“What, Major Kolomiets?”
“I delegate my responsibility to my helpers—they are less talkers than doers—while I’ll go to sleep. I’m exhausted. There are so many like you here.”
“Only here?”
He smirked. “Unfortunately, not. So, will we talk?”
“I want guarantees I can reveal the information to you. I need a written order from Moscow.”
“Ha! No less than from Moscow?”
Ulya didn’t like the fire in his look. Eyes blazing, he pulled out his Browning and pushed the barrel to her temple. For a long moment, he stood quivering as she stared at him and waited. He jerked the pistol back and made a noise that was between a groan and a sigh. “All right, I’ll see what I can do.”
On her return to her cell, to the sickening stench, she lay on her mattress, but the multiple bruises on her ribs and thighs prevented her from fully enjoying the chance to relax. Ignore the pain, the humiliation, she mentally commanded, refusing to feel sorry for herself.
Hardly had she time to take a comfortable position when keys rattled in the lock. “Kriegshammer, out! Face the wall, hands back.” Then, after the guard locked the door, he ordered, “Move!” A push of a rifle on her shoulder blade.
In the room she’d left ten minutes ago, two men, ununiformed, stood at the window, smoking. One of them, with badly smallpox-marked cheeks—like Stalin’s, the image ran through her mind—motioned her to come closer. She took a step toward him and received a punch to her stomach. “Talk!” he voiced in a raised tone.
“Relax yourself, Boris. There is no point in shouting. A broad. She’ll confess in the end. Everyone does,” the younger one, thickset, reasoned with his comrade. “Were you recruited by SD?” he asked in the same calm voice.
“No.”
“We know differently,” the one addressed as Boris barked.
“I demand you record the interrogation.”
The pockmarked one laughed out loud. “See, Rustam, she demands! The records, my dear, are written during the daylight. During the nights, it’s too dark.”
“Which way did you communicate your information to SD? In writing? Reporting in person?” The Thickset continued as calmly as he’d sounded before.
“I was a translator, and I communicated whatever useful information I could get to the Underground.”
“She doesn’t understand the seriousness of her situation, don’t you see?” Boris hissed through his teeth, agitated more than a minute ago.
“If you tell the truth—” Thickset said again.
“In any case, you’ll shoot me before the sun rises.” Ulya didn’t let him finish.
“Not certain. We’ll preserve your life to help us dig a lot of shit others like you produced during the occupation.” A smirk spread across his face.
“That’s what I was left here to do.”
“Blatant lie. We are not the fools you take us for. You are an idiot if you don’t fully comprehend your situation!” The one addressed as Rustam abandoned his playing calm.
It drove them mad that she just stared at them in silence. She got a strange satisfaction out of that; in reality their prisoner, she controlled the emotions of her encounters; she angered them, not the other way around.
“I suppose we should transact our business. Are we to stay here through the night?” Boris hissed through his teeth then swore with great and filthy ease.
Sideways, she saw him coming up behind her. The next moment, he hooked her at the throat, immobilizing her, and she felt both terrified and entirely calm. After what seemed a long time to her but in reality, must have been only a matter of seconds, she heard the younger one saying, “Well, let’s get it over with.” He swung a punch and caught her just below the eye. The shock sent black waves through her and an impulse—to kill them. She would do it without regret and with abounding pleasure.
When in the morning Ulya woke up in her cell, not even remembering how she got there, the stink seemed to catch in the back of her throat. On all fours, she crawled to the opposite corner from her own vomit, the attempt so laborious, she felt her pulse racing, sweat congregating on her forehead, pain, nagging, like she’d experienced during her days. Suddenly, something warm gushed from between her legs and she dreaded to see what it was. But the understanding of what had just befallen her, was crucial. The ache in her chest expanded, deep and hollow as if a piece of her was leaving her. The baby. The dream.
Ewald. You so much wanted a son. Forgive me. She felt eerily detached from what was happening to her, as though she was wandering through a nightmare. And then, she wept.
58
July 1944
Night after night, Ulya would wake with a start to find that nothing had changed and fall back again into a half sleep, only to be startled back into wakefulness once again. That was when little by little, several disconnected notions formed in her mind and the pieces started to fit together. For a fraction of a second, she gasped for breath, stunned by the magnitude of the idea that could bring her to the point from where there would be no turning back.
Her torturers continued summoning her, sometimes at day, mostly at night. The guard would take her down the familiar corridor, open the door of the interrogation room, and push her inside. Boris would thrust a piece of paper and a pencil at her. “All you have to do is to sign here, and we’ll leave you alone.” He pointed his finger at the bottom of an empty sheet. As if they both were actors in an eerie play, they worked the same scenario with little variations.
“Do you expect me to sign something I have not read?”
He would kick the chair from beneath her, sending her crashing to the stone floor. It looked like he had a favorite way of inflicting agony—paralyzing kicks to the ribs. And even when she was on the floor, he
