Beneath the Darkest Sky Page 17

  “Yes, I mean, I don’t know them all, but I have read about them in Izvestiya.”

  “What are some of their professions? What do they do for work, besides the obvious ones who work at the Kremlin?”

  “Ah, Comrade Sweet!” He shook his head like he didn’t want to tell me. “I don’t—”

  “You don’t want me to tell the ambassador that you were in his car. We’ve established that. Now just tell me about the guests.”

  “Okay. Only two are from the Kremlin!”

  “Only two?” I said. “Maybe Stalin sent them to take notes.”

  He half blushed and continued. “Others are local scientists. Some are teachers at the universities. I recognize a couple of artists and musicians, some sculptors. But, of course you know, eighty percent of the people here are just expatriate Americans along with your friends from the chancery. And some of the foreigners are journalists or maybe, you know, diplomats, visiting here to better their relations with our great Stalin.”

  “Thank you.” I held up the box of whiskey and eyed the ring of keys hanging from his waist just inside his jacket. “And now let me tell you why I was looking for you, Sergei. I wanted to give you your Christmas gift. A bottle of Redbreast Irish! For you to enjoy with your lovely wife.”

  “Oh my! You are far too kind, Comrade Sweet.”

  I handed it to him and he gladly accepted, extending both arms up at me like a little boy, overjoyed to be receiving a gift from his father on Christmas morning. I was every bit of six-two, but had never felt so tall.

  “You must come sit with us and toast to Christmas Eve,” he said, smiling from ear to ear and taking my arm. “Come! You can sit behind the wheel and Anya can sit on my lap in the passenger’s seat. Come!”

  He opened my door and I got in before he circled the front of the car and signaled for his wife to get out, which she did. Then he plopped himself right in her seat.

  “We don’t need glasses!” he said, opening the box and taking out the bottle. “Get in, Anya. Sit on my legs.”

  She got in and he began twisting the top off like a drunken sailor.

  “In honor of our new American comrade, Anya, I’d like for him to take the first drink.” He held the open bottle up while his wife took a handkerchief from his suit pocket and began wiping the lipstick from his mouth. “Please, Comrade Sweet! Drink!”

  “I need to run upstairs real quick,” I said, opening the door. “I’ll be right back.”

  I headed upstairs and told Loretta, Dorene, and Bobby that there’d been a problem with the circuit breaker because of all the power usage during the party, and that I’d need to help Sergei fix it. I told them to carry on without me for however long it might take and they seemed to be just fine with that, all three engaged in conversation with various folks I’d never met before.

  I returned to the garage to find Sergei still holding the bottle and waiting for my return. I opened the door and got in again.

  “Please, Comrade Sweet,” said Sergei. “Drink!”

  I grabbed the bottle and took a fake swig. My plan was to get the both of them very drunk, so drunk that I just might be able to steal the keys off of him. The key would be making sure they were the ones doing the majority of drinking. I’d need to creatively sip.

  “Ah . . . that’s good whiskey,” I said, handing him the bottle.

  Without saying a word or handing it to his wife first, he took a big drink.

  “Delicious!” he said. “The Irish know how to make the best whiskey.”

  He took another drink and handed the bottle to Anya, who still had a look of embarrassment, a blush, on her round, olive-skinned face. Based on the behavior of these two, I had a feeling they had downed more than their share of vodka, but this stuff was about to be much more potent.

  I’d still had my bouts with sleep over the last decade and had received my last prescription of little white pills from Dorene’s doctor back in Nantucket. And as was the case during my Strivers’ Row days, they were coming in mighty handy. I just needed Sergei and Anya to enjoy the whiskey along with my crushed-up doozies. Of course, with no work for either of them to do tomorrow, I was betting they would fully partake and empty the bottle.

  15

  Magadan, Russia

  January 1938

  TIME DOES NOT PASS FAST WHEN ONE IS WORKING IN THE SOVIET prison camps. It had been exactly one week since Yury and Boris had left the camp here at Magadan and headed up the dreaded Road of Bones, but it had felt like two months. If they had managed to stay alive so far while navigating the frozen tundra, they would now be fighting against forty to fifty below temps.

  My standing with my boss, Koskinen, had not deteriorated at all. In fact, I was on even better terms with him. The problem that existed in these ungodly camps was that a man like him couldn’t actually help me. He was beholden to a slew of individuals who outranked him, and many of them seemed to disappear and be replaced often. It was a revolving door of bureaucratic Stalin worshippers who made up the Dalstroi, many of them willing to cut one another’s necks in order to lay claim to the latest idea of where the newest gold mine might be.

  The only thing keeping Koskinen around, it seemed, was his unprecedented knowledge of land and structural development. He was a brilliant engineer and architect, able to design the most comprehensive drawings, most of which were too advanced to use, as they required materials that were not yet being shipped up the coast. His knowledge of state-of-the-art sewage systems, electrical grids, etcetera, was not being completely put to use.

  All of the engineers met with Koskinen on Sundays as a group, but it was my biweekly one-on-one meeting with him that kept alive my hopes of one day seeing my wife and daughter again. It was a Saturday in late January when I decided to press the issue further. But first I had to carry a toilet bucket to the big hole.

  All of the barracks had five eighteen-inch-high buckets called parasha to use as toilets, all set aside in a small room where we were forced to relieve ourselves in front of one another. We used dried leaves from the taiga to wipe—poplar, aspen, or birch. Whichever zek topped a bucket off had to carry it to the big hole. Failing to do so would cause a fight. Guards typically let us carry them to the five-by-five, ten-foot-deep hole unaccompanied, but they made sure the bucket was full first.

  The big hole was covered by a six-inch-high, square wooden lid, which looked like the roof of a small shed. The lid had handles on each side and a hinge in the middle, allowing one to open it on the right or left. There were many of these zek-dug holes within the camp containing waste and leaves. Once a hole was full, it was sealed by covering the lid with a mound of dirt. The hole was then left this way for one year, after which the contents would be used as manure at the nearby Dukcha State Farm, where they were still foolishly trying to grow vegetables in an impossible climate. They were also trying to acclimatize goats, sheep, cattle, rams, ducks, and chickens there, with very little success.

  Finished with my toilet duty, I stood in front of the commander’s barracks and looked down at my concrete-covered felt boots and galoshes. Still had them, even though they’d already issued me clothing for the still-distant summer, including gray canvas shoes. For the summer they had also issued us long gray underwear, top and bottom, made of linen and old, frazzled, cotton military tunics.

  I kicked the lower step of the commander’s deck until the almost-dry concrete began to flake off. I took a piece of torn-away sock from my pants pocket and wiped the sawdust and concrete splatters from my face. At least there were no mosquitos to flick away yet. I’d been told they loved the muddy roads and alleys throughout the camp when the summer came, or perhaps it was the filthy sewage holes, the dirty and sick bodies, or the smelly clothes of new arrivals who’d likely be issued garments recycled from the dead.

  The small amount of cold water we were given to wash our clothes periodically had little effect. And clothes were never thrown away. They might as well have been gold, too, as far as the Dalstroi heads
were concerned. Zeks would kill one another over them. We’d seen such things when men awoke to find their coats or shoes stolen.

  Water was like gold, too. And it was served randomly in a bucket from which we dipped. We weren’t given bowls or cups. We’d been issued a piece of tin to make a pot, usually no more than twenty-four ounces’ worth. From this we drank and ate. We’d been given no utensils, as our hands would serve as such. Stalin had more important uses for tin.

  If a zek’s pot was stolen, he’d have to find another willing to share, a rarity, as each man was only allowed to fill his pot with soup, gruel, or water one time per serving. A stolen or lost pot essentially meant having to cup your hands and have the cooks ladle the food into them. Such zeks quickly learned how to overlap their hands to keep liquid from seeping through the natural openings that most bony, knobby hands created. On the rare occasion when the soup or gruel was actually boiling hot, this meant not eating. It always meant not being able to have the nightly ration of hot water for dinner. I felt awful for these poor souls, for I hadn’t yet seen a zek lose a pot and be reissued another.

  But even with self-made pots in hand, water rations were inconsistent. Not counting the ladle portion of hot water we were given for dinner, the most we ever received in a day was a potful. To make matters worse, only sporadically were we sent to the baths with a bucket for ten of us to share. Using our same twenty-four-ounce pots, we dipped from the bucket and washed ourselves. No soap was provided.

  All of these barbaric norms still haunted me, as I remained standing in front of the commander’s small barracks. With most of the concrete removed from my boots and face now, I stepped onto the deck and entered.

  “I can see that you Americans are always on time,” he said from behind his desk, a lit cigar in hand. “Please sit.”

  “Yes, Commander Koskinen.”

  “I do not know how much longer I’ll be here,” he said. “I may be going to the mines to construct new camps. They’ve found many new mines. Maybe you can come. With your boy! It is warm inside the mines.”

  “As you wish, Commander Koskinen,” I said, gladly breathing in the sweet-smelling cigar smoke.

  “Do you know about explosives?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Good. But you would be building still. Only, it might serve you well someday in the camps, knowing about explosives.” He paused before continuing. “There has been no record to be found regarding your sentence reduction. But I have ordered a new one for you based on superior work. I filed the document and it will be sent to the proper authorities. It’s for your boy, too.”

  “Thank you.”

  I felt a warmth run through my body, a good feeling I hadn’t felt in a year. I continued breathing in the smoke, actually getting a chemical effect from it, as I hadn’t breathed in tobacco smoke to this degree for such a long time.

  “Do you have any free relatives here in the Soviet Union?” he said, flicking some ash into a tin cup. “If you do, ask them to send some money so you can buy tobacco once in a while from the commissary like the other zeks do, at least the ones whose families have money.”

  “I do not smoke,” I said, “but I have written a letter to a close comrade. I wrote it last week.”

  “You wrote ‘Prisoner Prescott Sweet’ and ‘Sevvostlag Magadan Camp’ as your name and address, as required, yes?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Is he an American?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is he here in the Soviet Union?”

  “No, he was earlier. He’s now in Argentina.”

  “Then NKVD confiscated the letter. No letters from prisoners are allowed to leave the Soviet Union right now. As soon as they saw the Sevvostlag in the upper left corner and the Argentina address below, they tore it up. Only letters from free civilians can go outside Soviet borders, this after NKVD has read them. Maybe your comrade is a spy, you see?”

  I casually nodded, realizing that Bobby hadn’t received my letter telling him we’d been arrested. I’d written it earnestly, half believing it would only be a matter of time now before we were released. It had given me the impetus to work hard and remain in decent spirits.

  “Was this comrade in Moscow when you were arrested?”

  “No.”

  “When did you last correspond with him?”

  “I sent him a letter in August, which he likely received in September. So, maybe four months.”

  “How often do you correspond?” he said, setting his cigar in the ashtray.

  “At least a letter every five months.”

  “Do you cable each other?”

  “We hadn’t since he’d left. But it would be something he would do only if it was urgent.”

  “Sounds like it is about time for him to hear from you to keep him from being concerned. But it seems that won’t happen. What do you believe your Moscow friends and neighbors are thinking about your absence now?”

  “My wife and I were traveling to Stalingrad and Leningrad a lot. She was . . . is ... a noted painter here. So the neighbors likely think we are away doing showings.”

  “Neighbors are too afraid to say a word to anyone anyway when they know of an arrest. They are only worried about themselves. You could be gone for ten years and they’d never say a thing. NKVD has everyone afraid of his or her own shadow. Besides, what your neighbors don’t know is that NKVD has already emptied your apartment during the night. Your belongings are being stored somewhere and your place has been rented to someone else. By the way, many artists, like your wife, and writers have been arrested. And their comrades won’t report it. Believe me. Too terrified that they’ll be put on a list also. What does this comrade you speak of do?”

  “He’s a diplomat.”

  “Ah. Not good. He will be one to go poking around. Very much not good.”

  He stood and walked around the desk until he was at a cabinet next to the door behind me. Returning with a bottle and two tin cups, he sat again. The label on the bottle read ubróvka, a brand of vodka I recognized, as Bobby enjoyed it.

  “Does this comrade think you’re still in Moscow?” he said, pouring two drinks and handing me one.

  “Thank you, Commander. Yes, he does.”

  He held up his cup and I followed suit, both of us downing the tasty stuff. It would be the first time since Moscow that I’d perhaps have my emotions numbed a bit, a more than welcome possibility.

  “Hear me,” he said. “Your comrade needs to keep believing that you live there, as far as NKVD is concerned. Or, even better, I will give you some strong advice that might keep you alive longer, Comrade Sweet. It will keep this comrade from pestering Moscow NKVD about you.”

  “Okay.”

  “I am doing this only because I feel that if I help at least one decent zek in this world stay alive, especially a black one who makes me think of my sister’s husband, maybe my Trotsky will look upon me someday with pride. I am doing this for Trotsky. Understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Write another letter to this comrade and tell him you have moved with your family to Leningrad. Tell him you are all happy and fine. Tell him, however, that your wife and children are still traveling a lot with her paintings, and that you’ve been hired to do a quite lucrative engineering job at the port here at Nagaev Bay for at least six months. There is actually construction being done down there as we speak. I say this all to keep you alive. Makes sense, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “The bags of zek mail here at the Magadan post office are kept separate from the free hires’ mail. And it is all shipped to Moscow postal before it goes anywhere else. I will drop your letter in the free hires’ bags when I take my mail over to the post office.”

  “Thank you, Commander.”

  “Moscow postal might then forward it to NKVD, but once they read it and realize you’re from Leningrad, and that you’re only temporarily working at Nagaev Bay, they will let it go out. There are only a handful of officials in this entire cou
ntry who know of you. No random NKVD policeman or postal worker is going to recognize your name whatsoever. They deal with millions, you see. But, of course, you’ll never receive your comrade’s return letters, as you must use a fictitious Leningrad address. I will give you a good one. I used to live there.”

  “Well,” I said, “he probably won’t write back until July, especially if he believes I’m busy here at Nagaev Bay. But still, once his letter eventually comes, it will be returned to him. Not good. I mean, maybe he won’t write back until August, but then again, maybe sooner, if he thinks Loretta might forward it to me.”

  “Ah,” he said, pouring us both another vodka, “I know what to do. It is now late January. Don’t send the letter for two weeks.”

  He held his tin cup up again and I did the same. Then he nodded and we drank before slamming our cups down, both of us feeling the vodka.

  “Now,” he said, “one of the free hires here, a medical equipment technician who I know and trust, Kirill, is returning to Leningrad in March. He, like me, is a Trotskyist. A lot of us Trotskyists know one another. There are more than you would think amongst the free hires, guards, and even the Dalstroi and Sevvostlag officials. And we’re brave. Not afraid to take risks. We always help one another. Anyway, I know another loyal Trotskyist who works for Leningrad postal named Rodion. I will have Kirill track him down and tell him in person to set up a post office box in your name. Rodion will then check the box weekly while at work, but will simply save the letters for you. He won’t write back to your comrade, obviously.”

  “Thank you, Commander Koskinen,” I said.

  “Ah, a problem! I will have to first cable Rodion and tell him that my cousin from Moscow is moving to Leningrad and would like to set up a post office box until he gets situated. The cable will tell Rodion this: ‘Please assign a number to P. Orlov and cable me back the box number so I can inform my cousin, who wants to begin having his mail forwarded.’ Then I will simply explain the truth of the matter to Kirill and he can relay it to Rodion in person, you know, explain that the box is actually for you. Rodion will switch the name. You see, we have to get a box number before you send your letter. And, of course, I have no cousin in Moscow.”