Dancing Under the Red Star (28 page)

In spite of everything, we managed to have some good times giving our fellow inmates stirring and memorable evenings at the theater. We were very proud of the wonderful reviews and comments we heard from the many who enjoyed our work. We were deeply humbled as well, if we provided them even a short-lived escape from the grim life in camp. There were no performers among us who falsely held their heads high or arrogantly thought themselves special, rightfully privileged, or in any way “chosen” over the other women. We were all prisoners in a Siberian death camp; no one ever forgot that reality. And our lives were as humble as could be. Our dramatic performances were only brief diversions, momentary breaks from the madness that engulfed our lives. Most of us, inside as well as outside of our group, truly and sincerely loved one another, and humility was the common thread that joined us.

Members of the theatrical group never neglected to celebrate individual birthdays by giving presents. Maybe it was a few hairpins, a pair of socks, or a small piece of fragrant face soap. I received a lovely present for one of my birthdays before I eventually left this camp. My friends made me a beautiful, intricately knitted, sleeveless sweater.

We always presented something resembling a homemade cake to the birthday girl. To make the cakes, each of us saved our bread and various other food items for about a week. Then we passed the hat, freely donating the items we had saved. We would dry the bread and crush it repeatedly with a bottle, making fine crumbs, then wet the crumbs with a solution of vitamin C syrup (or jam) and water. We would then place a ring of cardboard (the size of the cake desired) on a flat board covered with fancy paper, designed and cut out by our artist, a young Lithuanian girl named Aldona.

The damp crumbs were then pressed down within the cardboard ring and covered with a creamy filling, produced by laboriously hand whipping sugar, butter, and chocolate (all donated items). Alternate layers of crumbs and filling were added until the cake reached the desired height. We frosted it again with the same delicious cream and let it stand for about five hours, until the ring could be removed. Although the crumbs were made from a very hard, black rye bread (the only kind available), our cakes generally turned out to be quite delectable. They were always a pure blessing of enjoyment to receive!

As a member of the brigade, I now received my serious indoctrination into top-level ballet education. One day at rehearsal Sonya let me try her ballet pointes. She was an exceptional German ballerina and a wonderful member of our group. It was the first time I had ever worn real pointes. They were great; they made me feel like a real ballerina. But afterward, my toes were a bloody mess for weeks! I loved it so much that I persisted. And then finally, partly through rest but mostly by continuous practicing and toughing it out, my toes became hardened enough to perform. And they stayed that way for the rest of my life, from those long-ago days of endless ballet practices and performances in the labor camp at Inta.

Leksi was another member of our group and a good friend to me. One day he gave me my very own pair of pointes as a present. “Here, Margaret,” he said, handing them to me. “I got these just for you!” I was thrilled. I didn’t know what to say. I had no idea where I could get my own pointes nor where Leksi could have gotten them or even why. I didn’t ask him; it didn’t matter to me. I knew Leksi. I knew his heart. His motives were pure, and I trusted him completely. Leksi was an extremely talented performer himself, but after my routines, he was always the first to offer congratulations, a welcoming hand, or a pat on the back. He was a cheerleader for others, a very special man, kind and gentle. In the middle of this spiritually and literally parched and frozen wasteland, my friend Leksi was truly a refresher of others.

We spent countless hours daily just mending and darning our pointes to keep them properly conditioned and fully supportive for our work. They were the only ones we had, so we had to take good care of them. My strength was acrobatic and character dancing, which called for greater athletic skill and overall creativity than did other parts. That’s precisely where my early training came in; I now felt very fortunate to have spent all those years as a competitive athlete. I was also grateful to my parents for allowing and motivating me to devote so much time to sports and dance. Those formative years created the basis for my acceptance into these dance groups, providing me the background and foundation to excel and advance in my new work. At times I could actually feel a sense of purpose in what I did.

Initially, I was the only acrobatic dancer in the entertainment group. So they reserved most of the lesser-used, more physical dance parts for me. I ended up doing virtually all the vigorous female parts, those requiring strong athleticism in addition to dance skills. Being quite thin and agile, I was also able to dance many of the male parts. Basically, I just loved performing on the stage, even in a labor camp, even in Russia. There was nothing quite like it. I loved having a highly appreciative audience watching and enjoying my performance. That’s what made it worthwhile. That’s why I did it. Why else? If my life had somehow turned out differently, maybe in another time and place I could have been a professional ballerina.

What always inspired me most about the craft was the degree of personal flexibility and innovation allowed the dancer within the actual movement; it was all uniquely you, the inherent soul that the routine pleaded for. But the thrill of it all, the athleticism involved, the feedback, was all so exhilarating, so mesmerizing! Looking into the eyes and the hearts of an audience that has been moved by your dance, your performance, is the very reason a dancer dances. There was nothing in the world I loved as much.
This is it!
I thought.
Only not here.

I was also a member of the stage carpenter crew and the producer of many special effects and accessories used in our shows. We always needed nails and boards, for which we had to scrounge constantly. Occasionally we received packages of food in wooden boxes from friends and relatives. We could barely wait to open them when they came, not only because of the goodies inside, but so we could immediately use the boxes. We spent hours pulling and straightening nails. They could be used again and again on various projects, so we took utmost care in preserving their future usefulness. We used our civilian clothes for stage and performance costumes since we weren’t allowed to wear them for routine dress anyway. For our required work details, we were issued padded jackets, pants, and felt boots for the severe cold of winter, along with flimsy leather-and-canvas work shoes.

In the meantime, our little orchestra was expanding and flourishing. Quite surprisingly, we were blessed one day with the acquisition of an old grand piano brought in from another camp. We had no idea how it arrived at our camp. That was very strange in an environment where everything had to be accounted for. Yesterday we had no grand piano; today we do. But no one, including several of the more trusted guards, could tell us where it came from. The mystery piano was quite weathered and neglected and in desperate need of tuning, but we loved it. Our dear Olga had it wonderfully tuned in no time, and she also restored the wood to its former luster. When she was through, the sound coming from this grand prize was the sound of which dreams are made! Oh, how music could so generously take me back to another place and time, a time of peace and tranquillity, a time in my past with Papa and Mama, a time nearly forgotten, a time of pure joy…before life’s unforeseen detours. I will never forget the sound emanating from this grand treasure or how much we loved it!

One of our members owned an accordion, and our orchestra leader taught herself to play it. Stefanie, who came from Vilnius, Lithuania, actually mastered the instrument, performing some very complicated musical compositions, all by ear. Equally talented was a woman named Tatiana, from Odessa, who sang popular songs and accompanied herself on the accordion or piano. Tatiana also played for our morning ballet practices. She claimed to have been married to, and divorced from, the mayor of Bucharest. Since she was tall and athletic, she played many of our supporting male roles. A close friend of hers, Regina from Moscow, was one of our better actresses; but she was very stubborn and opinionated and hard to get along with.

Something about this place, this camp, these people, seemed to bring out either the worst or the best a person had to offer. Sharing this burdensome time, one’s true colors were fully exposed, because there was no hiding. It was a time of personal pressure, a time of constant testing to see what you were made of. You could fall or climb; it was up to you. Circumstances didn’t really change: the difference was in whether or not you could adapt. The choice was always yours.

A memorable part of our group was a very beautiful actress named Larissa, who had been with the Gorky City Theater. She very much resembled Vivien Leigh in
Gone with the Wind,
and whether she was on stage performing or not, she always played the famed Scarlett O’Hara to a T, wearing her hair in a low-slung net and tossing her head. She was something to see!

Rita Maas was another important member of our entertainment group. She came from a community of German-speaking people called Volga-Deutsche, who originated in Prussia. These people lived on the Volga River in a tightly knit community, with their own customs and principles, abiding by and within the Soviet regime and system. During World War II, however, the Russians uprooted the Volga-Deutsche, which numbered in the thousands, imprisoning or exiling them to remote areas, scattering them all over the country.

Yet another member of the entertainment group, with a fine contralto voice, was Valentina, who became a good friend of mine. She was one of the few who had survived the devastating bombardment of Dresden, Germany, during the war. Valentina was an engineer by trade, the head of the camp’s building group, and she supervised the construction of several new barracks. Her duties also included the general maintenance and upkeep of the entire camp.

Other entertainers in the group came from Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. My favorite Latvian was a very tall girl, also named Tamara, who was a natural comedian, a pure delight, and played mainly humorous roles and also did comical dancing. She was probably the all-around crowd favorite during our performances, with the winning lightness of her personality. At times it was hard to tell that she was actually a political prisoner sentenced to a Siberian labor camp. Unlike anyone else in the camp, Tamara had a gentle and pleasant type of indifference, as if sometimes she was here and sometimes she wasn’t; as if she could just turn the nonsense off whenever she wanted to. I found it impossible to do that. One day I asked her how she did it.

She said, “We won’t be here forever, Margaret. We must remember that. I don’t turn it on and off. It’s always on. I just decided that I won’t let this place make me so bitter that I have no life to live when it’s over.”

I thought long and hard about her wise words. She had a definite edge, which I couldn’t quite figure out but admired. In a way she was like a younger version of my mother.
Could she possibly forget where she was? Or did she possess something I too should have had? Did she know God in such a profound way that it could strip fear of its stronghold and power over her life in this place, or was it something else?

Tamara was also my favorite partner in the game of Aggravation, which we called Ritch-Ratch. Sometimes we’d play for hours and well into the nights. I manufactured the first game board from a piece of veneer that I found in our stage wood supply. I laid it out with my drafting tools and colored all the moves. Then some girls from the crew working in the city garbage dumps managed to bring me back various colored toothpaste caps, which we used as our game pieces.

One day the camp commander strolled into our barracks while Tamara and I were playing Ritch-Ratch. He was so impressed with the game and the board I had made that he asked me to make twenty more just like it for the other barracks. Of course I didn’t have a choice, but I didn’t mind. I thought it was an unusually kind gesture to think that the other prisoners might enjoy it as well. So, in time and with some help, I supplied the other barracks with boards. They were an overwhelming success. Soon the entire camp was playing Ritch-Ratch on my game boards. So, in addition to my athletic and dramatic stage roles, I also became the official camp game maker. I produced some checkerboards and domino pieces too, hundreds of them, precisely cut from wood by Valentina’s crew, with dots carefully burned on by a soldering iron.

I also used the toothpaste tubes themselves. I sliced them open lengthwise, thoroughly washed and dried them, and straightened out all the wrinkles. This produced very shiny pieces of gold foil, which I used to make sequins, stage jewelry, and ornaments for our hair. Toothpaste tubes also formed a candelabra and chandeliers for the stage. For Tamara, our teacher and now my best friend, we cut out more than two thousand foil discs to cover her costume for a solo she danced in our production of
Faust.