Chad Thumann - The Undesirables

They plunged deeper into the woods. He couldn’t tell which direction he was moving in, but the night sky was slightly brighter in one direction. That might be a sign of the aurora borealis, or it might be the glow of Leningrad’s lights. Either way, that was north, and north offered Petr the best chance of escape.

As Petr would later learn, he was partially correct. The sky was reflecting the glow of Leningrad, but the light came from Leningrad’s burning fires. Petr knew the Germans had surrounded Leningrad and held the city in a tight blockade. He wasn’t aware of the true desperation, starvation, and privation of every citizen caught within the city. He didn’t know that the electricity had been cut. He didn’t know that the gas lines didn’t work. He didn’t know that the water-pumping stations had broken down. And he didn’t know that thousands of people were starving to death every day. The Soviet government didn’t want people to know what was happening in Leningrad, because it didn’t want anyone, especially not soldiers, to know how close they were to losing the war with Germany. So the officials and bureaucrats and commissars carefully controlled all information coming out of the city. The NKVD opened and read all mail. Refugees who managed to escape and began to describe what was really happening were arrested and warned to keep quiet.

No one outside of Leningrad knew how bad it truly was in the city. Everyone believed the citizens were courageously and patriotically holding out against the Germans, waiting for the glorious moment when they would finally be liberated by the Second Shock Army. That, the Soviet leaders believed, was best for morale.

No one outside the city knew it was a death trap.

So Petr headed toward Leningrad, believing that, since he was behind enemy lines, the besieged city offered him the best chance of safety. If he could only reach the guns and trenches of Leningrad, he would be safe.

The NKVD man looked well fed. Everyone here did. That was all Karen could think of while she stared at the man across the big wooden table. She could even smell the food. It was somewhere in here, a commissary perhaps, feeding important Communist officials, high-ranking military officers, and their families. She could smell boiled cabbage. When was the last time she’d eaten vegetables? She could only vaguely remember. She briefly considered stealing some on her way out. But that was her stomach thinking, and she knew such thoughts were unwise. She reminded herself to concentrate. She was playing a dangerous game—a game at which men like the NKVD officer were masters. If Karen lost, she knew she would never leave this building alive.

The NKVD man read from his notes. “You met Sasha Portnov in the Young Pioneers?”

Karen blinked. Sasha Portnov? What did he have to do with her crimes? Sasha had been a true believer, a Communist, a patriot. He had nothing to do with the black market. “Why are you asking about Sasha?”

The NKVD man’s expression didn’t change. “I will ask the questions here. Did you or did you not meet Sasha Portnov in the Young Pioneers?”

“I did not.”

The NKVD man looked up from his notes and peered at Karen across the table with the expression of a strict schoolmaster. “It is important that you understand. I know when you are lying. I will let this first lie go unpunished. But next time there will be consequences.”

“I am not lying.”

“Do you enjoy pain?”

“Of course not.”

“Then tell me the truth.”

“I am.”

The NKVD man sighed, then pushed back his chair and stood. “Don’t you think we have records from the Young Pioneers?” he asked as he walked around the table toward her. “Don’t you think we have official documents proving that you and Sasha Portnov served together in the same group?” He took her wrist in both hands. “Why are you pretending not to have met him?”

“I’m not pretending—” Karen’s words caught in her throat as the NKVD man twisted her wrist. The pain was excruciating. She couldn’t think, couldn’t hear, couldn’t even see. She could only feel the pain and wonder what he was doing to her, wonder if it would ever stop. And then it did.

“I know everything about you,” the man warned her. “I have investigated your father and your sister. I have even searched your apartment.”

Karen’s head swam. For a moment she couldn’t speak. She wanted desperately never to feel that pain again. But some part of her mind told her there was something worse than pain. You could recover from pain. The only thing you couldn’t recover from was death. “My apologies, Comrade,” she forced herself to say. “But you misunderstood. I don’t claim never to have met Sasha Portnov. But I did not meet him in the Young Pioneers. I met him before that. I joined the Young Pioneers so that I could be with him. I will try to be more clear in the future.”

The NKVD man flinched, shocked. He quickly regained his composure, circled back around the table, and sat down. “You see, then? That was not so difficult. The truth is much easier.”

“Absolutely, Comrade.”

The NKVD man picked up a pen and twisted off its cap. “You say you joined the Young Pioneers to be with him. Why? Did someone force you? A foreigner?”

“I was in love with him.”

Again, for the briefest moment, Karen saw shock wash across the face of the NKVD man. Karen realized with some satisfaction that this interrogation was not going as he had planned. Perhaps the old saying was right; perhaps the truth really would set you free. But this time it was not Karen’s truth. It was Inna’s.

“You joined when you were eight.”

“Sasha was nine.”

“And you claim to have already fallen in love with him?”

“Desperately.”

“You were not yet mature enough for romance.”

“You do not need to be mature to love someone.”

“And am I to believe the two of you… an eight-year-old and a nine-year-old… were, what, sweethearts?”

“No, comrade. Sasha Portnov barely knew I existed.”

Inna had told Karen the story at least half a dozen times. It was a quaint story, and cute, one that Karen loved. Inna, as a little girl, had taken off her gloves to admire a necklace. It was a cheap piece of jewelry, with a tiny beaded doll serving as its pendant, but to young Inna it was magical. She had wanted to feel it, to run her fingers over the beads, so she had removed her gloves. She so coveted the pretty jewelry that she completely lost track of the world around her. She was distracted, and someone used that distraction to steal her gloves.

Inna knew that when she got home her father would ask about the gloves, and Inna would be punished for letting someone steal them. So Inna didn’t go home. Instead she just sat on the stoop and cried until a boy came and asked her what was wrong. That boy was Sasha. He said he was in the Young Pioneers, and that part of his code was to help someone once a day. He gave Inna his gloves.

As Karen told the story to the NKVD man, she remembered Inna telling the story to her. It had been such a small thing, a common thing, a moment motivated by a child afraid of a spanking. But the good deed and the handsome boy had turned it into something special for Inna. Without realizing it, Sasha had also turned it into an act of romance, because from that point forward Inna was obsessed with him. Her love for Sasha went unrequited for eight long years. Inna couldn’t help but smile when she told the story to Karen and now, when Karen retold it, she couldn’t help but cry.

The NKVD man looked puzzled. “Why are you crying?”

What could Karen say? That she missed Inna and Sasha? She couldn’t tell the NKVD man that. Or could she? The truth will set you free.

“Because he is gone,” she said.

The NKVD man put down his pen, sat back in his chair, and stared at her. “Gone where?”

“I don’t know. But I think he’s dead.” Karen sobbed then. She couldn’t help herself. They were real, these tears. Until now she had never had a chance to mourn for Inna, to grieve. It had been such a senseless death, but also a beautiful one—beautiful in its selflessness. So she grieved now, and her sorrow came out in convulsive sobs that shook her body and turned her empty stomach.

The NKVD man stared at her in silence. Then he stood up again and circled the table. He was going to hurt her again. Karen knew she had to get hold of her emotions, stop crying, say something to prevent the NKVD man from torturing her. But she couldn’t. Try as she might, she couldn’t stop crying.

The man stood above her and reached into his pocket. He was going to cut her, Karen realized, or stab her or worse. She’d read that in stories: torturers forcing blades under their victims’ fingernails.

But the NKVD man didn’t draw a knife from his pocket. He took out a handkerchief. He handed it to Karen, who didn’t hesitate to use it to wipe her runny nose and blot the streaming tears from under her eyes. The cloth was oddly comforting, as was the closeness of the strange man. He leaned against the table next to her, stoically watching her as she regained her composure. She drew one last sniffle before handing back the handkerchief. “Thank you. I think I ruined it.”

The NKVD man tossed the dirty linen on the table but ignored the comment. “Do you know what happened to him?” he asked.

Karen did know what happened to him. But she’d already told a lie to Inna’s sister, claiming that Sasha had stayed behind to collect wood. She couldn’t be sure the NKVD hadn’t already spoken to Inna’s sister, so she didn’t dare contradict herself. “No,” she lied.