“It can’t be true. He told me himself. The orphanage opposite to the school number one.”
“Well, this is the one. But we have never had a fosterling by the name Konstantin Petrov. Now, leave the premises. I’m too busy to be occupied with idle chatter. Soon the children wake up after their afternoon sleep.” With an astounding determination, she grabbed her mop as though ready to use it against Ulya. “Get going, go.” She made an eloquent gesture toward the exit door.
All the way home, Ulya pondered about his lies. What did he need from me? Bedding, or something else? More surprised than frightened, she questioned if hints were there, but she hadn’t been paying attention to them or missed them? Or brushed them off because . . . Konstantin was her first date. Was she desperate to have a boyfriend? She couldn’t place the feeling, and with no regret, she put him or whoever he was out of her mind.
MEMORANDUM
The object of the surveillance, A-711, is not responsive to conferring sensitive themes; secretive. Unemotional.
The object is insistent in getting married.
A hand-written note: To remove agent Karl from the assignment. To continue surveillance.
8
Natasha
Spring 1939
Vitebsk
“Why do you stay home on Sundays?” Aunt Anna looked at Natasha, her eyebrows pulled into an affronted frown. “Enjoy your youth. It won’t last long.”
“I just don’t want to go anywhere, Aunty.”
“Still pining for that son of a bitch?” she groused.
Natasha winced. “Let me alone. I don’t pine for him.”
“Well, then go out! Meet somebody, a young and beautiful girl you are. You live like a recluse.”
Natasha shrugged and, to avoid her aunt’s homilies, escaped to the kitchen.
No such luck. Her aunt followed her. “You are like dead. Other girls—” She chuckled. “Listen to this. A week ago, a girl of twenty, her name Natasha like yours, was brought to our hospital by an ambulance. With a ruptured appendix. Well, with no delay, we operated on her. Oh, what drama it was for the whole week. She moaned, and complained, and cried, all this girl stuff. On Friday, she disappeared.”
“How is that?”
“Ha! Just climbed out the window into the street and off she went.”
Natasha turned away and continued washing the plates left from the meal of the day before.
“Want to know what happened to her?”
“Well, go on.”
With a smirk, Aunt Anna lowered her frame into the simple chair at the table. “She, the girl, your namesake, went to a club to dance and, imagine, the next day in the morning, an ambulance brought her back to the hospital with her sutures ripped open.”
“A willing horse needs no spur.”
“What I’m telling you is a girl’s youth is short. Natasha, dear, strike while the iron is hot.”
“Why have you not struck?”
Her aunt breathed a sigh. “But you are right, Niece. Some are stuck with their first love forever.” Silence ensued, disturbed only by the buzzing of a fly.
“What was the problem building a life with your love, Aunty?”
“Easy for you to ask. Moishe . . . my Misha . . .” Her voice trailed off as though the words jammed in her mouth.
Something stirred in Natasha’s chest. “By chance not our next-door neighbor? The one with six children?”
Her aunt inclined her head and stared at Natasha as though weighing something in her mind.
“But he is a Jew!”
“And what? We do live with them side by side. From the times no one remembers. Good people they are. And a heart does not select nationality. Anyway, mine did not.”
“But why did not you marry then?”
“His parents found him one of theirs. Golda is a decent woman. A good wife and mother. They made a good choice for him.”
“So, they do select nationality, do they?” Natasha wrapped her arm around her aunt’s shoulder. She thought her an old crow, but all of a sudden noticed how delicate her mouth was and the spark in her green-gray eyes made her look much younger than her forty-two years. For the time since she lived with her aunt, Natasha felt how dear this woman became to her, like a mother she had never had. She stretched her hand to her aunt’s head and pulled out two hair pins. A wave of black hair, scarcely touched with gray, cascaded to her shoulders. “Aunty Anna, you are so beautiful. What a fool your Moishe was.”
“Nonsense.” Her aunt grabbed the pins and in one twisting move restored her old-woman’s hairdo. “Ah, what’s the point in dwelling on that now. Let’s go digging vegetable patches.” She took two steps to the window and threw it open, letting the fresh air of the early spring swoosh through the kitchen. “The day’s like a gift for it.”
9
Ulya
Spring 1939
Saratov
“Hey, stir aside.” A familiar voice stopped Ulya at the moment she was putting the bullet into the training Mosin rifle gun barrel. A young man flopped onto the padded cover beside her and carefully laid his rifle down on the sand-covered ground.
“Otto!” Ulya toggled the rifle’s safety to the on-position then shook his proffered hand. “What are you doing here?”
“The same as you, I suppose.”
“Are you talking or shooting?” The instructor’s voice interrupted their excitement at seeing each other.
“Now, now. What is my target?” Otto turned to the man and followed the wave of his hand with his eyes.
“Let’s compete,” Ulya said.
“Ten?”
She bobbed her head and, out of the corner of her eye, saw him stir in an attempt to find a comfortable position. A soft click of the safety sliding off. A shot. He reloaded and went on shooting in succession.
Resting her index finger on the metal curve of the trigger and aiming the rifle’s muzzle at the target, Ulya waited till he finished and, changing to her left hand after the fifth shot, performed the action in unstopping regular firing.
“We are done,” they shouted in unison and waited for the instructor to bring them the shooting targets. Otto got up to receive them.
The
