Later, upon reflection, she reasoned to herself. There was no question, Sergey Vladimirovich was with the partisans or Underground who, she knew, and everybody knew, had become a serious thorn for the occupying forces. She wished she could be with him in that dangerous resistance. Her nights were full of those images: people shot on the streets, bodies hanging from the gallows. “Jews.” “Communists.” “Commissars.” “Partisans.”
These nauseating images gave way to Sergey Vladimirovich’s face and the feeling of excitement and long forgotten longing. She readily explained his behavior by the urgent and dangerous situation. No doubt, he had a clandestine meeting with that lean man.
35
Ulya
January 1942
Big snowflakes flowed down peacefully to the frozen ground. The snow was her enemy and still, thanks to it, she saw him. Yesterday. She wouldn’t like to confess to herself that since her first meeting with Nathan, he was on her mind. Even more after she, dressed as a man, met him in the city to exchange the lists with the names of the Polizei and other information too voluminous to be squeezed into the hiding place.
Clad in a woolen tracking suit, she lay in bed, curled into a ball pulling the eiderdown quilt around her. Still shivering against the cold, her thoughts were on how risky their way of communication had become. Of the curly wormwood shrubs, only the dried-up stalks remained and her footprints on the snow led directly to the secret place.
He came in the night, knocked at the window, and waited for her to come to the door to open it. “An uninvited guest is worse than a Tartar,” he greeted her with the well-used Russian saying.
At the sight of him, she felt an odd pang and was glad the darkness of the room screened her delight. “On the contrary, you are very welcome, Nathan.” What would she give to learn his real name, and who was that young woman she had seen him with a week ago? His darling or a fellow-partisan? The words of the Polizei, “These Untermenschen are fucking everywhere, war or no war” awoke unfamiliar feeling in her. She shooed it away, pleased he was here in front of her.
Although he wore a sheepskin coat and a fur cap with flap ears, his twisted posture showed how cold he was. He pulled his coarse woolen mittens off and rubbed his hands together to keep them warm. “Might you have some hot water for me? To drink.” His voice was hoarse from a cold or thirst.
“Sure. Even coffee.”
“I see you have privileges in working for the administration.” His face creased into a sudden smile and he eased closer to the stove. “May I?” He pushed a half-burned log into the blackened hearth. It glowed and caught along a splinter and into what was left of the embers of a fire. He fanned it into flames with a strip of cardboard he picked up from the floor. “Our goal now is . . .” The flames lit the right side of his tired but lovely face and, for a moment, she forgot to listen.
“To implement some changes into the method of our communication.” His voice returned her attention to what he was saying.
Again, she noted how cultured his way of speaking was. “I’m all ears.” She sat at the table staring into his eyes, which were black, and the reflection from the fire in the stove made them spark.
“The snow betrays our secret place. If a stranger comes, he’ll find it easily. I offer you to write the most urgent information on the cigarette paper and stuff the tobacco back.” He held out a cigarette packet to her.
“Thanks, I don’t smoke.”
“Time to learn. In case of danger, you or our man who’ll pick them up, can destroy the information by smoking, and even without this precaution, cigarettes won’t attract immediate attention. You’ll tuck them in the crevice behind the upper part of the doorpost from inside in the toilet room on your floor.” A shadow of a smirk appeared on his face. “Right under their noses.”
Ulya nodded, mentally agreeing with the method. Men and a few women used the same toilet room and the massive iron latch provided needed privacy.
“You’ll get the assignments the same way. And the latest news from the front.”
“What about now? They say Moscow is—”
“Moscow is holding up.”
Ulya acknowledged his information with a nod. “What if I can’t squeeze all my reports into the gap or lose access to it?”
“We’ll meet at a safe place and the time communicated through the newspaper stand on Liberty Square. Do you read the New Way newspaper?”
“I don’t have time for it.”
“Now, please, find it. To establish a meeting, go there to buy the New Way. On a small piece of it, leave your message in invisible ink.” He took a dark glass vial from his pocket and set it on the table in front of her.
At SHON, she’d learnt how to prepare and apply invisible ink, and how to make the message visible.
“On the left-hand side of the stand, there is a gap between the planks. Tuck your message into it. Even if by chance it falls out, the seller will notice and pick it up.
“Nathan?”
He looked up at her.
“Are we done with the official part?”
He inclined his head, and his eyes followed her movements as she unwrapped a cloth from a loaf then pulled a saucepan from the oven. His fur cap already lying on his lap, he opened the collar of his coat and straightened his shoulders. “It’s so nice to be in the warmth of a real house.”
Was he spending nights in a partisan hideout? Or did he lodge in the city? Better not to know, she agreed with the principle of secrecy. She wished she could offer him her—The word “bed” refused to form in her head.
“Here.” She stretched her hand with a cup and almost let it go when his fingers touched hers. He
