arrested Loretta and Ginger, too. They’re at some camp near Finland. And to answer your question, I still have no clue as to why we were arrested. They simply said we’d been involved in counterrevolutionary activities, a far too common and devastating label it seems.”
“This is pure evil . . . what’s happening here,” said Lovett. “I don’t even think the rest of the world knows about it.”
“They know people are being tried and arrested, but they have been shielded from the true horror taking place. Can you imagine if a reporter were privy to this? As far as myself, I’d simply allowed myself to become brainwashed by the State. I can’t believe it happened to me. Maybe I didn’t want to see it.”
“Maybe Loretta had convinced us not to see it, that somehow we were on the good side, that the bad guys, you know, the enemies of freedom and revolution, were the ones being arrested. I must admit, Stalin’s propaganda machine is extraordinarily powerful and convincing. He has everyone fearing that so many czarist families in exile are plotting and about to return to enslave the proletariat. Shit, he’s the one doing the enslaving!”
“Yes,” said Lovett. “What he’s masterfully done is convince so many that Trotsky is the devil incarnate. It took him a while, but he managed to pull it off. Every single soul in the Soviet Union, including members of the Central Committee and his own Politburo, are scared to death of him. I had an NKVD Trotskyist tell me as much while I was in exile. And I know that members of the CPUSA, both here and abroad, have grown fearful. Stalin’s reach, his spies and assassins, are quickly spreading across the globe. He’ll soon have one of them kill Trotsky. Mark my words. And the U.S. Government is infested with his spies. Shit, I know some of them. There was a time when I was willing to become one.”
“According to my friend Bobby, there are many famous and important Americans who may not have joined the Communist Party, but are unapologetic in their support for communism. If only they knew what was happening inside these fences. They’ve probably heard hints of it, as we had, but don’t believe it. You have to admit it was hard to imagine when we were on the outside. And I certainly had no idea that so many Americans were being purged.”
“We see what we want to see, Bronzeville.” He touched his half-cutoff ear and looked down at his muddy shoes, his frazzled garments, and filthy hands. “We see what we want to see.”
“True. All I can see now is my wife and daughter. I’ve had some very disturbing images running through my mind about them ever since Commander Koskinen told me what often happens to women in the camps. It’s killing me.”
“The only thing that’ll kill you is that Road of Bones out there,” he said, pointing west.
“I have a plan,” I whispered in his ear. “I don’t want to talk about it out loud, but just trust me. I’m going to try to get you out of here with James and me.”
* * *
Later that night, as I lay in my middle bunk, I penned a letter to Loretta—one that Koskinen had said might or might not ever reach her. He claimed that Colonel Ivan Zorin, the head of the camp where she was near Finland, was a brutal, evil son of a bitch. Not allowing prisoners to receive any letters was something Koskinen said was “likely” in the case of Zorin.
I’d heard him loud and clear but wanted to send the letter anyway, for I had the distinct feeling that Loretta and Ginger were in serious trouble. Each night, as of late, I’d been having terrible nightmares about their condition, both of them on the verge of death. It was haunting me. Perhaps I was hoping this letter would reach her, if only so it might be the last words she ever heard from me. I’d always trusted my instincts, and they were telling me that time may have already run out for them. So, with the heaviest heart I’d ever had, I put pen to paper and wrote the following:
Dear Loretta,
My God, my love, how I long to see your face, touch your skin, and smell your essence again. Our lives turned upside down in the blink of an eye. Tell my daughter I love her beyond this universe. Tell her to look up at the Russian sky and search for the brightest star, for that is the one I see tonight, and it reminds me of her, my sweet Ginger. I have died a thousand deaths since being ripped away from you two. Yet I must have a thousand and one lives because my heart still beats and my mind still imagines the moment we will be reunited. Your son is so strong, this young man we created. He has seen far too much ugly, cried too many tears, felt too much pain, but he is still whole and full of life and hope because he was raised by you, an awesome, relentless, spirited, artistically transcendent woman. My weakest, darkest, pain-filled moments are always replaced with strength, light, and joy when I think of you, my gorgeous Loretta. I will never give up on you, on us, on the dreams we have for our children. I will stay alive for us. I will hold you again. I will make our family whole again. I will make love to you again. Life will begin again. I promise.
Faithfully,
Prescott
18
Moscow, Russia
May 1936
MAY 16, 1936, BROUGHT WITH IT SOME BIG NEWS. NOT ONLY HAD Bullitt’s tenure as ambassador come to an end, much to his delight it appeared, but Bobby had also accepted a higher-ranking post as Minister in Argentina. Loretta and I had
just found out and hadn’t discussed whether we’d be joining the Ellingtons, even though Bobby had already invited us. Everything was happening so fast.
This was also another important and exciting day for Loretta. Two of her paintings had been chosen to be displayed at Tretyakov Gallery across the river from the Kremlin. Tretyakov was known as the premier depository of Soviet art in the world. Bobby, Dorene, Loretta, and I had chosen this night to dress up and tour the gallery before heading to a black-tie dinner at the French Embassy.
As we walked the gallery, we came upon one painting that Loretta told us to stop and enjoy. It was a work by Boris Ioganson, a famous Russian artist.
“This will go down as Boris’s greatest painting,” said Loretta. “It’s called Interrogation of Communists. I believe it has been displayed here for three years now. I actually met Boris a year ago while visiting the All-Russian Academy of Arts in Leningrad. He was so nice to me, and we’ve been friends ever since. He visits Moscow often. I consider him a mentor.”
“Oil on canvas,” I said, kissing Loretta on the cheek. “Just like yours.”
“How old is Ioganson?” said Bobby.
“I believe he’s around forty-three,” said Loretta. “Five years older than me. Yikes! That’s so weird coming out of my mouth. Feel like I’m getting older by—”
“Stop,” said Dorene, “you look twenty-five. Don’t worry.”
“Yeah, you say that only because you’re just thirty-four,” said Loretta.
“Hell, you both look eighteen to my eye,” said Bobby, smiling and taking his wife’s hand.”
“God, I love you, Bobby,” said Loretta, turning back to the painting. “Kiss him for me, Dorene! Anyway, if I might, this piece represents the new man fighting against the old . . . you know, the brave proletariat not flinching as these brutal czars interrogate them.”
“I’m also noticing,” said Dorene, “how the faces of the young man and woman who represent the proletariat are lit up, while the faces of the three czarist army officers appear dark. The man and woman appear bold, not afraid of these men.”
Beneath the Darkest Sky Page 22