Beneath the Darkest Sky Read online

  She’d sold a few paintings here and there, and many Parisian aficionados of art had praised her work, but in terms of a household name, she was still chipping away at that dream, a dream Bobby’s wife believed would eventually come true. He had said as much during the long ship ride over from Le Havre the previous year in August. Not only had we discussed that, we’d also had an extensive back-and-forth about our Haitian mission. He’d seemed resolute about its purpose, and I’d gotten the distinct impression that he was certain Roosevelt would be elected that November, a result that Bobby believed would bring about a policy change in Haiti.

  “Make no mistake,” he’d said, as we’d dined and looked out over the glistening Atlantic, “we are going here to put an end to this disgusting, paternalistic occupation, but it can’t happen overnight. We have to creatively, patiently, and calmly use our diplomatic skills to help at least get the ball rolling. Then, once Mr. Roosevelt takes office, the groundwork we will have laid . . . the exit strategy we’ll have implemented . . . will shift into overdrive.”

  “Is Dorene still on the campaign trail with Roosevelt?” I had asked, cutting into a delicious porterhouse.

  “Yes, joyously so. The whole lot of them are in Ohio as we speak. Columbus.”

  “Are the children with her?”

  “No, they’re in Nantucket with her parents. She will be bringing them with her to Port-au-Prince sometime in December once the election is over. Once she’s finally spent more money than God knows . . .”

  “Stop it,” I’d said. “She’s putting it to wonderful use.”

  “I realize that. It’s just that the woman spends her money like a Rockefeller.”

  “You’re complaining?”

  “You’re right. Forget money. No, on second thought, speaking of money . . . regarding your personal service contract . . . what the State Department will be paying you won’t suffice the way I see it. I shall pay you extra—cash—the first of every month. Out of our family’s private account. Consider it done and do not argue. It’s the least I can do considering your education and the fact that State makes it next to impossible for coloreds to enter the Foreign Service.”

  “What if I try to argue?”

  “You’ll be wasting your time,” he’d said, cutting into his steak. “Of course, you could return to Washington and take the exam if you want to be an official Foreign Service officer. I could try to pull some strings and get you hired as an attaché.”

  “I’m not about to go back to D.C. and subject myself to the background checks.”

  “I don’t blame you.”

  “For all we know,” I’d said, “the same British Intelligence mole left Hoover’s bureau and is now firmly planted inside the State Department.”

  “You don’t think Hoover ever pegged him?” he’d asked.

  “Actually, I still can’t help but also wonder if it was Hoover all alone in cahoots with the Secret Intelligence Service.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Think about it, Bobby. Hoover wanted to imprison Marcus Garvey. But SIS wanted to kill him. You don’t think Hoover was willing to give them carte blanche in order to do so?”

  “Impossible to rule out,” he’d said.

  “What did he have to lose . . . besides my black ass?”

  “Plausible,” said Bobby.

  “More than.”

  “Back to your contract,” he’d said. “I couldn’t do this Haiti job without you and your language skills. Dorene knows that. And she respects the hell out of you. The State Department may not be in the business of hiring colored FSOs, but Dorene and I are damn sure in the business of paying you, my friend, as if you were one.”

  “I appreciate this, Bobby.”

  “I’ll see to it that you’re treated with the same decorum as an official diplomat. However high I rise and wherever I’m posted in the world, you’ll always have a job with me.”

  I’d lifted my glass of water. “Thank you . . . future Ambassador Ellington.”

  “I only wish,” he’d said. “But it better happen someday soon or Dorene will surely leave me for a more worldly and accomplished bloke.”

  “Stop.”

  “I kid. But it is her dream as much as it is mine. If only Eleanor, her idol, were as keen on Franklin becoming president as he himself is. It’s certainly his dream and not hers.”

  “Well, all I know is you’re leaving your mark on history, Bobby.”

  “We both are, Prescott. Whether you’re official or not, we both are.”

  3

  Somewhere in Russia

  August 1937

  MY OBSESSION WITH RAILROAD MAPS DIDN’T LEAVE ME WHEN I left America. And as my son and I sat in our sweaty, wooden, triple seats, having survived the first three days of this horrific journey across Russia, I couldn’t help but wish I had a map with me. Perhaps I’d be able to bring a touch of comfort to James by showing him the different towns we were traveling through, perhaps along the Mongolia border. Then again, even if I had one, how could I point out locations? None of us knew where we were going.

  All I knew was that we’d been traveling for three nightmarish days in darkness, the curtains so heavy we never knew when the sun was setting or rising. No hot meal. No bath. No good sleep. The train made the occasional stop, so that officers could refill the water buckets, I assumed, and buy themselves tobacco and real food. Common sense told me they had to be stopping for inspection as well. Still, we never knew which remote town we were in.

  One bit of information a blue top had relayed was that we were riding on car twenty-eight. There were fifty in total. I assumed ours was like all of the others—disgusting. So far, the guards had done as promised and let each compartment out separately in the morning and at night to visit the hole at the rear of the car after turning the lanterns on. And that was exactly what it was, a hole cut out in the wood floor in a tiny closet. When not in use, it was covered with a filthy rug.

  I’d tried my best to ignore the various moans, hallucinations, and cries throughout the car. On more than one occasion, the lanterns were turned on, the fencing opened, and the brutal sound of someone being pulled from their compartment, taken near the rear, and beaten, could be heard. How vicious the beatings, none of us knew. Fortunately, no one in our compartment had made so much as a peep.

  The gash on my ear had scabbed over, as all they’d done was tape some gauze over it at the jail, no stitches, which were needed. I hadn’t been able to see the cut but could feel the lobe split apart when I’d first checked that night. I figured it had scabbed over now because it itched like crazy. But I hadn’t removed the gauze, choosing to leave it taped on for as long as possible.

  We’d been given nothing to eat but a small piece of black bread twice a day and a thirty-two-ounce canteen of water to share amongst the six of us. The canteen was refilled each morning and night, but the water was very warm and did little to quench one’s thirst. We craved something hot to eat. Anything. Grain, soup, or even gravy.

  * * *

  Day three turned to day ten with nothing changing for us prisoners except a deeper feeling of agony, all of us having become immune to one another’s unpleasant odor. To say we were hungry is too simple. We were ravenous.

  Trying to describe what hunger feels like is akin to trying to explain what being stabbed feels like. Unfortunately, I could now say I’d experienced both. When James and I had first been taken, all I was consumed with were thoughts of my wife’s and daughter’s well-being. I needed relief, to know that they were at least safe. But as the days passed, those thoughts, those very instinctive ones, were overtaken by the desperate feeling of hunger.

  It’s not that my concern for them subsided; it was simply supplanted by science. My body had been deprived of nutrients and had gone into protective mode, trying to conserve energy at all costs. And make no mistake, the simple act of thinking about someone’s well-being consumes a lot of energy. There is not a human being on this earth who, when faced with the overwhelming
pain of hunger, doesn’t become selfish, wholly consumed with survival.

  After these ten days of travel, I realized that starving someone had to be the cruelest form of punishment. It leaves one feeling nothing but ache in every fiber of their being, right down to their bone marrow. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. It only takes a few days of having nothing substantive to eat to make you totally aware of the fact that you are already starting to die, your body decaying with each passing hour, the hunger siphoning every ounce of clear thought from your brain, save for the one telling you that your body is eating itself.

  Accompanying all of this mental anguish was the physical reality of our situation. We’d been sitting on wooden seats in tight quarters with little ventilation for ten days—unable to move about, other than the brief visits to the hole. My back ached—from neck to pelvis. My head was throbbing. My legs felt numb. My skin was sensitive to the touch. My muscles were tender.

  Perhaps the twenty years I’d spent doing Kodokan Judo had all been in preparation for this journey into hell, this no-end-insight test of will. I’d kept my hand on James’s thigh for most of the time, choosing to simply see him as a literal extension of my body, a third leg if you will. I’d convinced myself early on in the trip that my internal strength would flow through him this way. My meditative training would touch his soul. My physical presence and tough veneer would cocoon him.

  * * *

  It was on the eleventh day that, much to our surprise, the train came to a stop and a guard said something new, prompting me to wonder if maybe this would be the day that a substantive meal might actually await us.

  “Wake up, you filthy wreckers!” he yelled, as the lanterns were turned on. “We are going to let you off the train to walk outside. You can stretch. You can shit. You can drop dead if you want. You will get a little bit of food. We don’t want you to die before we even get to the last city.”

  The guards began to laugh after those words had been spoken. Each of them spoke Russian with deep, menacing voices. I could feel their hate with each word they uttered.

  “All of you walk slowly!” he yelled, as the fence began to slide open. “One of you makes any fast move and I will shoot you through the fucking eye.”

  Once we were outside, the temperature around sixty-five degrees Fahrenheit, we all stood there for a period just adjusting to the painful light. Then I squinted in both directions at the sea of prisoners. There was a river behind us and we’d just crossed a large bridge. Was I dreaming? My eyes still not even half-open, I looked up at the sky and peeked directly at the sun for a while, my face wrinkled up, the first time I’d done this in my life. I didn’t care about the pain in my eyes, the burn. I kept squinting, wanting every ray to recharge my mind, revitalize my spirit. There was life in these rays, and I knew I needed to stay alive somehow, someway.

  Slowly peeling off the tape and gauze from my ear, I closed my eyes and contorted my face several times, just trying to awaken my senses. I looked down at my brown patent leather shoes. Had purchased them in Paris back in 1929. How far they’d traveled!

  I looked left and then right. Nothing but barren land in all directions, save for one shabby log building close by—some type of maintenance post it seemed, a place to resupply goods and inspect the train. Perhaps a few kind souls inside had made us a decent meal.

  I gazed at the other men in my compartment group. The six of us had grown more attached to one another than we’d realized, because though we were free to roam about along the river, we remained huddled up, even standing in the exact arrangement of our seats. We had our eyes barely open, but we weren’t actually looking at one another. It was as if we were staring straight ahead at the past and what we’d left behind. The old man who’d been sitting in the middle seat facing me began to cough—so heavy that I worried about him surviving the journey itself.

  “Vy nuzhna voda?” I asked him, reaching out and offering what little warm water was left in the canteen, as it was my turn to have the last sip.

  “Nyet!” he said, refusing to take it, closing his eyes, the wrinkles on his tan face full of grime.

  The short young man with the blue newsboy hat who had been seated across from James seemed rather interested in the water. But if the old man didn’t need it, I’d best keep it for now. I casually pretended to ignore the young man’s stare.

  “Is there anything I can do to help you, comrade?” I asked the old man in Russian.

  “I am okay,” he said, squinting, his khaki shirt and pants damp with sweat. “My name is Abram. You should give the water to your boy there. If I die it’s normal. Your boy is too young to die.”

  “He can’t die,” I said, as Abram began violently coughing, his white hair soaking wet.

  “I have five children,” he finally said, his voice trailing off at the end of every sentence. “Three are in Leningrad, two in Poland. My wife died of stomach sickness two years ago. Do you have a wife?”

  “Yes, her name is Loretta. I also have a daughter named Ginger. They were put on the trains the same day we were.”

  “They went on the train north then,” said the old man. “I’m certain. You should hope you can see them again.”

  “You won’t!” said the young man. James and the other two prisoners stayed quiet. “We are all going to die. Such is the will of Stalin. I counted sixty people on our car. The blue top said there are fifty cars. That means three thousand dead. They tell me I was arrested for taking a trip to Berlin.”

  “For simply taking a trip to Berlin?” I said.

  “Yes, that is what they do. Stalin has taken what Marx and Lenin and . . . Trotsky—”

  “Shh!” said Abram, waving his frail hand. “Don’t say his name. They will shoot you on the spot.”

  “I know this,” whispered the young man, his healthy white skin closer to olive than pale. “What I am trying to say is that Stalin has taken something pure and perverted it. Communism at its core is pure. They are arresting people for simply visiting other countries because they claim we have been tainted by outside influences. We can no longer be trusted. We are to be replaced by a select breed of proven Stalin loyalists. What constitutes proven is a mystery to all of us. I’m sure the list of so-called loyalists is not written in ink.”

  “How old are you?” I asked. “And what is your name?”

  “I am twenty-two. My name is Yury. I had just been hired to write for the state newspaper, Izvestiya. Your name . . . age?”

  “Prescott. Forty-three.”

  “I can only hope they shoot me while I’m not looking,” said Abram, coughing again. “But every time one of the officers comes walking by our compartment, I fear that this is going to happen while my eyes are wide open. They know an old man like me is of no use to them. They hope I die before we arrive at wherever we’re going.”

  “They will not shoot you, Abram,” I said. “You’ve given them no reason. So don’t give them one going forward. All of us are going to be okay as long as we listen and do as they say.”

  “You can tell you’re an American,” said Yury. “Your Russian is excellent and quite . . . how should I say . . . quite Russian, but your optimism is quite American.”

  “I have been accused on more than one occasion of being naïvely hopeful. Yes!” I turned to James. “Are you feeling okay, son?”

  He nodded, his lips powdery dry. His cream-colored, long-sleeve, repro chambray shirt was still tucked into the brown herringbone pants Bobby’s wife had purchased for him in London. I knew he was in shock still, the look on his face hollow. But I’d made sure he’d eaten his bread and water. And I had a good feel for his well-being. He’d always taken his cues from me. As long as I projected strength, he’d be okay. Did I want to shield him from all of the horror around us? Of course. But that was now an impossibility. I’d have to fix later whatever trauma he’d experience. He was going to become a hardened man overnight.

  “To think,” said Abram, coughing, “that this train, known as the Trans-
Siberian Railway, all five thousand eight hundred miles of it, the longest in the world, would be used for such evil. You see . . . I was born in 1866, so I was there when everyone believed that the idea alone of building the railway was absolute insanity. Construction was ordered by Tsar Nicholas II in 1891, and not completed until 1916. Twenty-five years! A marvel to the world! Built and rebuilt over and over again because of ungodly terrain having to be exploded, snow and rivers having to be dealt with, only to now be used to torture its own. My God!”

  Abram closed his eyes and made a cross on his chest, then looked to the heavens. He was truly distraught at what had become of his country.

  “Look!” said Yury, pointing to the car behind ours.

  We watched as three guards began pulling a dead prisoner off of one of the many long metal spikes that had been placed under the cars. He’d obviously tried to escape through the toilet hole while en route, only to have the stake driven straight through his stomach. The officers were having a difficult time removing the poor soul—his limp body slouched over the long, bloody rod like a dead man on a horse.

  “Don’t look at this, son,” I said to James. “Look at the river. Think of Paris. Think of your mother and sister and the good times we had. They will come again.”

  “This part of their master plan seems to be working,” said Yury, as the rest of us watched the blood ooze from the dead man’s stomach. “They don’t seem to miss a thing. I wonder if it was Stalin himself who came up with this . . . this . . . how have I heard you Americans say it . . . this doozy. This is truly barbaric. Quite the appetizer for whatever food they plan on serving us.”

  “And to think,” said Abram, coughing, “I actually thought of jumping through that toilet hole several times. I think they want us to try such things. I think they enjoy coming up with sick ways to kill us. They don’t want to grow bored.”