Ice Trilogy (57 page)

My heart felt the awakening of another heart.

This experience is comparable to nothing else.

Tears of ecstasy spurted from my eyes, and I pressed my bloodied lips to the ugly, coarse, heavily scarred face of our newly acquired brother.

“Hello, Shro.”

We cut his fetters and removed the bandage from his mouth. His body slid powerlessly to the floor, his eyes rolled back, and from his lips could be heard a weak but angry whisper: “Fuckin’ cunts.”

Then he lost consciousness. Kha and Adr kissed his hands. I cried, touching his gnarly body, which had carried the locked vessel of the Primordial Light inside it. Henceforth this body was destined to live.

A month later, Shro and I were sitting in a restaurant atop the Moscow Hotel near the Kremlin. It was a warm, dry August day. A soft wind rippled the striped tent. We were eating grapes and peaches. Below, the great Russian city stretched out before us. But we weren’t looking at it. Shro held my hand in his rough, tattooed hands. Our blue eyes could not part for a second. Even when I placed a grape between Shro’s lips, he continued looking at me. We spoke almost no words in earthly language. Yet our hearts trembled. We were prepared to entwine our arms and fall down anywhere — here over Moscow, in the Metro, on the sidewalk, in an entryway, or on a garbage heap. Our feelings were so elevated, however, that self-preservation was part of them.

We took care of ourselves.

And our hearts.

For this reason we allowed them to speak only in secluded places where there were no living dead.

“Can we still croak?” Shro asked suddenly after a silence of many hours.

“Death doesn’t matter anymore,” I answered.

“Why?”

“Because we met.”

He squinted. Grew ponderous. Then he smiled. His steel teeth sparkled in the sunlight.

“I got it, Sis!” he wheezed. “I got the whole fucking shebang!”

We all understood everything: my young self, awkward Shro, wise Kha, ruthless Adr, and ancient Yus.

We were engaged in a great undertaking.

Time made way for eternity. We passed through time like rays of light through an icy thickness. And we reached the depths...

In September and October we visited eighteen camps in Mordovia, Kazakhstan, and western Siberia. Almost two hundred Ice hammers were broken on the emaciated breastbones of prisoners, but only two hearts began to speak, pronouncing their names.

“Mir.”

“Sofre.”

There were now seven of us.

We continued our search among the lower echelons of society. Kha’s new arrangements were dictated largely by the times: the repressive state structure was destroying the Soviet elite too quickly and too unpredictably. It was difficult for high-placed people to survive the Stalinist meat grinder. No one was certain of his safety; no one was protected from arrest. Even those who drank and sang Georgian songs with Stalin.

For that reason we made no attempt to find our own among the Party and military bosses. The losses of the ’30s and ’40s had sobered Kha forever.

But the camps did not resolve the problem of our quest. The few brothers found among them were a paltry reward for the huge risk and painstaking preparations.

Kha and Adr worked out a new search plan: we had to travel to the north of Russia, to Karelia, and the White Sea, to lands rich in fair-haired blue-eyed people.

With the support of his patron, the all-powerful Lavrenty Beria, Kha created a special division within the MGB called “Karelia,” purportedly to seek out deserters and German accomplices who had taken refuge in the forests of Karelia. It was a small but mobile subdivision consisting of former smersh operatives called upon during the war to fight against German spies and saboteurs. However, in line with traditional NKVD practices, the smersh people were largely in the business of fabricating false cases, arresting innocent Red Army soldiers, and beating the necessary evidence out of them — after which the newly minted “German spies” were safely shot.

The sixty-two cutthroat smersh operatives Kha chose for the Karelia Special Forces — which reported directly to Beria himself — were prepared to carry out any order. These truly merciless individuals viewed the human race as garbage and received great satisfaction from discharging large numbers of bullets into the backs of heads. Adr led the group.

In April 1951 the division began a secret operation called “Dragnet”: arriving in Karelia, in the small town of Loukhi, the operatives set about arresting blue-eyed blonds, both men and women. They were taken to Leningrad, where, in the basements of the Big House, Kha, Shro, Sofre, and I hammered them.

It was hard work. Sometimes we had to hammer up to forty people a day. By evening we would collapse from exhaustion. The laboratory where, in the past, three imprisoned engineers prepared the hammers, couldn’t handle the volume. Five more workers were added, tripling the production; they worked as much as sixteen hours a day, making thirty hammers daily. The hammers were brought to Leningrad by airplane so that we could pound the white-skinned Karelian breasts in the dusky cellar of the MGB.

Our hands and faces were scarred by shards of flying Ice, our hands and arms became iron though our muscles ached and hurt, our nails sometimes bled, and our feet would be swollen from hours of standing still. Kha’s wife helped us. She wiped our faces, spattered with Karelian blood, gave us warm water to drink, and massaged our arms and legs. We worked as though possessed: the Ice hammers whistled, bones cracked, people moaned and wailed. One floor below us shots rang out incessantly — the empties were being finished off. As always, they comprised ninety-nine percent. Only one percent remained alive. But how much joy we received from each one of a hundred!

Each time I pressed my head against a bloody, quivering chest and heard the flutter of a wakening heart, I forgot about everything else, I cried and shouted with joy, repeating the heart name of the newborn.

“Zu!”

“O!”

“Karf!”

“Yk!”

“Owb!”

“Yach!”

“Nom!”

They were few and far between. Like nuggets of gold in the earth. But they existed! And they glittered in our work-weary, bloody hands.

The living were immediately taken to the MGB prison hospital, where the doctor, following Kha’s instructions, provided the necessary care.

Gradually, their numbers grew.

The special division completed the operation in Loukhi and moved south along the railroad — through Kem, Belomorsk, and Segezh, to Petrozavodsk. While the agents were combing each city, a special train stood at the station, earmarked for the transport of prisoners. After the town had been searched, the train full of fair-haired people departed for Leningrad.

In the course of two and a half months of incessant work, we found twenty-two brothers and seventeen sisters.

This was a great Victory for the Light! Russia had turned toward Light-Bearing Eternity.

The Karelia special division was nearing the old Russian port of Petrozavodsk, the capital of Karelia, a large city with a population of 150,000, teeming with blue-eyed, fair-haired residents.

To implement the Dragnet-Petrozavodsk operation, the special division was reinforced with twenty officer agents and fifteen wardens from the Lubianka prison.

Dozens of Ice hammers awaited their hour in refrigerators.

But the ominous month of July 1951 approached. The “Doctors’ Plot” being fabricated in the bowels of the Lubianka — an alleged plot of doctor-murderers planning to poison Stalin and other Party bigwigs — had turned against the MGB. Abakumov, the minister of state security, was arrested. The threat of a new purge hung over the Lubianka.

Beria’s old enemies in the Central Committee and the Ministry of Defense acquired new life. Denunciations of Abakumov’s deputies, of whom Kha was one, flooded the Politburo.

Kha decided to halt the Karelian operation.

The special division was called back; an empty train returned to Leningrad.

We had to wait things out, to “sink to the bottom,” as Kha said. Adr and I received a month-long vacation and set off for one of the MGB’s resorts on the Crimean coast, not far from Evpatoria. Kha and his wife flew to Hungary to vacation on Lake Balaton. Shro lived with Yus. Mir and Sofre spent the summer working at one of the MGB’s Young Pioneers camps.

After the cellars of the Big House, it was hard for me to adjust to the hot, indolent Crimea, where everything is designed for primitive Soviet “rest,” which involves an almost vegetative existence. Our thirty-nine newly acquired brothers and sisters would not leave me in peace. Hundreds of kilometers away from them I felt their hearts, I remembered each and every name, and I spoke with them.

Adr, understanding my state of mind, tried to help. Early in the morning, before sunrise, we would swim out to the wild cliffs, entwining there and lying still for many hours like ancient lizards.

But Adr’s heart wasn’t enough for me. I yearned for the prison hospital where all of my brothers and sisters lay. I wanted them. I begged and pleaded, crying.

“It’s not possible Khram,” Adr whispered to me.

And I beat my useless hands against the cliffs.

Adr ground his teeth in futility.

Soon something began to happen to me. It started on a Sunday evening, when Adr, who tried in every way possible to help me fight off boredom, decided to take me to the movies. They showed movies on Sundays in a simple summer theater. Instead of the promised new comedy, they began showing
Chapaev
that night. Someone shouted out that they’d already seen
Chapaev
twenty times. An old corpse countered, “No matter, you can watch it for the twenty-first time!”

I had seen
Chapaev
as a girl. At the time the film shook me. I remembered it very well. But this time, when the first scenes began and people appeared on the sheet they used as a screen, I couldn’t see them clearly. They were just gray spots, flickering appearances, sputters of light and shadow. At first I thought that the projectionist had made some mistake. But I was able to read the list of captions and names. Everything else swam in front of me. I looked at the audience: everyone watched silently, no one cried out “Focus!” or “Murder the projectionist!”

Adr watched it too.

“Can you see the screen clearly?” I asked him.

“Yes. And you?”

“I can’t see anything.”

“We’re probably sitting too close,” he decided. “Let’s move farther away.”

We got up and moved to the last bench. But for me nothing changed: I still could read the captions, but I couldn’t make out anything else. Adr thought that I simply had bad eyesight. When another caption appeared on the screen, he asked, “What does it say?”

“In the White Guard headquarters,” I read.

He grew thoughtful. Next to us a tipsy couple sat kissing. I began watching them. The lust of those corpses seemed so bizarre to me. Watching them kiss was like watching two mechanical dolls. The woman noticed my look.

“Whadderya gawkin’ at? Look thata way!” She pointed to the screen, and the man groping her pudgy body laughed.

I turned my eyes toward the screen. Petka was telling Anka how a machine gun worked. All I could see was two quivering dark spots.

“What’s this?” Anka asked.

“Those are stocks,” the invisible Petka answered.

And the two spots merged.

The audience laughed.

“Let’s get out of here,” I said, standing up.

Adr and I left. It was a dark southern night. The cicadas chirped. Under the heavy darkness of the acacias and chestnut trees, the odd light shone out of the resort building. We entered the lobby.

Two concierges dozed behind the counter. On the wall above them hung a large picture of Stalin. I had never noticed it before, but something made me look at the portrait. Instead of Stalin in his white tunic, a white-and-brown splotch flecked with gold floated inside the frame.

I stared at the portrait and moved closer. The splotch shimmered and swam.

I squinted, shook my head, and opened my eyes again: it was still the same.

“What’s the matter?” asked Adr.

“I don’t know.” I shook my head.

The concierges had woken up and were watching me with curiosity.

“Who is that?” I asked, staring at the portrait.

“Stalin,” Adr answered tensely.

The concierges exchanged glances.

“Varya, let’s go to sleep, you’re tired.” Adr took my arm.

“Wait a minute.” I leaned on the counter and fixed my eyes on the portrait.

Then I turned my gaze to the concierges. They looked at me apprehensively. I noticed a pile of postcards lying on the counter. I picked one up. At the bottom of the postcard “Greetings from the Crimea!” was written in dark blue. Above the caption there was a clump of something greenish red.

“What is this?” I asked Adr.

“Roses,” he said as he took me forcefully by the elbow. “Let’s go. I beg of you.”

I put the postcard down and obeyed.

Climbing the stairs with Adr, I heard the concierges whispering.

“They come here to get drunk.”

“What do you expect — the bosses are in Moscow, there’s no one to keep them in line.”

In the room, Adr embraced me. “Tell me what’s happening to you?”

Instead of answering, I got out our passports. I opened them. In the place where the photographs were glued on I could see only gray ripples. But I could read all the words normally.

I took a little mirror out of my purse and looked at myself. The features of my face swam and merged in the reflection. I directed the mirror toward Adr’s face: it was the same. I couldn’t see his face in the mirror.

“I can’t see pictures. Or reflections,” I said, tossing the mirror aside. “I don’t know what’s happening...”

“You’re just tired,” said Adr, embracing me. “The last two months have been very hard.”

“They were wonderful.” I flopped down on the bed. “It’s much harder for me to wait and do nothing.”

“Khram, you understand that we can’t take the risk.”

“I understand everything,” I said, and closed my eyes. “That’s why I’m putting up with it.”