Second Fiddle

by Rosanne Parry

  “First thing you girls learn in school about the Soviet Union is that we are your enemy. It is not true. We are our own enemy. I am no Russian. Estonia is my home. I am alone in the Soviet Army. I am the only one from Estonia in Berlin, and they hate me for it. They spit in my food. They steal my letters to my family and the money I send to them. They never speak to me but to curse. For years I took this as a blind man takes the dark. It has always been so for Soviet soldiers who are not Russian. But I can see now. With the glasnost there is truth about our history in our own newspapers. We didn’t ask the Russians to come; they conquered us.”

  “Everyone knows that!” Vivian said.

  “Really? Everyone?” I said. Vivi had a talent for making me feel like a second grader.

  “Yeah, well, everyone who’s read ahead in the high school western civ book.”

  “It’s the whole reason we’re here in Germany,” Giselle added. “To keep you Soviets from gobbling up Germany and Denmark and all the rest of these little countries.”

  “This is all news in Estonia, in the whole Soviet Union,” Arvo said. “Our history books said the whole world was longing to be Communist. There would only be peace and freedom when the whole world was Communist.”

  “Seriously?” I said. “Because even I know that’s a lie.”

  “Now we all know. Last summer we made the Baltic Way, a chain of two million people who held hands from my city, Tallinn, to Riga to Vilnius—six hundred kilometers. We stood together in a line to ask for independence. We are almost free, and I want to be home in my own country when we are finally free. Home …”

  And then he stopped, because he was almost going to cry. And I thought, I love my country the same as anyone, but there isn’t any place in America that’s home to me. And then I thought, Never mind that he was almost murdered yesterday; Arvo’s a lucky man.

  He turned to Giselle and said, “It is because of your Martin Luther King and Gandhi, too. We read about them, and we try not to seek revenge on our Russian neighbors who stole our houses and jobs and cars. We try to stand up for justice with no violence. I want to be there. I want to be with my family making my country free.”

  “Can’t you get a transfer?” Giselle said. “You’re just a translator. They could get someone else to do your work.”

  “Is not so easy,” Arvo said. “I asked the only officer who was ever kind to me, but he said no. Then the lieutenants you saw on the bridge punished me for asking to go home.” He pushed up his shirtsleeve. There were clusters of round pink scars up and down his arm that were still puffy and new. “Cigarettes,” Arvo said.

  I wrapped my arms around my knees and hugged them to my chest, but I couldn’t look away. “They tortured you?” I said. “Why? My dad would go to jail if he did this to a soldier of his. He’d go to jail even if he did this to an enemy soldier.”

  “Three days ago they changed their minds. They said I could go and serve my last years of duty in Estonia.”

  “But there was a catch,” Vivian said.

  “A catch?”

  “You had to do something for them, something bad,” Vivi said.

  “Yes, I must carry a package on a train to Istanbul and then to Baghdad, a dangerous package, too dangerous for their own Russians to carry.”

  “Like a bomb?” I said.

  “A poison. A gas. If it broke open, it would kill everyone for kilometers in every direction.”

  “Oh my gosh,” I said. “We have to tell my dad.”

  “We have to tell my dad,” Giselle said. “Poison gas—on the train—that’s crazy!”

  “No!” Arvo shouted. “Please! No.” He quieted his voice and looked up at the bridge and then back at the road. “I tried. I told them two days ago.”

  “How? Who did you tell?” Giselle barged in.

  “I am translator. I have radio. I contacted the American army. They promised to help. I traded my freedom for their poison gas. But I was betrayed. My officers found out, and they beat me. If not for you angels, I would be a dead man.”

  “The HAZMAT trucks at the motor pool last night and the overtime at the hospital—that was all for you,” I said. “Arvo, you have to come back to Zehlendorf with us. They’re looking for you! They’ll be so glad we found you!”

  “No, listen to me! They betrayed me. You angels, what do you know of the world? There is a spy, a Soviet spy. Bring me to the Americans, and he will know!”

  “So?” Giselle said. “We aren’t going to give you to him. You’ll be fine. We’ll keep you safe.”

  “I am nothing. If I go with you, they will know. They will find my mother and sister. They will make them suffer.”

  “What?” Vivi said.

  “In the Soviet Union people disappear. A car comes in the night, and people are gone forever.”

  “Like to Siberia? Like in the movies?”

  “Yes, just like that. Please, my sister is a schoolgirl like you. How could I let something—anything—happen to her?”

  Arvo looked at me, and he had that worried wrinkle in his forehead just like Tyler gets. I spent about two seconds imagining my brothers in Siberia.

  “I won’t tell,” I said. “I promise.”

  I looked at Vivian, and she slowly nodded her head, but Giselle was still thinking.

  “Look, I know Communism is bad, but how can you be this bad to your own people? It doesn’t make sense,” she said.

  “Communism written down in books seems very sensible,” Arvo said. “Everyone gives what they are able to give. Everyone gets what they need. No one is rich, but no one is poor. It seems like a good idea. But it doesn’t work! There is corruption from the smallest town to the largest city. A few men in power live like kings and the rest of us are the paupers of the world.” He looked from Giselle to me to Vivian. “How can I make you understand? America is a charmed country. You have laws and policemen who obey the laws. You have grocery stores and food in them all the time. You can read whatever book or newspaper you choose.” He paused and looked at the ground. “You can say the truth and not be afraid. Do you know the price of that?”

  “They would actually put your family in jail if we brought you to the American army base?” Giselle said.

  “I could name one hundred people from the neighborhood where I grew up. Gone. Not to jail—to hard labor, to the mines.”

  The mines. I shuddered. The mines were the reason Dad left West Virginia and joined the army. They were the reason I don’t have a grandpa. “Giselle—please!” I said.

  She searched Arvo’s face, and I couldn’t guess what she was thinking. Between the split and swollen lip and the two black eyes, he was not the most reliable-looking person. But then Giselle looked at me.

  “I promise,” she said, and I hugged her.

  Arvo breathed in deeply and put his hand over his heart. “Thank you. Thank you. I will hide. I will hide like the Forest Brothers from the old days.”

  “Forest Brothers? What are you talking about?” Vivi said.

  “The Forest Brothers are the Estonian Robin Hood. They hid in the woods, and they fought for our freedom. My foot will get better, and I will find a path to get home even if I have to walk the whole way.”

  “How?” Giselle said. “You don’t have money; you don’t have a passport, a map, a clue. You’ve got nothing.”

  Arvo sat up a little straighter even though I could tell it hurt him to do it. He looked Giselle in the eye in a way people don’t when she’s sounding bossy and said, “I have myself. That is not nothing.”

  Something about the way he said that simple thing tugged at me.

  “You’ve got us,” I said. “We’ll help.”

  walked back toward the Brandenburg Gate. My violin case felt odd with no weight in it, and we were unusually quiet. The golden afternoon light on the buildings along Unter den Linden made them seem a little less grimy than yesterday. You could see from the fancy brickwork that it had once been the upscale part of town. That made it even more depressing
to see all the empty storefronts and shabby upstairs apartments. It was the middle of rush hour, and the thought of spending almost an hour crammed into a commuter train with a bunch of crabby people in suits wasn’t very appealing.

  “Let’s walk through the Tiergarten and catch the S-Bahn home on the far side,” I said.

  Vivi nodded, and Giselle led the way under the Brandenburg Gate, across the traffic-packed Ebertstrasse, and into the long shady blocks of the park. We walked through the south side of the Tiergarten, past the playground and the goldfish pond. We could still hear the rush-hour traffic, but there was shade and grass and, best of all, no one to overhear us.

  “What are we going to do about Arvo?” Vivian said quietly. “Do you think he’ll be okay on his own?”

  “We have to help him,” I said. I swung my empty backpack off my shoulder and took out the box of Tic Tacs. “It doesn’t matter if his broken foot gets better—without money and a passport, he’s stuck.” I handed the candy to Vivi. She waved it away, but Giselle took some.

  “I don’t know,” Giselle said, popping the Tic Tacs into her mouth. “He said he’d be fine. What if that story he told us isn’t true? What if he’s a criminal or something? And what if it’s against the law for us to help him? My dad would freak if I broke the law.”

  “I wish there was someplace safe we could take him,” Vivian said. “But I think he’s right about whoever helps him needing to give him back to the Soviet army. If we don’t help him escape secretly, I don’t think anyone else will.”

  I thought about Arvo sitting under that bridge with nothing but the little bit of food and clothes we gave him. My mind jumped to Tyler because Arvo was a lot like him, all serious. What if Tyler was hurt and alone in some other country far from home where no one knew how smart and kind he was or that he was afraid of the dark? I hadn’t even thought to bring Arvo a flashlight.

  “We can’t just leave him there,” I said. “Not when he doesn’t have anyone else.” I paused while a group of moms with strollers passed us on their way to the playground. “Maybe we can’t get him all the way to Estonia, but there has to be a way to get him out of East Berlin.”

  Vivian swerved right, onto a path that led to the busy street with the Siegessäule in the middle and the big golden lady on the top of the pillar. Lots of tourists were out taking pictures, and there were sausage vendors all around. She went to the newspaper stand.

  “Eine Zeitung, bitte,” she said.

  Vivian brought back the Berliner Morgenpost and scanned the headlines. “I wonder if anyone has reported about this.”

  “What?” I said. I glanced over Vivian’s shoulder. “No one knows he’s there. How could it be in the paper?”

  Vivian flipped through the first dozen pages. “Arvo is missing from his unit, right? The Russians who threw him off the bridge think he’s dead, but everyone else must think he ran away.”

  No wonder Vivian got a hundred percent on every quiz at school, because I never would have thought of that.

  “Those officers will be waiting for somebody to find the body,” Vivian went on. “If it doesn’t turn up somewhere along the river, they’re going to start searching for it, and I bet they’ll begin right from the spot they heaved him into the water.”

  “Oh my gosh,” Giselle said. “We need a plan.”

  I started walking toward the S-Bahn station on the west end of the park. “So we need to move the body of an almost, but not quite, dead guy. How are we going to do that? Carry him? Toy wagon? Wheelchair?”

  The glass dome over the hippo habitat started to show above the trees. I swerved onto a path going south to take us around the zoo. I could smell the sharp, sour fish smell from the penguin exhibit.

  “I don’t know, Jody,” Giselle said. “A moving target is the easiest thing to find. What if we just hid him where he is? He was hard to see today all wrapped up in green and hiding under that bush, and we knew exactly where to look for him.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “They would be looking for a dead body, so probably they’d only look along the bank and not up under the bridge.”

  “He might be fine for a while under the bridge, but there’s no way he’s going to get all the way to Estonia with no money and no paperwork,” Vivian said.

  We walked on a little farther, past the pond with flamingos. Eventually the fishy smells of animal feed were replaced with the smell of fried pork and mustard from the bratwurst cart that always stood by the zoo entrance.

  “What we need is an excuse for a grown-up to travel with three kids who are obviously too old to be his kids,” Giselle said.

  I frowned and kicked at the gravel on the path. “What we need is something like a school field trip.”

  We came out of the park and headed toward the S-Bahn station. There was a record store, and we all automatically stopped and looked in the window at a bunch of mannequins with pink and orange Mohawks and black leather jackets. There was an album cover from U2 and one from Madonna and one from the Bangles. The Bangles were my favorite because they were an all-girl band.

  An all-girl band. I stood stock-still, hardly daring to taste the idea. I closed my eyes. Could it actually work?

  “We need something like our music teacher, Herr Arvo Kross, taking his string trio to the Solo and Ensemble Contest in Paris this Friday.”

  Vivi and Giselle turned from the window and just looked at me. I got chills.

  We headed toward the train and walked the last block very slowly. We didn’t say anything so as not to spoil the perfectness of the idea. By the time we came to the station, we were grinning like fools.

  “Oh my gosh, could we really make this work?” Vivian almost whispered. “Could we save Arvo and still get our trip to Paris?”

  I nodded. We turned to Giselle.

  “I am not giving up on Paris,” she said. “We’ll never play together again if we don’t go. We worked hard on our piece, and we could win this year, you know we could!”

  “We could win,” Vivi said. “And we could be in Paris! Just us. No diplomats to meet. No stupid receptions like we have every time I travel with my mom.”

  Just us and music, I thought. One perfect weekend before I leave Germany forever.

  “We can do this,” I said. “We have to do this. Arvo needs us. We’re the only ones who can save him, right?”

  They both agreed.

  “Okay, so we just need to … ummm …”

  “Tell a whole bunch of lies?” Vivi said.

  “Yeah.” I thought about my mom and dad and about how much they trusted me. Setting a good example for my brothers was like a religion with them.

  “They’ll never know,” Vivi said. She steered us to the shady end of the train platform. “They’ll think we are at the competition with Herr Müller, and we will be at the competition—just with Arvo. It’s almost like we’re not lying—right? We go. We play music in the morning. We help Arvo find some other Estonians in Paris in the afternoon, and then we go home on Sunday just like they are expecting. What could possibly go wrong?”

  Clearly, we had no idea.

  “You know,” Giselle said, “I don’t think my parents even think about me when I’m not there. They’re so busy all the time. As long as I’m with people they know, doing things they approve of, they don’t care. I think they’re kind of glad I’ll be gone over the weekend. Dad never thinks of anything but his command, even when he has a day off, and Mom works fulltime plus overtime just with the stuff an officer’s wife has to do. They want me to go.”

  “Mom got me francs from the bank on Monday,” I said. “She got me film for my camera. She’d be sad for me if I couldn’t go.”

  “We’ll go!” Vivi said. “It’s only a little bit of lying.”

  “It’s lying for a good reason.” Giselle let her backpack slide off her shoulder and hit the platform with a thump. “Arvo will never make it on his own. Walk to Estonia? Right! He can fly to Estonia from Paris.”

  “Vivi, you said th
ere were Estonian people in Paris,” I said. “Are you sure? Where are they?”

  “I don’t know exactly,” Vivi said. “But Paris is packed with immigrants. I bet we can find someone who knows where people from the Baltics live. Probably those people will give Arvo a place to stay and help him earn enough money to fly home. It won’t be fast, but it will be way safer than walking.”

  “I’ll lie to save someone’s life,” I said.

  “It’s not like our parents are going to be worried,” Giselle said. “All we have to do is get on a train. How hard can that be?”

  next day, just Giselle and I went to see Arvo under the bridge. It was Vivian’s ballet day and not Giselle’s fencing day. I wouldn’t have cared if it was my have-tea-with-the-Queen-of-England-day; I was dying to see Arvo again. I’d had the most awful dream of those officers coming back and beating him up all over again and then taking him somewhere where I couldn’t find him. I brought fresh water bottles, a little bit of cash, and a flashlight in case he was afraid of the dark. Giselle brought the crutches she’d used last year, a dress shirt that belonged to Vivian’s dad, and a belt and a navy blue tie, so he would have something to wear that made him look like a music teacher. We didn’t bring our instruments, and we went to the bridge by a different route to not attract attention. I totally felt like a spy.

  Arvo loved our idea of going to Paris. And he knew just how to find Estonians there. Apparently they were all Lutherans before Communism made believing in God illegal, so if we could find a Lutheran church in Paris, then we could eventually find escaped Estonians who would help him get home. Arvo explained all this while he practiced with Giselle’s crutches. He did okay, even on the slope.

  “He looks kind of scruffy,” I said to Giselle as we sat under the bridge and watched.

  “Scruffy?” Giselle said. “He looks like a cheap drunk with a bad haircut who just shook hands with the wrong end of a bar fight. We have got to do something about that man’s face.”

  Arvo’s black eyes had blossomed from reddish blue to greenish yellow, and although both eyes were less puffy, the dark marks were twice as large. He had cleaned the blood away from where his lip was split, but he had three days of very uneven beard growing. It was not a music teacher look.