Dancing Under the Red Star (20 page)

Many others in the Vorobyo’vka were political prisoners awaiting trial or being held for exile and deportation. People accused of other crimes were held in the Gorky city prison. Gradually I gained a better sense of how many people were imprisoned here: many Russians and even more foreigners, all seized on political grounds. But I was the only American.

Prison mornings started with a nerve-racking shrill bell at five o’clock. Then we received our daily ration of bread and sugar. As news about Papa had suggested, the bread was terrible, almost inedible. But Mama had taught me to make the best of what was available, and I came to discover a little prison culinary secret. One of the guards showed me how to remove the bread crust and pour some slightly discolored hot water on it. This produced a not-too-unpleasant toastlike flavor, much better than the plain bread. Necessity is the mother of invention—we could have coined that expression in Gorky’s Vorobyo’vka prison.

The noon meal was not much better. I soon learned that its quality depended upon who was cooking that day and what mood they were in. We always tried to avoid angering the cooks. Lunch was often soup made with unpeeled, nearly raw potatoes, some carrots, and small herring floating about here and there. Again we had a kettle of hot water. The food was horrible, but I had to eat; I was famished. All the prisoners were—always. And I already knew how to deal with the most hideous-tasting potatoes on the planet. Even these prison potatoes were better than the four sacks of frozen ones Mama and I had lived on.

After lunch I would often open my bed to prepare for a long-awaited and much-needed nap in that single permitted hour—only to have a guard burst in and march me off harshly for another interrogation. I always hoped it would be Fidoli who interrogated me.

These constant interrogations, conducted mostly by Fidoli, came to be a game between us. He would repeatedly ask the same questions, and I would give him the same answers—the truth. Then he would pause, smile, and begin his thoughtful rephrasing tactics as if the reversal or insertion of new words in his inquisitions would somehow bring the truth out of me. It was a game indeed, but I resolved that I wasn’t going to break or confess to something I hadn’t done. I smiled back and answered the same way I always had. This went on for some time, without much variation, this game of cat and mouse.

The unwritten but well-known mission statement of the interrogators was “Don’t talk—that’s okay. We’ll exhaust you, and then you’ll talk!” Strangely enough, during this particular time of interrogations, the inquisitors were never rough with me. They never resorted to physical abuse or torture, and they never used obscene language in my presence, not once. Instead, my interrogators were arrogantly aloof, sometimes seeming stupid, but that was all intentional.

I sometimes heard other interrogations being conducted in the office next to ours, accompanied by violent words and moans of pain. I knew what was happening, but I didn’t want to give in to that ugly truth about people, power, and opportunity. Men and women were beaten and raped all around me. Terrible things are done when opportunity sees no immediate confrontation, and there is no accountability to law or justice. Perhaps I was just lucky. Or was I being protected somehow? Was it because Mama always prayed, saying, “Don’t worry. God will get us through this”?

I must admit, however, that my favorite interrogator, Fidoli, was a rather nice guy at heart; I actually liked him. Fidoli, as well as others, also seemed to like me. At their request, I began to help some of the interrogators with their English pronunciation and homework, because they all secretly wanted to perfect their grasp of the English language. I was a political prisoner, and I was a victim, but I was also a favorite of most of these officials and interrogators, though I never knew why. That doesn’t mean my interrogations ceased. I was just able sometimes to see us all as very human, following the steps laid out for us by the Soviet choreographers.

The interrogations went on and on. This routine proved exhausting, especially when I was ruthlessly interrogated by a different officer, a raving madman. I would return to my cold, dark cell to find that supper had been served hours earlier and my plate of
today’s special mystery treat
was sitting on the floor. I could hardly ever bring myself to eat it. The food was barely tolerable when it was warm, but cold—that was unbearable.

Sleep was difficult here too. I never got used to the annoying light constantly shining in my eyes from the dim bare bulb overhead. It was a miserable light, made more distressing because we were not permitted to cover our eyes.

At five o’clock the day started again, with the infamous bell, the bathroom routine, the bread-sugar-and-hot-water breakfast. We were always so bitterly cold that we quickly drank the entire pitcher of water, just to feel warm again for a few moments. Swollen from all that water, our fingers, toes, and faces made us look like puffed-up balloon caricatures. Then at nine, like clockwork, it was back to the interrogation room.

At least the cold in our cell kept the smell down. When the nauseating parasha was full, Anastasia and I were led naked to the bathroom carrying the nearly overflowing bucket between us. As we emptied and rinsed it out with lye water, a guard stayed feverishly glued to the spy hole. It was painfully humiliating, though my inherent modesty was quickly eroding under these intrusive circumstances. What else could one do? I was a prisoner, after all.

Once every ten days we were allowed to go to the bathhouse. Actually, it was a requirement, but only Anastasia saw it that way. The prisoners were marched naked to the bathhouse in ranks at assigned intervals. Unfortunately, this formal requirement was not strictly enforced. The prison was so filthy that I would have gladly gone to the bathhouse twice a day—even naked! When the ten days came around again, there was nothing any of us needed more urgently than a wash. Anastasia always refused to go; she simply refused to bathe herself. She was the talk of the prison, and she smelled terrible, even in our stinking environment. Everyone knew her ways, and most avoided her like the plague. Except me. I was her cellmate.

Word had it that many years ago Anastasia had been a nun. But something terrible had happened to her, and now her faith was shattered, turning her into a very angry, embittered woman. She spent most of her time on her knees praying, but as if she was in utter misery, rocking back and forth, always chanting, though I could never understand her words.

Feeling isolated and overwhelmed, I tried hard to be her friend in the early days of my imprisonment. I told her about my family and my work and tried to find common ground with her. Though I talked to her, Anastasia seldom replied, and I never learned anything significant about her past. I wanted to be encouraging and positive, but she would not be consoled or comforted. She seemed to have no motivation for living; her eyes were two dead black holes in space. Everyone knew she wasn’t all there; something was wrong with her mentally. When the moon was full or when she was aggravated, she had a purely devilish glint. Hoping I could get through to her, I told Anastasia far too much too soon. I didn’t tell her everything, but what I did tell her, she carefully remembered.

Eleven

BETRAYED

A
fter I had been in the cell with Anastasia for a few weeks, matters came to a head between us. I had worked to befriend other women and became fairly well liked throughout the prison. Anastasia was feared and hated. We were like oil and water; we absolutely didn’t mix. Our spirits smashed together like an inevitable midair collision.

I never saw her change or wash her clothes, and she only had one set. It didn’t take me long to discover I had lice due to Anastasia’s filth. I was tired of being nice to her. I’d tried respecting her as my elder, despite her stench, but now I’d had enough. Lice had to be dealt with—today.

Knowing no other alternative, the next time I was taken for interrogation, I told Fidoli about the lice, about Anastasia’s refusal to bathe. She was promptly removed from our cell and forcibly led to the bathhouse for disinfecting. I was elated! All her clothes and mine were sent through a disinfecting procedure twice, along with our bedding, which consisted of a cotton pad, a thin cotton blanket, and a pillow without a pillowcase.

Lice called for a major cleanup. Everyone in our block of cells got to wash that day. When we returned from the bathhouse, it was time for bed and, for me, not a moment too soon! No filthy Anastasia, no lice. I was ready to crawl under anything that would cover me, and I hoped I wouldn’t wake up for several years, hopefully back in Detroit. In the miserable cold of the room, I crawled under my blanket, still wearing my clothes, my coat, and my shoes. I had just drifted off to sleep when the door abruptly opened, and there stood Anastasia with her interrogator, Roslov.

He stood there, leaning his elbow on the door panel, and under his watchful guard, Anastasia walked defiantly toward me. I didn’t budge an inch as she squinted her black eyes at me and, with her familiar wicked grin, slurred the words, “You’ll get what’s coming to you now, Jew!”

“Really?” I asked. “And what is that?” I feigned a lunge toward her face—a ploy, daring her to retaliate and attack me so I would have good reason to make the next move. She didn’t answer but carefully backed away from me, as a fearful cat, with its hair rising, takes its natural defensive posture. This woman was pure evil, and I couldn’t wait for them to separate us again. Yes, spirit knows spirit, and the wicked spirit inside the shell of Anastasia hated my spirit with a passion. I had no doubt that she, or it, wanted to see me dead.

Roslov barked a command, and she left the cell. I don’t know what happened to Anastasia that night, but she didn’t stay with me. Surprisingly, I slept like a baby for once; my night was peaceful and sound.

In the morning I was taken away to the same interrogation room and asked the same questions, and I gave Fidoli the same answers in the same hard chair in the corner. It was a torture tool disguised as a chair, which became acutely painful when you sat there for hours. But this time I was kept there all day and half the night. And the questions began to change. Fidoli knew things about my life he had never mentioned before.

I was returned to my cell around three in the morning, and by then I was so tired and overwrought that I couldn’t sleep. Anastasia was back in my room, though she wouldn’t look at me. At five the next morning, the interrogation began again. I was thoroughly badgered by Fidoli to confess that I had agreed to spy for England’s Secret Service. That was my official charge. In essence, that’s why I was in prison. A spy for Britain! That was the underhanded spin they put on things, the lie that had landed me in prison. They would not believe that my friendship with the British officers, Leslie and Mac, was innocent, despite my sincerest efforts to convince them.

Anastasia had reported to her interrogator every incriminating word I had ever said to her during our time together: my thoughts, feelings, intentions, past affiliations, relationships. Much of what she reported was merely her lies, fabricated nonsense, which I think the interrogators knew. But, to an unknown degree, I was still exposed. Only time would tell how much.

What a fool I had been for opening my mouth to her in the first place! And to think that all I intended was to help her, encourage her, and be a friend to her when she had none. Anastasia had gathered quite an earful from me over the course of our days together. And it was my own fault; I should have known better. I was much too trusting and entirely too open with this loose cannon of a woman. She never forgave me for turning her in, and for the rest of my life, I have struggled to forgive her for the way she retaliated. What she did to repay me for making her clean up was not an eye for an eye. It was much worse.

My interrogations continued almost around the clock. Exhausted from lack of sleep, I began to hallucinate and couldn’t focus my eyes. The severe swelling of my feet and ankles made me barely able to walk. I had tried exercising to regain the use of my muscles, but I was sharply told that exercise was prohibited. The only uninterrupted sleep I got was on Saturdays and Sundays. About a month passed like this, and then I was allowed my first food package from my mother. I cried out loud when I saw the delicious cookies she had baked for me! Those were the first tears I had cried since my arrest—and the best cookies I have ever eaten.

In the interrogation room, I asserted my innocence over and over. Sometimes all the interrogators and prison officials, including Fidoli, would stare at me with an overtly theatrical look of skepticism. I think they were trying to perfect their dramatic acting, believing I would eventually crack and confess to
their
idea of my crimes under the pressure of their continuous expert scrutiny. I found it ridiculous. They would walk toward me with their heads cocked sideways, looking threatening, and say, “Now, come on and tell us the truth or else!” Or else what?

My answers were always the same. “I am telling you the truth! What else would you like me to say?”