Vera just smiled her thanks to hide her dread but said nothing. The woman might be testing her, trying to solicit a negative comment about the committee that could be reported. But Vera had heard the same thing about the committee’s procedures. It was rumored that it was better to get publicly reproved for your political sins than merely dismissed after the hearing. The latter could mean that your punishment was to be decided by a higher official, whose authority was more far-reaching than a low-ranking commissar.
She didn’t want to think about any of the possibilities. She wanted to go home, be with Peter and Nicky, cook a pot of borscht and a leg of lamb she had stood in line for two hours the previous day to buy.
Why didn’t Peter learn to keep his mouth shut?
It had been that way during their entire marriage. They both turned their back on an ordinary life in Britain to make Leningrad their home, accepting the challenge to create a utopian society. When things started going bad in the country, when the chilling realization came home that they were trapped in a brutal, totalitarian regime, Vera had the good sense to keep her mouth shut outside the home to protect her family. But Peter was impulsive and instinctively honest.
The door to the meeting-room door suddenly opened and Vera started. She forced herself to remain seated and kept her features blank to keep from exposing emotions that could be interpreted as an admission of guilt.
The commissar stepped out first, followed by Peter.
“Comrade Cutter, we appreciate your attendance. You may return to your duties.”
Peter joined Vera and they boarded an elevator. He started to say something and she shook her head. As far as she knew, the elevators were bugged. In fact, she was certain they were. They were walking on the street toward the trolley that would take them home before she asked him the question that was eating at her.
“What did the committee, the commissar, say about the charges?”
“They asked me questions about what I said. I told them that I was caught by surprise by news of the Polish invasion, that I meant no disrespect.”
“What did the commissar say about that?”
“Very little. You heard him when I was leaving. He said very little during the meeting. The other two committee members asked questions, mostly the commissar just listened.”
“Did he tell you that you were wrong, that you made an error of judgment?”
Peter grinned. “No, he was actually quite pleasant. A very reasonable man.”
The hair rose on the back of her neck.
8
Vera went through the motions of cooking dinner, with both her and Peter trying to keep the mood light for Nicky’s sake. But Nicky was perceptive for an eight-year-old. While he looked like his father, an attractive young male with light blond hair, he thought like his mother. He was quick for his age, analytical far beyond his years.
She never had any fear that he would report any anti-Soviet conversations at school, no matter who questioned him. She had told him that if asked by his teachers or anyone else what his mother and father talked about, he was to tell them honestly about every conversation they had about home and school—about dinner, clothes, cleaning the apartment, his school work. But he was never to reveal any conversation about their work or thoughts. Did they love Stalin? Yes! Was life good? Yes!
There were not many eight-year-olds who would fully understand that his loose lips could bring harm to his parents, but Nicky was not just mature for his age, he had inherited Vera’s street smarts.
The downside of Nicky’s ability to read people and situations was that it was impossible to keep a secret around him.
“What’s the matter?” he asked his mother and father. “You both look worried.”
“Eat your borscht,” Vera told him. “Tonight you’re sleeping in our bed, we’re sleeping on the couch.”
The couch folded down to accommodate both of them. She needed to talk and didn’t want to be cooped up in the tiny bedroom.
The apartment was just two rooms—a combination kitchen-living room and a small bedroom. They shared a toilet and shower down the hall with the three other apartments on the floor. But they were lucky to have a two-room apartment to themselves. After Vera’s mother passed away, they feared that they would be assigned another person, or even another couple, to share the two rooms with.
There was a severe housing shortage in the country, just as there was a severe shortage of anything people really needed. The production-oriented communist system managed to manufacture an endless number of things that no one had use for—or didn’t work—while skimping on housing and consumer products. The system didn’t work but no one criticized it. People were afraid to complain or even comment upon it.
When Nicky was sent off to bed and the bedroom door shut, the two of them unfolded the couch but sat up to talk, Vera on the couch, Peter on a chair facing her.
“Don’t be worried,” he said. “I think everything will be all right. I’m sure the commissar would have been tougher if there were going to be any real repercussions.”
She didn’t want to repeat what the clerical worker at the committee had said for fear it could come true. Nor remind him of another rumor they both knew—that there was literally a quota system for offices and factories to discover and turn in dissenters, whether they existed or not. To meet the quota, some committees in factories and offices simply drew a name out of a hat, with the unlucky person whose name was picked turned in as a counterrevolutionary. Other facilities based it on merit—or on who complained the loudest.
Vera couldn’t help but be recriminatory toward Peter. He had been in the country long enough to know when to keep his mouth shut. It wasn’t the first time his criticism of the system had caused a problem.
“You weren’t thinking about me and Nicky when you opened your mouth,” she said.
He rubbed his face with his hands. “It just came as such a surprise. One day we are the enemy of fascism and the next we are brothers with that maniac Hitler in Germany. I was a fool to believe that a barbaric, backward country like Russia could be the home of a utopian society. The people in this country have no history, no experience in self-government. From the Mongols to the tsars and the Communists, they’ve always been ruled but never ruled themselves. Hell, look at the way they treat Jews, hardly better than Hitler and his pals.”
“You have a way out,” she said. “Nicky is a British citizen, too, he was born there. We can apply for exit permits for both of you.”
“You know they won’t let you come.”
“I will stay and join you later.”
“No, they will never let you go. And I don’t think they’ll let me go, either, not now, it’s too late. They know I’m critical of the system, they don’t want a disillusioned Communist to return to the West and tell people what it’s really like in a society in which the apparatchiks have the mentality of steel filing cabinets—they store everything, forget nothing, but are so fearful of having an original thought that they can’t process the information they have. And if it doesn’t have the Party stamp, it stays in the back of the filing cabinet.”
“There! That’s the sort of comment that got you in trouble.”
He climbed onto the couch and lay his head on her shoulder.
“I’m sorry, sweetheart, I’m sorry I put you and Nicky into danger. But I can’t leave without you.” He sat up. “Do you think they’d let Nicky go to Britain to live with my father?”
“I don’t know, what excuse would we have? That we don’t want him brainwashed in a Soviet school system where children are taught to spy on their parents?”
“We could ask to send him for a visit.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know, I don’t want to think about it tonight.” She held his face in her hands. “You can never say anything again that in any way challenges the Party line.”
“I know, I know.”
“Another mistake and Nicky will be an orphan and I will have to find a new hu
sband, one with his lips sewn shut.”
“That will never happen.”
What she didn’t say was that in her heart, she thought it was too late. It was a cruel system that never forgave or forgot.
She put her arms around him and hugged him. She couldn’t shake the sense of dread that she had been experiencing since the summons came for Peter to appear before the committee. Everyone knew that they came at night, taking people out of their homes, putting them in black cars without markings. Often, the person was never seen or heard from again.
If they came for him, would they take her, too? And her son? Surely they didn’t hurt children. But she wasn’t so sure.
“I’m sure I covered myself with the commissar,” he said.
She hugged him with all her strength.
She didn’t share his sense of confidence.
9
It was three in the morning when the pounding on the door was heard.
They woke up and turned on the lamp next to the couch. Neither of them spoke, but just stared at each other.
Peter was terrified. “They’ve come for me.”
She got up and went to the door. “Who is it?”
“Officers of the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs.”
NKVD. Secret police.
“What do you want?”
Her voice shook. She knew what they wanted. She knew the time had come.
“Open the door. This is official business.”
Nicky came out of the bedroom with sleep in his eyes. “What is it? What’s happening?”
Peter was suddenly beside Vera.
“Take Nicky into the bedroom. I’ll deal with this.”
His voice was calm but his face was pale and drawn.
She grabbed him. “Peter!”
He pushed her back. “Take care of Nicky.”
The pounding came again. She grabbed Nicky and forced him into the bedroom, telling him to be quiet as questions poured from him.
She closed the bedroom door as Peter was opening the apartment door, exposing two burly men in black suits.
It wasn’t until later that she realized Peter had worn his pants, shirt and socks to bed.
He had known they were coming for him.
10
Charles Cutter opened the envelope from Russia as soon as he found it in his mailbox. Inside was a plain piece of paper, with a typed message.
My Dear Father-In-Law Charles Lawwood Cutter:
I regret to inform you that my husband, your son, Peter Charles Cutter, was killed instantly in an automobile accident.
He will be mourned by me and your grandson, Nicholaus Pedrovich Cutter.
There will be no viewing of the body. It was Peter’s wishes that in case of death, his body be cremated. His ashes were scattered in the Neva.
Your Daughter-in-Law,
Vera Menchik Cutter
Charles Cutter’s hands shook as he read the letter.
“Murderers,” he muttered. “Murdering commie bastards.”
11
Nicholaus Cutter, Leningrad, 1942
The other children gave me only dull stares as they watched me slip off the truck and walk away, down the road toward Leningrad.
The driver would not have stopped me even if he saw me leave—a missing child meant another bread ration for him. When—if—there was a head count at the other end, it would be assumed I became delusional from deprivations and wandered away, freezing to death or becoming a meal for a wild animal … some of which walked on two feet.
I trudged on snow and ice. The only thing making the “road” different from the rest of the frozen terrain were the tire marks on it. I followed the tracks in the direction the truck had come. There were other trucks parked along the road, like the one I had been in, covered with white camouflage canvas. The only person I saw outside the vehicles was a driver relieving himself on the side of the road. The trucks would stay put for the entire day, waiting until darkness fell before they attempted the run across the frozen lake to the Soviet forces on the other side.
I had no idea of how far I was from the hospital in the city or even if I was going in the right direction. I only knew the direction the truck had brought us. I wore a heavy down coat that went from a hood covering my head to the tops of my shoes. I wrapped my scarf around my face and pulled the coat hood tight to keep out the blistering cold. The glove on my left hand had worn away, leaving my little finger exposed. I kept that hand in my pocket as much as possible. I was numb all over, but that finger felt on fire.
The authorities had actually started the process of evacuating children from the city soon after the Germans attacked and began driving back our forces on the Polish front. But too little, too late, was done before the enemy was at our gates and had the city nearly surrounded.
While my mother was functioning, she never wanted me shipped out of the city, knowing she would never see me again. People believed that those left in the city would all die and that the children being taken out were to be adopted by others. Many parents in the city felt the same way, refusing to let their children go. But that was in the beginning. As the siege wore on, as the last fuel was used for heat and apartments and homes became subzero and starvation set in, the weakness started and then death became more common than life, which only made my mother regret keeping me in the city. But I didn’t want to leave her. We needed each other. After my father died, she became more and more fearful and withdrawn, worrying that men would come in the night and take her and I would be left an orphan.
Her fears increased that I would be left alone in the world as war and a pandemic of starvation and deprivations descended upon us like all the plagues of Egypt. Each day my mother and I, and everyone I saw around us, became weaker from hunger and cold. It became an effort just to stay alive.
At first, as family members died, they were taken to a cemetery and buried. I saw them on the streets every day, people pulling a child’s snow sled behind them—a man or woman pulling the body of a spouse or child, a child pulling a parent’s body—taking the bodies to the cemetery. But soon the ground froze hard and the number of bodies became overwhelming for the gravediggers who couldn’t do the hard physical work on the small ration of food they were given.
At the same time, it became more and more difficult for family members to get their dead loved ones out of their house or apartment as their strength faded. If they had a two-room apartment, they would put the bodies in the bedroom. With temperatures in unheated rooms as subzero frigid as it was outside, the bodies stayed frozen. People in one-room apartments would wrap the body in a sheet and drag it down to the street where bodies were stacked like cords of wood.
My mother at first was the strongest one in our neighborhood, taking care of me but helping other people, organizing people still on their feet to help the sick and dying. But when she fell down some icy steps as she helped an elderly woman move the body of her husband onto the sidewalk, there was a change in her. She claimed she wasn’t hurt, but I didn’t know if she had broken something internally because she was never quite the same after that. She grew weaker and weaker each day, her skin turning the bloodless pale of the dead bodies I’d seen.
When my mother was too ill to even take the small ration of food we got each day, and I saw death and defeat in her eyes, I got her into my sled in front of our apartment building with the help of a man who lived beneath us. I pulled the sled down the frozen streets to the hospital and asked them to save her.
They laid her on a thin mattress on the floor of a room that had almost wall-to-wall mattresses. An attendant told me I had to go to a place where children were kept as they waited for a chance to be evacuated from the city. But I held onto my mother, crying for her, as I was pulled away. Like her, I knew that if we were ever separated we would never see each other again. And I had no one to ask for help to save my mother and keep us together.
I knew my father had some family left in the village in England where he had
been born, but I knew nothing of them, though my mother believed my father’s own father was still alive. My Russian relatives were even more sparse. There had been mention when my Russian grandmother died when I was six that she had a sister somewhere near Novgorod, but my mother had been unable to contact her after Grandmother died.
As a Russian, I had three names—Nicholaus Pedrovich Cutter. Nicholaus after my mother’s father, and Pedrovich, which meant “son of Peter.”
I had been told that Peter, my father, had died in an automobile accident. But I still remembered that night when men came into our apartment and my mother took me back into the bedroom. I never saw my father again. And I found my mother’s grief was strange—rather than just grieving for my father, she seemed to be constantly worried about me, as if she might go to work in the morning and never see me again.
I missed my father. I guess it was natural that I felt a little closer to my mother than my father, but I loved both of them and felt the loss when he was gone.
A month ago, when my mother was weak and suffering from the starvation disease, almost delirious, she told me that “they” had killed him. But then she had panicked and told me never to say such a thing to anyone.
I promised her I wouldn’t, but when I pressed her further to find out who “they” were, I got no answer. She just kept warning me never to say anything.
I knew I had to get to my mother before “they” took her, too.
There was little movement on the road besides the pad of my feet. It was early morning and very cold. I saw an occasional guard hut with a sentry hiding inside from the cold, muffled in winter uniform, the barrels of rifles sticking out.
No refugees were trudging toward the road over the frozen lake because the escape route was reserved for “official business.” The food brought in was so little anyway it merely prolonged death. The route back out was also reserved for official business, used mostly for the movement of troops and the evacuation of children when a truck was available. Anyone who tried to leave the city without permission was considered a traitor and shot on sight. I’d heard stories of people who had gone out to sentry shacks and asked to be shot, saying they were too weak to kill themselves.
The Betrayers Page 5