Night Soldiers (63 page)

He began to have a dream, and in this dream Lake Murigheol was violet, like the lakes he had seen from the deck of the
Brovno
. Such a place seemed to him remote, difficult to approach. The driver of the taxi would argue and say there was no road and the rest of the money would have to be given to him and still he would not go and finally Sascha would put the gun against the back of his neck—the old place—and call him names in Russian until he turned the key in the ignition. Then later Sascha would remember that the “Red Banners” poem had been left in the church and they would have to go back and then start all over again. Then they would drive across fields on flat tires with the driver howling and swearing and Khristo bleeding and Sascha crying and waving the gun around and finally they would reach Lake Murigheol. There would be a seaplane, of course, with the usual freckle-face American pilot and some gangly fellow in a blue suit and vest and tie, and eyeglasses that made him look like an owl, standing there like a diplomat and holding a submachine gun away from his side so the grease wouldn't get on his suit, and he would be tense as the pilot fired up the engines and they began to move across the darkness of the violet lake, and he would ask if the villagers of Sfintu Gheorghe had enjoyed the party which he—fortunate one indeed—had given them. And he would see that Khristo was shot and he would be concerned and Khristo would pass out and come to and pass out again and wake to a moment when the plane quivered and roared and made white plumes of the violet surface until they lifted up and just barely over the tops of the trees and he realized that he was going home now on a new river and that only when he got there would he find out where home was and what it was like and how that river ran and the last thing he thought was that he hoped he would like it there.

In late September of 1945, in Manhattan, Muriel Friedman walked from her apartment building on West End Avenue up to Cake Masters bakery on Broadway, where she purchased two dozen jelly doughnuts, then hailed a cab and returned to West End Avenue, where Estelle Kleinman was waiting in front of her building on the corner of Eighty-third Street. The cab was then directed south, to Forty-sixth Street and Twelfth Avenue, the area of the docks. The two women were volunteers for the USO, the organization which, among other things, greeted servicemen returning from overseas on troop transports, serving them coffee and doughnuts as they disembarked. In most cases, the transports carried hundreds of troops and the doughnuts were trucked in from commercial bakeries in Long Island City.

But Muriel Friedman had been telephoned the night before by her USO supervisor and told that the next day's arrival, the
Skögstaad
, would be disembarking only four or five passengers, to go ahead and buy a few boxes of doughnuts at the store, for which she would be reimbursed. She could have gone up to Gristede's and bought box doughnuts, but she had decided to do something a little grander than that and absorb the cost herself. The money didn't matter. Vanity Frocks, her husband Mort's company, was once again manufacturing dresses, having spent most of the war producing uniforms for the army. A jelly doughnut baked that morning was a much friendlier greeting to a returning serviceman than a plain old box doughnut and, in Muriel Friedman's view of the world, such small gestures were important.

The
Skögstaad
was an old Norwegian freighter caught by the outbreak of the war in the Spanish port of Algeciris and used as a Liberty ship thereafter, successfully making the convoy run from American harbors to Murmansk—the chief supply port of the Soviet Union—many times during the war. Now she was nearing the end of her days. She'd carried a cargo of Jeeps and medical supplies from Baltimore to Athens, then called at Istanbul for a load of jute destined for rope factories in the southern United States, stopping at several ports on the way home to take on a few military passengers as well as sixty coffins—fallen American servicemen whose families had requested they be re-interred in military cemeteries in their homeland.

In the back of the cab, Estelle Kleinman glanced at the two Cake Masters boxes tied with string and lifted an eyebrow. “Cake Masters?” she said.

“A few jelly doughnuts,” Muriel said. “The world won't end.”

Estelle's disapproval was silent, but Muriel didn't care whether she liked the idea or not. Estelle Kleinman disapproved of almost everything, and it was much too nice a morning for an argument. Riding down West End Avenue, Muriel could see it was the first real day of autumn, the sky was bright and blue and the wind off the Hudson River made the city streets seem clean and fresh. When the driver took them up on the elevated West Side Highway they could see the river, sun sparkling on the water, surface ruffled by the wind.

They paid off the cab at Pier 48 and busied themselves in the USO office with a large coffee urn that had to be coaxed into action. A bridge table was carried out to the street entrance of the pier by a burly longshoreman with U.S. Navy tattoos on his forearms. He pinched his finger setting the thing up and swore under his breath, then declined the quarter Muriel offered. The jelly doughnuts were laid out on paper napkins in front of the coffee urn and the two women waited patiently for the ship, sharing a few bits of gossip about friends in the neighborhood.

At 12:30, the
Skögstaad
was just docking, the river tugs that had hauled her up past the Statue of Liberty nudging her gently against the old wooden pier. There was a pause, perhaps a half hour, while customs officials boarded the ship, then, at 1:15, the handful of passengers began to appear. A naval ensign exclaimed over the jelly doughnuts, and both Muriel and Estelle flirted with him in their own particular way while he sipped a mug of coffee and kept an eye on the street, apparently waiting for someone. Two businessmen, perhaps Turkish, declined the jelly doughnuts with elaborate courtesy, then hurried off toward the rank of taxicabs that waited at the docks. An army major ran right past them, swept up in the arms of a blond woman and an old man—wife and father, Muriel thought. Then, finally, one last passenger appeared, walking slowly from the great dark structure that covered the pier and blinking at the bright sunlight.

There was something different about this one, Muriel thought. He had black hair set off by pale skin, and deep blue eyes over high cheekbones. Striking, she thought, if you liked that Slavic type. He walked slowly, with a slight limp, and once touched a place on his left side as though it hurt him. Wounded, she realized. Wounded in the war, and now coming home.

Or was it home? He appeared to be very nervous, stopping at the pier entrance and tugging at the jacket of the light gray suit he wore. With dark blue shirt and yellow tie he was clearly what Muriel would call a “greenhorn,” a newcomer, an immigrant. She could see it in his eyes—how he looked and looked, trying to take in everything at once, struck with fear and joy and excitement over finally setting foot in America. Well, she thought, he would learn what it was, he would find his place in it. They all had. When her father had come to Ellis Island from Latvia in 1902 he must have looked something like this. Overwhelmed, for the moment, as the dream turned into reality before his eyes.

The passenger in the gray suit never noticed the coffee and jelly doughnuts on the bridge table with the USO sign tacked to its edge. Estelle started to call out to him, but Muriel put a restraining hand on her arm, and for once in her life she had the sense to shut up. The moment was too private for intrusion. Let him be with his thoughts. For a few seconds Muriel shared his feelings, seeing it all for the first time, taking the first step along with him as he moved from the shadow of the pier.

Then, from across the street, a young woman appeared, climbing out of a cab and walking briskly toward the entrance to the pier. She had short, chestnut-colored hair and green eyes. Jewish, Muriel thought. Wearing a very good wool dress from—Saks? Lord & Taylor? Was she perhaps meeting this immigrant? Maybe he was not so alone and friendless as he appeared.

Her eyes searched the crowd, then the young man in the gray suit waved his hand and called out “Faye!” and her face lit up with pleasure. Muriel watched carefully as they approached each other and shook hands.
So formal?
she thought. All the way from God only knows where, by what means she could not even imagine, to be greeted by a handshake? She found herself vaguely disappointed and started to turn away.

But then, as they crossed toward the waiting taxicab, sidestepping the honking trucks and cars that filled the busy street that served the docks, she took his arm.
There
, Muriel thought,
that's better
.

The Research of Alan Furst's Novels

Alan Furst describes the area of his interest as “near history.” His novels are set between 1933—the date of Adolf Hitler's ascent, with the first Stalinist purges in Moscow coming a year later—and 1945, which saw the end of the war in Europe. The history of this period is well documented. Furst uses books by journalists of the time, personal memoirs—some privately published—autobiographies (many of the prominent individuals of the period wrote them), war and political histories, and characteristic novels written during those years.

“But,” he says, “there is a lot more”—for example, period newsreels, magazines, and newspapers, as well as films and music, especially swing and jazz. “I buy old books,” Furst says, “and old maps, and I once bought, while living in Paris, the photo archive of a French stock house that served newspapers of Paris during the Occupation, all the prints marked as cleared by the German censorship.” In addition, Furst uses intelligence histories of the time, many of them by British writers.

Alan Furst has lived for long periods in Paris and in the south of France. “In Europe,” he says, “the past is still available. I remember a blue neon sign, in the Eleventh Arrondissement in Paris, that had possibly been there since the 1930s.” He recalls that on the French holiday
le jour des morts
(All Saints' Day, November 1) it is customary for Parisians to go to the Père Lachaise Cemetery. “Before the collapse of Polish communism, the Polish émigrés used to gather at the tomb of Maria Walewska. They would burn rows of votive candles and play Chopin on a portable stereo. It was always raining on that day, and a dozen or so Poles would stand there, under black umbrellas, with the music playing, as a kind of silent protest against the communist regime. The spirit of this action was history alive—as though the entire past of that country, conquered again and again, was being brought back to life.”

The heroes of Alan Furst's novels include a Bulgarian defector from the Soviet intelligence service, a foreign correspondent for
Pravda
, a Polish cartographer who works for the army general staff, a French producer of gangster films, and a Hungarian émigré who works with a diplomat at the Hungarian legation in Paris. “These are characters in novels,” Furst says, “but people like them existed; people like them were courageous people with ordinary lives and, when the moment came, they acted with bravery and determination. I simply make it possible for them to tell their stories.”

Questions for Discussion

1. How does Alan Furst use the crosscurrents of local jealousies and feuds at the start of
   Night Soldiers
   as a means of animating the plot?
   

2. D
   ISCUSS
   K
   HRISTO'S EXPERIENCE AT THE TRAINING SCHOOL IN
   M
   OSCOW.
   H
   OW DOES IT PREPARE HIM FOR A LATER CAREER IN THE
   NKVD
   ?
   

3. A decade after the action of
   Night Soldiers
   ends, what would you expect Khristo, Ilya Goldman, and Faye Berns to be doing?
   

4. 4 Alan Furst has called
   Night Soldiers
   a “panoramic spy novel.” What do you think he means by this description?
   

5. E
   XAMINE THE CHARACTER OF
   R
   OBERT
   E
   IDENBAUGH.
   I
   N WHAT WAYS DOES HE REPRESENT THE VALUES OF
   A
   MERICA IN THE 1940
   s?
   

6. Critics praise Furst's ability to re-create the atmosphere of World War II-era Europe. What elements of description make the setting come alive? How can you account for the fact that the settings
   seem
   authentic even though you probably have no firsthand knowledge of the times and places he writes about?
   

7. F
   URST'S NOVELS HAVE BEEN DESCRIBED AS “HISTORICAL NOVELS,” AND AS “SPY NOVELS.”
   H
   E CALLS THEM “HISTORICAL SPY NOVELS.”
   S
   OME CRITICS HAVE INSISTED THAT THEY ARE, SIMPLY, NOVELS.
   H
   OW DOES HIS WORK COMPARE WITH OTHER SPY NOVELS YOU'VE READ?
   W
   HAT DOES HE DO THAT IS THE SAME?
   D
   IFFERENT?
   I
   F YOU OWNED A BOOKSTORE, IN WHAT SECTION WOULD YOU DISPLAY HIS BOOKS?
   

8. F
   URST IS OFTEN PRAISED FOR HIS MINOR CHARACTERS, WHICH HAVE BEEN DESCRIBED AS “SKETCHED OUT IN A FEW STROKES.”
   D
   O YOU HAVE A FAVORITE IN THIS BOOK?
   C
   HARACTERS IN HIS BOOKS OFTEN TAKE PART IN THE ACTION FOR A FEW PAGES AND THEN DISAPPEAR.
   W
   HAT DO YOU THINK BECOMES OF THEM?
   H
   OW DO YOU KNOW?
   

9. Consider Furst's use of suspense in
   Night Soldiers
   . How does he build suspense? Discuss different methods he uses in the novel
   .
   

10. 10 Love affairs are always prominent in Furst's novels, and “love in time of war” is a recurring theme. What role does the love affair play in
    Night Soldiers?
    

Suggested Reading

There is an enormous body of literature, fiction and nonfiction, written about the period 1933-1945, so Alan Furst's recommendations for reading in that era are very specific. He often uses characters who are idealistic intellectuals, particularly French and Russian, who become disillusioned with the Soviet Union but still find themselves caught up in the political warfare of the period. “Among the historical figures who wrote about that time,” Furst says, “Arthur Koestler may well be ‘first among equals.' ” Furst suggests Koestler's
Darkness at Noon
as a classic story of the European intellectual at midcentury.

Furst, as a novelist of historical espionage, is most often compared with the British authors Graham Greene and Eric Ambler. Asked about Ambler's books, Furst replied that “the best one I know is
A Coffin for Dimitrios.”
Published in 1939, a month before the invasion of Poland, Ambler's novel concentrates on clandestine operations in the Balkans and includes murder for money, political assassination, espionage, and drug smuggling. The plot, like that of an Alan Furst novel, weaves intrigue and conspiracy into the real politics of 1930 s Europe.

For the reality of daily life in eastern Europe, Furst suggests the novelist Gregor von Rezzori, of Italian/Austro-Hungarian background, who grew up in a remote corner of southeastern Europe, between the wars, and writes about it brilliantly in
Memoirs of an Anti-Semite
, which takes place in the villages of Romania and the city of Bucharest in the years before the war.

To see life in that period from the German perspective, Furst says that Christopher Isherwood's novels
The Last of Mr. Norris
and
Goodbye to Berlin
are among the best possible choices. The sources for the stage plays
I Am a Camera
and
Cabaret
, these are novelized autobiographies of Isherwood's time in Berlin; they are now published as
The Berlin Stories
. Furst calls them “perceptive and wonderfully written chronicles of bohemian life during the rise to power of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party.”

For a historical overview of the period, Alan Furst recommends Martin Gilbert's
A History of the Twentieth Century, Volume Two: 1933-1951
. All the major political events that rule the lives of the characters in Alan Furst's novels are described, in chronological sequence, in this history.