by Kiera Zane
“No!” Dragunov screams, slapping the poor brunette again. But she’s not the only one. Over the course of our first week, nobody escapes the wrath of Dragunov’s hand.
“It is only English,” Dragunov screams at us, “the language of the miserable and the damned. If you are to be any more than that, you must master this foul tongue, or have your own cut out of you.”
We learn fast.
And English isn’t the only subject of study. At night we are instructed by KomDiv Sobchak himself, sometimes a less brutal man called Kubichek who seems sad and in constant mourning. Does he mourn for us?” Does he know that I am headed for my death? His approach is gentle, persuading and persistent.
“You must try harder, Aleksandra,” He whispers this in my ear one evening when it is just me, the other women and him. “You have the best chance of all of these women to survive the training, but you must try harder.” He continues away down the aisle drilling everyone. Why did he tell me that? Survive this? Up until now, we haven’t been told what our progress meant.
In a few minutes, Kubichek is dismissed by KomDiv Sobchak who comes in pacing and continues to pace up front and roving the aisles like a tiger searching for prey.“To properly control a person’s mind,” Sobchak says, “you must know their values, their emotions and desires and beliefs. These are their weak points, the best places of successful attack. Most important are the values, as they instruct what the subject wants, what motivates them to do the thing which you want them to do.”
Mind control, I say to myself. English and mind control. Why? But it can only be one thing. I must work harder, try harder to stay alive.
Spying, I realize. On the British? No.
On the Americans.
“You must appeal to your subject’s identity and ego,” Sobchak says, strolling down the aisle next to my chair. “Such as...” I look up and he stares down at me, thick lips in an expectant frown.
In English, I say, “You... you are a fine person, honest...”
Sobchak stares at me, then nods and turns to the others, his voice bouncing off the walls. “That is correct!” His fat fingers roll on the little desktop in front of me, his only acknowledgement to me directly before moving on.
He snarls at another woman, a smaller redhead with freckled skin and frightened blue eyes. She could be Ivanna’s sister. He says to her, “Impress me.”
She looks around, uncertain, and says, “You... you are a fine person, honest...”
Sobchak sits in the nervous tension that follows as if savoring it, nodding as if agreeing on some fine point, but only with himself. He screams out, “Stupid cow!” before striking her hard across the face. She falls out of her chair and lays on the floor, crumpled and cowering and sobbing into her hands. His face is screwed up in disgust. “I will show you how I teach stupid cows who can’t impress me.” He kicks at her, nudging her with his boot. “Get up, cow.”
“Please KomDiv Sobchak, I can do better.” The woman gets to her feet, now pleading, wringing her hands, tears streaming down her face. I know that is a mistake. If there’s one thing I’ve learned since coming here is that weakness is not tolerated. Pleading definitely fell into that category.
“Guards!” Sobchak turns away from her, his nose screwed up in a look of disgust. He looks like somebody had defecated in front of him. Two armed men enter from the hallway, eager and ready as they always appear to me. I think they like their job. “This one needs to be retrained.”
“No,” she says, increasing horror in her expression as the volume rises in her throat. “Please, no!” Mistake. Shut up. I will her silently to hold her tongue. Doesn’t she remember Tatiana? She screamed and hollered when she left, and she never came back.
The guards pick her up, one by each arm, and drag her out of the room. She begins to kick and struggle, pulling away but unable to escape their grip as they carry her out of the room, her screams fading down the hall with her. One less woman to beat. I know this place is changing me. I never would have thought that at home.
But, this isn’t home. I’ll never see home again.
Terrible silence returns to the class room, nervous glances being exchanged. Ivanna and I share one such look, the dread we both feel for our classmate matched only by the dread we feel for each other, and ourselves.
It could be any one of us.
Clearing his throat, Sobchak says, “Hypnosis is another matter altogether...”
***
January 1962
It feels like years, but in actuality, it’s only been some months since we arrived at this place. We follow the same routine, day and night, night and day. Sobchak, Kibiechk, Dragunov, Sobchak again On and on, drill, drill, drill.
Impress me. I hate those words. Impress me or disappear and most probably die.
Sobchak says, “In order to get somebody to believe they will benefit from doing what you want them to do, you must always consider the do you know technique. Ask your subject to imagine what other thing might provide the benefits which the action you suggest will provide. Examples?” He turns to me. “Aleksandra?”
I don’t have to think about it long. Like a childhood riddle or the rudimentary concept behind the Russian doll, this is no great mystery to me. I’m not sure why I grasp these concepts so readily, but I do.
I say, “Can you imagine what other technique will more readily help you to manipulate your subject and accomplish your goal?”
After a brief silence, Sobchak barks out an angry laugh, enjoying my cleverness and my stubbornness.
He turns to the meek brunette. “Example.”
The brunette says, “Can you imagine ... what other secrets there are to share?”
Sobchak shakes his head, eyes rolling in his wide skull. He draws back his fist, ready to smash her pretty face in yet again, until a single voice in the room shocks everybody into stillness, including me.
Even though the voice is my own.
“Get away from her!”
All eyes turn to me. What have I done?
Sobchak looks at me, his hand sinking slowly to his side. “What did you say, girl?”
It’s too late to deny it, and though I think I probably could dismantle Sobchak in front of the other women, I know I’ll be killed as soon as Sobchak finishes making a bloodied example out of me; and that would be a painful, protracted example indeed.
Instead I can only sit in the stillness of guilt and await the terrible ramifications.
I don’t have to wait long.
Sobchak’s hand cuts through the air with a whoosh and strikes the right side of my face like an iron hammer. Pain rings in my skull, banging through my brain and back again, eyeballs rattling in their sockets. I feel my body snap to the side but right itself instantaneously. Instead of a sob, my mouth turns in a tense smile, lips pulled tight over my clenched teeth. Instead of facing downward or crying into my hands, I am facing him again before I know it, before I have to time to consciously decide otherwise.
He detests weakness. I detest him.
He stares down at me and I stare up at him, the tension in the room so thick it may smother us all. His face becomes red, head quivering with his confused rage. He calls, “Guards!” and they enter while is voice is still reverberating around the room. “This one!”
I don’t resist. I follow the uniformed thugs, each with their fingers digging unnecessarily into my arms. I don’t look back with desperation; I don’t scream or plead; I look forward and walk head-long into the nightmare awaits me.
They take me to a room below the one we all inhabit, which is at least two stories below the street. I image one layer below lay the Christian’s hell.
I’m already stepping into a personal hell of my very own.
They pull the gray pants and shirt off me and chain my wrists to manacles that hang from a metal hook drilled into the ceiling. My muscles stretch, my arms pressing against the sides of my neck, chest pulled tight, my naked breasts hanging vulnerable in front of me.
The guards leer at me, nodding to each other and muttering, eyes tracking the lines of my bare flanks, the graceful thighs, my blonde hair pouring past my creamy shoulders.
They see me as sexual, now more than ever, and I know it. And they know it too.
But for whatever reason, I am left alone in that room, untouched by their lusty hunger.
Orders, I realize. His orders.
Because he wants me for himself.
Then let him come, I say to myself, recognizing my dear brother’s words in my own inner voice. This wolf will get as much as he can handle.
“Hey, boy.” I whisper in the child’s direction. He doesn’t respond just continues to cower in the corner, eyes wide open, mouth apart. I think he’s drooling. “Hey, can you hear me?” A lost cause. Whatever they’d done to him, his mind appeared to be gone.
The hours crawl by, my arms stinging with pain from the sheer lack of movement, blood unable to keep rushing upward into my swollen, purple hands, fingers long since gone numb.
It’s hard to breathe now, my ribs pressing against my lungs, my arms pressing against my windpipe.
My own tired voice creeps up out of my throat, the last of my strength beginning to seep away.
Then the door opens and closes behind me.
“Hello, Aleksandra.”
I don’t need to crane my head for a better look behind me. I recognize that bastard Sobchak’s voice, and the drunkenness of his slurred greeting. He’s finished with the class, treated himself to some vodka, now he’s come for me.
Good, I say to myself. Let him get close enough to kick his balls in, give him something to remember me by.
No, I tell myself. Hold back. Be smart, remember what they’re teaching upstairs. Once you lose control, you won’t be able to get it back.
I watch him walk towards the child appearing to be about to pat him on the head. The boy skitters closer to the wall trying to blend in. “Get me hard.” He opens his pants, I hear, his back mostly towards me. I hear the child gagging, crying. “Good boy. You do yum-yum so good.” Sobchak’s hips are moving back and forth as he pushes his shaft in and out of the child’s mouth. “Oh, that feels so good. Yum-yum, good, feels so good.”
From his voice, I can tell Sobchak is drunk. After a few more thrusts, he stops and turns his attention to me. I watch as he steps in front of me, his shirt already off to reveal his bulky, hairy body, chunks of muscle and gobs of fat in different spots of his torso, giving him an oddly misshapen but no less intimidating appearance. His manhood is hard, sticking straight out in front of me. “Now for you, my dear Aleksandra.” He spins me away from him, pulls on the chain to give me a bit more give, enough for me to bend over. I know where he plans to push his shaft next, and I vomit at the prospect.
He holds a bottle of vodka in his hand and takes another deep swig of it, swaying on his feet. I feel him looking at me, his drunken breathe on my back. I imagine those dead eyes staring at me like he’s done in countless classes before.
He stands me up, pulling hard on the chain that binds me. Maybe, he’s changed his mind. I am grateful to be standing but my arms are numb and useless. “You,” he gurgles, “you think you’re so special. Daddy’s little girl, I’ll bet.”
I don’t answer, but my expression is cold and humorless and, most importantly, fearless.
He reaches up, the fingers of his free hand wrapping around my neck, squeezing hard. The pressure against my already-strained windpipe is almost too much, the collapse of my throat just an ounce of strength away; a bit more of his or a bit less of mine.
The outcome would be the same.
But my hands are bound above me, and I cannot feel them in any case. I know I can still kick him, and I count the seconds until that is my defense of last resort. He stares at me and I back at him, our wills locked together like the horns of two ram. His face grows red, and mine redder.
I know I am dying.
So, I pull up as much phlegm as I can, push it past his digging fingertips to the back of my tongue, and spit it with as much force as I can muster into his monstrous, pugged face.
The glob of phlegm covers parts of one cheek, his nose, one eye and his forehead. He winces in disgust and turns away for a moment, his eyes returning to mine as we stared each other down.
I’ve hit him with everything I have and he is still squeezing. My lungs churn, struggling to pull in some life-giving air, enough at least to keep my heart beating a few moments longer. Blood runs in hot and then cold waves, my veins tingling as if ready to burst.
Even as my body shuts down, my brain flutters in what may be its final moments, its final visions.
I see familiar flashes of the man I now recognize to be Sobchak, in a room I now recognize as the one I’m in. I see myself, as I appeared in my previous visions and I as I appear now; grimy and naked and about to die.
I see others, women and men; the little redhead from my group, others that neither I nor anyone will ever see on this Earth again. I see their screaming, childlike faces. I see them writhe in pain under the sting of a whip. I seem them pulling and wrenching for a freedom they cannot win. I see him relishing their torment, savoring their terror and agony.
I see him standing behind them, bodies jittering from the very manacles that now bind me. I see him standing in front of a captive, pounding his naked pelvis into his prisoner’s. I see their slim and naked bodies, male and female alike, lying in crumpled heaps on this very floor as Sobchak stands over them, satisfying his thirst for liquor to match his already-sated thirst for the carnal pleasures of unwilling young boys and unlucky young women.
I see him laughing and guzzling from that clear glass bottle, the vodka pouring into him to fuel his rage, his skin already sheeted in the sweat of his forcible coitus.
And, then I see my fantasy man, hands out, smile on his face, blue eyes twinkling. I hear him say, “I love you, Lexy.” He is speaking English, American English. I am sad, because I know I will never meet him. I will never be loved by him, and I will never see my family or my home again.
Then Sobchak lets go, pushing me slightly as he backs up with a wicked chuckle. He puffs out his chest, arms slack at his sides. “Do you not fear the beast?” he challenges me, laughing at his own absurd presentation of man and monster. “All must cower before the beast, or be consumed by it!”
My voice is raspy, pushing out from my beleaguered throat. “I fear no man,” I managed to say, “nor beast.”
“Then the beast must destroy you!”
“No,” I spit back, “the beast cannot destroy me. Because the beast knows I alone can do its bidding. And the beast knows that if I am tortured, if I am raped and defiled and battered, I will not be so well able to serve the beast, or the State.”
Sobchak stares at me, his expression dumbfounded as he sways, his belly reaching over the front of his pants.
“Even the beast must serve the State,” I say. “The beast may be an animal, but it isn’t a stupid animal.”
Sobchak lurches at me, but stops himself even as I lean back on my chains, bracing for the worst.
When it doesn’t come, I know I’ve found my enemy’s weak spot. I say, “Like all animals, the beast respects strength; the beast wants to be tamed.”
He takes another long pull from the bottle, each gulp only working to dull his senses and make him easier to manipulate.
“The beast is an animal and an animal does as it’s told!” After a brittle silence passes, I say with rising anger and impatience, “Now release me, beast! Do as you’re told! Obey me, you dumb brute, I order you!”
He stares at me for a minute and I almost think he’s going to comply.
Then he sets the bottle down and unbuckles his pants.
“I’ll show you the beast,” he says.
And I know wha
t he means; at least I think I do. But instead of pulling down his pants, he clutches the buckle, pulls the belt out and wraps it twice around his fist. He pulls it back and then strikes me with it across my exposed belly.
The pain shoots through me; up my spine and down my legs, my knees buckling. Another strike from the other direction hits me in the same place, just below the ribs on the taught flesh of my torso. Pain bursts out of my mouth in a clenched grunt, too powerful for me to withhold.
“I’ll show you the beast!” he yells again, his voice more like a roar than a bellow. And he keeps roaring, a wordless battle cry as he brings that leather belt down onto me time and again. My thighs tremble with the sting of the blow, my ribs feet like they are cracking with the force and the energy from that speeding, flat leather ribbon. The sound alone, the smack of it against my numbing skin, is almost enough to make me vomit and I know that, if nothing else, I’ll probably just choke to death in the process and at least this rain of anguish will be over.
At long last, no more pain.
A few more strikes of the whip and Sobchak backs off, weaving and leaning, breath panting in his heaving chest.
“The beast knows no master,” he says, drunkenness overtaking him. He staggers up to me, reaching to open his pants and let them fall to his knees. He takes one step toward me and trips, falling forward with a grunt. He groans and gurgles, face-down on the floor, a few muttered words replaced by a loud, ugly snore.
The guards enter behind me. “KomDiv Sobchak!” They rush to pick him up, wincing from the alcohol vapors and struggling to lift his massive, dead weight. “Let’s get him to bed.”
I pass out while still hanging from the hook, but I wake up the next morning in my bed, my body racked with pain, my arms barely able to move.
When Dragunov sees me an hour after I wake up, he knows where and vaguely how I spent my night. He looks almost sympathetic, but only for a moment. The hard mask of Soviet teacher and master crashes back down and his face is unreadable once more. Had he experienced the re-education chamber before? Was he once that little boy on the floor, brown curly hair, hunted gaze, terrorized gaze that looked almost animal. How had he come back from that world of insanity to become the man that he is? I am returned to the activity center leaving no room for further reflection.