“Yana! Why are you holding him like that?” Accusation dripped from Maya’s voice.
Aleksei tore himself out of his grandmother’s grasp and threw himself at Maya, burying his head in her waist. “She hates me,” Aleksei cried. “She said I’m not good.”
“Of course you’re good, honey,” Maya soothed. “You’re the best boy in the whole world.”
Artur cleared his throat. “Aleksei, apologize to your grandmother, and clean up the paper you threw on the floor.”
“Do I have to, Mama?” Aleksei looked to Maya, while Artur’s own mother closed her eyes as if she willed herself anywhere but here. The quiet gesture spoke volumes. A teacher and lover of children, she had so looked forward to being a grandmother. While she could easily manage a roomful of children, she could scarcely manage Aleksei.
“Yes,” Artur said at the same time Maya said, “No.”
“Yes,” Artur repeated. “You don’t talk to your grandmother that way. Apologize now.”
Aleksei’s face reddened. He fisted his little hands at his sides. Sound exploded out of him in a dramatic, “I’m sorry!”
His mother covered her heart with her hand and took an involuntary step back, as if the apology had been an attack. Aleksei took off and ran from the room without cleaning up the paper. He slammed the door to his bedroom.
Maya rounded on Artur, eyes full of anger and accusation instead of the warm acceptance of only moments ago. “Look what you’ve done! You haven’t been home for days, and suddenly you’re going to be a father? You have no idea how to handle him.”
Somehow Maya was the only one who did. As time went on and Aleksei’s behavior became worse, Artur put increasing stock in his mother’s diagnosis. Maya indulged him too much.
“I know when he’s being a monster,” Artur said.
“You think a fit of temper is such a bad thing? It shows will and spirit. I’m raising our son to take his place in Russian society.”
“What place?” Artur’s mother asked indignantly.
“Look around you, Yana,” Maya said with a lift of her chin. “We’re not like other people. We’re royalty.”
“This isn’t tsarist Russia. There’s no such thing as royalty here,” Yana said.
“No? Your own son has had every advantage. A fast track in the KGB, this beautiful apartment, all the right connections, money. Because his wife is the daughter of a KGB Spymaster. If Artur follows my father’s example, he could be the General Secretary of the Communist Party one day. We’re not like other people.”
Whenever she felt threatened by Yana, Maya would allude to the differences in the family’s status. She never came out and made the point directly, but they were all aware of the subtext.
Marriage to her had brought him everything. He would never have risen so high on his family’s own connections.
“Royalty or not, Aleksei’s not going to get far if he throws a tantrum every time someone tries to make him read. He’s going to flunk kindergarten,” Yana said.
“He’ll never flunk. His teachers wouldn’t dare,” Maya said. “Everyone knows who his grandfather is.”
This barb was more pointed than usual, and Artur couldn’t abide the unnecessary dig at the difference in station between Yana and Semyon.
“He needs to learn how to read,” Artur said. He couldn’t let the jab at his mother stand.
“He’ll learn when he’s ready,” Maya said with a careless shrug. “We need to make allowances for him. You’ve been away on assignment. He misses you. And now, in the two minutes you’ve been home, all you’ve done is side with your mother against me and call him a monster.”
She turned on her heel and headed for their bedroom, making as dramatic an exit as Aleksei.
“She’s impossible,” Yana complained.
“She has a point,” Artur’s father said as he entered the room from the study, carrying a newspaper and pipe. No doubt Mikhail had been eavesdropping the whole time and waiting for the coast to clear. He always claimed that sound strategy depended on knowing when to enter and when to leave.
But Mikhail’s strategies amounted to little more than avoidance and appeasement.
“The words coming from her mouth sound like sense until you really listen to them,” Yana grumbled, but Artur couldn’t take his mother’s side.
“She’s pregnant,” Artur said.
“Is that supposed to be an excuse?” Yana asked.
Artur found he didn’t appreciate the challenge in her stance. It was as if he had somehow encouraged her criticism of Maya by taking her side earlier. But with him away and with Maya pregnant, it was more important than ever to keep peace in their home. Maya might not be able to handle the extra stress of conflict with his parents. He didn’t want her to lose another child.
“She might have a point,” Mikhail said again gently, as if he too saw the need to keep the peace. “Imagine how different your life would have been if you’d married Koslovsky instead of me. If Artur had been his son instead of mine.”
His mother gasped. “Why would you even say such a thing?”
Artur scowled at his father. After all these years keeping the secret of Yosef’s engagement to Yana, Mikhail now invoked him freely?
“I think about it often,” Mikhail admitted. “But especially since Artur asked about him. I think about what your life would have been if Yosef had lived. If you had married him. Had children with him. There are a lot of disadvantages to being a Jew in this country,” he said.
Artur saw through the seemingly innocent conjecture. His father wished to continue their last conversation, to push his views once more, this time pretending he agreed with Maya. Did he think Artur was so easily led?
“I think about that, and it keeps me humble.” Mikhail spoke his words in a gentle tone, but it didn’t take the challenge out of them, the ever present question of Artur’s path, of the values he shared with Maya.
“That reminds me,” Artur said. He thought he might relish confronting his self-righteous father with the propaganda Ruben had wanted to use to recruit him. “One of my targets—”
“People,” his mother corrected.
“People,” Artur conceded for the sake of her civilian sensibilities. He could temper his use of depersonalized terms when he spoke about work with her. But it didn’t change what he did, what he would do.
He turned to his father and baited him. “One of the men I’m investigating mentioned ‘Jewish accidents’ in the army. That’s not real. Is it?”
He already knew the answer to his own question, and he waited smugly for his father to confirm that Ruben had tried to indoctrinate him with lies, that things weren’t as bad as the Jews claimed, that the questions his father wanted him so badly to ask would offer only empty answers.
“What do you mean?” Yana asked, while Artur savored his father’s hesitation.
“He claimed Jewish soldiers get killed by our own side. By friendly fire or maybe in training exercises. That such accidents happen frequently,” Artur explained.
“Those things happen,” Mikhail said on a heavy sigh, “but not by accident. Almost never by accident.”
Yana swayed as if she might faint. Artur caught her and lowered her to the sofa. Usually quiet and sensible, his mother was never one for melodrama, and her reaction alarmed him. “Are you all right?”
She pressed her fist to her mouth and shook her head. Artur had an uncomfortable feeling in his chest.
“Let me get you a drink,” Mikhail said. He crossed to the sideboard and poured her a generous snifter of cognac.
Artur gestured for him to fill a second glass. If Ruben’s stories weren’t lies and paranoia, then he needed his own stiff drink.
“You said it was an accident.” Yana’s voice came out high-pitched and reed thin. “When Yosef got shot in training. An unfortunate accident.”
Mikhail passed Artur a glass then turned his attention to Yana. “I lied to you. And I’m sorry.” He pressed the snifter into Yana’s hand. “I didn’t have a choice back then,” he said. “I couldn’t tell you the truth. I couldn’t tell anyone.”
Artur poured the cognac down his throat, but he didn’t feel the usual warmth. He felt cold inside.
He had never seen his mother touch a drop of alcohol, but like him, she greedily drank down the cognac Mikhail offered. She placed the empty snifter on the coffee table with a soft clink.
“They killed him,” Yana choked. “You never said so, but that’s what happened. Isn’t it?”
“Yes.” Mikhail sat down heavily beside her on the sofa and pulled her into his arms. “It was murder.”
“They killed him,” she repeated and then burst into tears. Artur couldn’t remember ever seeing his mother cry, and the sight unsettled him deeply. “I loved him, and they killed him.” She sobbed against Mikhail’s shoulder, weeping for a man she had never discussed with Artur.
All these years, why had his parents avoided mention of her engagement to Koslovsky?
“I loved him,” she repeated.
“I know.” Mikhail rubbed soothing circles on her back. He kissed her head tenderly. “So did I.”
Artur turned away, giving them a little privacy. He struggled to gather his own scattered thoughts, but they slipped out of his grasp.
He didn’t remember moving to the sideboard, but he found himself there pouring more cognac into his glass. He stared out the window at the prized view of Moscow. Everything looked strange and unfamiliar tonight. The Moscow River was a dark stain cutting through the lights of the city.
Artur sipped his cognac. When his mother’s crying wound down, he reluctantly turned back to them. He had too many questions, and he didn’t know when there would be other chances to ask them. He was due back at Ruben’s soon.
“Was there an investigation? A trial?” Artur asked. He couldn’t wrap his mind around his father’s story. He had no reason to doubt Mikhail, but he resisted believing.
It couldn’t be true.
Ruben’s propaganda couldn’t be true.
“No. There was no trial,” Mikhail said with a bitterness Artur had never heard before. “I pushed, but no one wanted to listen. They forced me to let it go.”
Artur could almost feel the weight of his father’s frustration and regret, the secret he had been forced to keep for so long. He understood now why Mikhail seldom talked of Yosef, except to share a fleeting, happy memory.
“My superiors didn’t think it mattered,” Mikhail said, and Yana buried her head in his shoulder. “They didn’t think Yosef mattered.”
Artur abandoned the protest on his own lips, the cross-examination he was conditioned to give to get the answers he wanted.
Unlike Ruben, Mikhail had no reason to lie about this.
The story made a horrible kind of sense. It explained why Mikhail was always so cynical, why he constantly pressed Artur to open his eyes to the weakness and hypocrisy in the system.
But why the secrecy for all these years? Why had he never shared this story with Artur? Why was Yana’s engagement to Koslovsky such a closely guarded secret?
Artur swallowed another mouthful of his second drink, trying to wash away the taste of answers he didn’t want. The warmth flowing down his throat didn’t ease his growing insecurity, this doubt about what was true and what wasn’t.
He felt compelled to ask about things he had once confidently taken for granted. The questions were unthinkable, and yet he couldn’t stop thinking them. He went to drink some more and found his glass empty. It hardly mattered. No amount of alcohol would let him escape the thoughts roiling in his mind.
“Am I Koslovsky’s son?” Artur was glad Maya wasn’t in the room to hear him utter such blasphemy. But he had to ask.
There was a moment of stunned silence, when all of them froze. His parents looked at him and then back at each other, and there were secrets in their eyes, a lifetime’s silent conversation passing back and forth between them.
No fast protestation. No reassurance.
Was Artur a lowly Jew? An impostor?
He hurled his glass across the room. It crashed against the wall and shattered. Yana gasped.
“Am I?” he demanded again.
“You’re my son,” Mikhail said fiercely.
Was that the truth? It had to be the truth. But Mikhail had hesitated, and that brief hesitation, that moment between one breath and another, left room for a world of doubt.
Chapter THIRTY-SEVEN
ARTUR
EDIK WAS DISCHARGED from the hospital with a mild concussion and several stitches in the back of his head. Artur had little patience for his moans and groans or for his existential whining about how he could ever leave Sofia.
Then Sofia arrived to visit, and Artur gained an appreciation for Edik’s artful complaining. Sofia, much to Artur’s disbelief, fussed over him and told him how brave he had been. She showed endless patience for addressing the aches and pains he doubtlessly manufactured, just so he could milk every ounce of her attention.
Artur gathered Mendel had prevailed in their argument about covering her hair. Today she hid her abundant hair under a floral kerchief tied under her chin, in the style of Russian babushki. He longed to pull the silly scarf off of her head and see her hair spill free.
She caught him looking at her. Her forehead wrinkled, and she cut her attention away from him. She didn’t seem to be able to stand the sight of him, and Artur wasn’t sure what he had done wrong.
She tucked Edik into the corner of the sofa with pillows and a thick blanket, while Ruben sat in his armchair and observed the proceedings with uncharacteristic sobriety.
Almost as soon as Sofia got Edik settled, there was a knock on the door. Artur, taking on what he assumed would be his new duties in the apartment, opened for a couple, likely a husband and wife.
Artur guessed them to be in their early forties. He led them into the living room, where they performed introductions. The visitors had brought a single shopping bag with candies, a sort of hostess gift, but no contraband for Edik’s closet.
“Sofia, I’m not feeling well,” Ruben said. “Would you mind bringing out the tea? Yosef can help you. And maybe you should call your mother.”
Sofia led the way and pushed through the swinging door into the kitchen. “Get the cups and saucers,” she said.
She stood at the faucet and filled the electric kettle, her back to him. Artur imagined pressing in close behind her, whispering in her ear, making her come undone right here, right now, while the sound of the running water would muffle her cries.
Too soon, she turned off the water. Before he could breach the silence, she picked up the receiver for the rotary phone and dialed. “Mama, Uncle Ruben’s asking for you. He said he’s not feeling well.”
When she hung up with her mother, Artur said, “Don’t worry about him. He’s milking your sympathy. Ruben’s engineering it so you’ll entertain his guests and do all the dirty work.”
He merely parroted what her own husband had said before, namely that this family leached off of her. But she gave him a sharp, disapproving look.
Too late, he realized he’d made a major misstep.
She didn’t share his disdain for Ruben and Edik, and likely she didn’t see them as parasites the way Mendel did. He didn’t actually know how she felt, what she thought.
He couldn’t afford to alienate her. More importantly, he had to win her over if he hoped to be successful in seducing her. “I only meant that they are both enjoying your company and taking full advantage of it.”
“You think they’re faking,” she said. “And they’re trying to use me.”
“Who could blame them?” he asked with a winsome smile, but she turned her back
on him and pulled teaspoons out of the silverware drawer.
Sofia seemed immune to the charm that had always served him so well. Worse, she seemed irritated with him. With him and not Edik or Ruben!
He didn’t understand her at all, a rookie mistake.
He didn’t try to talk with her again. He needed to get a better sense of her before he made another gaffe and forever spoiled his chances of seducing her.
He worked silently beside her in the kitchen, matching teacups and saucers. None of his tactics would be effective if he didn’t understand what motivated his targets, if he couldn’t anticipate their next moves.
The water heated quickly. Sofia poured it into the teapot and laid it on the tray, and Artur carried the tea service back into the living room.
Sofia perched beside Ruben, while he told the same story he always did about sharing a cab with the KGB agents assigned to follow him.
Unsure what to do or say, how to act so that Sofia might embrace him, Artur poured hot water into the guests’ cups, drawing out the task so that he could gather his thoughts.
Right now, he was still thinking and acting too much like Artur Gregorovich, a KGB outsider, and not enough like Yosef Koslovsky, one of them. He had to overcome his own natural resistance.
He didn’t want to be one of them.
But what if he were?
The thought jarred him, and he sloshed the water from the pot over the edge of the cup he was pouring. A few drops of scalding water hit his hand. He cursed.
“Are you all right?” Sofia asked. Her concern seemed to override her earlier pique with him.
“It’s fine. Nothing,” he said. The burn was minor, a few dots of achy pink skin and nothing more. As for the rest, he had to be fine. There was no other choice.
He sucked on his hand to soothe the burn while Sofia watched, her attention fully diverted to him, her gaze lingering on his mouth. He could still salvage the situation with her, he thought.
As Ruben elicited a laugh from the visitors, Artur found himself wondering, was the story Ruben just told true? Everything about these visits seemed artificially constructed to put the Jews in the best light and the Soviets in the worst.
To Catch a Traitor Page 20