Natasha didn’t expect everything to change immediately, but she did expect something to change eventually. The first time their group assembled after Natasha and Dima spent the afternoon together, Dima sat at the head of the table, as always. Natasha hadn’t expected him to save her a seat next to him—this wasn’t grade school. But it did feel odd that Ludmilla still occupied that right-hand place of honor. Natasha ended up in her usual spot, three spaces down, one ahead of the cuticle-chewing Marina who, a few months earlier, had decided to turn religious, change her name to Miriam, and start covering her hair with a scarf. She hardly ever said anything, so it was easy to forget she was there. A fate Natasha was determined not to share.
She was heartened when the first item on Dima’s agenda was the announcement that Natasha had begun her emigration process. He beamed at her, and she basked in the glow.
Sadly, the remainder of the meeting consisted of items that didn’t require beaming. Dima updated them on the efforts of counterparts overseas, the peaceful rallies staged in the United States by the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry, and the more militant sit-ins of the Jewish Defense League, as well as the underground efforts of Israel’s Nativ, who suspected they were being spied on by the KGB, making smuggling out information about refuseniks even more difficult. When Dima brought up that last point, Natasha attempted to catch his eye, so they could share a furtive smile about the last time they’d discussed the matter. He shook his head and looked away.
And so it went, Dima covering their ongoing samizdat distribution of not only handwritten copies of Archipelago but also a Russian translation of Leon Uris’s Exodus, as well as the poems of Joseph Brodsky. The latter weren’t political, but since they’d been judged anti-Soviet and their author locked up in a mental institution as a parasite who failed to contribute to the good of the Motherland, Dima felt they owed the brave rebel their support.
At the end of the meeting, however, outside of everyone’s hearing, Dima sidled by Natasha and casually let her know that his acquaintance at Odessa University would be taking a long exam tomorrow afternoon. Natasha smiled.
She was the favorite now.
There was a different floor matron patrolling the hall, a crone who barely reached Natasha’s shoulder yet sat so regally, she managed to look down her nose while looking up from beneath an ill-fitting wig the color of rancid beets. Natasha presumed she and Dima would enter separately. But at the sight of this Oracle of Delphi, Dima assured, “It’s all right,” and grasped Natasha’s hand to lead her inside.
“Youdifa Solomonovna,” Dima greeted her. “You’re looking wonderful!”
“That’s because I live a wonderful life,” she repeated by rote, and discreetly tucked the rubles Dima slipped her into a pocket already bulging with similar bills.
“Aren’t you afraid she’ll report us?” Natasha asked as soon as the door closed behind them and Dima set immediately to removing his clothes. What had his admonitions about their never being seen together been for all these months, if he felt free to disregard the precaution on a whim?
“Youdifa Solomonovna is one of us. She teaches Hebrew to our group of refuseniks every Tuesday and Thursday night.”
A group Natasha wasn’t invited to, allegedly for the same reason she and Dima couldn’t be seen together in public. She told herself it was further proof of just how valuable she was to the group—and to Dima. She told herself she wasn’t jealous of the extra time women like Ludmilla and Miriam got to spend with Dima. She told herself those women had to share that time with assorted others and spend it reading children’s books written in a sequence of squibbles. She told herself the time she and Dima spent together was their own. And a lot more fun.
“She was in Leningrad during the siege. That’s how she lost her hair, typhus. When there was no food or drinking water to be had, she was one of the women you hear about, still scrubbing revolutionary monuments for the glory of Stalin. She survived all nine hundred days. Decorated a Hero of the Soviet Union! Then, last year, she applied to emigrate to Israel. She was fired from her job as university librarian and sent here, instead. But she’s a tough one. She’ll outlast us all.”
An inspirational and courageous story, yes, the sort of story that, one day, Natasha expected wide-eyed acolytes to be telling about her. But that was in the future. At the moment, all Natasha could focus on, even as her skirt slipped to the floor and she unbuttoned her blouse, was, “I feel like there’s so much I’m missing. So much more help I could be to you, if you’d just let me participate. Like Ludmilla and Miriam.”
It may have sounded as if Natasha were being petty. She sounded that way to herself. But the reality was, Natasha yearned to open her soul to Dima, to tell him how much the previous months had meant to her. She ached to explain how she’d grown resigned to relegating her dreams of becoming someone of note to the dustbin of childish fantasy. She’d accepted being ordinary, no different from anyone else, the Soviet ideal. But then Dima had returned, and her ambitions were reawakened, flipped on their heads yet suddenly again within her grasp. Whenever Natasha attempted to turn feelings into concrete words, she ended up sounding greedy or shallow or, yes, petty, when that wasn’t how she saw herself at all.
So Natasha stumbled on, trying to sound like the woman she believed herself to be, instead of the one she secretly feared she was, cajoling Dima, “I know I’m doing my part by applying to emigrate. I don’t want to sound ungrateful about the huge trust you’ve placed in me. But I feel like I’m just on the fringes of our work. I want to be in the heart of it.”
Dima had crawled into bed, naked except for his watch, which he’d already checked twice to calculate how much time they had left. Seeing precious seconds ticking away, he decided now was not the time to get into a philosophical argument. If Natasha were honest with herself, she’d admit that was precisely why she’d chosen this moment to bring the subject up. But that would make her sound devious and cynical. And that wasn’t how Natasha saw herself, either. Especially when it came to the man she loved.
“Tomorrow, we have a planned demonstration,” Dima said. “You can’t stand with us. But if you find a hidden spot far enough away, you can watch.”
“Just watch?” Natasha struggled to keep the disappointment from her voice.
Dima consulted his timepiece again, raising the blanket, gesticulating for Natasha to join him. “And you can take notes, keep the record about how we’re treated, so you can report on it once you’re free in the West.”
It wasn’t what Natasha had been hoping for. But it was more than she’d honestly expected. If it meant playing even the smallest part in their plans, if it meant spending even a few minutes more in Dima’s presence, it, too, would have to do.
Natasha had passed the majority of her life delaying gratification while focusing on a long-term goal. She stood well versed in how to bide her time and keep her eyes on the prize. Natasha’s only hope—one that she pushed to the back of her mind, for even thinking it was disloyal—was that this bout of sacrifice wouldn’t disappoint her.
Like the last had.
When Dima called it a demonstration, Natasha expected something along the lines of what she was used to for May Day or Victory Day or Veterans’ Day; thousands of citizens packing the streets, bouquets of flowers everywhere, placards with pictures of Lenin and Brezhnev, a forest of giant red flags. As a child, Natasha had loved the holidays, putting on her school uniform with the white, special-occasion pinafore and marching with her class. Afterward, she’d beg Papa, his chest overflowing with medals, to let her hold one of the flags he’d been given to heft onto his shoulder.
Natasha hadn’t been expecting flags and placards of their leaders at this demonstration. But she had been expecting something more than the Odessa University matron and her equally short, albeit wigless, husband standing on their apartment building’s balcony, her holding a sign that read i want to emigrate to israel, his proclaiming let my people go. On the street below, Dima, along with Ludmilla and Miriam and a half dozen men who weren’t Dima, formed a line of similar protesters. And that was it.
How could that be it? Surely, something that played such a dominant role in every waking moment of Natasha’s life—and in her dreams, as well—was worthy of a larger manifestation in the outside world? How could something so all-encompassing to her be so negligible to everyone else?
“Remember, keep your distance” was the last thing Dima said as he left Natasha lurking behind a lamppost almost a full block away and jogged to join the others. First, she felt abandoned. Then, she felt bored.
It was a silent protest. The only noise came from the handful of passersby heckling them, but even that was low-key. Schoolboys threw rocks and pinecones and called them “dirty zhidy,” but most adults scurried by, averting their eyes lest their even acknowledging the event put them at risk of being misconstrued as endorsing or, God forbid, participating in it. Natasha’s favorite critic was the one who shouted, “Go back to where you came from!” As if that weren’t exactly what they were trying to achieve.
The militsia arrived within ten minutes. Which was faster than when Natasha’s neighbor had called an ambulance for her convulsing husband. That took six hours.
Natasha should have expected the police, and she had—intellectually. Of course a protest by someone as significant as she believed Dima to be would court censure. But she hadn’t expected it on a visceral level. Nor had she expected what proved to be her response to the sight of Dima being repeatedly punched in the stomach and face, until he finally stumbled and sank to his knees, still clutching his sign, demanding freedom for all!
Before the attack began, Natasha had expected she’d want to drop her notebook and pencil—red on one side/blue on the other, filched from the children’s art room at school the day she was let go as yet another act of rebellion—and rush to Dima, no matter what he’d told her about staying out of sight. She’d expected to want to throw her body between his and the blizzard of blows, to absorb them herself and spare him, to cradle his bloodied head in her lap, and to dab at the worst of it with a strip of cloth she’d torn from her sleeve, refusing to be dragged away in a feat of passive resistance rivaling the Mahatma himself.
But while it was happening, what Natasha most wanted to do was drop the notebook and pencil—and run in the other direction. She wanted to close her eyes and plug her ears and pretend that none of this was happening. It was too horrible. It was too real. It was just like that 3 she’d received on her exams, the sense that she’d miscalculated and any attempt to rectify the error would only make matters worse. Then, she’d been helpless and uninformed; she couldn’t be blamed for her inaction because it was before she’d become enlightened. Now that Natasha knew better, she must simply be spineless and unwilling.
No, Natasha chastised herself, that wasn’t it. The only reason she wasn’t running to Dima was that she was following his orders. Keep your distance, take notes, report it all later, and raise awareness of their cause . . . Once she was safe in the West. That’s what Dima wanted Natasha to do. That’s what he’d ordered her to do. Natasha was a good soldier. Natasha was brave.
Natasha watched Dima and the rest, including the elderly couple on the balcony, being dragged, barely conscious, into the backs of militsia trucks pulling away in a cloud of exhaust.
Natasha wrote down what she’d seen. And then she went home.