Beautiful Assassin (20 page)

“You have suffered greatly and you want your pound of flesh. But by helping us, you will have many more pounds of flesh than you could have your way. Besides, you will be thought a great patriot. You will go down in history as someone who helped the Motherland in a time of her greatest need.”

After I was in Moscow for about a week, Vasilyev told me I was to meet a group from the West that evening. It was to be held at the Spaso House, the residence of the American ambassador.

“There will be important Amerikosy there,” Vasilyev had told me. I noticed how he had used the demeaning word for Americans.

“What do they want with me?”

“They very much wish to meet you. Lieutenant, you are famous not just in our country, but all over the world now. The Yanks are fascinated by you. They can’t get enough of you.” Here he paused for a moment, brought his knuckle to his mouth in thought. “I must ask you one question, though. Are you a Jew?”

“What?”

“I heard that rumor.”

“Why on earth does it matter if I’m a Jew?”

“It would just be better if you weren’t. The Americans can be quite touchy about such things. But if you are, we can work around that.”

“You mean, change it?”

“You could be a ravishing Georgian. Or a lovely Armenian.”

I was struck by how fluid reality was for Vasilyev. I would find that nothing was so fixed, so permanent and unchangeable that he couldn’t
alter to his purpose with a nice turn of phrase, with a catchy line. Even the war—
especially
the war—was something he could manipulate. He had only to change a headline, reword a few sentences, take a couple of publicity photos, and voilà, the war was swung in our favor, the Germans close to being vanquished.

“I’m not a Jew,” I said.

“Well, that simplifies things.”

That evening when I got in the car, seated up front near the driver was another man I’d not seen before. He was smoking a cigarette.

“This is Radimov,” Vasilyev said, indicating the man in the front seat. “He will act as your interpreter.” The man in front looked over his shoulder and smiled at me, his lips drawing back to show teeth stained from smoking. He was thin, with a ruddy complexion. “I’ve read much about you, Comrade,” Radimov said.

“Hello,” I said, in English.

“So you speak English?”

“A little. Not very much, I’m afraid,” I replied.

The ambassador’s residence was in Spasopeskovskaya Square, not far from the Kremlin. As we pulled up in front of the impressive mansion, Vasilyev put his hand on my wrist and said, “Lieutenant, be mindful of what you say to the reporters. We don’t want to alienate them. They are invaluable to us. Above all, be sure to tell them that we are winning the war. After all, they wouldn’t want to bet on a losing horse.”

Inside the embassy, I was greeted by the ambassador, a tall, gray-haired man named Standley. He wore wire-rim glasses and had about him a slightly distracted, professorial demeanor.

“I’m so pleased you could come, Lieutenant Levchenko,” he told me through the interpreter Radimov. He shook my hand vigorously. “I’ve heard so much about you. I can certainly see why they call you the Beautiful Assassin.”

“I am honored to meet you as well, sir,” I replied.

“They tell me you can shoot the wings off a fly at a hundred meters.”

“I think they exaggerate.”

“And I think you’re just being modest. Three hundred krauts! That’s some shooting, young lady.”

I was led into a palatial hall with a high, domed ceiling from which hung a huge chandelier. The ceiling was painted a pale blue, so that it reminded me of the sky on a clear spring day over the Crimea, before the war and all the smoke. When they spotted me, a small group of journalists, some holding cameras, rushed over, pushing and shoving to get close. Unlike the Soviet reporters, the Americans had little sense of decorum. Like unruly children, all at once they began yelling things out at me in English and waving and trying to catch my attention.

Vasilyev attempted to quiet them. “Gentlemen, please,” he said through the interpreter. “Lieutenant Levchenko will be happy to answer your questions. But one at a time.”

Their hands leapt in the air.

“You,” Vasilyev said, pointing at one reporter.

He stared at my legs, then said something in English.

“He wants to know if you wear stockings while fighting,” the interpreter explained to me.

The reporters guffawed as a group, much like a bunch of raucous boys at a football match. I glanced over at Vasilyev, who offered a smile that was meant to placate me.

“No, I don’t wear stockings to fight,” I replied.

“Is it difficult to sleep in a foxhole beside men?” asked another.

“It is difficult to sleep in war period,” I replied. “There is much noise.”

They asked many questions in a similar vein. If the men flirted with me. If my fellow soldiers treated me like a girl or like a soldier. How did I change in front of the men? What did I think of the sight of blood? At least the Soviet reporters had treated me with the dignity due a soldier. These Americans were fools, I thought to myself.

“We are at war,” I explained. “We don’t think of such things. We think only of defeating the enemy.”

“Let’s get some pictures, sweetheart,” one American called out. He was dark featured, good-looking, with fine white teeth and hair heavily pomaded. He spoke rapidly, the words spilling from his mouth in the
self-assured way I thought all Americans spoke, like gangsters in the movies. “Pretend she’s aiming her gun.”

“Smile,” added another.

“Tell him I don’t smile when I shoot my gun,” I replied.

The interpreter, however, looked over to Vasilyev, who gave me a frown, then instructed me simply to go ahead and smile for the picture. Which I did, albeit stiffly.

“Atta girl,” one journalist called out. “By next week, your face will be in every paper in the States.”

“The boys back home are gonna eat you up, sweetheart,” said another.

I felt like saying I didn’t care in the least what those overfed and pampered capitalists who sat back and let my countrymen die while they went to their picture shows and drove their fancy automobiles thought of me.

“What would you like to tell the American people?” one called out.

I paused, then said, “I would encourage your soldiers to fight like men.”

The interpreter again looked to Vasilyev, who sighed, then, turning toward the Americans, replied for me. “Comrade Levchenko said she is delighted to have the full cooperation of all our valued American friends. She desires only complete victory over our mutual enemies, and is sure that with your continued assistance we shall soon defeat the fascists.”

“What does she think of Mrs. Roosevelt’s invitation?” one reporter called out.

When the question was translated, I frowned, then turned to Vasilyev.

“Later,” he whispered to me. Then to the group he replied through the interpreter. “Lieutenant Levchenko is deeply honored by Mrs. Roosevelt’s invitation. She feels that the International Student Conference is a wonderful opportunity for our two countries to create an open dialogue that will ensure a lasting world peace after the hostilities are concluded.” He then turned toward me and smiled, before saying, “She eagerly awaits meeting the First Lady in person.”

As soon as we got into the car to head back to my room, I turned to Vasilyev and asked, “What do you mean, ‘meet the First Lady’?”

“You are going to America,” he replied bluntly.

“America?” I exclaimed. “I cannot go to America. My place is here.”

Before he replied, he told the driver to stop the car.

“Gentlemen,” he said to the two in front. “May I have a moment alone with the lieutenant.”

We happened to have stopped beside the river. The others got out and walked down toward it, where I could see them light up cigarettes in the dark.

“Mrs. Roosevelt,” Vasilyev began, “has heard about you and desires to meet you in person. She is organizing an international student conference convening in Washington and has graciously extended an invitation for you to come as her personal guest. The theme of the conference is peace among nations in the postwar world. You will attend as one of our country’s representatives.”

“But I want to return to fighting.”

“You will do far more good for your country there than at the front.”

“I am a soldier, not a diplomat.”

“We feel it is important for the Americans to see you.”

“Why?”

“You will present the new face of the Soviet Union,” he said. “One that is intelligent, educated, brave.” Smiling, he added, “And attractive too. It is our hope that your presence will inspire the Americans to get off their fat capitalist asses and open that second front they keep promising.”

I suddenly recalled my conversation with Stalin, how he said I would get them to fight. Only now did I understand. They had all known about it. Everyone but me.

“So this isn’t really about my going to a peace conference, is it?” I asked.

“That too. But we are at war now. Winning takes precedence.”

“So let me go back to fighting.”

“This is the best way for you to serve your country right now. You
will go to the conference, and then when it’s over, you can return home and go back to shooting Germans to your heart’s delight.”

“What if I refuse to go to America?”

He wagged his head so that his jowls quivered. “I’m afraid you can’t, Lieutenant. This comes from the very top. You will do your duty.”

“My duty is here.”

“Your duty is whatever we say it is, Comrade Levchenko,” he said, his dark eyes flashing with impatience and the muscles in his soft face tensing. It was the first time I’d seen him on the verge of losing his control. Yet in the next instance his face relaxed, and he assumed his usual congenial demeanor. “You will go and enjoy yourself. And as soon as the conference is over, I promise that you can go back to the front lines then. And your country will be deeply grateful for your service.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this before?” I asked.

“Certain details had to be worked out.”

“When do I leave?” I said finally.

“Tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow!”

“Yes. Think of it as a little R & R. A much deserved one.”

“How long is the conference?”

“A few days.”

“And then I can return when it’s over?”

“You have my word,” he said.

We drove back to my hotel in silence. I was a loyal soldier and only wanted to do my duty, to do all that I could to defeat the Germans. I loved my country and would gladly have given my life for it. If I could best help in this way, I was determined to do it, despite my own personal disappointment in not returning to the front.

As I was about to get out, Vasilyev placed his big paw on my arm. “Lieutenant,” he said. When I turned to look back at him, I saw that he was holding something in his hand. An envelope.

“Here,” he said, his tone hinting at something ominous. I hesitated taking it, sensing that something was wrong and that by accepting it I’d be authenticating whatever the bad news was that it contained. I glanced down at what he held, then back up at him. “It’s about my husband, isn’t it?”

He nodded.

Reluctantly, I accepted the letter but continued to stare at it for a moment. I thought how until I opened it, Kolya was still alive, still very much in the world with me. He seemed so real, so palpable to me then. I could picture his hands, the color of his eyes, hear his voice. He had been a good man, I thought. A doting father to Masha. Someone who had not only loved me but had done so unconditionally, even though he knew it wasn’t returned. With the deaths of Masha and my parents, he was all that I had left, the only slender thread connecting me to my former life. I thought of what I had secretly wished for when we’d parted at the train station over a year before. Did I really want that?

As soon as I opened it and saw the military letterhead, I knew immediately that it was a
pokhoronka
letter, one of those formal missives informing next of kin of a death. As I read it, I learned that Kolya had been reported missing in action in the fighting at Leningrad. Not dead, but missing. Still, I knew what that implied. If he wasn’t dead, he was a prisoner, which was just as good as dead. As I stared at the words on the page, tears sprung to my eyes and slid down my cheeks. I hadn’t wanted to cry in front of Vasilyev, but I was helpless to stop. I had never felt so completely alone in the world, so utterly vulnerable. Kolya, I realized as never before, had been there for me, protected me, insulated me from the world. Now I was alone.

Vasilyev reached out and put his hand on my back and rubbed it in small circles. “My deepest sympathies, Comrade,” he said. “Would you prefer company?”

I looked over at him.

“I assure you, my offer is quite benign. Just an ear to listen,” he explained.

“Thank you, Comrade,” I said. It was one of the few times Vasilyev would show a more human side. “But I think I’d rather be alone.”

“Good night then. I shall pick you up at seven, Lieutenant.”

Without bothering to get undressed, I lay on top of the covers, staring at the ceiling. Another part of my life had just come to an end. Some time during the night, sleep finally claimed me.

A
nd so, I left all I knew behind me, my past, my homeland, my own identity. I had never been so far from everything I had known and loved. But it was much more than physical distance. I felt emotionally alone, isolated. My family gone. My comrades killed or taken prisoner, or off fighting the Germans, as I should have been. My beloved country under siege.

From the deck of the ship, I stared out at a sea that was a savage gray, riotous and unsettled as my own heart. A cold, driving rain out of the northwest pummeled the decks. The
Poltava,
a 25,000-ton dreadnought, slammed headlong into ten-meter swells, the ship’s engines shuddering each time the vessel crashed into another wall of water. I had to fight just to remain standing. Everything toward the horizon appeared a leaden void, the sort of dim netherworld I imagined inhabited by the blind soldier I’d read to in the hospital at Baku. The weather had taken a turn for the worse shortly after we’d passed the Faroe Islands. The previous night at dinner, the captain, a gregarious, silver-haired man seemingly too old for war, had said we should be thankful for such weather. It shielded us against the wolf packs that prowled the North Atlantic. I hardly felt fortunate, though. I could still only pick at my food, having spent the first several days of our voyage hunkered down in my cabin over a bedpan. As I now stood on the deck looking out at the vast, roiling grayness, my knees weak, my stomach still churning uneasily,
I had the distinct feeling that this was a passage between worlds, like that which exists between the living and the dead.

We were six days out from Murmansk, the port we’d sailed from. The first four days I’d been confined to my cabin with sickness, until I’d gotten, as the sailors called it, my sea legs. Then we ran into weather, and the captain gave orders that we were to stay belowdecks, that it was dangerous to go topside. However, despite the wind and rain and rough seas, I finally had to get out of the stuffy, fetid air down below, which seemed only to make me sicker. When no one was watching, I slipped out of my cabin. I was able to get my hands on a poncho, which kept me from getting completely soaked in the lashing rain. I took cover in the lee of the ship’s starboard gun turret. From here, I could gaze out at the tenebrous world we sailed through.

When I wasn’t sick, I’d spend most of the time in my cabin reading, thinking about things. I’d found some books in a small footlocker beneath the bunk I slept on. A tattered copy of Turgenev’s
A Sportsman’s Sketches
, which my father used to read to me when I was a girl. Gogol’s
Dead Souls,
whose title seemed almost a description of myself. Vasilyev had also given me a small American phrase book, with which I was to practice English. It had silly expressions like
My favorite baseball player is Babe Ruth.
Or,
Where is the Empire State Building?
Or,
Please hand me the ketchup
. Several times, Vasilyev would have Radimov instruct me. He turned out not to be a particularly good teacher. He was impatient and often short with me. “No, no, no,” he would cry, exasperatedly waving his cigarette about. “Not
pleasant
. You say, ‘It gives me great
pleasure
to meet you.’”

Or I’d pass the long hours of the voyage writing poetry. It was the first time since the war started that I was actually able to concentrate on writing without distractions. A strange calmness, that quiet introspection necessary for poetry, had seeped into my soul once more. You see, without realizing it I’d found myself changed again, altered in some incalculable fashion. These past several months—the weeks recovering at the hospital, the time in Moscow, the last several days aboard ship—had been an uncomfortable but necessary period of adjustment for me. I found I was no longer the person I’d been just a short time before, the
warrior, the callous sniper who could shoot the enemy without batting an eye. Sometimes I would wake from nightmares about the German I’d killed in the cemetery in Sevastopol. I’d jerk awake as his hand gripped my wrist, his voice urgent. “Senta,” he’d cry. “Senta.” Then again, I certainly wasn’t that other woman I’d been prior to the war either, the wife and mother. Especially with the news of Kolya, that part of me was gone forever. Another casualty of war. I was in a gray area, neither fish nor fowl. And now I was leaving all that I’d ever known and heading off to an alien land, for what purpose I had no idea but about which I felt a strange foreboding. I told myself I still wanted to return to the fighting, to the brutal clarity of battle. But another part of me wondered how I could ever go back to placing men in my sights and coldly killing them. As much as I still hated the Germans for what they’d done—to me, to my country—I didn’t know if I could do that again.

One afternoon I had been in my cabin working on a poem. It was about Kolya.

As I worked on the poem, I found myself rubbing the wedding band I had taken to wearing again. I don’t know why exactly I’d begun wearing it. I didn’t love him as a husband, of that I was certain. Perhaps it was out of guilt. Or maybe loyalty. Then again, maybe it was hope, the frail hope that if I wore it Kolya might still be alive. I wondered, had
it not been for the war, if I would’ve stayed with him. Learned, as my mother had said, to love him. Or would I have turned into one of those old and embittered women whose frustration is visible in her eyes and mouth. Or would I have followed my heart and left him. But now with the news of his being missing in action, all that was just a moot point.

That’s when a knock came on my cabin door. It was Vasilyev, who had brought me a bromide he’d gotten from the ship’s infirmary.

“I’m told this will help your stomach,” he’d said.

“Thank you,” I replied, waiting for him to leave. He didn’t, though. Instead, he stood in the narrow doorway of my tiny cabin, filling it with his bulk.

“What is it you are writing, Lieutenant?”

“A poem.”

“I would very much enjoy hearing you read it.”

“No,” I said with more brusqueness than I’d intended. I could see his mouth take it as an insult. “What I mean is, it’s not done.”

“Of course,” he said. “But when you finish it, I would be honored if you wished me to peruse it.”

“Perhaps,” I said.

He remained standing in the doorway. “Lieutenant, regardless of what you might think, I am not the enemy,” he offered.

I stared silently at him.

“We are on the same side. We want the same things.”

“And what would those be?” I asked.

“For one, victory over the fascists. For another, a better life for our people. A place where poetry can flourish.”

I couldn’t help but smile.

“You don’t believe that?” he said.

“Not when our poets are thrown in prison.”

He nodded ruefully. “Of course, some minor setbacks are to be expected.”

“If you were one of them I don’t think you would call being sent to the camp a minor setback,” I scoffed.

“If it were up to me, poets would have much more freedom.”

“As they do in America?”

“
Pfft
,” he scoffed. “They have no poetry there. No
real
poetry, anyway.”

“Have you been there?” I asked.

“Yes, several times. The last was shortly before the war.”

“Did you like it?”

He shrugged. “It has, how shall I say, a certain appeal. They make excellent bourbon. And I enjoy New York. At least it has some culture.”

“How did you find the people?”

“They are very self-centered. Like children, they live for the moment. They have no sense of history. No understanding of class struggle. Even the poor bow down to Mammon. They’ve been duped into accepting the lie that is the ‘American dream.’”

I thought of what Madama Rudneva had told me about America. “But they have freedom,” I offered.

“Freedom!” he scoffed. “For the wealthy few perhaps. Not for the millions of workers who live in poverty. Or for their Negroes, who are still enslaved.”

“But they can live how they choose.”

He had snickered at this. “It’s all an illusion, Lieutenant. Marx said religion is the opiate of the people. For Americans it’s the opiate of success.”

To my right I heard someone say, “You really oughtn’t to be out here.” Startled, I turned to see Viktor Semarenko walking toward me, his feet splayed against the heaving of the ship, his legs rubbery as those of a drunken man. He was one of two other Soviet students headed to the conference in America with me. Viktor was tall and rawboned, with a long, equine face. A gaudy scar inched its way beneath his left cheek, where a German had cut him with a bayonet. The knotted scar drew his features to that side and gave him a slightly skewed expression.

“I needed some air,” I replied.

“So you’d rather freeze your balls off up here?”

“I don’t think I have to worry about that, Sergeant,” I kidded.

“Not from what I’ve heard. You have more
mude
than most men.”

Like me, Viktor had been a sniper, one who’d had over 150 kills to his credit. He’d fought at Kiev and Kharkov, was captured once and managed to escape. During the battle for Kharkov, he’d killed an entire platoon of Germans, for which he’d had his picture on the front page of
Izvestiya
and received the Gold Star and the Order of Lenin. And like me, he’d been paraded around, feted, accorded a hero’s status. However, I’d heard that he could be difficult, that he drank too much and had an eye for the ladies. There was a rumor that he’d gotten into some trouble involving the wife of a local Party leader. Unlike me, he eagerly looked forward to going to America, anything to get away from the war. Now he was interested only in having a good time, and he looked upon this trip as if he were going away on holiday. He joked that when he was there he wanted to ride in a convertible with a “big-bosomed blonde” who looked like Betty Grable sitting by his side. I had never heard of this Betty Grable, so he’d taken from his wallet a frayed picture of a long-legged blond woman in a bathing suit. “Not bad, eh? You don’t find legs like that back home.”

Viktor was coarse and foulmouthed, but also funny. He made me laugh, and I liked him for that. He played cards and traded with some of the sailors on the
Poltava,
for cigarettes and booze and German souvenirs. Despite his peasant language, he was actually pretty bright. In fact, before the fighting, he’d been studying to become a veterinarian. To him the war was just a stinking pile of
der’mo,
as he referred to it, something we should be grateful to be out of for now. He hated the way the Soviet high command had sacrificed the lives of tens of thousands of soldiers while the big shots back in the Kremlin lived like kings. And he couldn’t stand Vasilyev, called him “that fat swine.” I’d warned him he’d better be careful or his mouth would get him in trouble. “Fuck him,” he’d replied. “He needs us. What’s he going to do in America if he doesn’t have real war heroes to parade around?”

“How are you feeling, Lieutenant?” he asked me now.

“A little better.”

“Here,” he said, holding out a flask to me. “It’ll warm you up.”

“I don’t know if I should,” I explained, touching my stomach.

“It’ll settle your guts. It’s first-rate cognac. I won it off one of the sailors.”

He removed the top and took a drink. “Go on,” he said, offering me the flask. “You need to relax. That’s your problem, Lieutenant.”

Finally I gave in and took a small sip. At first, though, I regretted it, as I felt a new wave of nausea sweep over me.

“Give it a chance,” Viktor said. He was leaning against the base of one of the big guns, his
ushanka
pulled low against the rain. Water collected in the furrow of his scar and ran sideways down along his face.

After a while, my stomach did settle down as the cognac’s warmth fanned out throughout me. “That’s good,” I said.

“What did I tell you? I offered that little
khuy
Gavrilov a sip, and you know what he says?” Viktor asked me. “He says he doesn’t touch hard spirits. That it weakens the will and we need to remain firm against our enemies.”

As he repeated this, Viktor mimicked Gavrilov’s high-pitched, pedantic voice, and he stroked an imaginary goatee, exactly the way Gavrilov did when he talked. It made me laugh. Anatoly Gavrilov was the third member of our student entourage, some sort of official in Komsomol, the Party youth organization. Viktor didn’t like him and was always needling him. He called him that little
khuy
—a prick. I didn’t much care for Gavrilov either. A slight, bookish man who always had his nose in some Party tract, he was arrogant and condescending, like a precocious child in school, the one who was always vying for the teacher’s attention. He never just talked—he lectured, haranguing you about Party politics or Communist ideology.

“He
is
an annoying little bugger,” I agreed.

“He’s down there now, yakking with the fat swine. Christ, to hear Gavrilov tell it you’d think he’d seen all this action.”

“Where did he fight?”

“Huh!” Viktor snorted. “That’s just it, he didn’t. He spent the last year behind a desk in Moscow, writing propaganda for
Komsomol’skaya Pravda
.”

“Why is he going on this trip then?”

“My guess is he’s a
stukach
.”

A
stukach
was an informant for the government. Every factory or
building or organization in the Soviet Union had them, and they curried favor of those above them by informing on their colleagues.