“Ah,” he said, pouring us both another vodka, “I know what to do. It is now late January. Don’t send the letter for two weeks.”
He held his tin cup up again and I did the same. Then he nodded and we drank before slamming our cups down, both of us feeling the vodka.
“Now,” he said, “one of the free hires here, a medical equipment technician who I know and trust, Kirill, is returning to Leningrad in March. He, like me, is a Trotskyist. A lot of us Trotskyists know one another. There are more than you would think amongst the free hires, guards, and even the Dalstroi and Sevvostlag officials. And we’re brave. Not afraid to take risks. We always help one another. Anyway, I know another loyal Trotskyist who works for Leningrad postal named Rodion. I will have Kirill track him down and tell him in person to set up a post office box in your name. Rodion will then check the box weekly while at work, but will simply save the letters for you. He won’t write back to your comrade, obviously.”
“Thank you, Commander Koskinen,” I said.
“Ah, a problem! I will have to first cable Rodion and tell him that my cousin from Moscow is moving to Leningrad and would like to set up a post office box until he gets situated. The cable will tell Rodion this: ‘Please assign a number to P. Orlov and cable me back the box number so I can inform my cousin, who wants to begin having his mail forwarded.’ Then I will simply explain the truth of the matter to Kirill and he can relay it to Rodion in person, you know, explain that the box is actually for you. Rodion will switch the name. You see, we have to get a box number before you send your letter. And, of course, I have no cousin in Moscow.”
“I can’t thank you enough,” I said, truly stunned at his kind gesture.
“This should work for a while, until your comrade realizes you’re not answering any of his questions. Yes?”
“Yes,” I said. “Could work for a year or so before he grows truly suspicious.”
“But maybe our Trotskyist takeover will happen before then. It is only a matter of time before we Trotskyists rise up and retake control by force, allowing our Leon Trotsky to return and lead us. Many men with guns across the country, and many inside the Kremlin, are Trotskyists. All of us former and current military men are simply awaiting the Kremlin overthrow. I won’t say his name, but a top member of the Politburo is a Trotskyist. He is in position to seize power and send orders to us loyalists. We want a war. Understand?”
“Very much.”
“Still,” he said, picking up his cigar, “I can’t help you beyond this mailbox arrangement. But just know that NKVD would never release you if your comrade learned of your arrest and demanded such.”
“I understand, Commander.”
“They would tell him you’d committed certain crimes against the State and then proceed to secretly kill all four of you in order to prevent an ongoing investigation by your government, and that’s assuming your Roosevelt would even consider such. He has never done so for any other to this date. Why would he concern himself with a Negro? It is this simple.”
“Thank you, Commander,” I said with a lump in my throat.
“I found out where your wife and daughter are,” he said, picking up a sheet of paper and reading. “They are near a town called Kirovsk. It is all the way across the country, up near Finland. They’re at the MR4 Labor Camp. I know the director of that camp, a pig named Colonel Ivan Zorin. Now he, for one, is certainly a devout Stalinist!”
“If I might ask, what type of labor do you think he has my wife and daughter doing?”
“They mine apatite at MR4. Apatite is a pale-green mineral used to make fertilizer. So they are probably doing very difficult hauling and cleaning of the freshly mined stones… even if they are pregnant. As you already know, based on this camp alone, many women get pregnant in the camps. And again, this Colonel Zorin is a real pig.”
“Do you know anything else about him?” I said, halfheartedly. He began rattling off all sorts of details about Colonel Zorin, and I was listening astutely, but his previous comment—“even if they are pregnant”—was echoing loudly in my head.
Koskinen finished talking. He then held the thick cigar near his lips and turned it several times before taking a big drag and exhaling directly at me, as if he knew I was enjoying it. “What was something pleasing you did in our beautiful Moscow with your family, Comrade Sweet?”
I took a second to think back, still trying to ignore the image I had in my mind of my sweet wife and daughter being violated. I wanted to jump up and grab him and demand him to do something immediately. I was enraged inside, perhaps even twitching on the outside. Maybe the smoke was keeping him from seeing the impulse bubbling up in me to want to vomit all over his well-organized, wooden desk. But I breathed in deeply and focused.
“There were so many,” I said, my Russian words trembling, a tear forming in my eye. “But the most enjoyable thing we did in Moscow was go to the Theater of People’s Art and listen to the Anglo-American Chorus. It was comprised of forty-five Americans, men and women. They sang Negro protest songs to a largely Russian audience. Their applause was so grand and heartfelt at the conclusion of ‘Dis Cotton Want a Picking.’ So grand! So heartfelt!”
I looked at Koskinen and thought about the part of this story that I wouldn’t be telling him. It involved how Loretta and I had actually felt that night. We had looked down at our twins as the applause had continued. We realized that our children had never known America. But part of us was glad they had never known that ugly bird called Jim Crow. Still, as the next Negro protest songs had continued from the stage, Loretta and I hadn’t been able to help but feel the souls of our American ancestors. We hadn’t been able to help but miss some of what our children would never know—the unexplainable, ever hopeful, good essence of the United States of America. I missed it.
“Where your wife and daughter are located doesn’t get very cold,” said Koskinen. “Nothing like Magadan, and certainly not like Kolyma’s frozen road. Men who know about what it feels like to work in forty below temperatures will do anything to avoid it, it seems. I can tell you such things. One zek, when I first arrived here, refused to join the lines and leave for the mines. He nailed his own testicles to a wood bench in the washtub barracks. It didn’t work, however. The NKVD guards yanked him up, sent him to the medic, and a week later he was sent to the mines.”
“He truly wanted to stay here,” I said, trying not to grimace.
“I think… after that visit to the medic… you should be saying ‘she’ truly wanted to stay here, Comrade Sweet.”
“Yes, Commander.”
“A few more items. Did you know the zek in your barracks who killed himself the other night?”
“No,” I said.
He was referring to the man who’d bitten the veins on his wrist under his tattered, thin blanket. It had been a disgusting, blackish-red mess-of-an-image to wake up to.
“Such suicides are common throughout the system. But, I must say, every camp across the Soviet Union is its own universe. Every camp has its own culture. Some have… they have… I am searching my mind for a Western phrase. Some have minimally compassionate bosses, a good term, yes?”
“Yes.”
“But others have bosses who are sadists. My boss is a sadist. And then there’s Stalin. He still doesn’t understand that all of us officials are still just humans. Guards throughout the system are corrupt and rape women zeks. Camp bosses steal money and gold. Moscow officials could never know what goes on thousands of miles away. They come to inspect, and camp administrators make the camp appear perfect. But as soon as they leave, things return to reality. Can you tell I was educated in Norway?”