“What happened to your ear?” I said, both of us speaking English.
“One of those evil, murdering motherfuckers on the ship from Vladivostok bit half of it off when I tried to stop him from killing an Estonian comrade of mine. And his bite worked. He and his partner still wound up killing him. Beat him with their bare fists over a ration of fuckin’ black bread. Hell… at least I tried.”
“Biting is all they do in the prisons,” I said, showing him my thumb and webbing. “With no knives or other weapons available on the ships or in the barracks, teeth might as well be switchblades.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Don’t get me wrong,” I said, “More than once I’ve seen one zek kill another with a hammer or saw. But teeth have caused by far the most injuries.”
“Speaking of teeth,” he said, opening his mouth and touching his upper and lower gums, “another thing that happened to me when I first left Kazakhstan for Vladivostok was the guards decided I wasn’t moving fast enough to board the train, so they took a baton to my mouth and knocked most of my front teeth out, as you can see. My lips were split open real good, too, but they had a nurse stitch me up right there on the train before we departed. Had ’em removed in Vladivostok.”
I shook my head with disappointment, and again we stood there holding our words, trying to let this stunning set of circumstances settle in. He looked up at James sleeping and half smiled. Then he looked down and past me like he was transfixed on something not present.
“How long ago were you arrested?” I said.
“Too damn long ago,” he said, snapping to.
I leaned over and touched the new zek, Roy.
“Yeah,” he said, opening his eyes.
“Excuse me, Roy. But would you mind taking my middle bunk for a while? I desperately need to sit and talk to my other American friend here. I’d really appreciate it.”
“Of course,” said Roy, rolling out of bed and hopping up to my spot. In the forty-eight hours he’d been here, the two of us had shown nothing but respect for each other.
“Thank you,” I said, Lovett and I sitting on his bed.
“Sure is good to see another colored face,” said Lovett, both of us shaking our heads in disbelief.
“I tried for almost two years to find out from B when I could see you after you left Moscow in late 1935. But she kept telling me she had lost touch with you. It was as if your wife had been hurt by you.”
“Na,” he said. “The entire thing was a lie. That night we met you and Loretta at the Foreign Workers’ Club, we had already received some bad news.”
“Come again.”
“About a week before that night, I’d been at that same club and had gotten into an argument with a couple of CPUSA members about that damn Langston Hughes book of all things. A book entitled, The Ways of White Folks. I had claimed that the book did too much pandering to white people. Well, Hughes is a hero to the Soviet Union, just like Robeson. Somebody in the audience reported my diatribe to the blue tops. Subsequently, they paid me a visit the next day and branded me a ‘counterrevolutionary’ right there on the spot. They visited B and me every day during the course of that next week, asking all sorts of questions.”
“That’s hardly enough to get you arrested,” I said. “Bitching about a damn book by an American!”
“That was just the tip of the iceberg, Bronzeville. They kept questioning me until they found out I was a close friend to Karl Radek, a man the State was also beginning to investigate. So when I met y’all that night, I hadn’t been sentenced to the Sevvostlag labor camp yet. I had only been told to leave Moscow and find work in, of all places, Alma-Ata, a small town in faraway Kazakhstan, until the State could sort out just exactly what Radek’s crimes were. I was exiled. B was ordered to remain in Moscow. The blue tops had granted me one final wish: to say good-bye to several friends during the course of that last day. We saved you two for last. They’d also ordered us not to tell a soul where I was being exiled. It pained me to lie to you both. No choice!”
“I’m thinking back to that night,” I said. “You two seemed so happy and certain of your plan.”
“The fear those blue tops put into you will make you believe your own lie, Bronzeville. Make you happy to just still be breathing! That’s what you saw that night. And B was also just glad to see me still alive.”
“When did you get arrested and sent here?” I said.
“Well, part of my story I told y’all that night turned out to be true. I did end up teaching chemistry and boxing, just in Alma-Ata, not Kuybyshev. Then I was sent to another town in Kazakhstan named Semipalatinsk.”
“Did you and B ever meet halfway like you’d said you would?”
“No,” he said. “I never saw her again.”
“I’ll be damned!”
“I’d been in exile under the watchful eye of NKVD officials for two and a half years before they finally arrested me on May 8th of this year and sentenced me to five years hard labor here at Sevvostlag. That’s when they’d claimed that I, like Karl Radek, was a Trotskyist. NKVD told me they’d had a big show trial for Radek.”
“Yes,” I said. “It was all over the papers for months. He was sentenced to ten years in prison. The papers, particularly Izvestia, made it appear as though his crimes were fact, that he’d been justly charged with complicity in plots against the State.”
Lovett shook his head. “I’m sure I was found to be one of his close confidants. The list of men associated with Radek is far too long. I’m sure they’ve all met similar fates. Radek is a damn good man.”
“Are you a Trotskyist?” I whispered in his ear.
“Shit, I’m an American,” he said. “Just like you.”
His words shook me. Of course! All he’d ever been was an American seeking to live a life of dignity.
“Am I a Trotskyist?” he whispered, looking around. “Much more so than a filthy Stalinist. That’s for sure. And it’s no crime.”
“Don’t worry about these other zeks,” I said, surveying the barracks. “Most speak no English, and the Americans who do are completely with us in our opinions. Trust me! We are all loyal to one another. We have to be.”
“How could we not be,” he said, looking up at the streaming lights. “They hang these bulbs like Christmas lights. They ever turn ’em off at night?”
“No,” I said. “One thing I’ve learned, they never leave zeks here alone in the dark.”
“Does that guard out front ever leave?” he said.
“Only when he comes in here and makes the rounds.”
“I see.”
“Did they assign you to this barrack?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Good. I had it arranged. Commander Koskinen is responsible.”
“Thank you, Bronzeville.”
“Of course. Question. You told me they arrested you back in May. Where have you been for these past few months?”
“They had me working at this state farm not too far from here called Dukcha. Just temporarily! Had me doing all kinds of experimental fertilization work for twenty hours a day. Lots of work with trying to help breed farm animals, too! All of their experimenting is failing. Can’t grow shit in Siberia for more than a month, and that’s only in the summer! Can’t keep damn calves alive in this frozen land, either! They ship cows in, try to acclimatize them and have them breed. Then think their offspring can survive through the long, frigid winters. Foolish! Can’t happen!”