Beautiful Assassin (18 page)

It was late in the afternoon when we arrived back to my hotel. We sat outside in the car for a moment.

“You have a couple of hours in which to freshen up,” Vasilyev told me. “I shall pick you up at seven.”

“Where are we going tonight?” I asked.

“The symphony,” he explained. “There will be a lot of important people there. You’ll want to look smart, Lieutenant.”

“Smart?” I asked.

“Presentable. You will find a dress uniform waiting in your room for you. By the way, do you have lipstick?”

“What?”

“You know,” he said, mimicking the application of it to his own thin lips.

“Why must I wear lipstick?” I asked. “I’m a soldier.”

“You are also a woman. Women wear lipstick.”

“I don’t see the necessity.”

“It has nothing to do with necessity,” said Vasilyev. “Please, just put on a little lipstick. Okay?”

“I don’t have any,” I replied, thinking that would be the end of it.

With this Vasilyev reached into his coat pocket, and like some magician performing a trick, he pulled out a small silver cylinder. “I suspected you would need some. And while you’re at it, rub a little into your cheeks. You’re far too pale,” he said. “And be sure to wear your medals. They’ll want to see them.”

When I got back to my room, I found a vase filled with fresh flowers on the nightstand along with a bowl of fruit and a box of chocolates. I
thought of Zoya, how she loved chocolate. Next to the chocolates was a bottle of champagne. And spread out over the bed lay a dress uniform, complete with a visored cap, Sam Browne belt, a skirt, as well as a pair of shiny new boots, none of which I’d gotten during the hasty westward rush to confront the German invasion the previous summer. I went over to the window and peeked through the curtains. Below in the street, I saw the same black car that had been following us all day.

In the bathroom I found a number of toiletries—soap, toothpaste, shampoo, a razor and blades, things I’d almost forgotten existed. I drew a bath, treated myself to some chocolates and an orange. Then I got the bottle of champagne and a glass and slid into the water. It was so hot it took my breath away as I eased myself into the tub. Yet even now in this room so far from the front, I felt the war’s presence. It was as if I could never completely wash away its mark, the smell of it on me, the taste of it in my mouth. I noticed the tattoos of battle: the matching pair of knotted scars on my thigh where I’d been hit by a bullet—entry and exit wounds; the quarter-moon scar from shrapnel along my calf; the pale thinness of my broken arm; various other cuts and scrapes and abrasions, some of which I’d not even been aware of until now. Especially the long, still-pink, still-tender wound over my belly, the one that had robbed me of the ability to have life inside ever again. I thought of my comrades—Zoya off fighting in Stalingrad, Captain Petrenko and the others, either dead or in some German POW camp. Kolya in Leningrad. And here I was, drinking champagne and soaking in a warm bath, about to go to the symphony. Then I thought of my daughter, in an unmarked grave somewhere along the road to Kharkov. Though I knew it was foolish, I worried that she would be lonely there, afraid without me.

But after a while, the hot bath and the champagne eased my mind a little. It had been more than a year since I’d had a real bath. I scoured my skin hard, rubbing it raw, like some religious flagellant, trying to remove the stench of war. I scraped the dirt and gun oil and blood from beneath my nails. It was heaven, let me tell you. I felt like a new woman, like a girl going on her first date. I wanted only to lie there and savor the fact that I was in this warm tub, alive, getting a little tipsy from
champagne, about to go to a symphony. It was a strange, strange world, I thought.

I got dressed and put on lipstick, combed my hair. I looked at myself in the mirror. Thinner than I had been, a little older about the eyes and mouth perhaps. But given all that I’d been through, I was pleased with what I saw. I thought I was still an attractive woman, a sentiment I hadn’t felt in a very long time.

That evening when Vasilyev saw me at the door, he stood there for a moment looking me up and down, his hand rubbing his chin in a caricature of appraisal. Finally he gave a smile of approval, his fleshy cheeks pressing his eyes into narrow slits.

“Very nice, Comrade,” he said as he entered the room.

“Thank you,” I replied, with more than a trace of sarcasm, which he decided to ignore.

“The uniform fits well?”

“Yes.”

“I wasn’t sure what size. I could only go by what my wife wears. And she’s a bit, shall we say, larger than you,” he added with a smile. “Do try to be a bit charming tonight, Lieutenant.”

“Charming?” I said.

“You know, smile a little. Be pleasant. We want to show everyone that our female soldiers can have a feminine side. Come, we mustn’t be late.”

As we drove along, he took out his handkerchief and said, “Turn toward me.” When I did, he reached over and made as if to wipe my mouth with it.

“What are you doing?” I said, fending off his touch.

“You look cheap.”

“Cheap,” I replied, my voice sounding petulant even to me. “You said to wear lipstick.”

“But I didn’t tell you to make yourself look like some five-ruble
shlyukha
. I don’t want them to get the wrong impression. Come here.” Then he added, “Please.”

I relented finally and let him wipe my mouth, feeling as he did so like a little child when my mother used to wash my face.

“There,” he said. “Much better. And here,” he said, handing me a pair of silk stockings he had removed from somewhere on his person. “Put these on.”

“Now?” I said.

“Yes.”

“I don’t have a garter belt.” I thought this would suffice, but Vasilyev, I would soon learn, did not take no for an answer. He was, if nothing else, resourceful.

“Stop the car,” he called to the driver.

At this, the man put on the brakes. “In the trunk there’s a first aid kit. Bring it to me,” Vasilyev instructed the man. The driver got out and returned in a moment with a military first aid kit and gave it to Vasilyev. He opened it, took out a roll of adhesive gauze, and handed it to me. “Use this to hold up your stockings,” he said.

“You’re joking,” I replied.

“Quickly. We don’t want to be late.” When I hesitated with him sitting there, he said, “Aren’t we the modest one. All right, I shall be outside.”

The entire episode would have struck me as comical if I wasn’t so annoyed by his trying to control my every movement. Even then, I was beginning to chaff under his claustrophobic hand, his Svengali-like manipulation. I longed for the simplicity of battle, the clarity of knowing your role, which side was the foe. I felt I was entering an entirely new and subtle kind of arena, one in which your enemy, as well as your comrade, was much harder to distinguish.

Soon Vasilyev got back into the car.

“Are we all set, Lieutenant?”

“Yes,
we
are all set,” I replied.

He glanced down at my legs. “You have lovely legs,” he offered.

“Are you with them?”

“With whom?”

“Those two,” I said, nodding my head toward the car that followed us.

“Those idiots!” he replied, indignant. “Hardly. I work in the Ideological Department.”

“Never heard of it.”

“It’s not important. Your job and mine are similar, though.”

“How so?”

“We are both trying to win this war, Lieutenant. It’s just that you do it with your gun, while I do it with my pen.”

“A pen doesn’t kill a single kraut.”

“That’s rather disappointing to hear from a poet. Don’t you believe the pen is mightier than the sword?”

“I don’t like any of this,” I said, motioning toward my new uniform. “Wearing makeup and silk stockings. Eating enough to feed an entire platoon. When our people are dying. I should be out fighting. That’s where I’m needed.”

“Your way, Lieutenant, is killing one German at a time. But if I write something that inspires a million more to join our cause and they each kill a German, that’s a million dead krauts. Think of it.”

“We’ve already lost a million soldiers in the Ukraine alone. Where are we going to get that many more?”

“That’s where you come in, my dear.”

“But I don’t write. At least not your brand of writing.”

“Yes, that’s true—you are a poet,” he said, his tone sliding toward something like sarcasm. “A poet and a killer in the same lovely person. What a lovely paradox.”

We finally arrived at the Kremlin and pulled up in front of a long, pale-colored, brightly lit building, which Vasilyev explained was Poteshny Palace. Taking my elbow, he led me inside and toward a large room where a crowd of people were milling about. Music drifted from a small string quartet in the corner. There were tables set up with food—more food than I’d ever seen before. Large platters with sturgeon and smoked salmon, sides of beef and hams, pheasant and duck and quail, cheeses and caviar, fresh fruits and small pastries and various delicacies. On one table alone there was an entire suckling pig with an apple stuffed in its mouth. Waiters came through the crowd with trays of appetizers or champagne. I was intoxicated by the heady aroma of it all.

Vasilyev leaned in close and whispered, “Look over there.” He pointed across the room at a group, in the center of which was a tall man with wild, dark hair, thick horn-rimmed glasses, and an expres
sion that betrayed a look at once bored and full of disdain. The others surrounding him appeared to be journalists. Several had cameras, and some were writing on small pads as the man spoke. “That scrawny fellow,” Vasilyev explained, “is Shostakovich.”

“The composer?” I asked.

“Yes. He’s back in the good graces of the Party, don’t ask me how. His problem is he’s all genius and no charm. When those journalists come over and start asking you questions about your experience at the front, be sure to tell them that morale among the troops is very high.”

“But it isn’t,” I countered.

“We must give the people something to hope for.”

“Even if it’s not the truth?”

He scoffed at this. “The truth is, we are fighting for our very lives. If a lie will help us to beat those sons of bitches, then so be it. Wait here.”

He walked over to the bevy of reporters. For a heavy man, he moved with a natural grace, gliding effortlessly across the floor with a dancer’s lightness of foot. As he spoke to the reporters, they glanced over at me, and in a moment they had left the composer and approached me en masse.

“Comrades,” Vasilyev said with the dramatic flare of an impresario, “I would like to present to you Lieutenant Tat’yana Levchenko, Hero of the Soviet Union.” At this, there was applause and several flashbulbs exploded, blinding me for a moment. “The destroyer of over three hundred fascists. Our secret weapon. Our very own
la belle dame sans merci
.”

One reporter blurted out, “Lieutenant Levchenko, how do you feel about winning the Gold Star?”

I hesitated, nervously staring at the small crowd. “It is…a very great honor,” I replied. “But I can only accept it on behalf of all my comrades in arms.”

“She’s just being modest,” Vasilyev chimed in.

“What do you think makes you such a great marksman?” a second asked.

“Patience. A steady hand.”

They continued to ask questions—what part of fighting I found
hardest, did I think women fighters were as capable as men, was I ever frightened, how soon would I return to the front.

“Do you think we are winning the war?” one man called out.

“I am confident that we will, in time, defeat the fascists.”

“What would you like to say to the Soviet people, Comrade?” asked another, his pencil poised for my answer.

I hesitated. It made me nervous to think that what I said would be read by millions of people, those same people who had written letters to me.

“I would tell them that our troops’ fighting spirit remains high,” I said. I saw Vasilyev nod approvingly at this, roll his finger for me to continue, to expand on that. “Our men and women are confident we will soon drive the invaders from our land. I would tell them that we must all be heroes to defeat the enemy. The factory worker making munitions no less than the farmer who feeds our soldiers.”

At this, Vasilyev stepped in. “Thank you, gentlemen. Comrade Levchenko is still recovering from her wounds, and we don’t want to tire her out.”

Taking me aside, he said, “Excellent, Comrade.”

“Was I charming enough?” I asked sarcastically.

“I particularly liked the business about the farmer and the factory worker. Had a certain poetic ring to it. Then again, I would expect no less from a poet.”

I turned toward him. “How did you know I wrote poetry?” I asked.

Smiling obscurely, he said, “We know a great deal about you actually, Lieutenant. You ran the hurdles and threw the javelin in track and field. You used to associate with an undesirable element back in your university days. You published a poem in
The Workers’ Voice
.”

I stared at him, wondering how he could have known that. Of course I hadn’t signed my name to it.

“For what it’s worth, I think your poetry is quite good. Though I would be more cautious about what I put my pen to from now on. You are a public figure now. Come, I want you to meet some people.”

I noticed some women there. Mostly they stood off by themselves talking in small groups and eating hors d’oeuvres. Arrayed in furs and
jewelry, they were the wives, I assumed, of the Party leaders. Stout-bodied women, with soft, flabby arms, they didn’t look as if the war had caused them to miss a single meal. To formal events such as these, the men would bring their wives, leaving their mistresses behind at their dachas.

Vasilyev took me by the elbow and ushered me toward a small group of men who were sipping champagne and smoking cigars. As I walked I could feel the tape pulling uncomfortably against the skin of my thigh.

“Good evening, Comrades,” Vasilyev said to them in his overly grand manner. “It is my great pleasure to present to you Lieutenant Levchenko, Hero of the Soviet Union.”