Dancing Under the Red Star (12 page)

We still had no word of Papa and could not know whether he was alive or dead. At my job I eventually met several people who had seen him. They all spoke very highly of him but only in the strictest confidence. It was dangerous to express any sympathy for the family of an arrested vrag naroda, or “enemy of the people,” as they were so callously and conveniently labeled. You carefully guarded your thoughts and, better yet, your lips. People were blatantly encouraged and sometimes coerced to inform on one another to the NKVD. Even family members were forced to become informers, turning in mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, and relatives in order to survive. Very rarely would anyone risk telling us anything.

Mama and I tried over and over to determine what had happened to Father, what he was charged with, and where he was being detained, but all information was denied to us on every attempt and approach we made. Russians could learn nothing about their fellow citizens. All of the Soviet newspapers were operated and manipulated by the Communist government—the spinners of political darkness. They did not permit any information from beyond the borders of this morally ravaged country, either. Like physical darkness, the Soviet system had to be kept closed off in order to perpetuate itself; it could never admit the light of day that exposes the evil deeds of men. We had to wait in this darkness as did all the other families affected by this national ruthlessness and mindless cruelty. The first thing we heard, several months after his arrest, was that Papa was being held in the Gorky city prison, some twenty-five kilometers away.

I remember having the strong expectation that I would be reunited with him. Perhaps I was foolish, but faith is why we choose to press on, despite the odds. I loved him and missed him beyond words. We packed a box of permissible items for him: some small bits and pieces of food, a toothbrush, underwear, a pair of shoes, a shirt, a warm sweater, and some cigarettes.

Along with hundreds of frightened families on similar missions, we waited for several hours in a large hall. Then our name was called, and it was our turn to submit our package. “Werner,” called the blank-faced woman in charge. I quickly jumped to my feet and ran up to her desk. Handing her the box, I looked at her anxiously for some sign of confirmation, but she wouldn’t show me her eyes. She just went about her business, staring downward, avoiding looking at me, saying nothing. “Nowitski,” she then grumbled and went on with her mechanical roll call. Some two hours later we were privileged to see a receipt Papa had signed. With hope still alive in our hearts, we could only trust that he had received our gifts, but we didn’t know for sure. Of course we wanted to believe, so believe we did.

On a bitterly cold day in November 1939, wearing my father’s sheepskin jacket and other warm clothing, I went out into the city again in search of more information. At the Gorky city prison, a tiny man standing inside a huge booth curtly informed me that Papa had been “sentenced to an indeterminate term” and “shipped out without the right to correspond with his family.” He would or could say no more; that was the official response. No lawyers would touch the case, as was the situation for millions throughout the country. For Mother Russia, this was business as usual, just another day when there was no place for protest or demonstration, no one to get angry with, no one who cared about your civil complaint. If you were smart, you wouldn’t try to learn more than the authorities wanted you to know.

A year or so later we talked to one of the Italian men from the village who had also been arrested but then later released. He told us he had accidentally seen my father in prison but had not been permitted to speak with him. I probed him for more, but he was either unwilling or unable to elaborate. He was another person who would not look me in the eyes when he spoke. Another time, a complete stranger contacted us and reported that he had been in a crowded cell with my father for a time before his trial. This man expressed his genuine admiration for Papa, for his good spirits—despite his surroundings—and for his encouragement to others. “Everybody loved Carl,” he said. “We all looked to him for strength.” That news sounded indeed like my precious father. I remember feeling much better with that report, even somewhat relieved.

From another source we heard that all the prisoners had been sick with extreme diarrhea, caused by the filthy food and the unsanitary living conditions. This type of diarrhea doubled people over in agony for days, and there was no medical care or treatment of any kind. The bread they received was moldy; so, as the news went, my father hung the bread out to dry through the window bars, and the bread became palatable. Somehow this gradually cured the prisoners of their ailments.

Mama and I gathered these random tidbits of information and hoarded them in our memories. They were all we had. They became cherished remnants of Mama’s husband, my father, the head of our family—golden treasures no one could take away.

We continued our daily struggle to survive. My mother took a short nursing course at a nearby vocational school in Gorky and finally found more suitable work as a nurse and receptionist in a local medical clinic about a mile from our apartment. For a short time, I worked as a typist in a secretarial pool in the factory, and then I began working in the drafting department, making copies of industrial prints in ink. The days were gray and depressing. They passed with agonizing lethargy. I thought many of them would never end.

Seven

WAR: ENEMIES AND ALLIES

I
n 1940 I had a vacation at a resort about sixty miles from Gorky. It was set deep in a dense pine forest, along a meandering river. The peaceful beauty of the landscape was marred, however, by mosquitoes that were as large as my thumbnail. I’d never seen anything like them.

At night I slept completely covered by my sheets because the open-air tents had no nets. Everyone at the resort kept in constant motion during the days, frantically playing volleyball or tennis to avoid being stationary victims of the insidious insects. Even swimming in the river provided no relief. The exposed skin along the part in my hair turned a bright red from the painful, swollen bites. I often wished I could breathe underwater. But, miniature vampires aside, the camp was pleasant, the food was good and plentiful, and I enjoyed meeting a few other vacationers.

I often walked in the woods, where it was cooler and the mosquitoes were not quite as fierce. One day I came out of the forest into a small open meadow completely covered with countless lilies of the valley in bloom—my favorite flower. They stood a foot high or taller, and oh, how exquisite they were! Sprays of delicate fragrant stars hung above the thick green leaf blades all around me. It was such a lovely sight, I thought I was close to heaven.
Could it be there is a God after all?
I pondered.

A unique feeling of peace enveloped me in this open field of lilies, as if
peace
were actually a place. The flowers smelled of purity to me, of comfort and freshness, but they also spoke of separation and departure. They represented newness, a Utopian dream, a rebirth away from the awful realities of my life. Except for my friendship with Nikolai, I had never felt this good about anything in Gorky; this was entirely different from anything I had known in Russia. And I wondered,
How could this be, these extremes?
I wanted to never leave. How could I keep this feeling in my heart? How could I take it back with me?

Looking back, I remember feeling as though this experience of beauty and hope was an encounter with the world’s Creator. I did not think of myself as religious; in fact, religion was seldom brought up in our family. We did not attend church back in Detroit, nor did I ever hear my mother and father speak to each other or with others about God, religion, or the church. Papa was a good man of unwavering character, conscience, and principle, but he wasn’t religious. I never heard him openly deny God or question his existence; it would have been out of character for him to do so. But I never heard him outwardly express a belief in God, either. Mama was different. There were times I saw her praying silently, and there were things she said only to me, words I’ll never forget. “Spirit knows spirit.” My mother and father loved each other dearly, but they were cut from distinct cloth; they had different sensitivities to God and the deeper, timeless considerations of the human heart. That was okay with me. I loved both of them for who they were.

But the field of lilies startled me into an awareness of something beyond myself, a goodness deeply different from my everyday life. Something in me responded with love and hope. I could tell it moved like my mama’s heart. Mama was not “religious,” according to any textbook definition. But did she believe in God? Absolutely! She was content with what she knew inside and with how she lived her life. From start to finish, her life was a daily example of love, peace, and abounding faith. My mother didn’t feel it was right for people to display their religion, as they would wear a garment.

“There are far too many crusaders already,” she said to me one day. “Their speech is not based in truth. They are best left alone to preach to themselves. Let your heart tell you what is right, Maidie. Sometimes it’s good to just be silent and content with what you know.”

I longed for Papa, and I often cried myself to sleep thinking about him. I saw Mama’s grief too, and I often prayed in my inner thoughts, although I had never been taught how to pray. The friends I had grown to love and trust were no longer constant: Sanya and his family had moved away, Maria seemed strangely distant after the incident at school, and Nikolai went back to Moscow. The unpredictable times dashed my hopes for a normal life. And deep down inside, although I certainly never admitted it or spoke it aloud, especially to Mama, I felt that Papa was already dead.

I imagined I was talking to God, a God I didn’t really know up close and a God I wasn’t quite sure heard me. But somewhere along the line, through my simple prayers, I knew I had made a connection. Something or someone had broken through to my heart. Maybe that’s why I felt as though I recognized him in that flowery meadow. By calling out to him, I had begun to see him. I was longing for an inner place of peace like that.

The next year I had only begun my vacation when, literally, all hell broke loose in Russia. One morning at camp, in June 1941, we were having a late breakfast when the loudspeaker suddenly announced, “All men and women are to depart for home and report to their workstations immediately.” We were told that Finland had just attacked Russia, so we were now at war. Certainly, we all
knew
it had to be the other way around, that Russia had invaded Finland, but no one dared to say this. We weren’t idiots; to speak our minds would have been suicidal. Regardless of the endless military and political propaganda constantly spread by this regime, we all knew the real truth: Stalin was the oppressor, a perpetrator of evil. I considered him a devil.

All shortwave radios and private cars were confiscated, because the state saw them as tools for the discovery and dissemination of privileged information. We were permitted to receive news only via loudspeakers, which broadcast nothing but politically filtered and heavily censored local programs. Soviet leaders had no use for democracy or freedom, much less freedom of speech. Truth was alien to them. They were, instead, masters of deception. The party hated truth; it is too much like light. In fact, truth
is
light.

In August 1941 all of the village youth from the factories and the younger teachers, along with their high-school students, were mobilized to dig antitank trenches. We were told that the German invasion of Russia was now under way, as evidenced by the screeching planes overhead. Several hundred of us were strategically assigned to various locations along the road from Gorky to Moscow. The militia sent us about fifty miles down the Oka River toward Moscow. We were inching closer to the advancing Germans, and monstrous, paralyzing fear loomed in our hearts.

Three other girls and I were assigned to live in a small kolkhoz—a hut belonging to a young woman who worked in the bakery of a village near the river. She had a child, so that night six of us cramped together in one tiny room. The front lines were nearby, and we heard gunfire all night long. We were too scared to sleep.