“No, I can manage,” I replied.
“Here’s a new uniform,” the younger one said, handing me a paper sack.
Even as I dressed the two didn’t leave, so that I had to pull the curtain around my bed for privacy. I wondered what the secret police could want with me. I recalled how I’d spoken out with General Petrov, criticizing him for leaving his troops. Had that something to do with the presence of these two? I thought of all the stories of people who’d been taken away, never to be heard from again. Yet I was now a Hero of the Soviet Union. They wouldn’t dare try anything with me, would they?
“What do you want with me?” I asked through the curtain.
“Move it. We have to be going,” replied the older one impatiently.
The younger one carried my duffel bag as we walked outside into the blistering sunlight. They had me get in the backseat of an automobile. Another one of theirs drove. It was stifling in the car, and the two policemen sat silently on either side of me, pressed so close I couldn’t move. I could smell the sweat on them and the unmistakably sweet tang of gun oil. They drove me to an airbase on the outskirts of the city. They escorted me toward a plane on the runway, its propellers already spinning. As we were about to board, I stopped and turned to the older one. “I demand to know where you’re taking me.”
“It would be better if you just got on the plane, Lieutenant,” he replied.
I wasn’t going to be cowed by these two. After all, I’d fought against the German Eleventh Army.
“I refuse to go unless you tell me.”
“Just get on the plane,” said the older one, growing visibly annoyed.
“No!”
He drew his lips tight over his too-large teeth. I could see he was used to having people obey his orders without question. Finally he said, “We are taking you to Moscow.”
“Why?”
“That is not for us to say.”
“I won’t go unless you tell me,” I repeated.
The older NKVD agent glanced from me to the younger one and back to me again. I think he was considering just grabbing me by the hair and dragging me onto the plane. The Soviet secret police had never been known for their subtlety. Finally, though, he threw his hands in the air, mumbled something to his partner, and headed up into the plane, as if leaving this unpleasantness to his colleague.
“They wanted it to be a surprise,” said the red-haired man.
“What do you mean, ‘surprise’?”
“They want to honor your achievements. We were told to say nothing. Now please, Lieutenant,” he said, extending his hand toward the plane with a kind of elegant bow.
I still wasn’t sure I believed them, but finally I acquiesced and climbed aboard.
At sunset that evening as we approached from the south, I made out the colorful domes and spires of the Kremlin. I gazed out the plane’s window, searching for the massive Palace of the Soviets. I’d read about it and seen sketches of it in newspapers. It was to be the tallest structure in the world, the grand expression of Stalin’s vision for our new country. I thought it would have been finished by now.
“Where is the great palace?” I asked.
“What palace?” replied the younger of the two policemen.
“Why, the Palace of the Soviets, of course.”
The younger one laughed. “See that big ditch down there,” he said, pointing through the window at an excavated area that resembled a massive bomb crater. “That’s what’s left of it. They used the steel for making tank defenses.”
We landed at Kuybyshev military airport and drove into the now-darkened city, where they brought me to a hotel on a narrow out-of-the-way street. I noticed that some of the hotel’s windows had wood covering them, and here and there the bricks were pockmarked, no doubt from the German guns during the previous year’s assault. I’d heard that the krauts had come within a few kilometers of Moscow before being driven back. My room on the third story was cramped and musty-smelling. They dropped my bag on the bed and turned to leave.
“Wait,” I said. “What now?”
“Someone will be by for you in the morning,” instructed the older one. “I hope everything is to your liking,” he added, flatly, without the least sarcasm.
I listened with my ear to the door as they walked away, and when they were gone I turned the lock. In bed that night, I had an odd feeling. I felt naked without my rifle, vulnerable and defenseless. I’d not had it in the hospital, but that was different. For a year in the war I’d kept it with me constantly, when I ate and when I slept, even when I went to the latrines. It had always been within arm’s reach. It had given me a feeling of security. Without my realizing it, my rifle had become a part of me, like an arm or a leg. That’s what war does to one. I lay on the bed, still in my uniform. That night, I slept irregularly, tossing and turning in the strange room. The pipes clanged, and outside in the hall I thought I heard footsteps, though maybe it was just one of several strange dreams I had.
In the morning, a knock on the door woke me. I got up and answered it. There in the hallway stood a heavyset man with ruddy cheeks, his thick neck overflowing his collar. He was wheezing from the climb up to my room. He wore a dark, smartly tailored suit, and sweat beaded on his upper lip. In his hand he held a fedora hat by the brim.
“I am Vasilyev,” he said, and without asking permission strode into my room. He stood there, looking disapprovingly about. “You’d think they could have done a little better than this for someone who has just won the Gold Star.” Then, turning back to me he said, “Your picture doesn’t do you justice, Lieutenant.”
“Who are you?” I asked.
He smiled at me and gave an exaggerated bow, sweeping the fedora in front of him. He had a meaty face, with a dark shadow of a beard, and he was thick through the middle. About the only thing that wasn’t abundant was his mouth, which was thin and severe, a sharp line separating his thick nose from his double chin. Despite his bulk he had a certain grace to him, a delicacy that was almost feminine.
“I told you, I am Vasilyev. I fear it is going to be unbearably hot again,” he said, dabbing his forehead with an embroidered handkerchief. His movements seemed almost theatrical, those exaggerated gestures of a second-rate actor. “Oh, pardon me. Let me welcome you to Moscow,” he said, extending his hand. When I offered my hand, instead of shaking it, he bent and kissed it, as if he were a figure out of some nineteenth-century novel. As he spoke, I caught a faint whiff of alcohol on his breath. “Vasily Vasilyev. At your service, madam.”
“I don’t need your service.”
“Then think of me as your escort.”
“To what?”
“To certain events they have planned for you.” Then turning toward me, he said with disdain, “That uniform looks as if you slept in it, Lieutenant.”
“As a matter of fact, I did.”
He smiled and walked over to the window, pushed the curtains aside and looked out. “Your wounds,” he asked, “have you recovered fully from them?”
“Yes,” I replied. “I’m fine.”
“I am pleased to hear that.”
“So when can I return to the front?”
At this he smiled, his hands folded beneath his prominent belly, as if it were a basket of clothes he was carrying.
“Have you had breakfast yet, Lieutenant?”
“No.”
“Neither have I. Come,” he said.
We headed down and got into the backseat of a black Citroën and were chauffeured by a man with a sharp, narrow face like a wood chisel. We drove east along the Moscow River, with the walls of the Kremlin to our left. The day was warm and bright, with a light breeze coming off the water. We wound our way through the city, stopping eventually in front of a small café in an old neighborhood on Tverskaya. “The only good French restaurant left in all of Moscow,” Vasilyev said as the two of us headed in. When the waiter came up, he said, “Ah, bonjour, Monsieur Vasilyev. Comment allez-vous?” The two spoke rapidly and flu
ently in French. My escort ordered a prodigious breakfast of eggs and sausages, blini cakes and grenki and porridge. Though he ate heartily, his manners were the refined sort of someone who’d come from a cultured background. Now and then he’d daintily wipe the corners of his mouth with his napkin, and once he removed from his coat pocket an expensive-looking silver flask. He offered it to me, but I shook my head.
“Ninety-proof bourbon from America,” he explained. “Munitions can’t get through the German U-boats, but booze can. It is a strange war, no?”
As he took a long draft, I noticed that he had a wedding band that creased the flesh on one fat finger and that his nails were perfectly manicured. His dark brown hair was thinning and combed straight back. His eyes were also dark, and beneath them the flesh was discolored and loose.
“When can I return to the front?” I asked again.
“Ah, the front,” he said, taking a sip from the flask. “Where is it today? I have not read the paper. It keeps changing so fast.”
“I want to get back to fighting.”
“That is a very admirable sentiment, Comrade. But right now we have more important things planned for you. You really ought to try the blini. It is delicious,” he said, eating heartily.
“What sorts of things do you have planned?” I asked.
“A little this and that,” he said, waving his fork about in the air. Now and then he’d take the handkerchief from his coat pocket and wipe his flushed brow. On the one hand, he gave the appearance of a rough-hewn peasant who enjoyed his earthy pleasures. But he was, I would come to know, a complex man of many sides, many contradictions too—erudite, sophisticated, worldly, someone equally well read in Pushkin or Goethe, or in the subtleties of Soviet propaganda, but also someone who could be fiercely cruel. “We want to give a human side to the war,” he explained.
“There is no human side to it,” I snapped. “It’s all brutish and vicious.”
“Then let’s say we wish to show you off.”
“Show me off?”
“Yes. The capitalists call it marketing. We intend to market you as they do one of their motion picture stars.”
He obviously thought this funny, for he smiled broadly. He reached into his pocket and brought out a silver case and offered me a cigarette. I took one, and he lit it for me and laid the case on the table. I noticed it had words engraved on the side: with all my love, o. His wife? I wondered.
Through the café window, I saw a second black sedan across the street from where our car was parked. Two men sat in it. The one behind the steering wheel wore glasses and had bushy eyebrows. I recognized him as one of the two chekisty that had brought me to Moscow.
After breakfast we got back in the car.
“I’m to show you about the city,” Vasilyev said. “Have you ever been to Moscow?”
“No.”
“Good. I shall be your tour guide.”
We visited the Novodevichy convent and its famous cemetery, where we saw the graves of Chekhov and Gogol. Next we went to the Pushkin museum. After a leisurely lunch, where Vasilyev drank an entire bottle of Italian Barbera all by himself, we headed to St. Basil’s Cathedral. After that we proceeded to Lenin’s tomb. As we stood there, staring at the grayish figure of Lenin apparently asleep beneath the glass, Vasilyev leaned toward me and whispered conspiratorially, “Wax.”
“What?” I asked.
“The real thing is in Siberia,” he explained. “When they thought the Germans would take the city, they removed Lenin’s body and replaced it with a wax figure. The NKVD sent an entire lab to keep his body preserved.”
Even now everywhere I saw artillery batteries with Katyushas and howitzers and antiflak weapons, soldiers manning machine guns behind heavily fortified emplacements. Tanks nearly collided with trolley cars and horse-drawn carts.
“It still looks like a city under siege,” I observed.
“They are not taking any chances,” Vasilyev replied. “If that crazy fool in Berlin changes his mind, they’ll be back.”
Vasilyev seemed thoroughly to enjoy his role as tour guide, gesturing at places we passed, pointing out landmarks, laughing heartily at his own jokes. He was chatty, gregarious, making witty comments. He seemed at times even a little flirtatious, though I would come to learn that this was an affectation, him just plying his trade. He had no interest in me in that way. There was, nonetheless, something about Vasilyev that made me wary. Was he, like the other two, NKVD? Everywhere we went we were followed by the black sedan. When we went inside some museum or palace, the two secret police would follow at a distance, never really trying to hide themselves but never coming too close either. Several times, the younger red-headed man made eye contact with me, and once I thought he actually nodded and smiled.
It was late in the afternoon when we arrived back to my hotel. We sat outside in the car for a moment.
“You have a couple of hours in which to freshen up,” Vasilyev told me. “I shall pick you up at seven.”
“Where are we going tonight?” I asked.
“The symphony,” he explained. “There will be a lot of important people there. You’ll want to look smart, Lieutenant.”
“Smart?” I asked.
“Presentable. You will find a dress uniform waiting in your room for you. By the way, do you have lipstick?”
“What?”
“You know,” he said, mimicking the application of it to his own thin lips.
“Why must I wear lipstick?” I asked. “I’m a soldier.”
“You are also a woman. Women wear lipstick.”
“I don’t see the necessity.”
“It has nothing to do with necessity,” said Vasilyev. “Please, just put on a little lipstick. Okay?”
“I don’t have any,” I replied, thinking that would be the end of it.
With this Vasilyev reached into his coat pocket, and like some magician performing a trick, he pulled out a small silver cylinder. “I suspected you would need some. And while you’re at it, rub a little into your cheeks. You’re far too pale,” he said. “And be sure to wear your medals. They’ll want to see them.”
When I got back to my room, I found a vase filled with fresh flowers on the nightstand along with a bowl of fruit and a box of chocolates. I thought of Zoya, how she loved chocolate. Next to the chocolates was a bottle of champagne. And spread out over the bed lay a dress uniform, complete with a visored cap, Sam Browne belt, a skirt, as well as a pair of shiny new boots, none of which I’d gotten during the hasty westward rush to confront the German invasion the previous summer. I went over to the window and peeked through the curtains. Below in the street, I saw the same black car that had been following us all day.
In the bathroom I found a number of toiletries—soap, toothpaste, shampoo, a razor and blades, things I’d almost forgotten existed. I drew a bath, treated myself to some chocolates and an orange. Then I got the bottle of champagne and a glass and slid into the water. It was so hot it took my breath away as I eased myself into the tub. Yet even now in this room so far from the front, I felt the war’s presence. It was as if I could never completely wash away its mark, the smell of it on me, the taste of it in my mouth. I noticed the tattoos of battle: the matching pair of knotted scars on my thigh where I’d been hit by a bullet—entry and exit wounds; the quarter-moon scar from shrapnel along my calf; the pale thinness of my broken arm; various other cuts and scrapes and abrasions, some of which I’d not even been aware of until now. Especially the long, still-pink, still-tender wound over my belly, the one that had robbed me of the ability to have life inside ever again. I thought of my comrades—Zoya off fighting in Stalingrad, Captain Petrenko and the others, either dead or in some German POW camp. Kolya in Leningrad. And here I was, drinking champagne and soaking in a warm bath, about to go to the symphony. Then I thought of my daughter, in an unmarked grave somewhere along the road to Kharkov. Though I knew it was foolish, I worried that she would be lonely there, afraid without me.
B
ut after a while, the hot bath and the champagne eased my mind a little. It had been more than a year since I’d had a real bath. I scoured my skin hard, rubbing it raw, like some religious flagellant, trying to remove the stench of war. I scraped the dirt and gun oil and blood from beneath my nails. It was heaven, let me tell you. I felt like a new woman, like a girl going on her first date. I wanted only to lie there and savor the fact that I was in this warm tub, alive, getting a little tipsy from champagne, about to go to a symphony. It was a strange, strange world, I thought.
I got dressed and put on lipstick, combed my hair. I looked at myself in the mirror. Thinner than I had been, a little older about the eyes and mouth perhaps. But given all that I’d been through, I was pleased with what I saw. I thought I was still an attractive woman, a sentiment I hadn’t felt in a very long time.
That evening when Vasilyev saw me at the door, he stood there for a moment looking me up and down, his hand rubbing his chin in a caricature of appraisal. Finally he gave a smile of approval, his fleshy cheeks pressing his eyes into narrow slits.
“Very nice, Comrade,” he said as he entered the room.
“Thank you,” I replied, with more than a trace of sarcasm, which he decided to ignore.
“The uniform fits well?”
“Yes.”
“I wasn’t sure what size. I could only go by what my wife wears. And she’s a bit, shall we say, larger than you,” he added with a smile. “Do try to be a bit charming tonight, Lieutenant.”
“Charming?” I said.
“You know, smile a little. Be pleasant. We want to show everyone that our female soldiers can have a feminine side. Come, we mustn’t be late.”
As we drove along, he took out his handkerchief and said, “Turn toward me.” When I did, he reached over and made as if to wipe my mouth with it.
“What are you doing?” I said, fending off his touch.
“You look cheap.”
“Cheap,” I replied, my voice sounding petulant even to me. “You said to wear lipstick.”
“But I didn’t tell you to make yourself look like some five-ruble shlyukha. I don’t want them to get the wrong impression. Come here.” Then he added, “Please.”
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