Dancing Under the Red Star (11 page)

As I learned later, after I was ushered out of the auditorium, many of the other children, including my friends, denounced their parents as ordered. My heart broke for them and for their anguished families, whatever was left of them.

I went to Maria’s house for moral support that afternoon. She was still fuming from the days proceedings, having chosen to remain seated and silent when asked to denounce her family. I did not fault her for that choice; it was her way of protecting not only herself but also the ones she loved. Such a decision was not made carelessly or taken lightly.

Maria shrugged apologetically. “I just couldn’t do it. I froze. I couldn’t say a word. I’m not like you, Margo. It’s so natural for you to stand up and speak what is right. When you spoke up today, my heart wanted to leap out of my chest for joy!” Her eyes met mine. “Everyone knows what great courage it took to do what you did. Margo, do you realize what you said? You said exactly the words that everyone else wanted to say—the things they knew were true—but were afraid to say. That’s a great thing! I am so proud of you!”

I was thankful for Maria’s affirmation, but I didn’t open my heart until I returned home that evening. Then I told Mama all that had happened. She listened quietly, her eyes steady, full of warmth and compassion. My shock and sadness surfaced in a wave of tears. Exhausted, I collapsed on my small bed and cried and cried. Mama lay down beside me. I felt her tears on my neck. We huddled together until sleep finally claimed us and the early morning hours came around again.

Mama was my best friend.

I got up earlier than usual, still charged with energy from yesterday’s events. I washed my face, got dressed, and ate a slice of dry bread, then departed for school. I wasn’t fearful or worried. Perhaps I should have been and just didn’t know any better. I was ready to hear the reactions, face the music, and confront the day. You can afford to be reckless when it feels as though you have nothing left to lose.

Things seemed peculiarly normal when I arrived at school. Had yesterday really happened? No one—neither school officials nor fellow students—said a thing about the previous day. Hadn’t I, uncharacteristically, said horrific things about Russia? It all felt surreal.

As instructed, I reported to the school office. The staff workers smiled, said little, and went about their usual business as if yesterday had been nothing out of the ordinary. I wondered why they would pretend it was not a big deal. Was it because I was an American? Perhaps they had something else in store for me, something worse, and they were just waiting for the appropriate time. Whatever the reasons, nothing happened…that day.

The school day ended, and I returned to our shabby room feeling more exhausted than I had the night before. I sank down on my bed and fell asleep without eating. My body, racked by stress and fear, cried out for rest. Yesterday’s crisis in the school auditorium had been the culmination of six years of personal and social conflict.

Only a few weeks ago the sun was still shining, and I had a loving father who came home to me every evening. I was different now; my friends were different. Memories of good times, formerly so vivid, were now like the pages of a book, ripped apart and blowing away in a strong wind. I cannot describe how much I missed my papa, my daddy.

Since my family had left America so long ago, I had learned much about this strange land. But there was much more to learn.

Six

LIFE WITHOUT PAPA

H
ard as we tried, Mama and I never became accustomed to living on our own. It never seemed natural since we were here only because of Papa, and now he was gone. Some days seemed easier than others, but really, all of them were next to impossible. You lived because you had to. The two of us were now trying to live the life of three. Papa was still very much with us, only we couldn’t see him, and he couldn’t see us. He was still our world, and Mama clearly believed, more than I did, that he would return. That was the measure of faith she had.

We had to sell most of our belongings. We kept only a few things: our sewing machine, Papa’s precious tools, and certainly his beloved drafting table. Mama wasn’t ready to abandon the possibility that he would one day return by the grace of God. Sometimes I daydreamed that he would walk back in through the door, right into our outstretched arms, and things would be as they used to be, as they were supposed to be. Thinking that way was fantasy, obsession, and personal torture, but it was the only remnant of hope we had. Mama continued to say, “Have faith, be strong, and God will get us through this.”

We didn’t have room to store even the few things we kept, so we gave many of these items to friends for safekeeping. It was hard parting with them, even temporarily; each of Papa’s things brought him back to mind just as we were saying a more permanent goodbye. In one case, a friend decided to sell my father’s tools to pay for a visit from her son, Alec, who was in the Russian army. That infuriated me, but I saw that her actions were driven by necessity. The system preyed upon and played upon the weaknesses and vulnerabilities of the human condition. She had nothing else to barter with, and we had inadvertently handed her some bargaining power. What else could she have done? Arrangements such as this were routine, not the exception. We were all too weak and ill equipped to initiate change. I felt more compassion for Alec’s mother later, when he was killed in the intense fighting in Gorky during the German occupation of the area in World War II.

I finally finished school in 1939
with honors,
all A’s and B’s. My goal and dream was to attend medical school at Moscow University and to practice medicine one day—back in America, should God or fate bless me with that opportunity. But we did not have the funds or friends in high places who could pull the necessary strings to help us get back to the United States, and I eventually had to accept that I had no real chance at further education. We had no money at all. I had to work to help support myself and Mama, because there was no other option.

Just after graduation, I went to Moscow for the first time on my own. For two weeks I visited with friends who had lived near us in the American Village. They were renting a room in a peasant’s house on a kolkhoz on the outskirts of Moscow. Our small reunion included some other acquaintances from my earlier years in Gorky. For many hours in the peaceful evenings, seven or eight of us talked together in that living room. Most of them were about my age, and some were a bit older, in their early twenties. When it came to discussing the future—destiny or even hope—there was mostly silence and quiet reflection in the room. That was okay, because anything peaceful was rare and valuable to us. But it was as if no one knew what to say, as if the future was unanimously understood to be a forbidden subject. Many of our collective hopes had already been dashed beyond repair.

One day I saw the owner of the kolkhoz, a man who looked about sixty years old, eating his midday meal on the front steps. He was pouring his four-year-old son a stiff shot of vodka. When I questioned him, the father laughed and proudly proclaimed, “He’s been drinking vodka since he was one year old! He can drink a glass of vodka faster than you can drink a glass of water!”

“But what will that do to his liver as he grows older?” I asked.

“What do you mean what will happen to him? He’s just fine! Look at me. I’m thirty-four years old and the strongest man on this kolkhoz!”

My jaw dropped when he blurted out his age. I couldn’t believe it. My question had just been answered. This poor man held no hope for the future either. Hopelessness was evidently a common thread for all who lived in this depraved country.

When I returned to our village, I landed a job in the chemical laboratory of the factory’s foundry. I stayed there for about three months and then earned a transfer, a promotion of sorts, to the foreign archives. I was chosen for my knowledge of English and my previous experience in the library. Vast piles of records, blueprints, and plans from the Detroit Ford Motor Company were haphazardly stored in those archives. I learned how Ford had sold plans for the factory to the city of Gorky, making it an exact duplicate of the Detroit plant. And this would have been quite a find, I reckoned, for certain interested parties, had these documents inadvertently slipped into the wrong hands. Since Henry Ford was simultaneously working both sides of the fence by supplying cars, technology, and financing to archenemies Russia and Germany, the people overseeing plant security and operations wanted this information secure. English, German, and British spies were everywhere, so secrecy about everything was always top priority.

All things considered, I enjoyed my job there, doing translations and keeping things in order. My boss and manager of the archives was Norissa Plotnov, an older woman not really qualified for her job. She spoke no languages other than her native Russian, nor was she able to read the blueprints. I took over virtually her entire workload. Unexpectedly, one day she told me that her sickly father, whom she had cared for most of her life, had just died, and she was spreading the news of her recent engagement and plans to wed. I was surprised that she was confiding these personal matters to me, even that she was in the process of quitting her job. She had never been very chummy with me before, so I suspected some kind of setup.

About a week later, purely by accident, I saw Norissa again in Kanavino, a Gorky suburb. As the two of us waited in line to board the streetcar, she was delirious with excitement, talking about her upcoming marriage and honeymoon. She was the happiest I had ever seen her, but soon she grew impatient in the waiting, then noticeably agitated, and she decided to take a crowded gypsy taxicab to her destination instead.

“Come on, Margaret. I don’t have time to wait. I’ll pay for us both, okay? Besides, there’s so much I want to tell you!” she pleaded.

I’m not sure why I chose to decline her offer. It would have saved me considerable time, cost me nothing, and been a significantly more comfortable ride. But something inside me said no. It was feeling over logic, instinct over intellect, faith over knowledge. Who knows? A simple premonition, like an inaudible voice, made me listen to my heart instead of my head.

Norissa and I said our good-byes, and she rode away in her taxi.

When the streetcar came along minutes later, I was able to secure a good window seat. We traveled just a few miles and then suddenly came to a jarring halt. There was mass confusion on the pavement ahead, gathering a large crowd of onlookers. I speculated that there had been an accident. Just then, a gap opened in the crowd, and I could see. Clutching my heart, I recognized Norissa’s taxicab entangled with another car. There had been a terrible collision—parts of cars and parts of people lay all over the street. Everyone in both vehicles was dead. Never in my life had I seen anything so ghastly! I recognized the body of my former boss, but her head had been totally severed and was lying in the middle of the street. Norissa Plotnov, who in her exhilaration had tried to convince me to ride with her. Other bodies were also strewn about.

I could hardly breathe.

There was no earthly reason why I should not have ridden with Norissa. Was this an indisputable instance in my life when maybe I heard the still, small voice of God? What else could it have been? I had no other explanation…but I knew that Mama prayed.