Beautiful Assassin

by Michael C. White

  I relented finally and let him wipe my mouth, feeling as he did so like a little child when my mother used to wash my face.

  “There,” he said. “Much better. And here,” he said, handing me a pair of silk stockings he had removed from somewhere on his person. “Put these on.”

  “Now?” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t have a garter belt.” I thought this would suffice, but Vasilyev, I would soon learn, did not take no for an answer. He was, if nothing else, resourceful.

  “Stop the car,” he called to the driver.

  At this, the man put on the brakes. “In the trunk there’s a first aid kit. Bring it to me,” Vasilyev instructed the man. The driver got out and returned in a moment with a military first aid kit and gave it to Vasilyev. He opened it, took out a roll of adhesive gauze, and handed it to me. “Use this to hold up your stockings,” he said.

  “You’re joking,” I replied.

  “Quickly. We don’t want to be late.” When I hesitated with him sitting there, he said, “Aren’t we the modest one. All right, I shall be outside.”

  The entire episode would have struck me as comical if I wasn’t so annoyed by his trying to control my every movement. Even then, I was beginning to chaff under his claustrophobic hand, his Svengali-like manipulation. I longed for the simplicity of battle, the clarity of knowing your role, which side was the foe. I felt I was entering an entirely new and subtle kind of arena, one in which your enemy, as well as your comrade, was much harder to distinguish.

  Soon Vasilyev got back into the car.

  “Are we all set, Lieutenant?”

  “Yes, we are all set,” I replied.

  He glanced down at my legs. “You have lovely legs,” he offered.

  “Are you with them?”

  “With whom?”

  “Those two,” I said, nodding my head toward the car that followed us.

  “Those idiots!” he replied, indignant. “Hardly. I work in the Ideological Department.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “It’s not important. Your job and mine are similar, though.”

  “How so?”

  “We are both trying to win this war, Lieutenant. It’s just that you do it with your gun, while I do it with my pen.”

  “A pen doesn’t kill a single kraut.”

  “That’s rather disappointing to hear from a poet. Don’t you believe the pen is mightier than the sword?”

  “I don’t like any of this,” I said, motioning toward my new uniform. “Wearing makeup and silk stockings. Eating enough to feed an entire platoon. When our people are dying. I should be out fighting. That’s where I’m needed.”

  “Your way, Lieutenant, is killing one German at a time. But if I write something that inspires a million more to join our cause and they each kill a German, that’s a million dead krauts. Think of it.”

  “We’ve already lost a million soldiers in the Ukraine alone. Where are we going to get that many more?”

  “That’s where you come in, my dear.”

  “But I don’t write. At least not your brand of writing.”

  “Yes, that’s true—you are a poet,” he said, his tone sliding toward something like sarcasm. “A poet and a killer in the same lovely person. What a lovely paradox.”

  We finally arrived at the Kremlin and pulled up in front of a long, pale-colored, brightly lit building, which Vasilyev explained was Poteshny Palace. Taking my elbow, he led me inside and toward a large room where a crowd of people were milling about. Music drifted from a small string quartet in the corner. There were tables set up with food—more food than I’d ever seen before. Large platters with sturgeon and smoked salmon, sides of beef and hams, pheasant and duck and quail, cheeses and caviar, fresh fruits and small pastries and various delicacies. On one table alone there was an entire suckling pig with an apple stuffed in its mouth. Waiters came through the crowd with trays of appetizers or champagne. I was intoxicated by the heady aroma of it all.

  Vasilyev leaned in close and whispered, “Look over there.” He pointed across the room at a group, in the center of which was a tall man with wild, dark hair, thick horn-rimmed glasses, and an expression that betrayed a look at once bored and full of disdain. The others surrounding him appeared to be journalists. Several had cameras, and some were writing on small pads as the man spoke. “That scrawny fellow,” Vasilyev explained, “is Shostakovich.”

  “The composer?” I asked.

  “Yes. He’s back in the good graces of the Party, don’t ask me how. His problem is he’s all genius and no charm. When those journalists come over and start asking you questions about your experience at the front, be sure to tell them that morale among the troops is very high.”

  “But it isn’t,” I countered.

  “We must give the people something to hope for.”

  “Even if it’s not the truth?”

  He scoffed at this. “The truth is, we are fighting for our very lives. If a lie will help us to beat those sons of bitches, then so be it. Wait here.”

  He walked over to the bevy of reporters. For a heavy man, he moved with a natural grace, gliding effortlessly across the floor with a dancer’s lightness of foot. As he spoke to the reporters, they glanced over at me, and in a moment they had left the composer and approached me en masse.

  “Comrades,” Vasilyev said with the dramatic flare of an impresario, “I would like to present to you Lieutenant Tat’yana Levchenko, Hero of the Soviet Union.” At this, there was applause and several flashbulbs exploded, blinding me for a moment. “The destroyer of over three hundred fascists. Our secret weapon. Our very own la belle dame sans merci.”

  One reporter blurted out, “Lieutenant Levchenko, how do you feel about winning the Gold Star?”

  I hesitated, nervously staring at the small crowd. “It is…a very great honor,” I replied. “But I can only accept it on behalf of all my comrades in arms.”

  “She’s just being modest,” Vasilyev chimed in.

  “What do you think makes you such a great marksman?” a second asked.

  “Patience. A steady hand.”

  They continued to ask questions—what part of fighting I found hardest, did I think women fighters were as capable as men, was I ever frightened, how soon would I return to the front.

  “Do you think we are winning the war?” one man called out.

  “I am confident that we will, in time, defeat the fascists.”

  “What would you like to say to the Soviet people, Comrade?” asked another, his pencil poised for my answer.

  I hesitated. It made me nervous to think that what I said would be read by millions of people, those same people who had written letters to me.

  “I would tell them that our troops’ fighting spirit remains high,” I said. I saw Vasilyev nod approvingly at this, roll his finger for me to continue, to expand on that. “Our men and women are confident we will soon drive the invaders from our land. I would tell them that we must all be heroes to defeat the enemy. The factory worker making munitions no less than the farmer who feeds our soldiers.”

  At this, Vasilyev stepped in. “Thank you, gentlemen. Comrade Levchenko is still recovering from her wounds, and we don’t want to tire her out.”

  Taking me aside, he said, “Excellent, Comrade.”

  “Was I charming enough?” I asked sarcastically.

  “I particularly liked the business about the farmer and the factory worker. Had a certain poetic ring to it. Then again, I would expect no less from a poet.”

  I turned toward him. “How did you know I wrote poetry?” I asked.

  Smiling obscurely, he said, “We know a great deal about you actually, Lieutenant. You ran the hurdles and threw the javelin in track and field. You used to associate with an undesirable element back in your university days. You published a poem in The Workers’ Voice.”

  I stared at him, wondering how he could have known that. Of course I hadn’t signed my name to it.

&
nbsp; “For what it’s worth, I think your poetry is quite good. Though I would be more cautious about what I put my pen to from now on. You are a public figure now. Come, I want you to meet some people.”

  I noticed some women there. Mostly they stood off by themselves talking in small groups and eating hors d’oeuvres. Arrayed in furs and jewelry, they were the wives, I assumed, of the Party leaders. Stout-bodied women, with soft, flabby arms, they didn’t look as if the war had caused them to miss a single meal. To formal events such as these, the men would bring their wives, leaving their mistresses behind at their dachas.

  Vasilyev took me by the elbow and ushered me toward a small group of men who were sipping champagne and smoking cigars. As I walked I could feel the tape pulling uncomfortably against the skin of my thigh.

  “Good evening, Comrades,” Vasilyev said to them in his overly grand manner. “It is my great pleasure to present to you Lieutenant Levchenko, Hero of the Soviet Union.”

  Smiling, the men applauded politely.

  “Over three hundred of the fascists have fallen to her deadly aim,” Vasilyev continued.

  Each one kissed me on both cheeks. When they thought I wasn’t looking they stole a quick glimpse at my legs and chest.

  “A pleasure to meet you,” said one, an old man with jaundiced eyes.

  “With brave soldiers like yourself we will soon have the fascists on the run, eh,” added another, who had a large mustache.

  I nodded. “I am grateful I was able to do my duty.”

  “And you are even more lovely than your picture,” said the third, a slight, balding man with a large head and wire-rim spectacles. Behind his glasses, his eyes had the rapacious look of a wolf.

  When I didn’t reply, Vasilyev answered for me. “Thank you, Commissar General Beria.”

  Everyone knew Lavrenty Beria, the head of state security. Stalin’s pit bull. The one who made up the daily lists of names for Stalin’s signature, the ones who were to be shipped off to the camps or tortured in Lubyanka or straightaway taken out and shot. And we’d heard the whispered rumors of Beria’s insatiable appetite for young women.

  After we had moved off, Vasilyev said to me, “Now that wasn’t so bad, was it?”

  “How long do we have to stay?”

  “Relax and enjoy yourself. Are you hungry?”

  “A little.”

  He led me over to the food.

  “Oh look, there’s Alexeyev,” Vasilyev said, waving to a man across the room. “I will be right back. Can I get you some more champagne?”

  I shook my head. I still had the same glass he’d given me when we arrived. I stood there by myself, feeling awkward, with everyone watching me. I would rather be in a foxhole with Zoya than here with these sycophants and flatterers. I was thinking of her when I heard behind me a low voice, almost a whisper.

  “Comrade Levchenko?”

  I turned to see a man standing there. Older, wearing a plain khaki uniform without insignia, he was short, slump shouldered, with the thick body of a peasant and a head that was too large for his height. His hair was coarse and black with just a few gray strands in it, his bushy mustache resembling a small furry creature. But it was his eyes that were his most striking feature—small and not quite black, more really a complete absence of color. They were the eyes of something both primitive and yet cunning in its way. Where had I seen them before, I wondered.

  “I am she,” I replied.

  “It is a great honor to meet you,” he said, shaking my hand and nodding his great shaggy head. He spoke Russian with a thick Georgian accent. Though his hands were large and blunt as bricks, his handshake was surprisingly soft, almost effeminate. As he spoke he continued holding my hand. His gaze ran the length of me, from my calves to the top of my head, but unlike the other men, his interest wasn’t in the least of a carnal nature. He viewed me coldly and dispassionately, more appraisingly, the way a farmer might look at a plow horse. I slowly freed my hand from his grasp.

  “Thank you,” I said. I assumed him to be some Party figure of importance with whom I needed not to say the wrong thing or Vasilyev would reprimand me.

  “You have meant a great deal to our war effort,” he offered. “You have lifted the spirits of our troops at a time when we most desperately need it.”

  “I only try to do my duty, sir.”

  He leaned in to me, as if to tell me something in confidence. “You and I know what it is to look into the eyes of a man before we kill him,” he said, the slightest hint of a smile lingering beneath the bushy mustache. “These others”—he gave a wave of his blunt paw—“they chatter like a bunch of old women. But when it comes down to it, they are gutless creatures. You and I, Comrade, we are made of different stuff, are we not?”

  I nodded, though I wasn’t sure what he was getting at.

  At this he turned and left me standing there.

  Vasilyev returned shortly after this. “What did he say to you?”

  I shrugged. “That he and I knew what it was like to look into a man’s eyes before we killed him.”

  Vasilyev frowned, concern lining his face.

  “What did he mean by that?”

  “I have no idea. Who was that?”

  He stared at me as if I had suddenly grown another head. “Surely you’re kidding.”

  I shook my head.

  “That was him,” Vasilyev said.

  “Who?”

  “The general secretary.”

  I stared at him dumbfounded.

  “Stalin,” I blurted out. “You’re joking.”

  “I would not joke of such a thing,” Vasilyev said. “That was him. My goodness, you didn’t even know it.”

  A shiver passed through me. To think that I’d actually met the man. The man my father revered, the same one my mother detested. I was surprised too that he was not bigger. All of the images we’d seen of him in the newspapers or film reels made him out to be this imposing figure, the Man of Steel. And I recalled the picture in front of the classroom back in school, the same cold, soulless eyes staring down upon us. Eyes that Madame Rudneva had called the devil’s. Old Whiskers.

  After a while, we moved off into a large hall where Vasilyev brought me up and had me sit at the front. A few seats away was Stalin, flanked by his toadies, Beria and Molotov. Before us was a stage, with an orchestra tuning their instruments. At the front of which was the man I had seen earlier, the composer Shostakovich. When all had been seated, Shostakovich spoke a few words to the audience. He explained that we were going to hear a new work, something called the Leningrad Symphony, which he had named in honor of the heroic defense being put up by the citizens of that brave city. Then he turned and began to conduct the orchestra. I soon found myself forgetting my objections about coming along. I was swept up by the intensity of the work, its initial martial drumbeat proclaiming that Leningrad was under siege by the Germans. The last movement began quietly, with the strings slowly rising in pitch until they were joined by woodwinds, before picking up the marchlike melody again. Finally, the woodwinds built until violins took over and carried the piece to its final rousing crescendo. I was mesmerized by the music.

  Once during the symphony, I happened to look over and catch Stalin staring at me. It was a strangely enigmatic gaze, as indecipherable as that one might receive from a crow or a rat. I averted my own gaze for a moment, and when I looked back at him, he was still staring at me. I felt my blood chill in a way it had never done before, not even when a sniper bullet would pass within inches of me. This was something beyond mortal fear, beyond the potential harm he could do me, something that had to do with an elemental dread, the terror that strikes the heart when one recognizes that the world is run by forces one cannot even begin to fathom.

  At the end of the symphony, there was utter silence, a tense, glassy stillness that left one almost breathless. All eyes, I noticed, were directed not at the stage but at Stalin, not the least of which were those of Shostakovich himself, who waited onstage, his bat
on hanging from his hand, anxiously peering down at the small, mustachioed man in the front row. Slowly, the secretary rose from his seat and directed the same impenetrable stare he’d given me at the composer now. Finally, he brought his blunt hands together in a modest, almost grudging show of appreciation. Only then did the crowd respond with a thunderous ovation.

  As we passed out of the hall, Vasilyev suddenly clutched my elbow and said, “He wishes a word with you.”

  I was directed over to one side of the stage. Someone held back the curtain, and as I stepped past it, I spotted Stalin standing there, smoking a cigar.

  “What did you think of the performance, Lieutenant?” he asked, an odd grin distorting his features.

  “I thought it was quite good, Comrade Secretary.”

  He nodded, but without conviction, as if that wasn’t the reply he wanted. He took another puff of the cigar, which he held delicately between thumb and forefinger.

  “You will get them to fight, no,” he said.

  “Pardon me?” I asked.

  “Those timid capitalists.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t follow you, sir,” I said.

  Through the haze of smoke from his cigar, his eyes narrowed and he squinted at me. Right then a general came up to him and whispered something in his ear. Whatever it was, it wasn’t good news, for his expression changed to one of mild irritation. With a flick of his hand, he dismissed the man, who withdrew a short distance away and waited. Turning back to me, Stalin leaned toward me, so close that I could smell cigar smoke and the rusted-iron breath of a man who habitually dined on rich foods and spicy meat. “Can I trust you, Lieutenant?”

  I didn’t quite know how to respond to this statement, what he meant by it, so I said, “Of course, Comrade Secretary.”

  “Good. Because you will have a mission of utmost importance to perform for the Motherland. Now you will have to excuse me.”

  Then he turned and walked over to where the general waited.

  On the ride back to the hotel, we rode mostly in silence. Vasilyev seemed preoccupied. Finally, he said, “You did well tonight, Lieutenant.”