The Secrets We Kept

by Lara Prescott

  After the search, we got in another line. There’s always another line in the Gulag, Anatoli. They handed us pieces of lye soap, just slivers, and turned on the showers. The water was cold but felt scalding hot on our frozen skin. We air-dried and were dusted with a powder to kill whatever we may have brought with us.

  A Polish woman with beautiful wisps of flaxen hair framing her otherwise bald head sat at a table mending smocks the color of an overcast day. She looked us each over and pointed to either the stack of smocks on her right or the stack on her left: large and larger.

  Then a woman with prominent ears and an even more prominent nose who didn’t even attempt to guess our right size gave us shoes. I stepped into the black leather shoes, and as I went to walk, my heels came out. It would take a month of saving up my sugar rations until I could barter with another prisoner—not for a new pair of shoes, which would have cost me at least five months of sugar, but for a ream of tape with which to fasten them to my feet.

  The guards split the line into three and I followed my line into Barrack No. 11. I’d live there for the next three years, Anatoli, shuffling my feet so I didn’t lose a shoe.

  * * *

  —

  Barrack No. 11 was empty, its current residents still at work in the fields. A guard pointed to the empty bunks, three layered on top of each other, in the back of the room, farthest from the wood-burning stove. We ducked under the clothesline strung from wall to wall, where women had hung their washed but stained socks and underthings. The building smelled of sweat and onions and warm bodies. It smelled of the living; a small comfort.

  I placed the wool blanket I’d been given onto the top bunk, second from the back. I chose that bunk because a petite woman I’d noticed on the train took the one below it. I guessed her to be around my age, midthirties, with black hair and delicate hands, and I thought perhaps we could become friends. Her name was Ana.

  I never made friends with Ana. Nor did I make friends with any of the other women in Barrack No. 11. At the end of each day, we were exhausted and needed to conserve our energy to get out of bed and do it again the next day.

  That first night in Potma was quiet. All nights were like that, only the howls of the wind to soothe us to sleep. Sometimes we could hear the cry of a woman who’d succumbed to loneliness ring out across the camp like an air raid siren. The woman would be quickly quieted—how, we could only imagine. And although no one spoke of those cries, we all heard them, and we all silently joined in.

  * * *

  —

  My first day in the fields, the earth was hard and frozen, and the pick too heavy for me to raise above my waist. My hands were blistered within half an hour. I used all my strength just to pierce the soil—just a chip, the width of a finger. The woman next to me was having better luck, having been given a shovel that she could step on, so that her weight would force its tip into the ground. But I had only a pick, and a few cubic meters of earth to be upturned before I’d be given my ration for the day.

  That first day of my rehabilitation, I didn’t eat anything.

  My second day of rehabilitation, I didn’t eat again.

  On my third day, I still could make but a few dents in the earth, so was denied rations yet again. But a young nun broke off a piece of her bread and handed it to me as I passed her in line for the bathhouse. I was thankful, and for the first time since the men had taken me in my apartment in Moscow, I thought that maybe I should start praying.

  * * *

  —

  The nuns of Potma fascinated me, Anatoli. They were a small group from Poland and tougher than the most hardened criminals. They refused to back down when they didn’t agree with a guard’s order. They prayed aloud during morning reveille, which infuriated the guards but gave me comfort, despite not being an overly religious woman myself. Sometimes the guards would make an example of their insolence by dragging one out of line by her smock and making her kneel in front of us. One nun was forced to kneel like that for an entire day, her bare knees pressed into the rocky soil. But she never gave in, never asked to stand—praying the whole time with the serene smile of a Holy Fool. They used their fingers to count beads on invisible rosaries, even as their faces burned under the unforgiving sun, even as urine trickled from their smocks and cut a path through the dirt.

  Once or twice, the guards threw the whole lot of them into the punishment block—the first barrack built at the camp, where the roof had half caved in and the cold air rushed in, along with insects and rats.

  It was hard not to be jealous of the nuns, even though their sentences far exceeded my own. They had one another, and no need for word from the outside world, something the rest of us craved. Even when they were separated, they never succumbed to the dark loneliness that plagued us all. They had the company of their God. My only faith was put into a man: my Borya, a mere mortal, a poet. And having been unable to contact him since the men took me from my apartment, I didn’t know whether he was dead or alive.

  * * *

  —

  By the fourth day of my rehabilitation, a thick callus had developed on my once soft hands and I could finally grip the pick. I swung it overhead and into the earth with surprising force. By day’s end, I’d turned over my assigned piece of earth and was finally given rations, of which I could eat only a few bites. My body had adapted faster than my mind. Isn’t that the way it always works, Anatoli?

  Those first few terrible days, then weeks, then months, then years, passed—not in days on a calendar but in holes dug, number of lice picked from my hair. They passed in blisters cracked and calluses made from shoveling, in cockroaches killed under our bunks, in the number of visible ribs. And there were only two seasons: summer and winter; each as punishing as the other.

  I learned what human bodies need to survive, how very little we require. I could survive on eight hundred grams of bread, two cubes of sugar, and soup so thin it was hard to tell whether it was actual food or seawater.

  But the mind takes so much more to survive, and Borya was never far from mine. I used to think I could feel it when he thought of me—that the tingle I felt whispering across the back of my neck or down the length of my arms was him. I felt it for months. Then one year passed without that feeling, that tingle, then another. Did that mean he was dead? If they sent me to the Gulag, surely what they did to him must’ve been even worse.

  Anatoli, I can tell you now that my five-year sentence was a blessing and a curse. Only bourgeois Muscovites had such pitiful sentences, a fact I was reminded of again and again by our barrack brigade leader—a Ukrainian woman named Buinaya, who was sentenced to ten years for stealing a sack of flour from her collective farm. She was strong and severe and everything I was not. Over time, I grew stronger in the fields, but I was still one of the slowest workers, and Buinaya made a point of making me the primary recipient of her sharp tongue.

  Once, after coming in from the fields, I was too tired to bathe and went directly to my bunk, so exhausted I didn’t even remove my dirt-encrusted smock. Just as I shut my eyes, I heard Buinaya’s unmistakable voice. “Number 3478!” she called out like a magpie with a cough, using my prison number as the guards did.

  I didn’t stir. But she called out my number again, and Ana tapped the underside of my bed. When I didn’t respond, she kicked it. “Answer her or there’ll be trouble,” she whispered.

  I sat up. “Yes?”

  “I thought you Muscovites were a cleanly people. You smell like shit.”

  A ripple of laughter erupted across Barrack No. 11 and I felt the burn of embarrassment spread across my chest and up my neck to my cheeks. I did smell, although there were women in the barracks who smelled far worse.

  “I was born in a dugout,” she continued, “and even I was taught to wash my crotch at least once a week. No wonder only traitor poets will go near yours. Isn’t that why you’re here?”


  The laughter rose as I swung my legs over the edge of the bunk and got down. My legs shook so hard I was sure they were vibrating the floorboards. I could feel every eye on me, awaiting my response. But I hesitated, and turned to face the wall, which made Buinaya, then the rest, laugh even harder. She picked up a small pile of her dirty underthings and marched down the middle of the barracks until she reached my bunk. “Here,” she said, dumping the clothes on the floor. “While you’re cleaning your filthy body, you don’t mind washing some of my things as well? Of course not.”

  Anatoli, I’d like to report that I turned away from the wall and threw Buinaya’s dirty things back in her face. That I stood my ground and slapped her, which provoked a fight that left me bruised the next day. That although I’d lost the fight, I’d gained Buinaya’s respect.

  But I didn’t. I took her dirty things to the wash basin and scrubbed them with my lye ration, then carefully hung them to dry in the best spot next to the wood-burning stove. Then I stripped and washed myself in the cold, cloudy water. Then I slept. Then it happened again the next day.

  If I were to give you now what you’d asked for during our late-night chats in Lubyanka, Anatoli, would it do me any good? Would my sentence be lessened if I cooperated now? If I were to confess to every last charge, could I leave this place? If I took the sharp end of my pick and used all my force, could I end things for good?

  * * *

  —

  One might think winter would be worse, but the summers are what wore us down most. As we worked the fields, digging or pulling or hauling, sweat pooled under our gray smocks. We called those smocks “devil’s skins” as they didn’t allow our skin to breathe. We developed sores and rashes and attracted black flies with vicious bites. To shield us from the sun, we stretched gauze over rusted wire to fashion hats that resembled a beekeeper’s. Other women, their hide already tanned from a decade or more in the fields, laughed at our hats, at our precious porcelain Muscovite skin. They were thirty or forty but looked sixty or seventy. They knew it would be only a matter of time before we’d give up trying to block the sun—before we’d turn our faces up and let the rays take from us the last remainder of the people we were before coming to Potma.

  We were in the fields twelve hours at a time, Anatoli. I’d pass those hours reciting Borya’s poems in my head—timing the rhythm of each line, each break, with the clang of my shovel.

  In the evenings, when we came back from the fields and they ran their hands over our bodies to ensure we hadn’t brought anything back to the barracks, I ran Borya’s words through my mind again, deadening what was happening to my body.

  I’d also compose poems of my own, the lines appearing in my head as they would on paper. I’d say them to myself again and again until they were cemented. But for some reason I cannot recite them now, when I have the paper to write them down. Maybe certain poems are meant only for oneself.

  * * *

  —

  They called for me one evening after I’d finished washing Buinaya’s dirty clothes. I was about to lie down when a new guard, who hadn’t quite mastered the tone of voice the other guards used when barking orders, entered the barracks and called out my number in her singsong way. I put on my smock and shoes and followed her out the door.

  When the guard turned left at the end of the path that cut through the barracks, I realized where we were going: the small cottage whose upkeep was given to prisoners who’d gained favor with the camp’s Godfather. The style of the cottage did not fit with the rest of the camp, and the first time I saw it, I thought I might’ve been hallucinating. It resembled a grandmother’s dacha—bright green with white trim and neat flower boxes lining the windows.

  In one window, I could see the glow of a red-shaded lamp. Beyond that, I could see, sitting at a desk, the Godfather—a man I’d seen only once before, standing at the center of a semicircle of lower-level government officials who’d once toured Potma. Even from a distance, I could see his thick white eyebrows. They seemed to stretch up his forehead, almost touching the white hair he’d combed down across his bald spot. He looked friendly, seated there at his desk like any dedushka. But I knew from some of the other women that he was no harmless grandfather. The Godfather’s job was to interrogate prisoners and recruit informers. He was also widely known to have taken several camp wives—women who were called into the green cottage and given the option of either letting him do whatever he wanted with them or face the rest of their sentences in another camp, where the most violent offenders were taken.

  The camp wives were identifiable by the silk robes they’d wear after bathing and the large straw hats they wore to shield their faces from the sun. They were also taken out of the fields to work the easier jobs in the kitchen or laundry. Or they simply spent hours tending to the cottage’s hedges and flowers—and then whatever else needed tending to on the inside. Each of the camp wives was beautiful, the prettiest among them an eighteen-year-old named Lena. I never saw Lena, but her famed black hair, long and sleek as an orca’s back, was talked about across the camp. It was rumored that Lena had been given special shampoo the Godfather had smuggled in from France, and a pair of calfskin gloves to protect her slender fingers, as she had been a promising pianist in Georgia before her arrest. It was also rumored she was pregnant once, and a babki was brought in with her knitting needles to perform the abortion.

  These were rumors, only rumors, I told myself as the guard pointed her truncheon at the cottage door. I told myself I was too old for the Godfather’s taste, which I’d heard was for women who’d yet to have children or reach the age of twenty-two—whichever came first.

  I entered the two-room cottage and stood at the door. The Godfather sat at his desk, writing. I wanted him to speak, but all he did was point his fountain pen to the chair in front of his desk. Ten minutes passed before he put down his pen and looked at me. Without a word, he opened his desk drawer and handed me a parcel. “For you. These cannot leave this office. You must read them here.” He pushed a piece of paper toward me. “And when you’re finished, you will sign that you’ve seen it.”

  “What is it?”

  “Nothing of importance.”

  Inside the parcel was a twelve-page letter and a small green notebook. I opened it, but the words didn’t register. All I could see was the handwriting—his handwriting—broad scrawls that always reminded me of soaring cranes. I flipped through the notebook, then the letter, and the words started to register. Borya was alive. He was free. And he’d written me a poem.

  I won’t share the poem with you, Anatoli. Did you think I would? I read it over and over again until I committed it to memory, then I never saw the actual pages again. Maybe you’ve already read them, but I will pretend you haven’t—that his words are mine and mine alone.

  In the letter, he wrote he was doing everything in his power to get me out, and if he could change places with me, he would do so gladly. He said the guilt was a weight on his chest that grew heavier each day. He said he feared the weight would become so heavy, his ribs would crack and he’d be crushed to death.

  Reading the letter, I felt something I think only the nuns of the camp could understand—the warmth and protection of faith.

  Why was I allowed to read what Borya had written me, Anatoli? Why had the Godfather given the letter to me after all that time? Perhaps he wanted something in return. Whatever it was, I knew then that I would do it. I’d become an informer, I’d become a camp wife—whatever it took as long as I could hear from him.

  But, Anatoli, the Godfather never asked that I become his wife, nor did he groom me to become an informer. Only later did I discover that Borya had demanded proof I was still alive, and that they had sent him some months later the piece of paper I had signed that night after reading his letter.

  It was rumored that Stalin was sick and his reins were loosening. After my night in the cottage, I was allowed
to receive mail from my family and Borya. He wrote of his heart attack, a condition he attributed to my arrest, and how he spent months in a hospital bed fearing he’d never see me again.

  He wrote of his renewed obsession with finishing his novel now that he was well again and could be in contact with me. He said he’d finish it at all costs, and nothing—not the authorities who were likely reading his letters, nor his bad heart—would keep him from doing so.

  * * *

  —

  Dear Anatoli, do you remember the night before Stalin died? I dreamed of birds that night. Not the white doves I’d been longing for—which the women of the camp believed signaled one’s imminent release—but of black crows, thousands sitting in rows like chess pawns in an empty concrete lot. The crows barely appeared to be breathing, and when I walked toward them and clapped my hands, they remained still. I clapped and clapped until my hands were raw. And when I turned to walk away, some inaudible signal propelled them to take flight. They swarmed into a beating cloud that covered the moon. I watched as the cloud shifted to the right, then left. Then, all at once, the cloud dissipated in all directions, each bird going her own way.

  The next morning, the music started before dawn, blaring from the camp’s loudspeakers. We all seemed to sit up at once, squinting until our eyes adjusted to the darkness. Funeral music—they were playing funeral music. No one in Barrack No. 11 said a word. No one asked who had died. We already knew.