13
Vasilyev was sitting in the backseat of the limo that picked me up that morning. It was already unpleasantly warm, the air thick and languid, so I rolled down the window a little. A sweet, not-unpleasant odor of putrefaction slipped into the automobile. Washington, I’d found, was a city built on swamps and dreams, both of which are subject to a slow disintegration. It was just the two of us, so I assumed that Viktor and Gavrilov had already gone ahead to the conference. Vasilyev didn’t so much as give me a nod when I got in. He was preoccupied by some documents he was reading. Instead of his usual dark clothing, he was dressed in a cream-colored linen suit with a carnation boutonniere in the lapel. Whatever he was reading, he found the news troubling. He alternately furrowed his brow or exhaled a frustrated sigh, which made the papers in his hand ruffle gently. On the seat between us lay an American newspaper, the same one that Mrs. Roosevelt had shown me earlier. The one with the picture of the Soviet delegation on the front.
Finally he looked over at me and, extending his hand, said, “So?”
I reached into my pocket and withdrew the envelope that the man named White had given me the previous night. He took the envelope and slid it into his pocket.
“Who is this man?” I said. “Is he one of our agents?”
“The less you know, the better. Let’s just say that he is sympathetic to our cause.” He glanced out the window, searching for something. “Turn left here,” he instructed the driver. After a while he said, “Stop.”
The driver pulled over to the curb in front of a seedy-looking hotel in a crowded section of the city.
“This is where the conference is?” I asked, surprised.
“No,” he said. “I shall be right back.”
Vasilyev got out of the car and headed into the hotel. I sat there watching people walk by. After half an hour, I saw Vasilyev emerge. He was accompanied by another man. The other was stout, well dressed, with reddish brown hair and a lean, sharp face like a hawk. The two conversed for a moment, then shook hands and parted. Vasilyev got in the car and we continued on.
He turned toward me after a while and said, “How was your big night, Comrade?” I couldn’t tell if his tone was mocking or not.
“I enjoyed myself,” I replied.
“I am glad to hear that. Was the president there?”
“Yes.”
“Did you get an opportunity to talk to him?”
“A little.”
“And?” he said, waving his hand in a circle to speed up my reply.
“We talked about the war some. I told him how important a second front was to our troops. He said it was a complicated issue.”
“Complicated?”
“He spoke of his Congress. I didn’t really follow him. But he said that he would open a second front just as soon as he was able.”
“Did he now?”
“Yes.”
“And were you able to talk to his wife about his election plans?”
It crossed my mind to lie to him. On the one hand, Mrs. Roosevelt had been kind to me, and I didn’t like the idea that I was somehow betraying her trust. Besides, how would he know what we talked about? I was the only one there. I could make up anything I wanted. Yet I told myself I was a loyal Soviet citizen, a soldier that would do her duty to the Motherland. What was more, perhaps Vasilyev was right, maybe it was important to know what the Americans’ plans were, how they might affect the war effort. They might be our allies but they weren’t dying with us—not yet anyway. We Soviets had to take care of ourselves, I argued to myself.
“She said that she hopes that he doesn’t run.”
“Really?”
“She is worried about his health.”
“How sick is he?” Vasilyev asked.
“She didn’t say. But clearly she is concerned about it. And her friend said she wanted to get back to her own interests.”
“Her friend?”
“Yes. A reporter.”
“What’s her name?”
“Lorena Hickok. She lives at the White House.”
“What else do you know about her?”
“Nothing,” I replied. “Just that she’s a friend.”
“I see,” said Vasilyev, taking out his small notebook and writing down her name.
“Comrade, I will be going home after the conference, will I not?” I said to him.
“Don’t worry, you’ll be going home soon enough.”
The conference was held in a beautiful old hotel that displayed out front flags flying from the various countries represented, and signs in a dozen languages that read, WELCOME, STUDENTS FOR PEACE. Inside, the hotel was decorated with chandeliers and plush carpeting, velvet drapes, and dark oil paintings. Everywhere employees in crisp uniforms and little round hats were scurrying about, tending to the needs of their guests. As we entered, Dmitri approached us.
“Go get the others,” Vasilyev ordered him.
We followed the signs, which led us toward a grand ballroom. The room was crowded with people and very noisy, a discordant hubbub arising from all the different languages being spoken. There were student representatives from some fifty nations, as well as diplomats, politicians, reporters, interpreters, and guest speakers. Students had come from as far away as China and Burma, India and Australia, England and France and the Netherlands. Almost all were dressed in the uniforms of their countries.
No sooner had we entered when a number of reporters spotted us and came rushing up.
“Lieutenant,” they cried, shoving their cameras at me. They wanted me to smile, to wave at the cameras, and since we hadn’t yet found Radimov and the others, they had to communicate with me by hand gestures and a kind of crude pantomime. “Smile,” they said as the flashbulbs popped, momentarily blinding me.
After a while, Dmitri appeared moving through the crush of people, with the others from our delegation in tow. Radimov still appeared the worse for wear, his coloring poor.
“We couldn’t find Viktor,” Dmitri offered.
“What do you mean, you couldn’t find him?”
“He was here a minute ago. And then,” the Corpse explained, snapping his waxy fingers, “he was gone.”
“I saw him talking to some girl from the French Free Forces,” Gavrilov added.
“He doesn’t speak French,” Vasilyev said.
“Comrade Vasilyev,” offered Gavrilov, with a fawning smile, “even without words Viktor can communicate with the opposite sex.”
Vasilyev shook his head, his lips gathered tightly together in annoyance. “Fools,” he lamented. “I am surrounded by fools. Find him! Immediately!”
“Don’t worry, Comrade, we’ll find him,” the Corpse said.
When they were gone, Vasilyev led me a little way apart from Radimov and Gavrilov. “I thought I asked you to speak to him.”
“I did,” I replied. “Victor has his own mind.”
“I told you that there would be consequences.”
I felt like saying Viktor was a big boy, that whatever the consequences he might suffer, they weren’t my responsibility. But still, he felt like my responsibility. I whispered, “Please don’t do anything to him.”
Vasilyev stared at me, his anger partially changing into something else. Half of his mouth offered up a smile, but the other half seemed to remain frozen in its anger, so that the total effect was a decidedly grotesque expression.
“So you don’t wish anything to happen to your friend, eh?”
“Please,” I said.
“I shall think on it,” he said. “Have you prepared something to say?”
“Yes.”
Handing me a piece of paper, he said, “I’ve taken the liberty of jotting down a few things to make sure you touch upon them in your talk. Number one: tell the Americans that we desperately need more supplies. Tell them they can send donations to the Soviet War Relief Fund. We want them to dig deeper into their pockets. Number two: reassure them that we won’t sue for peace.”
“Sue for peace?” I said. “What are you talking about?”
“Evidently, the Americans are worried that we are in negotiations with Germany. That we might cut a deal with Hitler. We need to reassure them we won’t do that.”
“Is that true? About our cutting a deal?”
Vasilyev pursed his lips and shrugged.
“Finally, I want you to say that it gives you enormous pleasure to be here. Say it exactly that way: ‘enormous pleasure.’ Do you understand?”
I had no idea why it had to be this way, just another of Vasilyev’s quirks, I assumed.
“Come, let us go in.”
We headed into the auditorium, a large room that was packed with those attending the conference. A young woman greeted us there. She led Gavrilov and me up to the front of the room, where, as special guests of the First Lady, we were to sit right onstage. We were given headphones so that the speeches could be translated. The stage was colorfully decorated with flowers and banners, and from somewhere musicians played something by Mussorgsky. At the podium there was an array of microphones from various radio stations, as the conference, we’d been told, was being broadcast across the country and to soldiers fighting overseas. I happened to spot Mrs. Roosevelt in the wings talking with several people. I recognized one as Miss Hickok. Another was a Negro woman wearing a long, low-cut gown. The three were chatting amiably. When she recognized me, Mrs. Roosevelt waved and gave me her toothy, infectious grin.
Soon the musicians struck up what turned out to be sections of various national anthems from around the world, including our own “L’Internationale.” This was followed by an honor guard made up of student soldiers who bore their respective flags up onto the stage, where they arranged them in a semicircle at the back. Finally, the black woman strode out to the microphone at the center of the stage and began to sing a slow-moving Negro spiritual. She was a striking-looking woman, with delicate features and a commanding presence, and a voice that, when she finally gave herself over to it, soared like a bird in flight. Though I didn’t know what the words meant, I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand at attention as she sang. Quite frankly, though, I was surprised that they allowed such a thing to happen in America. Back home, everything we’d read about the treatment of Negroes spoke only of how oppressed they still were. Like our peasants before the revolution. And yet here was a Negro woman singing before all the world. When she finished, the audience gave her a rousing applause.
Mrs. Roosevelt herself then got up to officially open the proceedings. The voice that translated her words struck me as vaguely familiar, but I was concentrating too hard on what she was saying and didn’t really pay it all that much mind. She welcomed the international students and their guests, as well as other dignitaries and representatives to the four-day conference. She spoke about how lasting peace would be achieved only through the cooperation of all the world’s nations. It was interesting to see how this plain, soft-spoken, and unpretentious woman suddenly changed right before your eyes into a speaker of great passion and fervor, how she was able to inspire the crowd. She then introduced the keynote speaker, Supreme Court Justice Jackson. This was followed by a number of students who got up to speak. I kept looking around to see if I could spot Viktor, but he was nowhere to be seen. I worried about him, worried that the Corpse and Dmitri would harm him, or perhaps that Vasilyev would ship him back home to be reeducated—and I knew all too well what that meant. Then Gavrilov got up and gave his speech, a lengthy harangue filled with platitudes and clichés, with phony tales of fighting the fascists.
Finally it was my turn to speak. Mrs. Roosevelt introduced me, saying such generous things about me that I felt quite embarrassed. She called me “that brave little soldier” and “the woman with the heart of a lion.” On my way to the podium, she gave me a reassuring hug and said something in English that I assumed was wishing me good luck. She must have known how terribly nervous I was. I had never spoken to such a large crowd before. Shooting Germans was easy compared to this. With an unsteady hand, I removed from my pocket the little speech I had prepared.
“To begin, it gives me enormous pleasure to be here,” I said. “I want to thank Mrs. Roosevelt and all Americans everywhere for their kindness and support.”
Then I read my speech—how the world couldn’t rely on the sacrifices of a single country, the need for cooperation with our allies, the necessity for still more supplies and financial support. The fact that we were winning the war, that my comrades would never surrender to the Nazis. I spoke for a while about the importance of opening a second front without delay. I said other things as well. It was not very memorable, I’m afraid. After a while, I looked out and saw a sea of eyes glazed over, of yawns and heads nodding off, and here and there someone glancing at his watch. It had, after all, been a long day, and they had already had their fill of grand words, of martial speeches, of the suffering inflicted by the Nazis. These Americans, I thought, didn’t need more empty propaganda, more clichés about fighting and heroism. Unlike us, they hadn’t been attacked by the Nazis, and although they were at war, they weren’t locked in a death struggle for their very lives. If and when they chose to fight in Europe, they’d be going off to fight in some unclear affair they knew little about and cared even less for. If they were going to fight and die alongside of us they would need the truth, I thought. They would need to be toughened by truth, not puffed up by fancy-sounding illusions. And what was more, if we were going to ask them to die with us, they deserved the truth as well. So instead of reading the rest of my speech, I put it away and decided to speak directly from my heart.
“Do you know,” I began, “that fifteen thousand of my countrymen are dying each day? Fifteen thousand in a single day! Try to imagine that if you can. Try to imagine how high a pile of bodies that would make. But that is just a number. It’s hard to grieve over a number. Better yet, I’ll tell you of the time that my unit, after retaking some land held by the Germans, came upon an old people’s hospital. When we went inside, we were appalled to find that everyone had been slaughtered by the Germans. The old men had been bayoneted in their beds, the women raped before they were killed. They were harmless old folks. And yet the Germans massacred every last one of them. Try to imagine one of them your grandfather or grandmother. Or perhaps I should tell you of the first enemy I shot. I had expected to feel only joy, as he was part of the enemy that killed my people. But what I felt was not joy. I actually felt sick to my stomach.” With this a pall fell over the auditorium. They sat up and stared at me. I heard a low murmur of discord rise from the audience. I saw reporters frantically writing in their little pads. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Vasilyev lean forward nervously in his chair, no doubt anxious that I would say the wrong thing. But I continued on anyway. “You see, ladies and gentlemen, like most soldiers, I thought killing the enemy would be quite easy,” I explained. “After all, they had invaded my country. They had bombed our cities, killed our children, raped our women. My own family was killed by them. Yes, my entire family. Both my parents, my husband. I had a three-year-old daughter named Masha. She was the most precious thing in the world to me. She died in my arms, killed by those monsters. So you see, if anyone had a right to hate the enemy, I did. For a long time, I hated them with all my heart and soul. I lived only to kill them. But I was wrong to give up my humanity in the process. Wrong to make killing the only thing that was of importance to me. If we are to defeat our enemies, to really and truly defeat them once and for all, we must not only defeat them on the field of battle. We must defeat them in here,” I said, touching my chest. “We must defeat them in our hearts and our souls by not becoming too much like them. That is our most important asset in this struggle. More important than bombs or tanks or planes. That’s what makes us different from the fascists. And that’s what will help us to defeat them. In the war and after too. We must hold on to our humanity at all costs. I have heard that you Americans are very brave. I know that you have fought courageously in many wars. And I would like to think you are brave. I would like to think that you will join with me, and shoulder to shoulder we will defeat this common enemy. I ask this of you from the bottom of my heart. Don’t let my comrades die in vain. Don’t let my country continue to be plundered and burned, our old people killed, our children put to the bayonet before the invaders. Don’t let my own child’s death be in vain.”
I paused for a moment. Then I said, “I thank you, my comrades.”
The auditorium was silent as I walked back to my seat. I didn’t quite know how my talk would be received, but I studiously avoided looking at Vasilyev. When I reached my seat, I was surprised to hear a thunderous ovation.
Soon afterward, Mrs. Roosevelt and Captain Taylor came over to me.
“My dear,” Mrs. Roosevelt said, hugging me, “that was simply marvelous. Why, you had them hanging on your every word.”
Patting me on the back, Captain Taylor added, “She’s right. That was just great.”
Only then did I realize that it had been his voice translating earlier for Mrs. Roosevelt.
“Your adoring fans are waiting for you,” Mrs. Roosevelt said to me. Just off the stage, a crowd of reporters was being held at bay by ushers. “Tat’yana,” they were calling. “Lieutenant.”
Before I left, I felt Vasilyev at my elbow. “I must say, Lieutenant, that you had me a little worried there for a moment. I wasn’t sure where you were headed with that. But it was good. Quite good, in fact.”
I nodded.
“Rest assured, important people back home will hear of this.”