Kursed

by Lindsay Smith

  It won’t be squashed down.

  Olga drums her fingers against her hollowed-out prosthesis.

  “All right. All right. We can—let’s just get to Berlin, first of all. That’s where the Americans are, the ones Herr Trammel was going to meet.” Andrei flicks on the truck’s headlights, though only one comes on. “Then we can figure out a plan of action from there.”

  “Comrade Secretary said the Red Army was making a push for Berlin. It’ll fall soon enough,” I say. “And the Americans and British are pressing in from the west. Everyone meets in the middle. Utter chaos.”

  Andrei quirks a smile again. “The perfect place to disappear.”

  Olga slings one arm over the back of the chair and peers at the doctor, passed out on the rear seat. “But what about him?”

  I ask myself a question about his future—but not for me, not for anyone else except that dark-haired girl I’d seen sitting in a classroom, attention rapt as she listens to a white-haired professor. Something in her earnest eyes and hidden face … I’d seen it before, echoing on others’ faces.

  I would see it again.

  “First, we find out the truth from him,” I say. “Then we decide.”

  *

  Somewhere a few hours after nightfall, the truck begins to shudder and shake, jarring me from my dreamless sleep. I knew our luck was too good to last, that the visions of blood and a cold-iron grip I’d seen on the plane were coming, but I thought we’d have more time. Andrei turns off the headlights and lets us coast over to the shoulder of the road.

  “Well,” Andrei says, “I suppose we’d better find shelter.”

  I listen to the unsettling silence, so foreign to me after the madness of the past few days—no droning prop jet or planes overhead, no crackle of badly shielded electrical wiring, no yelling Politburo officials or NKVD officers or other men trying to get into my head. “Is there a reason we can’t rest here? In the truck?”

  Andrei gestures to the darkness pressing up against our windows. Even the stars are blotted out by thick cloud cover; no moon, no streetlights, no nothing around. “We’re vulnerable on the road. No radio. No way to prove ourselves to be who we say we are—or who we really are, depending. It’s best to be where we won’t run into anyone else overnight.”

  “And do you have any suggestions on where that might be?”

  Andrei taps his temple. “As a matter of fact, I do.”

  We shove the truck over the shoulder and into a ditch. Andrei has gotten a German pistol from somewhere—I’m afraid to ask where—and fires a couple rounds into the windshield and tires. “For authenticity’s sake,” he says, though I’m not sure if it’s the Germans we want to convince or our fellow countrymen.

  As Andrei leads us into the forest, I notice the doctor’s cracked lips, and the way he wipes away blood from them every now and then. It’s no surprise, how malnourished he is; I saw how the corpses looked, shrunken down, every last nonessential ounce drained away from them until there was nothing left to take but what mattered. They told tales, during the siege of Leningrad, about people so desperate with hunger that they resorted to eating themselves—a foot or an arm or a buttock, sheared off like ham. But you don’t have to eat yourself to survive. Your body will start to do it for you.

  The forest swallows us up, so thick and syrupy, smothering even the sounds of our own footsteps, our own hearts thudding with its dank and rain-soaked air. I don’t notice the cabin until we’re nearly running into it—unlit, uninhabited. I close my eyes, try to peer just a few minutes ahead—are there other squatters already inside? But I only see our party sweeping through the dusty two rooms, no one disturbing us. I nod to Andrei and he pushes open the unlocked door.

  “How long did it take you to find this place?” I ask, as we head inside. Thick tufts of dust coat the floor and windowsills, lit only by Olga’s lighter.

  Andrei kneels in front of the cabinets that rim the makeshift kitchen corner. “Not long at all. As soon as I could tell we were running out of fuel, I started bumbling my way through the forest, searching.” He digs around inside the cabinets, even though he can’t possibly see them in the dark. “Ah! Here we go.”

  We all stare at the box that he plops onto the rickety wood table: a lantern half-full with kerosene. He fishes his crystal radio out of his pocket and sets it beside the lantern.

  “Well? Shall we try to make contact with the rest of the team?” Andrei asks, his voice tight.

  “Maybe in the morning,” I say, which eases the air all around me.

  Olga reaches for the dial. “We don’t have to tap in. Let’s just see if there’s any news out of Berlin or Moscow. We’ll stay off the NKVD comms.”

  “Sure. Okay.” Andrei dives back into the cabinets. “Now, let’s see what we can find to eat…”

  In short order, we’re shoveling beans from a can into our mouths with our bare hands by the feeble light of the lamp. Even the doctor has joined us, though he starts to look queasy after just a few bites. Olga watches him with a cool expression on her face. “All right, doctor,” she drawls, leaning back in the chair. She’s removed her prosthetic to rest for the evening, and she crosses her whole leg over the stump of her thigh. “I think it’s time you tell us who you really are.”

  He forces a weak smile to his face, but it falters in an instant. “My name is Friedrich Stokowski. I was a professor, before, in Warsaw. Biology, some genetic research. It was my passion, but lately the field of genetics has become … tainted. Political.”

  My lips press into a hard line. “I know what you mean.” But I don’t, not in the way he thinks. He’s speaking of eugenics—of Germany’s obsession with genetic purity and superiority, as absurd a concept as any. In Russia, we are not looking to prove a point; we are hunting for weaponry.

  “I was a political prisoner, at first, but as soon as they learned I had a medical background, I got special assignments in the labor camps. Tending to the sick and wounded. It sounds very touching, yes, having a medical bay, but make no mistake—they wanted me to carry out one purpose, and one alone. Patch the starving, dying prisoners up long enough that they could squeeze one more day of work from them.”

  “But you were—” I swallow down the noise that had been crawling from me—something exhausted, yet desperate to show horror at the boundless power of humans to cause pain to others. “You were dissecting them. The dead.”

  Doctor Stokowski cups his hand over his mouth, muffling his words. “Yes. Yes, everything changed when they transferred me to Mittelbau-Dora.” His eyelids tug downward. “The factory—it’s only one part of their work there. They have thousands of workers for it, all concentration camp prisoners, and those get fed through the gristle of the assembly line, no doubt about it. But it was also a place of … experimentation.”

  My stomach churns as I dread what comes next.

  “Trials, to see what manner of person is best suited to enduring such harsh work. Alterations, experimentation, see how we could tweak the human body to make it work longer on less sustenance … And then autopsies, after we’d worked them to death, to see what effects we’d had.” His hand migrates up to his eyes, heel of his palm against his eyes. “I couldn’t—I never thought I could do such a thing. To anyone. I swore the Hippocratic Oath, to do no harm. But then it became a game, to me.”

  “A game of exceptions,” I mutter under my breath. Andrei glances at me from the corner of his eye, but his gaze is back on his meal before I can meet it.

  Stokowski nods. “Yes. Exactly. At least this will keep my sister fed, over in the women’s camp. At least this will spare my sister’s life. At least this will ensure my sister is properly buried. At least I can show the dead proper respect, more than these others would … At least I meant to do right…”

  I always try not to stare too closely into the past—what’s happened is prologue, it’s only the constraints of any given experiment. I can’t change it or shape it or interpret it in any way. So I tell myself. Bu
t I think there’s another reason, one that slices to the quick, that keeps me from looking back, and it’s because I don’t want to see the winding path that brought me here.

  To the middle of war-torn Germany, scooping up swastika-sporting monsters to bring them to the Motherland.

  To the confidence of men like Stalin and Rostov, when I promised them a new weapon in the war.

  To the attention of the KGB, as I’ve trimmed away the parts of my research that wouldn’t assure my safety in the Party.

  I’ve willingly aligned myself with the sort of man the doctor felt forced to accept. I thought I had no choice—but I have a chance to do more. To be more.

  I reach for Doctor Stokowski’s hand and squeeze, gently, mindful of his papery skin and bones too close to the surface. “But what of your research before the war?” I ask. “Who were you then?”

  His face shrinks on itself, slowly, struggling. “I—I don’t know.” He sinks back into the seat, hands falling to his sides, and lines up his legs. “I don’t remember. It’s been so long that I just … I didn’t … I never thought I’d escape.”

  I close my eyes and invite my vision of this man in once more—his cheeks fleshy and full, face softened by age, standing before a sun-dappled classroom. “You’ll find him again.”

  *

  Olga claims the narrow bed against one wall of the cabin, while Stokowski bundles up on the couch. Andrei and I make pallets on the floor with the rest of the blankets we find, and roll our jackets up to put under our heads. I burrow deep into the blankets, but there’s a chill in my bones that refuses to thaw. When I try to fall asleep, the futures loom out at me. Berlin, bombed into nothingness, chimneys poking from shattered wreckage like accusing fingers, and bodies scattered like matches. Olga screaming as flames lick at a doorframe. And everywhere—a scratchy, prickly sound, scrubbing at the world like bleach to eat it away.

  I open my eyes and roll over, once again, to my other side. Andrei is staring at me—I can see the dull moonlight glinting off his eyes. I start to turn away, but there’s something so familiar in the way he’s watching me. Not cold, not calculating, not the look of a man who has a use for me—whether as a scientist or a warm body or anything else. Like a friend, waiting for me to tell him to go or stay.

  “Can’t sleep,” I whisper, low enough that only he should be able to hear. Not that Olga’s snores leave much doubt as to how she’s faring.

  Andrei nods, but is quiet for a while. He looks more vulnerable without his glasses, or maybe it’s the way he has of softening, of letting the camouflage drop. I still can’t put my finger on what the real difference is—between the moments when he’s dazzling, commanding, confident Andrei and when he fades into the background. “Step outside?” he asks.

  I start to nod, then hesitate. “Is it safe?”

  He closes his eyes, then nods and rises slowly, silently, to his feet.

  We exit the cabin and circle around to a windowless wall, then settle onto the stoop. The cold, wet air pricks at my flesh. The blouse I’ve been wearing since we reached Mittelbau-Dora feels clammy against me, like a bathing suit that refuses to dry out, but unless we get lucky, even luckier than we did in our escape, I’ll be wearing it for far longer. Better it than the uniform Andrei’s wearing. Even without the hat, with the jacket peeled away, he has no choice but to present himself as much of anything besides an officer of the SS. I curl my arms around my chest and hunch into a tight ball on the stoop.

  “All right,” Andrei says, “let’s hear it.”

  I raise one eyebrow. “Hear what?”

  “Whatever caused that … that look on your face, back there. Bozhe moi, how it hurt to see you look so sad.” He smiles, lopsided. “What can I do to ensure you never look that way again?”

  I shake my head. “It was nothing. Just … thinking about the past. Regrets.” The dimple in his cheek calls to me; maybe it’s just exhaustion, but I find myself reaching for it, brushing my fingertips against it. “What about you? What’s keeping you awake tonight?”

  His smile fades, and the shift happens. “Speaking about loss,” he says.

  I look down at my hands. “I’m sorry. If you’d rather not say—”

  “It was my mother. My father. My sister.” Andrei’s voice is right beside me, but his expression looks thousands of miles away. “I’d been away at university for not even a year when they were deported.”

  “From Georgia?” I ask.

  He nods. “Stalin’s work. The Georgian people are unclean, don’t you know. Bourgeois. Soft from our sunny life by the sea.”

  “But Stalin himself comes from Georgia.”

  “The exception to the rule.” Andrei laughs, dry and brittle. “No one sent me a letter, any sort of proclamation or explanation as to where they’d gone or why, but as soon as I returned during that first break in studies, as soon as I saw three new families crammed into our old family home, I knew.”

  I cup one of his knees—so wiry and lean—with my hand. He startles at first, but then eases into my touch. “I’m so sorry, Andrei. It’s not your fault.” My mouth tastes like ash; it’s hard to speak. “There’s nothing you could have done.”

  “Maybe not then. Now, though…”

  Leaves crunch in the distance, and we both sit up straight as if pulled up by string. Andrei shuts his eyes. I hold my breath, lungs aching, every cell in me leaning forward and eager to bolt.

  Andrei exhales, opens his eyes, and shakes his head. “Only a deer.”

  I slump forward with a weary grin. “I’m sorry … it’s just…”

  “A long day,” Andrei says.

  A long life. The past four years—between the war, catching the attention of the NKVD with my research, and everything else … But no matter how I study and dissect it, I can’t fight that primitive instinct in me. Fight or flight. Self-preservation. My ability seems to be an extension of that—a glimpse of the future designed to help me survive at all costs.

  “What were they like?” I ask Andrei, trying to shake my mind off of the rumination. “Your parents, your sister. You said something about musicians, right?”

  “Ah.” He reddens, a deep shade of gray in the moonlight. “You remember.”

  I smile in spite of myself. “Music was important in our family, too.” Don’t look back, Antonina. Never look back. I keep the smile fixed in place, pinning it there like a tailor.

  “My parents played for the local opera house, back before the Revolution. Before it was declared too bourgeois—that music was for the masses, the people. I suppose the Party thought that meant performances should be for everyone, but there was no budget for that. So soon enough, they were performing for no one. Except for my sister and me.”

  “And your sister?” I ask.

  Andrei rubs at the stubble along his jaw. “She was—well, she’s the reason I became interested in developmental psychology. She’d always had cognitive difficulties.” He slips into the jargon of our specialty; I recognize the tactic well. Distance yourself from the truth with cool clinical labels, with case studies and experiments conducted in the safe remove of a laboratory. “Brilliant in many ways, challenged in others. I thought maybe if I knew more about it, I could help her more. If she wished it. But now…”

  He doesn’t have to finish. I know this story well. Now they are on the far side of Russia, in a resettlement village, or worse. Hard labor, the sort designed to burn off every ounce of bourgeois softness and convert it to fuel for the Revolution, for the spread of Russia’s glory, for just another five-year plan.

  “But—but your gift.” I tilt my head. “Do you ever use it? To—to check on them. To see what’s happened, or know that they’re okay—”

  “No.” The word falls like a gavel. “No. I refuse.”

  “Why not?” I ask. “If I could, if I could know that—”

  “I can’t.” Andrei shakes his head, again and again. “It’s not possible.”

  There’s something too tight in his expre
ssion, throbbing like a headache. I can’t place it. “What do you mean?”

  “Because I’ve forgotten what they look like.”

  Something in his tone makes it clear to me that he chose to forget. “I’m afraid that if I look at them again … I won’t ever want to stop.”

  My hand falls away from his knee, from this all too familiar sentiment, and I grip my shins tight. I’m not the only one who refuses to look back.

  The air crackles, static, anxious; for a moment, I think it’s another vision, pressing up against me like a soap bubble ready to burst. But it’s gone as quickly as it came. Andrei hoists himself to his feet and holds out a hand to me. “Tomorrow, we’ll have to find another way to Berlin. Is this still what you want to do?” he asks.

  “Herr Trammel said the Americans were waiting for him there.”

  Andrei nods. “He showed Rostov the place they were to meet, and I saw it, too.” Andrei reaches for my hand; he cradles it between both of his, running his fingers against my palm like he’s divining the future.

  “We’ll find them, then,” I say, lacing my fingers in his. “The Americans found a way in; Trammel isn’t the first scientist they’ve smuggled out. They must know a way out of Germany. Safely.”

  “You’re a bold woman, Antonina Vasilievna.” Andrei smiles. “If it’s a way out you want, then I’ll find it with you. If this is what you want, then I’ll follow you. I trust you.”

  I let the warmth of his skin spread across mine, just for a few moments’ time. If a man like him can put his trust in me, then maybe it’s time I tried trusting me, too.

  Chapter Five

  I wake to the sound of voices—distant ones, muffled by hisses and pops and a metronomic click. The shortwave radio. Olga and Andrei are huddled around a sheet of paper, jotting down the numbers that the Russian voice is reading out in steady doses. The numbers station Rostov had told us about. The NKVD broadcasts orders to its agents all over the world, encrypted with numbers, and only the agents who know the code can decipher the message.