Beautiful Assassin (41 page)

“On the train one night, I bumped into him going between cars. He was bent over, coughing as if he were sick. I asked him what was the matter and he pretended it was nothing. But then he started coughing up blood, holding his side. I offered to go get a doctor, but he got very nervous. Said he didn’t need one. When I asked him what had happened, he told me he had gotten into a fight, that he thought one of his ribs was broken. He wouldn’t tell me who did it, though. In fact, he seemed very concerned about me telling anyone that we’d talked. Do you know anything about this, Tat’yana?”

I hesitated, wondering if I dare tell him all that I knew. Finally I said, “Those two men who follow us about.”

“You mean the two NKVD?”

He seemed to know much more about us than I had imagined.

“Why, yes. They did this to Viktor. They beat him up.”

“Why?”

“Because he disobeyed an order.”

“What sort of order?”

“I don’t know,” I lied.

“You don’t know? Or you don’t want to tell me?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“If Mrs. Roosevelt knew, she wouldn’t stand for such behavior.”

“No, you mustn’t!” I said urgently.

“But this is America. We have laws here,” he said with that sort of impetuous naïveté that was both so annoying and so appealing. What struck me then wasn’t so much that Americans thought they lived by a different set of rules from the rest of the world. It was that they were so confident, like little children playing a game, that there
were
rules at all, that the world was governed by logic, that it was organized around their optimistic wishes. It seemed completely alien to their thinking that there were dark forces beyond their control, chaotic forces that didn’t adhere to their sense of fair play.

“We may be in America, but we still are under our government’s control,” I explained.

Though I wanted to trust the captain, I knew, of course, I couldn’t tell him everything—about the spying, about what they wanted to do with Mrs. Roosevelt, about what they wanted
me
to do—not without it all blowing up in my face, without bringing down the terrible wrath of the entire Soviet system on my head. I knew if I confided in the captain all that I knew, I would be setting in motion something I would be unable to stop. It was partly fear. But it had much more to do with the fact that I wanted to do my duty, to be a loyal soldier, to do everything I could for my comrades back home fighting. I was still under the illusion that I could act as they wanted me to without serious consequences, that I could straddle the wobbly fence between what I considered my duty and what were the demands of my own conscience, and that I could return home in a few weeks’ time to the moral clarity of the war.

“Tat’yana, if I can help in any way, any way at all, you’ll let me know, all right?”

I stared at him, his eyes probing deeply into mine. Then I looked away, out over the park.

When the carriage ride was over, we got off and started walking along the street.

“Are you tired?” he asked.

“A little.”

“I thought maybe you might like to go out and listen to some music?”

“Perhaps I should get some rest. It will be a long day tomorrow.”

The next day we were scheduled to board a train in the afternoon on our cross-country tour. We were to make a series of whistle-stops and longer stays on our way across country.

“Of course,” he said, his mouth turning downward in disappointment. He flagged a taxi and we got in.

As we drove along, I felt this knot of anxiety in my stomach. I thought of our conversation about Viktor, about the captain’s asking me if Vasilyev was NKVD. Then I thought of Viktor’s warning me about the American. I wondered, too, if I were doing the right thing in lying to the captain about what Viktor and I had been asked to do? Would Viktor really defect? And would they hunt him down as they had so many others who tried to escape from their iron grasp? Then I thought of how when I returned to my room, Vasilyev would probably be lurking there, eager to pump me with questions about what I had gleaned from my time with the captain.

“On second thought, Jack,” I said, “perhaps I would like to hear some music.”

The captain turned toward me, surprised, a smile lighting up his face.

“Great. I know this nightclub down in the Village.”

Even before we entered the place, you could hear the music throbbing upward from the concrete, rumbling through the soles of your feet like distance bombing. Once inside, the noise seemed to grab hold of your spine—this rhythmic pounding of drums and the lusty blare of horns, accompanied by the wild hammering of piano keys. I had never before heard such music. Save for the dance floor in front of the stage, the room was half-lit, with darkened corners where couples sat close, lingering over drinks. A thick cloud of cigarette smoke hung over the room, as well as a pungent mélange of alcohol and perfume and hair pomade.
A band dressed in white coats performed on a stage at one side of the room, while people out on the dance floor writhed and twisted, throwing their arms and heads about, the men twirling their partners around before catching them in their arms. The women threw their hips wildly about and laughed boisterously. There were a number of servicemen in uniforms.

The captain led me through the crowded room to a table in the corner. When a waitress appeared, over the din he called to me, “What would you like to drink?”

“I don’t know. What are you going to have?”

He ordered something for both of us.

“So, what do you think?” he asked me, glancing around the room.

“It’s quite loud,” I replied. “What is this sort of music called?”

“Swing. Boogie-woogie. Do you like it?”

“I think so, yes,” I replied. “It makes one’s heart beat faster.”

He laughed at that. When our drinks came, the captain picked up his glass and said, “
Za zdorov’ye
.”

“
Za zdorov’ye,
” I replied, taking a sip of my drink. It was very strong, burning my throat. But once it landed, I soon felt this delicious warmth fanning out throughout my chest. “What is this called?” I asked, indicating the drink.

“A manhattan,” he replied, smiling.

After a while an attractive blond woman in a long blue gown joined the band onstage and began to sing. Her voice was honey smooth yet crackling like a green wood fire. Slowly the music and the drink began to loosen that tightness in my stomach. By the time I’d finished my second drink, the knot had all but disappeared. With my third manhattan, I felt positively wonderful.

“Would you like to dance?” the captain asked.

“I’m afraid I don’t know how.”

“You never danced back home?”

“Nothing like this,” I said, glancing out at the dance floor, where bodies were hurtling around. I had, of course, danced at my own wedding, but it was the traditional
vesilni pisni,
the Ukrainian folk music that my mother had taught me.

“I’m not much of a dancer either,” he explained, “but I’ll teach you what I know.”

“Well, I guess I’m game,” I finally conceded.

He grasped my hand and pulled me out to the dance floor. The captain, I found, was being modest about his abilities. He was in fact quite a good dancer, at least compared to me. He moved gracefully, with a practiced step and a natural rhythm that belied his tall and awkward body. Even with his one arm, he expertly spun me about. For my part, I felt clumsy, ungainly as a fish out of water. But he was patient with me, slowly showing me how to turn and what to do as he led me. As I started to get the hang of it, he increased our speed, so that soon he was spinning me around and around. I thought of that time after school when Madame Rudneva had tried to teach me American dancing.

When that song ended we danced another, and then another after that. Despite my earlier reservations, I began to get over my self-consciousness, and the more I danced the more I enjoyed it. It felt good being in motion, the only physical activity I’d had in months.

“Why did you say you weren’t a good dancer?” I shouted over the noise.

“Becky said I had two left feet.”

“I think she was mistaken.”

“She was…,” he started to say.

“What?”

“Never mind.”

Onstage the blond woman, accompanied by a lilting saxophone, began a slow song, her sultry voice filled with emotion I could sense despite the unfamiliar words.

I could tell that the captain was a little drunk, the way his eyes were slightly unfocused, heavy-lidded, his full mouth partially open. I myself felt a bit tipsy too, my head spinning as he swirled me around the dance floor.

“‘I’m in the mood for love,’” he sang, a little off-key.

I stared up into his eyes.

“That’s the words to the song she’s singing.”

The captain wrapped his one arm around my waist and drew me
gently to him. I felt a little uncomfortable at first, our bodies pressed against each other’s. I didn’t quite know where to put my right hand so as to avoid the stump of his left arm. Besides, I had not been in a man’s arms in such a very long time, it seemed almost unnatural. War had taught me to shun the touch of a man as something filled with threat. Yet as the captain and I danced, my head spinning not unpleasantly from the drinks, the comforting warmth of his hand against the small of my back, I found myself relaxing, easing into him. He moved me across the floor with such effortless grace, with such confidence, I felt something else too, something I had not experienced since the war began. Safe. I felt safe in his embrace. With my head against his shoulder, the music sinking down into my very soul like a balm, the drinks warming my insides, I felt the jagged edges of the world retreat very far away. I inhaled his cologne, the smoke and alcohol scent on his breath, the sour-sweet tang of his body. I must admit too that beyond feeling safe, I experienced another and even more peculiar sensation—the faintest whisper of desire, a language I thought I had all but forgotten. No, I told myself. Don’t. But instead of heeding my warning, I actually gave myself over to the sensation. It spoke to me of the fact that despite everything—all that I had lost, the numbing brutality of the war, the deadening of every nerve ending save those for survival—I could still feel like a woman. I held the captain tighter, pressing my body into his all the more firmly, even desperately. I sensed that he too felt as I did, for he started to rub my back in small circles.

“See,” he said, his lips against my ear, warm and moist.

“See what?”

“I told you it was easy, didn’t I?”

“Well, you are a good teacher,” I offered. “What were you going to tell me about your fiancée, Jack?”

He made an exasperated snort through his nose, then he pulled back so he could look at me. “You know I told you she left me because I enlisted? That’s not quite true.”

“Why did she leave then?”

“The truth is she left me for someone else. He was all ready to settle down and start a family. Could give her the sort of life she wanted.”

“Why did you not tell me the truth?”

“I guess I felt like a fool. The funny thing is I think you were right about her. How you said she probably was only interested in the life I could provide for her. And when she found something better she grabbed it.”

“It’s hard to see into people’s hearts. Perhaps she did love you after all.”

“I think I fooled myself into believing that.”

“Well, it was her loss then,” I said. “And you were right as well.”

“About what?”

“About love. I don’t think it is a bourgeois concept. It’s just that I never really experienced it.”

“Certainly with your husband,” he said.

I shook my head. “No. It was, as you have said, a marriage of convenience.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I am too,” I said, looking up into his face. In the overhead light of the dance floor, his face looked older, more mature, sadder too. The lines around his mouth suggested that this woman had broken his heart more than he admitted even to himself.

The woman singer began another song, and we danced slowly to it, my head naturally settling into the warm crook of his neck. I savored his smell and the touch of his skin, and I wished for the music never to end.

But it did end, of course. When we finally left the club, it was raining hard, the evening air cold and unforgiving. By the time he managed to get a taxi we were soaked. I shivered in the backseat. Jack took my hand in his and rubbed it.

“You’re freezing,” he said. He brought my hand up to his mouth and blew on it.

At the hotel, we got out, and he escorted me up to the door so that we were under the awning, out of the rain. A uniformed doorman held the door for us, but the captain pulled me over into a corner to one side of the door.

“Thank you for a wonderful day, Jack,” I said.

“You’re very welcome. I had a swell time too.”

Then he reached out and touched my face with his fingertips, five warm points of contact burning my cheek.

“You’re beautiful, Tat’yana,” he said.

I felt myself blush, my head swirling from the alcohol and from the music still pulsating in my blood.

With a modest smile, I said, “Perhaps you should not say such a thing.”

“But why? It’s true.”

“We’re soldiers. Our fates are not our own.”

He stared at me in the same peculiar way he had the previous night, an expression that was at once serious and yet with a hint of the mischievous. When I held his gaze, he must have taken that as an invitation, for he suddenly leaned toward me, cupped his hand under my jaw, and kissed me on the mouth. He pulled back a little, staring at me, as if awaiting my response. What I did next surprised me even more than it must have him. I placed my arms around his neck and drew his head down, kissed him back, hard, on the mouth.
Dura,
the thought ran through my head even as I kissed him. Yes, I was a fool, flirting with danger. Nonetheless, I clung to him for a moment, hungrily pressing into him for dear life, as if he were that very same tree I had taken refuge in against the German sniper. All of the previous months of war seemed to overcome me right then and there, and I gave myself over to it. Finally, though, when the moment had passed, embarrassed, I pulled away. Avoiding his eyes I said, “I’m sorry, Jack. We should not have done that.”