by Kiera Zane
I know.
I had visions, this time of myself; quick flashes of my face, twisted in agony, smeared with grime, sweating, sobbing.
Dying.
I say, “I’m sure it will be fine, everyone. What an opportunity to help Mother Russia.” I have never used that expression before, and I hope it doesn’t reveal to them that I am lying, and very poorly too.
“What good thing has the KGB ever done?” Papa asks anyone with the courage to answer. “There’s no light at the end of this tunnel, and you’ve have me hurl the jewel of this family into that abyss?”
I can see that my father’s anger will soon get the better of him, and he’ll find himself at the hurtful end of a private KGB meeting of his own.
I try to smile when I say, “You all know there’s no future for me here, no husband or adventure. Perhaps this wolf is really a sheep.”
“Adventure!” Mamma says, a lifetime of it finally toppling down and crushing her. “I told you what madness you were bringing down upon yourself with your whimsies and your foolishness.”
“Without them,” I snap back, “why bother to live at all?”
“Young Peter,” Vlad says to Gregory, both shaking their heads.
Gregory turns to me with a smile. “We shall go together, as a family. This wolf will get as much as he can handle.”
I try to smile back, my genuine gratitude for his support and love not quite counteracting my own creeping sense of misery and dread. It’s true, I don’t see much life for myself in the Omsk, but in the KGB all I can really see for myself is death.
Torture, then death.
I say to Papa, “You can’t stop me!” Being my father’s only daughter has some perks, among them his strong, almost instinctual compulsion to give in to my will. And although I don’t think of myself as spoiled and certainly not as privileged, I do realize that I’ve learned from more than one experiment that my father is most likely to stand behind me, beside me, in front of me; anywhere but against me. To him alone, I say, “Please don’t make me stay in the Omsk, to grow old and tired. Don’t keep me cooped up here anymore.”
Silence fills the room in the absence of any answer. I can feel my Papa’s heart breaking to have me deny his love and protectiveness and refuse his dedication. I love my home and I don’t feel cooped up in it at all. But the sorrow of feeling that he’d brought me pain is a much lesser evil than the pain he’d feel knowing how terrified and sad I am to be saying goodbye to my family, almost certainly for ever more.
Chapter Two: The KGB
"The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for." -- Fyodor Dostoyevsky
April 1961
We all travel together to the city of Omsk. Local magistrates send buses to the surrounding towns to make sure that the smaller, outlaying populations complies with the government’s official invitation. The threat of death was not enough. A show of guns in the hands of young guardsmen, sent as escorts, and flat gray buses that arrived empty and left full more than did the trick.
The drive takes hours and the road is rocky, the bus weaving and swaying around us. There are three buses ahead of us and four behind, but none can be seen nor heard for the whipping winds and the thickening snow flurries. Inside the bus, there is an ominous murmur that borders on silence. The armed guard in the back of the bus glares at those who dare to mutter to one another, even to mother’s when their sorrow overtakes their composure.
Papa glares at them, Mamma solemnly at me. Gregory and Vlad remain at home, unable to secure passage onboard the overcrowded bus.
When we arrive, the streets are already overflowing with our neighbors, some we know and some we do not. Families huddle around their young daughters, some as young as fourteen or even younger. Mothers sob, men stand stoically nodding to each other, each hopping that neither daughter is taken from them and both hoping that, if it must happen, that it happen to the other.
We get out of the bus; the smell of fear is potent. It smells like copper, like old vegetables, and it rots the wind cutting through the streets of downtown Omsk, our so-called Siberian Chicago.
Omsk is already home to over a million Siberians, many well-educated and productively employed. The influx of what looks like thousands of us from the surrounding areas, the oil and gas mining families, the farmers and ranchers, gives the romance of the big city an over-crowded, impoverished aspect.
The smell of the passing automobiles is strong in the air, even after breathing it in during the entire bus trip. I’m almost dizzy as Papa and Mamma walk me deeper into the crowd.
Uniformed officers direct us in a steady stream of pedestrians like cattle being herded to the slaughter.
We pass under the Tobolskie Gate leading to the City Fortress. Once used to protect the citizens, it was then used to imprison them. The great Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky was once an unwilling guest. Walking into that stone fortress, hundreds of years old and the scene of so much misery, warfare and bloodshed, I feel like I am leaving the last vestiges of my old life, and of society itself, behind.
“Not a single one,” I hear somebody say. I do not recognize the voice, low and gravelly but still remarkably loud; a threatening bark. “In all the Omsk, there is not one woman who will suffice for our needs, not a single one!”
Then the crowd parts, almost as if organized to do so, and it reveals him. We’ve never met, but I recognize him.
From my visions.
This is not the man with the heavy brow, pronounced like an ape’s over his cold, lifeless eyes and adorned with scraggily eyebrows, like stretches of thorny thicket. I recognize the absence of his sneering smile, hatred the only thing that can inspire its mirth.
This is the other man; the sorrowful skeleton, the pale ghost of delusion.
I feel his eyes lock onto me, his words trailing off. When he shouts, “You there, hold!” my stomach turns, hairs on the back of my neck standing on end.
For he wasn’t the only person in my vision that day. I was included, in agony, twisted and tortured, bruised and bleeding, filthy and denigrated.
I stop, Papa and Mamma standing nervously behind me as the man approaches, several uniformed KGB officers behind him. He approaches me slowly, looking me over. Even hunched forward, with my mother’s worst clothes draped over me, his eyes find my hidden curves, the firmness of my youth, the fullness of my eyes and lips.
He says, “Who are you?”
Papa says, “I am Boris Zolotov. This is my wife and daughter. She is ill, we are just taking her to get some medical attention.”
The KGB agent looks me over, his rough fingers pushing up under my chin to reveal my face more clearly to him. His breath collects between us in a cloud of herring and vodka.
He may have seemed sorrowful to me in my vision, but here he is all business, all power and authority and rigor and the things that makes an officer great but a man monstrous.
“What strikes you, child?” he asks me. “An ailment of the body, perhaps? Is there some congestion of the chest?” He let his eyes linger over me, sinking from my breasts as he added, “Perhaps you are in need of a detailed, physical examination.”
“Please,” Mamma says, “she is our only daughter!”
“So I presume,” he says, his voice quick with an angry snap. “Otherwise you risk the State’s wrath for not bringing both. Now hold your tongue, woman, lest I be forced to remove it and then hand it to you personally.”
I clear my throat. “Forgive her, sir,” I say, my voice lilting and meek, turning to my parents to say, “I do feel better now, just as you thought I might.”
The man looks me over and nods, his thick lips pressing against each other in a satisfied grin. “I’m very glad to hear it,” he says. “No reason the entire family should succumb to a single malady, eh?” After an ugly silence, echoing with his threats, he turns back to me and says, “Yevgeny Dragunov.”
I bow my head. “Aleksandra, sir.”
Agent Dragunov nodded again, as if pleased with my subjugation. “You are quite lovely, Aleksandra. Do you know that?”
“Only if you say it is so, sir.”
A tense silence passes, followed by a crackle of laughter as ugly as the face it bursts from. He says, “You lie splendidly, which proves you are as smart as you are beautiful.”
He glances at my parents behind me, his voice taking a strict, authoritarian tone. “You have served your country well.”
“Oh no,” Mamma began to mutter, a sob welling up behind her aging face as her body sinks toward Papa’s side, his arm wrapping around her.
Agent Dragunov says, “You are pleased to be able to serve the government in this way, I trust. You don’t harbor any... subversive notions or other overtly... individualistic delusions?”
I can see Papa wrestling with himself, barely holding back from letting loose with the full brunt of his frustration and sorrow. “I... ”
“Yes, comrade?”
Don’t do it, Papa, I silently urge him, knowing he can understand me. I’m not the only one in the family with a brain especially tuned to things that other people cannot see or feel or hear or understand. It’s one of the things that brought me and Papa so close to each other. I’ve always known that, in part at least, my visions reminded him of me and his own sensitivities.
Agent Dragunov stares at Papa and so do I, soon Dragunov’s eyes go from Papa to me and back, as if he knows we can communicate on a different level, even if it only because we are father and daughter.
I will go with this man if I must, but only in the service of keeping you and Mamma alive. If you prefer, you can attack this man, cry out your anger and fear and sorrow and loss. I will join you, and the three of us will die together.
I can see my father reasoning it out. Life would not go on as before, there is no doubt about this anymore.
But it could still go on. And that meant one thing.
Papa lowers his head, bowing slightly to Agent Dragunov. “We are overcome with gratitude is all.” My papa turns to look at me even as he addressed Dragunov. And I know the subtext of what he is saying, and I know who he is really addressing. “To serve in this way is a... a higher honor than I could have imagined. The joy I have known today will stay with me always.”
Mama sobs harder, even as she fights back her misery and bites down on her tears.
I say, “Tell my brothers that I will always think kindly of them, and that I look forward to a time when we will all be together again.”
Mamma smiles through her tears, but cannot stand the strain. She buries her face in Papa’s side as he reaches down to stroke my cheek. “Sandra,” he says, “the sun of my day, the star of my night.”
Agent Dragunov glances at us again, taking in Papa’s erstwhile bravery, Mamma’s crumbling courage and my own grim determination that both of them get back on that bus and be returned safely to our home.
Their home.
Dragunov says to one of his officers, “Take her.” The officer, a tall and burly man, steps casually over to me, extending his hand that I should follow him. With a last look back at my huddled and humbled parents, I nod and follow the officer, the image of my stooped and sobbing family etched into my mind. No horror the KGB can offer will hurt more, but this brings me no solace.
A second later, I turn again for a last glimpse of those two lovely and loving people, who bore and sired and raised me, who loved me and protected and nurtured me.
But they are already gone, swallowed up by the crowds of young women, their own parents, and the KGB menace that strolls among them.
I am the only young woman taken from Omsk that day, leaving behind what is certain to be a happy and relieved population, save for a tiny handful.
My family.
But I hold tight to their memory, their faces and the times we shared; the fights and the flights of fancy, the miseries and the meanings behind them. I tell myself I’ll never forget them, and I don’t doubt it for a moment.
I don’t expect to live long enough to forget anything.
I sit in the bed of an army truck, canvas draped over its steel-ribbed frame. The ride is painful, every bump in the road shooting directly up through the balding tires and the rusted metal, through the wooden bench and into my posterior; the pain shooting up my spine to coil in my brain in a seething headache.
And the truck sways, squeaking shocks beneath us failing to hold the vehicle steady on the long highway to Novosibirsk. Across from me, a young soldier sits with a rifle in his hands. He stares at me, his face a grim mask. I look around the otherwise-empty truck, realizing they’d intended to be bringing back a lot more women.
But I am the only one.
And with nobody else to look at, I draw my guard’s undivided attention. His gray eyes crawled up and down my body, even under the layers of tattered, mildewed wool. When his eyes finally reach mine, a little smile curls into his left cheek, then sinks down again to resume his angry frown. His head is large, fleshy, jowls rippling slightly with the motion of the truck.
I try to look away, but I can feel his stare boring holes into the side of my head, and through my clothes to the vulnerable flesh within.
I know what he’s thinking.
Who knew I’d be alone with just one woman? he contemplates. Nobody ever mentioned it, or anything like what I should or shouldn’t be doing with the prisoners.
I can’t help it, my eyes drifting toward him against my better judgment and against the straining and yearning of every muscle in my body. As soon as my gaze meets his again, it touches the spark that ignites the flame.
The guard puts his rifle aside and pulls open his belt buckle even as he is falling on top of me, three feet in front of him.
I reach out instinctively, my lips parting in a scream. The first suggestion of my call for help rattles around the truck bed until the guard’s flattened hand falls down over my face, clamped over my mouth. My own hot breath bounces against my lips, from my nostrils to the side of his palm and back up, pushing the hair from my face as he looms over me, panting and grinning and grunting.
His smell overpowers me, the stench of his body odor having soaked into his ill-fitting woolen uniform. With his free hand, he reaches down to un-sheathe himself. His hips thrust forward and push my skirt up around my hips. I struggle, kicking at his hips and back with fruitless aggression. My left hand pulls at the hand he uses to gag me.
This leaves my right hand free.
In the cab, the driver and his guard may feel the commotion, they may feel the vibrations of the struggle, but I can’t know if they understood them or if they even care to stop them.
My mind is alert, even in the frenzy of the attack, the panic of the assault as it changes the shape of my life forever, bending its course irreversibly into darker terrain. I’ve been in such terrain before, and I know the only ways out.
After Gregory found me in that field with the two minors, he showed me ways to quickly thwart an attacker, and those lessons come back to me like the quick rescue of my brother himself; action that feels alien to my own body, independent of my decisions or willingness. And it isn’t about size, or strength.
It’s about speed.
It’s almost like I’m watching it all happen, even as I am in the center of the horror.
My right fingers clamp together, bending at the knuckles. The muscles along my arm clench, contracted before releasing their energy and springing out at my attacker. My knuckles find their mark, his fleshy jowl just below the jawbone. I can feel his windpipe collapse as my knuckles jab into his throat.
He looks at me in shock and pain, eyebrows high on his surprised expression, his beady eyes round beneath them. His body feels instantly heavier, dead weight on top of me, pushing my legs aside.
But my right hand isn’t finished, because neither is he. But instead of my stiffened fingers bent at the knuckles, my hand bends back, presenting the ball of my palm.
But the same muscles pull my a
rm back, and then release it once more in a blur of bone and thrust, energy pouring from my arm and through my hand as it rams my guard’s nose, sending the plank of cartilage there rushing into his skull and digging into his brain.
Blood shoots out of his nostrils, his nose a fleshy, sagging snout pushed and hanging down. His head back, I can push him off me. He falls to the floor of the bed of the truck, staring up as blood pours out of his face, rattling gurgles leaking up from his crippled windpipe.
He lays on his back, staring up, bloodied, his body quivering, fingers twitching.
He’ll be dead soon.
I look at his army-issue rifle still leaning up against his side of the bed. I have two choices, neither of them promising at all. The first is to grab the rifle. I can start firing toward the cab at the front of the truck, enough shots roughly aimed to end the lives of the men in front.
But that would cause a crash, and in the center of an eight-truck convoy I know that if I manage to survive the crash, I won’t escape the scene. As soon as I kill the driver, I’ll be killing myself.
I an hold onto the rifle, aiming it at the rear entry to the truck bed. When whoever comes for me did so, I can open fire with everything the rifle has. There is a chance the convoy would break up and go to different locations. In that case, I could be alone with only two guards and then I’d be free to escape.
Or I could kill only two out of a dozen of more, and then my death would be certain.
And, I have to remind myself, they’ll know it was me and they’ll go back for my family.
The gulag.
No, I have to correct myself, not anymore. It’s been the gulag for so long, the shadow of death hanging over our heads and stretching so tall and dark that it is hard to remember that they’d closed the gulag down the year before, in 1960.
Now there is the Ministry of Justition RF, now there are the institutions of the GUIN MVD Directorate of Corrections of Ministry of Justice.
Said to be even worse.
Which leaves a single choice; sit on that bench and watch the man die, leaving his rifle untouched. When the truck stops and they come for me, they’ll see me unarmed and hopefully, I won’t be killed and I’ll live on to escape at a better time.