The Patriots

by Sana Krasikov

  —

  THE ENVELOPE THAT ARRIVED at her desk at Amtorg was as thin as cigarette paper, and when she unsealed it, a photograph fell out. It was Sergey—a small figure standing in front of a great brick building. He was wearing a white undershirt tucked into a pair of high-waisted dungarees, shielding his eyes from the strong Central Russian sun. He wished her a happy new year, and hoped his letter would arrive before 1934 did. The construction of the rolling mill was coming along tremendously. He wished to thank her for her help with its design, everything she had done for him, for being his guide and a beacon of kindness in a foreign country, and especially for making his summer in America a time he would never forget. He had just finished reading a novel by “your great American writer Jack London.” A Daughter of the Snows, it was called, and its heroine, Frona Welse, had reminded him of Florence. A “brave, natural woman” was how he described either Frona, or Florence, or both. He saw now how lucky he was that life’s twists of fate had brought them together, if only for a short time. It made him very happy to think about those weeks.

  Reading these lines, Florence felt overtaken by a strange impulse to cross and recross her legs. Her body’s intuitive response to the words on the page—merely to the Cyrillic bend of Sergey’s penmanship—was like the pulse of a looping current. Hearing his voice in her head, Florence felt haunted by the ghost of every kiss, every touch from the summer. Was this open flow of feeling on his part a quirk of translation? she wondered. Were the unmistakable romantic notes quite standard fare in Russian? She scanned the rest of the pages. With a heroic-sounding enthusiasm that seemed somewhat uncharacteristic, Sergey described the mighty furnaces and plants rising up from the steppes. “How far we’ve come. How much work there is still to do!” The picture, he wrote, did not convey the proper scale of the work being done. She would have to see it herself one day, with her own eyes.

  Florence reread the last line with a turbulent flip in her stomach. Was this an invitation?

  —

  IN THE COURSE OF the next several weeks, she attempted to compose a response. She could not manage to match the broad spirit of Sergey’s letter. Her bid to strike the same easy romantic note seemed shot through with lovesick desperation. She wished to pour out her whole gloomy heart, but did not want to compromise his image of her as Jack London’s physically splendid and brave heroine. It was late in January when she finally managed to write something on her portable.

  JANUARY 23, 1934

  Dear Sergey,

  Your letter arrived like a diamond from the sky. It brought me joy to again see the triumphant and carefree face that I remember so well from Cleveland. All that now seems part of a dream. Looking at snow on top of dead leaves, or smelling the rain, I’ve sometimes wondered if it was a dream. Perhaps this is only because, ever since I’ve returned, it often feels to me that the real and important portion of my life is happening elsewhere.

  You may have read in the newspapers that our President has declared an end to the odious dry laws. So our New Year was quite merrier than last. Aside from that, there’s little that’s changed—I won’t bore you with all of that. People say things are improving thanks to Roosevelt. Maybe so, but not fast enough for me. You often said I ought to see with my own eyes the majesty of Magnitogorsk. I think I shall.

  She had not planned to write this, but as soon as she put down the words, she knew they were true.

  I fear if I stay I may fall into the ranks of the indifferent, or, worse, the eloquent malcontents. This thought frightens me more than anything else. Whatever the name of this new craving in me—to see the world firsthand—it’s finally come into bloom. Now that I have diligently resolved to see the Soviet Union with my eyes, it should not be too difficult to secure a visa through Amtorg connections. I hope to set sail by Spring.

  Perhaps you and I might meet again after all.

  Yours,

  Flora

  Her letter had not been entirely truthful: her desire to leave her job and country did not come about wholly voluntarily. The word of Florence’s breach of loyalties had traveled back to New York before she had. Scoop was sympathetic but unhelpful. “You’ve got a good heart, Florence; you did what you thought was the right thing, the fair thing, at the time.” Only, the first rule of diplomacy, he reminded her, wasn’t to say or do the right things, but to avoid saying and doing the wrong things.

  “But I thought you wanted me to help the Russians,” she’d said, sounding more helpless than necessary.

  “What I said,” he clarified, “is to try to get the McKee men and Magnitogorsk boys to find a compromise.”

  It occurred to Florence that Scoop would have solved the problem by inviting men like Clement and Knur Anderson to palaver over roast pig and home brew—the sort of male statecraft it would have been impossible for someone like her—rigid, appeasing, Eastern-born, young, a woman—to carry off. Yet, were she to point this fact out to Scoop, she knew she would sound even more pitiful. Already the disappointment in her boss’s voice was more painful than any reproach.

  Amtorg would soon be closing its doors. Roosevelt had recognized the Soviet Union over the protests in Congress. As Scoop predicted, there would soon be a consulate in Washington, with trade no longer having to be laundered through a complex web of executive and Amtorg emissaries. Scoop had succeeded in getting himself hired by a group of export managers to lobby Roosevelt’s new people for lower tariffs and open trade. “It appears this old sled dog is going solo,” he told her. There was no question now of his getting her a job at the new embassy.

  “I can make some calls to old friends after the New Year,” he told her when she’d reached him on the phone in Washington.

  She didn’t remind him that he’d twice pledged to do this.

  “I’m starting to think I might have an easier time finding work in Russia,” she suggested, expecting him to contradict her.

  Instead, he said, “You might. Moscow’s swarming with Americans.”

  “The new Paris,” she said in a tone between wistful and sardonic.

  “Better than Paris if you can get them to pay you in dollars. You got to be firm—tell them you won’t accept anything but legal tender.” And his voice filled again like a sail with the instructive rhapsodizing that never cost him a penny.

  —

  TO ESSIE, ON THE BREMEN, Florence left out most of these details of her failures and said only that she was traveling to Magnitogorsk to meet the man who’d opened her eyes to the opportunities in Russia.

  “Does he know you’re coming?”

  “I wrote to him, but I didn’t hear back before I left.”

  “Hmm. The mail can be quite unreliable in that part of the country. Maybe you oughta telegraph first.” They were in their nightgowns. Essie had relocated her meager suitcase to Florence’s second-class cabin. Florence waved off Essie’s practical suggestion, but this simple idea, for reasons she couldn’t explain to herself, stirred more dread in her than the thought of boarding a train and riding it for a thousand six hundred kilometers to the Urals. “Magnitogorsk is a small pond,” she said to Essie. “I don’t think he’d want me to draw attention with a wire. I’ll find him once I get there.”

  “Well, that’s also a plan,” said Essie with worrisome geniality.

  —

  IN THE WEEKS OF TRAVEL, Essie told Florence her story. While Florence had attended Sunday school at Midwood Synagogue, Essie had spent her Saturday mornings at the Workmen’s Circle in the Bronx, studying the lives of the patriarchs Marx and Trotsky. In the mildewed, newsprint-smelling milieu of the Frank apartment, the only holidays observed were the Seventh of November (anniversary of the October Revolution) and the First of May (International Workers Day), when Essie and her little sister joined their parents in taking to the streets and singing “The Internationale” at the tops of their voices, together with other Socialist Youths, whose ranks Essie had joined by the time she was eleven. Summers were spent at Camp Kinderland in Massachusett
s, the “Summer Camp with a Conscience.” True to the Soviet model, the campers adopted the semi-autonomous role of the proletariat, while their adult counselors assumed the guiding role of the Party.

  During the school year, however, things were different. “I always thought it was okay, you know, being poor and having no smart clothes, and gum being stuck in my hair ’cause I refused to say the Pledge of Allegiance,” Essie said. “And the other kids calling me a bastard on account of how my parents didn’t properly marry till I was six. I could endure it because I knew my mother and father had more guts and principles in their pinkie fingers than any of those pishers had in their whole body.”

  It seemed that Max Frank’s employers, however, saw things differently; after being fired from several factory jobs “on account of his spotless convictions,” and certain that the workers’ government would never be established in the United States, Essie’s father had decided to scrape together money and take his family to Russia. The family had been all set to make the move when Essie’s mother fell ill with a harmless tooth infection that rapidly spread to her heart. The trip was delayed and the money used on “fool doctors” and, later, on a cremation. But the plan was still on, with Max again professing to save money for their journey.

  A year went by. Then another. Essie worked in a dog-collar factory while taking night classes in Russian. One day, she fell asleep on the factory floor and almost had her thumb chewed off by a leather punch. She came home hysterical after being docked by the boss for jamming the machine, and demanded to know when the family was leaving for Russia.

  “And that’s when my father says to me: Essie, I wanted to wait until you were ready to hear this, but I’ll just come out with it—I’m getting married. Who to? I say. Melmy Skolnik from the fourth floor, he says. My heart falls to my stomach, Florence. She’s not seven years older than me! A real cooking spoon, mixes into everybody’s business. Started coming by with meals for us when my mother fell ill, making with the tears like a finger wringer.

  “I say to him: What about everything you and Mama used to talk about, our dream? He says, Nit mit sheltn un nit mit lakhn ken men di velt ibermakhn—‘Neither with curses nor with laughter can you change the world, Essie.’ Gives me a shrug and a half. Why go to the end of the world? Let’s us make the best of it here, he says. He has a nerve to tell me, ‘You know Lilly needs a mother,’ when I’m the one who’s been mothering her all this time!

  “So I say, to hell with you, I’m going. I already had a visa, just needed the ticket. Before I left, I told him I knew all along it was my mother who had the principles and guts, and never him. He was just going along, like he was going along with that tsatske. Mankind doesn’t come any weaker or stupider, I told him. Oh, I said so many horrible things, Florence. I told him not to bother seeing me off, and he just hung his head like a child and said he was going to respect my wishes. But I never wanted him to respect them, I wanted him to fight, Florence, to fight for me.”

  Florence sat nodding attentively. Essie’s tears and misery had the agreeable effect of making Florence feel kindhearted and serene. She said, “I’m sure he knows you love him, and so does Lilly.” She enveloped the girl in her arms, inhaling a whiff of the bodily sourness that bespoke Essie’s torment. And then, suddenly, the feeling she’d had the day before—that she’d been mistaken to leave her family, who had fought for her, and mistaken about so much else—returned with a nausealike force so powerful that she had to lie back on the bed to alleviate it.

  “Are you ill?” Essie looked worried.

  “I think it’s just the ocean.” Florence sat up and glanced at the porthole. A frothy green-and-black curtain of foam was slapping against the glass. In her throat she recognized the taste of that evening’s Stroganoff, and felt herself pitch forward. “Wait!” Essie cried helplessly. “I’ll fetch the pan!”

  —

  ESSIE HAD BROUGHT ALONG sour drops and saltines to prevent seasickness and fed them to Florence while enormous waves pounded the side of the ship. When the storm abated, she took Florence under an umbrella up to the deck for fresh air. Scaly purple clouds filled the sky. Florence held on to her friend’s arm and tried not to look down into the churning black water. She was glad to have Essie there. Clumsy as she’d appeared at first, Essie proved herself to be uncommonly knowledgeable in all practical matters involving travel. She forbade Florence to stay indoors all day and told her to look at the horizon as often as possible. Once the sea calmed, she advised her on everything else. Not to convert her dollars at the Russian border: “They’ll give you a standard rate of two rubles for the dollar. Don’t take it. Once you’re inside, you can exchange them for twenty-five on the dollar.” She instructed her not to let the Russian border guards confiscate her typewriter: “Tell them you’ve got official papers for it. Make a fuss and say you’ll call the embassy.” A little palm-grease always helped: “Have you got any jazz records, or some pretty tins of face powder?”

  Florence bit her lip. She’d packed some rouge and perfume, but had planned to use them when she saw Sergey.

  “The guards will give you some line,” Essie went on, “about how they’re decadent and spread moral corruption. Don’t argue. Just let them take something home to their wives or mothers.”

  —

  AFTER MOST OF THE PASSENGERS disembarked at Danzig, the ship was quieter. By the time they reached the Latvian coast, the sea had acquired a softer, Baltic hue. In 1934, the Baltic States had yet to be absorbed into the Soviet Union under the gentleman’s swap of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Florence would have seen neither Soviet boots nor German ones on the large, broken cobblestones that paved Libau’s narrow streets. In Riga, no red banners marred the high-pitched ochre roofs. Florence and Essie took a room in an old-fashioned boarding house and woke up to the clear, reverberating toll of church bells. In the freshness of morning everything around them suggested a miniature kingdom. In Riga, they purchased tickets for the Rizhsky railroad station in Moscow. The train that arrived for them was bright red, fitted with polished brass ornaments—one of the grand old locomotive models that no longer ran in America. Instead of coal, it burned wood, and had to stop frequently in the dense forest to refuel. Along the tracks, men in logger boots and woolen hats piled pyramids of timber to sell to the railroad. Closer to the Russian border, Florence noticed, the wood sellers all had vanished.

  Dark pine forests flashed by, drew closer, retreated. “Look, Florence! Red Army soldiers,” Essie cried excitedly as the train slid into a wooden depot supporting a roof with painted letters that urged workers of all lands to unite. Inspectors dressed as soldiers in khakis strutted onto the train and commenced with their searches. They confiscated Essie’s Life magazines and Silver Screens, which she’d packed strategically toward the top of her luggage. (In fact, Florence was quick to note, Essie looked positively exultant with the privilege of giving away her “anti-Soviet” literature.) When the search was over, Essie assured Florence that she too had made out well, losing only her last pack of Camels and a bottle of Shalimar. Nevertheless, the first feeling Florence experienced upon crossing the Soviet border was a sense not of wonder but of violation. She told herself it was foolish to be angry when most of their American money was still safely tucked in their brassieres. Equally foolish was to believe that such searches didn’t occur at every border station in the world. Any other kind of reasoning would have required too severe a downgrade of her hopes about the new land she was about to enter.

  Soon her eyes were once more alighting on the majestic pines and flickering birches, little houses with carved windows like those she’d seen in her grandmother’s storybooks. But it wasn’t long before this mythic countryside peeled away abruptly to reveal the great hammering, bumping, screeching city.

  In no time, the swaying train corridor filled with people, and Essie and Florence were funneled along with their trunks into the echoey swarm of Moscow’s Rizhsky Station. Out on the huge square, the chrome fenders of Soviet
Fords flashed reflections of horses and wooden carriages. Bearded coachmen from the era of Tolstoy mingled on the curb with pomaded taxi drivers. Essie did the haggling, in a rough Russian the drivers attributed to Baltic rather than Bronx origins. And soon the girls were off, rolling at deadly speed along the Prospekt Mira, their GAZ nearly colliding with rumbling trams overloaded with people flattening their bodies against doors and windows.

  It was June in Moscow, a late-afternoon hour thick with brick dust from torn-up cobblestones and drifting fluff from ripe poplar trees. On the curbs, crowds ten and fifteen deep jostled in front of shops.

  “Oh, Florence, did you ever think it would be so tremendous?” Essie remarked. And, indeed, its proportions seemed to Florence Mesopotamian. Moscow appeared to her as an Asiatic sprawl of twisting streets, wooden shanties, and horse cabs. But already another Moscow was rising up through the chaos of the first. Streets built to accommodate donkey tracks had been torn open and replaced with boulevards broader than two or three Park Avenues. On the sidewalks, pedestrians were being detoured onto planks around enormous construction pits. Derricks poked out of excavated trenches where a vast underground rail system was being drawn. A smell of sawdust and metal filings hung in the air.

  Essie was dropped off first, at Baumanskaya, a neighborhood their driver called the German District. “I’ll miss you so, Essie!” Florence said, embracing her friend tightly. She was afraid that if she let Essie go she might start sobbing and not stop. She knew no one else in this city, and suddenly felt that fact in all its overwhelming terror. Essie did no better at holding in her tears. “I wish you were staying, Florie. Be my sister here. You could get work at the institute. Well, I can see your mind’s made up.” She removed her tear-streaked glasses and handed Florence a slip with her address. “Find me when you’re back from Magnitogorsk.” And then she stood on the street a long time as the black GAZ pulled her friend back into the currents of late-afternoon traffic.