The Secret Speech (25 page)

Fraera unbuttoned her shirt, restricted by the collar, revealing the top of her tattoos that unraveled across her body like the symbols of an ancient witchcraft:

– Raisa, how much do you know about him? How much do you know about his past?

– He infiltrated your husband’s church. He betrayed you, he betrayed your congregation, and he betrayed Lazar.

– And for those things alone, he deserves to die. However, did you know that before he revealed his betrayal, he proposed to me? Like a young lover under a full moon?

Raisa dropped her head and nodded:

– Yes, he asked you to leave Lazar. At the time I’m sure he believed you would want to become his wife. He was deluded. He has been deluded about many things, love included. Love, particularly.

Fraera seemed disappointed, wanting to pick open a secret. She continued, her enthusiasm notably diminished:

– He thought he was trying to save me. In fact, he was trying to save himself. Had I accepted his offer, he would’ve tricked himself into believing that he was, at heart, a decent man. I would not excuse his crimes so easily. I made him a promise. I swore that he would never be loved. I was sure that I was right because how could such a monster be loved? Who would love him?

Raisa felt flustered under Fraera’s stare:

– I will not defend the things he did.

– But you must. You love him. I’ve seen the two of you together. I’ve watched you, spied on you, as Leo once spied me. You make him happy. What’s worse, he makes you happy. Your love for him is everything. That is why I am placing it on trial. That is why I am here. I want to find out, how it is possible that you can live with him. Sleep with him. I thought at first you might be stupid: an officer’s trophy, beautiful and unquestioning. I thought you didn’t care about the crimes Leo has committed.

Fraera stood up, crossing the divide and sitting on the same bed as Raisa, positioned like two best friends sharing secrets in the middle of the night:

– Yet you exhibit no mindless loyalty to the State. There were even rumors of you being a dissident. Your love for Leo became an even greater mystery, one that I had to solve at all costs. I was forced to delve into your past. May I share my findings?

– You have my daughter. You may do as you please.

– Your family was killed during the war. You lived as a refugee.

Raisa was paralyzed as Fraera wielded information like a knife:

– During those years you were raped.

Raisa’s mouth opened, a fraction, enough to serve as confirmation. She didn’t try to deny it, sensing there was more to follow:

– How did you know?

– Because I visited the orphanage where you abandoned your child.

Raisa felt something far more powerful than surprise. The most intimate secrets from her past, events that she’d carefully buried and laid to rest, were being dug up and brandished before her. Scrutinizing Raisa’s reaction, Fraera took hold of her hand:

– Leo doesn’t know?

Raisa held Fraera’s hopeful stare, answering:

– He knows.

Once again Fraera looked disappointed:

– I don’t believe you.

– It took many years for me to tell him but I did. He knows, Fraera: he knows it all. He knows I can’t have children, he knows why, he knows that the only child I will ever give birth to I gave away. He knows my shame. I know his.

Fraera touched Raisa’s face:

– That is why you married Leo? You sensed how desperate he was to be loved. He would gladly have accepted the opportunity to be father to your child. You saw him as an opportunity. You would bring your child back from the orphanage.

– No, I knew my child had died before I met Leo. I went to the orphanage as soon as I was strong enough, as soon as I’d found a home, as soon as I was able to be a mother again. They told me that my son had died of typhus.

– So why did you marry Leo? What reason was there for saying yes to him?

– Since I’d already given up my son in order to survive, in comparison it didn’t seem too much of a compromise to marry a man I feared rather than loved.

Fraera leaned forward and kissed Raisa. Pulling back, she said:

– I can taste your love for him. And your hatred of me…

– You have taken my child.

Fraera stood up, walking to the door, buttoning up her shirt:

– She is not yours. As long as you love Leo you leave me no choice. Your love for him is the reason he can live with himself. He has committed unspeakable crimes and yet, despite this, he is loved. He has murdered and he is loved. And by a woman any man would admire, by a woman I admire. Your love excuses him. It is his redemption.

Fraera fastened her jacket, returning the cap to her head, disappearing into her disguise.

– I spoke to Zoya before I came to see you. I wanted to hear what life was like in this sham of a family. She is intelligent, broken, messed up. I like her very much. She told me that she made you an offer. Leave Leo and she could be happy.

Raisa was appalled. Zoya was supposed to be a hostage. Yet she was confiding in Fraera, talking about Raisa, equipping their enemy with all the family secrets she needed. Fraera continued:

– I’m surprised you could be so cruel as to dismiss her request with a declaration of love for Leo. This is a girl so disturbed that she takes a knife from your kitchen and stands over Leo while he sleeps, planning to cut his throat.

Raisa’s guard fell. She didn’t know what Fraera was referring to-what knife? A knife held over Leo? After several attempts Fraera had finally landed upon a weakness-a lie, a secret. She smiled:

– It seems there is something Leo hasn’t told you. It’s true, Zoya used to stand by his side of the bed, holding a knife. Leo caught her. And he didn’t tell you?

In an instant Raisa fitted together the discrepancies. When she’d found Leo sitting at the kitchen table, brooding, he hadn’t been concerned about Nikolai, he’d been thinking about Zoya. She’d asked him what was wrong. He’d said nothing. He’d lied to her.

Fraera was now in control:

– Bearing that incident in mind, think about what I’m about to say carefully. I will repeat Zoya’s offer. I will return Zoya to your care, unharmed. In exchange you and the girls must never see Leo again. Love the girls, or love Leo, that has been the reality of your situation for the past three years. And Raisa, now you must choose.

Leo could barely stand, let alone dig. Working in a crude system of trenches three meters below the topsoil, his pickaxe pinged uselessly against the permafrost. There were vast smoldering fires, like the funeral pyres of fallen heroes, slow-burning to soften the frozen ground. But Leo was near none of them, deliberately located by the leader of his work brigade in the coldest and most remote corner of the gold mines, in the least-developed trench system where, even had he been at full strength, it would’ve been impossible to fulfill his norm, the mininum amount of rocks he needed to break in order to be fed a standard ration.

Exhausted, his legs quivered, unable to support his weight. Swollen and bubbled, his kneecaps were sunk behind sacs of fluid, swirls of purple and blue. Last night Leo had been forced onto his knees, his hands tied behind his back, his ankles lifted and bound to his wrists so that his entire body weight was supported on his kneecaps. To keep him from falling over he’d been secured to the steps of a bunk. Hour after hour he’d been unable to relieve the pressure: skin stretched tight, bone grinding against wood, sandpapering his skin. At each shift in position he’d cried out and consequently been gagged in order that the prisoners might go to bed. They’d slept while he’d remained on his knees, teeth chomping like a mad horse against the filthy rag, which the prisoners had prepared by rubbing it across their weeping boils. While snores had crisscrossed the barracks one man had remained awake-Lazar. He’d watched over Leo the entire night, removing the gag when he’d needed to vomit, retying it after he’d finished, displaying a paternal dedication: a father tending to a sickly son, a son that needed to be taught a lesson.

At dawn Leo had spluttered back into consciousness as ice-cold water had been poured over his head. Untied, his gag removed, he’d slumped, unable to feel his feet, as though his legs had been amputated below the knees. It had taken several excruciating minutes before he’d been able to stretch them and several minutes more before he’d been able to heave himself up-hobbling-aged a hundred years. His fellow prisoners had allowed him to take breakfast, to sit at a table, to eat his ration, his hands shaking. They wanted him to live. They wanted him to suffer. As a man wandering in a desert might dream of an oasis, Leo’s mind concentrated on the shimmering mirage of Timur. Since it was impossible to make the journey from Magadan at night there was only a narrow window, in the early evening, when his friend, his savior, might arrive.

Arms shaking with fatigue, Leo lifted the pickaxe above his head, only for his legs to give way. Falling forward, his puffy knees slammed into the ground. On impact the fluid sacs burst, popping like ripe adolescent pimples. He opened his mouth, a silent scream, his eyes streaming as he toppled onto his side, taking the pressure off his knees and lying at the bottom of a trench. Exhaustion smothered any sense of self-preservation. For a brief moment, he would’ve been content to shut his eyes and go to sleep. In these temperatures he’d never have woken up.

Remembering Zoya, remembering Raisa and Elena-his family- he sat up, placing his hands on the ground, slowly pushing himself up. He was struggling to his feet when someone grabbed him, hissing in his ear:

– No rest, Chekist!

No rest, no mercy either-that had been Lazar’s verdict. The sentence was being carried out with vigor. The voice in his ear didn’t belong to a guard: it was a fellow prisoner, the leader of his brigade, driven by an intense personal hatred, refusing to allow Leo a single minute where he didn’t experience pain or hunger or exhaustion, or all these things together. Leo hadn’t arrested this man or his family. He didn’t even know the man’s name. That didn’t matter. He’d become a talisman for every prisoner: an ambassador for injustice. Chekist had become his name, his entire identity, and seen in that way, everyone’s hatred was personal.

A bell was rung. Tools were downed. Leo had survived his first day at the mine, a modest ordeal compared to the upcoming night-a second as yet unannounced torture. Dragging his legs up the ramp, limping out of the trench, following the others back, his only source of strength was the prospect of Timur’s arrival.

Approaching the camp, the dim daylight, diffuse among the sunken cloud cover, had almost completely disappeared. Emerging out of the darkness, he saw the headlights of a truck on the plateau. Two fists of yellow light, fireflies in the distance. Were it not for his knees, Leo would have dropped to the ground and wept with relief, prostrate before a merciful deity. Pushed and shoved by the guards, who dared curse him only out of earshot of their reformed, enlightened commander, Leo was herded back inside the zona, his eyes constantly thrown over his shoulder, watching as the truck grew closer. Failing to keep his emotions under control, his lip trembling, he returned to the barracks. No matter what torture they’d planned, he’d be saved. He stood by the window-eyes and nose pressed up against the glass, like an impoverished child outside a sweet shop. The truck entered the camp. A guard stepped down from the truck’s cabin, then the driver. Leo waited, fingernails digging into the window frame. Surely Timur was among their number, perhaps seated in the back. Minutes passed, no one else stepped out. He continued to stare, desperation overwhelming logic, until he finally accepted that no matter how long he watched the truck, there was no one else on board.

Timur hadn’t arrived.

Leo couldn’t eat, his hunger displaced by disappointment so strong it filled his stomach. In the dining barracks he remained at the table long after the other prisoners had left, lingering until the guards angrily ordered him out. Better to be punished by them than by his fellow inmates, better to spend the night in the isolator-the freezing punishment cells-than to go through another torture. After all, weren’t these guards operating under the changed Commander Sinyavksy? Hadn’t he spoken about justice and fairness and opportunity? As the guards pushed him toward the door, in a deliberate act of provocation, Leo lashed out, swinging a punch. He was slow and weak: his fist was caught. A rifle butt smashed into his face.

Dragged by his arms, legs trailing in the snow, Leo wasn’t taken to the isolator. He was dumped in the barracks-left sprawled in the middle of the room. He heard the guards leave. His eyes focused on the timber beams. His nose and lips were wet with blood. Lazar looked down at him.

He was stripped bare and wet towels were wrapped tight around his chest, tied behind his back. They rendered him unable to move, arms pinned by his side. He felt no pain. Although he’d never served as an official interrogator, he had firsthand knowledge of their methods. From time to time he’d been forced to watch. Yet this technique was new to him. He was lifted up and left lying on his back. The prisoners continued with their evening activities. His stomach was cold and wet with the towels. But he was too exhausted to care and, seizing the opportunity, he shut his eyes.

He woke, partly due to the sound of prisoners getting into bed, mostly because of the tension around his chest. Slowly he began to understand the torture. As the towels dried they became tighter, constricting incrementally, steadily crushing his ribs together. The subtle dynamic of the punishment was the knowledge that the pain would only get worse. While the other men readied for bed, Lazar took his regular place on a chair beside Leo. The red-haired man, Lazar’s voice, approached:

– Do you need me?

Lazar shook his head, ushering him to bed. The man glared at Leo like a sulking, jealous lover, before retreating as ordered.