Out of where? was Natasha’s instinctive first thought.
She refrained from saying it out loud. See, ignoring her instincts was starting to pay off!
Instead, Natasha smiled in the vague, noncommittal way she’d perfected for staff meetings.
“This is Natasha,” Dima introduced her to the rest of his cronies. “I told you about her.”
He’d told them about her!
“I think she might be exactly whom we’ve been looking for.”
She was exactly whom they’d been looking for!
“I sent her postcards from the road, checking to see if she could be trusted.”
It was a test! Had she passed?
“She didn’t turn me in. I covered my ass, made sure I could explain away every single one, if it came to that—love-starved suitor, the usual nonsense.”
Did Dima just say something about love?
“Sit down, Natasha,” Dima said. And then he continued talking, no longer about her, now about their group, who they were, what they wanted, what they’d accomplished so far, growing more animated as he went along, cheeks glowing pinker, saliva moistening his lips, making them fuller, more luscious, more tantalizing. Others around the table joined in, tossing out horror stories like gambling chips. One-upmanship tales of Jews forbidden from leaving the USSR because the government claimed they were in possession of state secrets, but it was just an excuse to harass them. They talked about how those who’d dared request an exit visa were persecuted. This one lost her job; that one was evicted from his kommunalka. One woman was publicly shamed; a man was stripped of the medals he’d earned during the Great Patriotic War.
“We’re so glad you’re here with us.” Dima beamed.
“I’m so glad to be here with you,” Natasha enthused, making sure to put special emphasis on the last word.
“We need your help,” Ludmilla said, even though Natasha had not meant her.
“How can I help you?” Natasha stammered. “I-I’m not political.” A childhood spent exiled in Siberia had made Mama quite clear on the subject.
“That’s why we need you,” Dima said. Suddenly, Natasha was reconsidering her position. “We’re known dissidents. We’ve applied to leave and were turned down. They call us agitators. We’re being watched. You’re not.”
“You can do things we can’t,” Ludmilla elbowed in.
“Do you know what this is?” Dima slid a book across the table.
Though the publisher, Éditions du Seuil, appeared to be French, the title and author were in Russian. “Arkhipelag GuLag,” Natasha read out loud. The Gulag Archipelago.
“By Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Of course you’ve never heard of it or him. Owning a copy is grounds for a prison sentence. Solzhenitsyn couldn’t work on it all at once. He stashed sections at friends’ houses around Moscow. It had to be smuggled out on microfilm and published in France. He’s been deported. They were too scared to imprison him again. Can you imagine?”
“It’s vital that every citizen of the USSR read this book,” Ludmilla said. No, it was the other woman at the table, the one plucking her cuticles with her thumbs and pinching her tongue between her lips. Natasha found both females equally immaterial.
“We”—Dima indicated his group, Natasha not included—“are being stopped on the street and harassed. They search our homes. We can’t risk being caught with the book.”
“But you,” said a man who wasn’t Dima, “are not under suspicion.”
“We need you to take it, copy it—you don’t have to type, longhand is fine,” Dima assured. As if that were the biggest inconvenience. “So we can distribute it. Expose how the Soviet system brutalizes its people, not just for political crimes, real and imagined, but also for trivial offenses.”
Natasha wondered why Dima thought it was a good idea to use the word brutalize while trying to convince her to commit one of those trivial offenses—which carried the penalty of a political crime.
She asked, “And after I copy the pages, do I bring them back to you?”
“Yes.”
“All right.”
Walking home after dark, Natasha feared an attack, a senseless drunk, a punk boy snatching her purse, a sexual assault. But with the forbidden book in her bag pulsating like an untreated burn, Natasha almost wished to be robbed. At least then it would be someone else’s problem.
Then again, a savvy thief might run her purse straight to a militsia station in exchange for amnesty. She’d be even worse off. The nightmare scenario jogged Natasha’s memory of a story Baba Daria told. About her second husband, not the one for whom she’d played hard to get in front of the opera house but the one who’d engineered their lifesaving escape to Siberia, turning in his mother to set himself up better in life. For a moment, Natasha even considered doing the same to Dima; it’s what Mama would want Natasha to do.
“No!” she blurted out, then, despite there being nobody to overhear, promptly covered her mouth with her palm, conditioned as she was to express only the most sanctioned of thoughts.
The anger that flooded through her took Natasha by surprise. She wasn’t certain at whom she was angry. Mama, for lying to Natasha all her life about what she could expect and turning her into someone too afraid to demand anything different? Dima and his ridiculously blue eyes, for putting Natasha in this dangerous situation? Herself, for so much as momentarily entertaining the notion of a self-serving betrayal?
The system, Natasha decided. That’s what she was angry with. The entire political system of the USSR. It was to blame for her current discomfort. It was to blame for Mama’s terrible child rearing, and for Natasha’s earlier disenchantment and depression, and even for her moment of cowardice just now. After all, if it weren’t for the USSR, Natasha would have never needed to fear the consequences of her work with Dima in the first place!
It made sense now. Natasha finally understood what Dima had been trying to tell her, why his revolution was so important and why she was destined to play a critical part in it. His cause was her cause now. Nothing would stand between them! She didn’t even mind the danger. Or at least, she resolved not to think about it. Not the most heroic of approaches, Natasha was self-aware enough to realize. She also knew herself well enough to comprehend it was necessary, for the time being, to keep her from changing her mind.
Natasha crept into the apartment after everyone was asleep; she imagined Boris’s door closing seconds before she entered. Natasha tiptoed past her parents’ bed and climbed into her own, slipping the book under her pillow, her mind—and her heart—made up. She was in!
When she’d first accepted the novel, Natasha had given scant thought to where she planned to fulfill her clandestine task. A public place such as a café, park, or library was out of the question. She might be able to spirit a few blank notebooks from school to write in, but she couldn’t risk bringing the actual book to work. She’d be ratted out before end of day by the red-scarved brownnosers always looking to cause trouble under the guise of patriotic duty. Meanwhile, every room in her apartment was communal. The only one who had a private door he could close was . . . Boris.
She sneaked in for the first time when she knew he was working late. Natasha told her parents she was going out, then closed the door to their room and let herself into Boris’s. She stayed for half an hour. Pressing her ear to the door to make sure no one was in the hallway when she reemerged, she slammed the front door to make it sound like she’d returned.
The second time, Natasha found an hour when Boris went to a football tournament with friends, his parents had departed for the movies, and Natasha’s mother was in the kitchen, baking a cake after the miracle acquisition of butter, for which she set Natasha’s father on a stool next to her, cracking a mountain of walnuts.
After a few weeks, Natasha had painstakingly tracked everyone’s schedules to the point that she could predict when Boris’s room would be available, and nobody would catch her coming in or out. It was a shame she couldn’t pass her work to Dima directly, as she’d expected. He said it would be too dangerous for them to be seen together. Swallowing her disappointment, along with the urge to remind Dima he’d promised she’d be handing the materials over to him, not some go-between, Natasha suggested meeting at Pushkin’s fountain, pretending to be young lovers walking hand in hand, exchanging deliberately distracting kisses, using the rushing water to cover up their renegade talk. Dima said no. He said it was even too risky for Natasha to be seen openly with Ludmilla, the go-between she’d been trying to avoid, as Ludmilla was under surveillance, too.
Instead, on Saturday afternoon, during its busiest time, Natasha lined up with dozens of other Odessa residents waiting to use the public banya. When Natasha was younger and their apartment had no indoor plumbing, she and her parents used to come regularly. Then, when Natasha was in her teens, Papa bribed a workman installing bathrooms in the compound next door to divert some of his equipment and build them a functioning toilet in a lean-to adjacent to the kitchen. Once that was done, Papa threaded the pipe that ran under the sink toward the ceiling. He took a metal basin, drilled a hole in the bottom, and attached a shower nozzle. The basin went on rods that he screwed into the wall. Redirecting water from under the sink filled the basin. When you loosened the nozzle, water rained down. To keep the basin from overflowing, Papa got a piece of cork and stuck a tiny flag into it. When the flag appeared above the edge of the basin, it was full. The flag was red. No one could say they weren’t patriots!
Thanks to Papa, Natasha hadn’t needed to use the public bath in years. She didn’t miss the four-hour waits, though it had been handy for getting homework done. Natasha had a different agenda now. She waited in line, and Ludmilla waited a handful of folks behind her. They didn’t speak. They didn’t even make eye contact.
When Natasha’s turn finally came, she purchased her ticket and moved to the women’s side of the banya, while the men crossed to their side. When Dima first proposed this plan, Natasha had the fleeting notion they might rent the more expensive bathrooms that were designated for families. But singles weren’t allowed to share. So Natasha stepped into the changing room and handed her ticket to the attendant, knowing odds were fifty-fifty it would be pocketed and resold several more times by the end of the day. Natasha followed the grim-eyed woman to the lockers, each with a deadbolt on the inside opened via a hook slipped through a tiny hole by the matron. Natasha undressed, folded her clothes, and left her bag in the locker . . . the bag holding the precious pages. She grabbed her soap and proceeded to the main washroom, picking up the wooden shayka bucket and dragging it to the faucets in the wall, one hot, one cold. Natasha mixed the water, then squeezed in between two other women sitting on the stone benches, slowly proceeding to wash herself, biding her time until she saw Ludmilla enter. Natasha stretched as if working out cramps in her shoulders and hands, but, in reality, she was flashing Ludmilla her locker number with her fingers. Ludmilla did the same.
Natasha dumped her soapy water down the drain in the center of the room and returned to the changing area, telling the matron Ludmilla’s locker number and gambling that, at rush hour, the woman wouldn’t notice the switch.
Natasha dried herself off with Ludmilla’s towel, then reached for the clothes Ludmilla had worn, putting them on quickly and telling herself not to be squeamish about sharing undergarments—for the cause! A few minutes later, Ludmilla would do the same with Natasha’s locker, towel, clothes . . . and bag.
They met the following week to pass on more papers and to switch back. After that, they decided not to use the banya anymore. The official reason was Natasha and Ludmilla didn’t want their faces to become too familiar. But there was the more immediate concern that Natasha couldn’t let anyone see her in Ludmilla’s clothes. Her parents and the Rozengurts were way too acquainted with Natasha’s meager wardrobe. They’d notice a whole new outfit.
The next time, they performed the handover in another madhouse, a pediatric medical clinic congested with hysterical mothers and hyperactive children waiting hours for their appointments. It was elementary for Natasha to switch her bag with Ludmilla’s while Ludmilla distracted the nurse at admissions with woes of her baby spitting up milk after nursing—he must be allergic to it.
“Impossible,” the nurse insisted. “It’s impossible for a child to be allergic to dairy.”
Ludmilla proceeded to scream obscenities, making sure all attention was on her rather than Natasha. Ludmilla ended up being placated with a prescription for yogurt, which she was told the clinic was out of—come back next month. Ludmilla stomped out in a huff, grabbing Natasha’s bag as she went.
Each operation went off without a hitch, swelling Natasha’s confidence about her usefulness to the group, and to Dima. Confidence that lasted up until the evening she and Boris were alone in the kitchen, cleaning up their respective families’ plates after supper, and he, again using water to keep from being overheard—in this case, it was the trickling sink—asked Natasha, “What were you doing in my room earlier today?”
Natasha managed to catch the glass she’d been holding before it hit the ground. “Why—Why would you think—”
“I could smell you,” Boris said, which shocked Natasha by its intimacy, before she realized they’d gone through puberty together in a cluster of rooms that rarely got a breeze. Of course he knew what she smelled like. Natasha bet she could pick Boris out in a crowd, too, even on a bus stuffed to the rafters with commuters returning from work on a summer day, arms raised, pits at nose level, no soap or perfume to speak of.
Nonetheless, she went with denial. “I wasn’t in your room.”
“Do you have a boyfriend?” Clearly her repudiation had been less than convincing.
“Yes!” Natasha leaped on the out he’d given her, then lowered her voice to sound guiltier. “Don’t tell Mama and Papa.” She lowered it even further. “He’s not Jewish.” There was nothing more sinful than that. Except . . . “He’s Romanian! Black. A Gypsy.”
“Doesn’t he have his own home?”
She went with what easily could have been the truth. “He shares a room with his parents.” And since locals were forbidden to check into hotels, which were for out-of-town visitors, “We have nowhere we can go to be alone.”
“So you chose my room?”
“I’m sorry. I wish I could have thought of something else.”
“Was it worth it?” From anyone else, the question would have sounded prurient. But there was an innocence to Boris that made Natasha opt to be honest with him. Up to a point.
“You and I,” Natasha began, “were raised to do what we were told, follow the rules, be good. Sure, it was the way to survive, but it also came with the promise of reward. Except we were lied to. Our parents said it was to protect us, but they were still lies. I’m a teacher, you’re a . . . what do they call it? Computer programmer. You rearrange ones and zeros. That’s not what we wanted. That’s not what we earned. That’s not what we deserved. Doesn’t it make you angry? Doesn’t it make you want to do something? Break a rule? Fight back?”
Boris looked unconvinced. Which Natasha found disappointing. She’d had no intention of telling him about her recent activities. Yet a part of her had been craving his tacit agreement. She’d wanted Boris to validate her choices even if he didn’t know the truth about them. What else was a childhood friend who’d been in love with you for years for? It bothered Natasha that Boris’s good opinion of her still mattered.
Realizing she wasn’t going to get what she wanted, Natasha flipped from aching sincerity to joke mode. “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs. I needed your room more than you did. You can’t deny me; it would be anti-Marxist! I’d report you!”
“Would you?” There went that innocent curiosity of his again. Natasha found it completely disarming.
She’d made a similar joke multiple times when they were kids and Boris wouldn’t share the floppy, azure flexible disc he’d cut out from a magazine and spun on his child-sized record player. But was he honestly asking her now whether she meant her threat? Did that mean he considered it a genuine possibility?
Horrified, she rested her fingers on Boris’s arm and reassured, “I’m kidding. I would never do that. You know me.”
“I know you,” Boris agreed, even as he continued looking unconvinced.
Which unexpectedly disappointed Natasha even more.