“And then what happened to them?”
My mother fired a look of disapproval in my direction, as though with each question I was making her delve further into a topic she preferred to forget. “What do you think happened? Most of them ended up on trains going back to the Soviet Union.”
“But I thought forced repatriation lasted only for a short time. I was told Eisenhower and his generals put an end to it.”
“I didn’t say anyone forced them to get on the trains.”
“You mean they went voluntarily? Why? I thought that was the last place they wanted to go?”
“It was. But the NKVD rounded them up one by one. They kidnapped them off the streets if they had to, and then made them offers they couldn’t refuse.”
“What kind of offers?”
“Go back to the Motherland where you belong and the family you left behind will not be sent to a labor camp. Or murdered.”
“Extortion? The Americans and the British allowed that?”
“The Americans and the British didn’t understand the Russians. Plus they had their hands full managing the camps and trying to figure out where all the hard-core DPs would go. The ones who survived the screenings. The Americans and the British had no idea that SMERSH even existed.”
“Did you say SMERSH?”
“Vindictive men with a vindictive spirit.”
“I heard that name in a James Bond movie once. That was real? I assumed that was something Ian Fleming made up.”
“You did? Well, so much for your college education. Stalin thought of the name. Spetsyalnye Metody Razoblacheniya Shpyonov.” Special Methods of Spy Detection. “He created SMERSH to prevent the Gestapo from infiltrating the NKVD. In the camps, SMERSH used bribery, blackmail, and threats to repatriate as many DPs as possible to the Soviet Union. After the camps were disbanded in 1950, they stayed in Europe and became the foundation for the Soviets’ European spy network.”
“And the DPs that went back because they were threatened. What happened to them and their families?”
My mother snickered. I could tell it wasn’t directed at me. She was staring out the windshield remembering a scene from her past, or one that she’d imagined.
“The Soviet officers would gather around the trains that were leaving and make it look like a big party. They would clap and cheer and wish all the DPs a pleasant journey back home. But when the train crossed the border into Russia, all their bags would be seized and they would be greeted as traitors.”
I darted into the exit lane for Hartford. It was the same exit Father Yuri had taken last night in my car, but we were coming from the opposite direction. It occurred to me that ever since I’d started digging into my godfather’s death, I was increasingly discovering the truth to be the opposite of what I had thought it had been. In this case, my mother didn’t sound like my mother. She sounded lucid, logical, and authoritative. She sounded like someone else’s mother. That thought shook me to the bone.
“How do you know so much about this, Mama? I mean, I know you lived it and all, but you sound… You sound incredibly knowledgeable on the subject.”
My mother looked out the side window again. “What? Your mother isn’t the idiot you thought after all these years?”
We sat in silence for a minute as I negotiated some gridlock. I took a right onto Wethersfield Avenue and headed toward the church. I tried to connect what I’d learned to the DP entry in my godfather’s calendar.
“Did SMERSH or the NKVD ever try to turn one DP against another?”
“It wouldn’t surprise me if they tried it, but I never heard of anything like that. Our community was our strength. It’s how we survived. Where is that coming from?”
“I found out my godfather was a bit of a scoundrel.” I remembered my brother’s assertion that my godfather had made sexual advances toward my mother. “Where business is concerned,” I quickly added. I didn’t want to embarrass her. “Do you think he could have discovered something about someone? Someone who was a DP but pretended he wasn’t, or someone who was a DP and hurt the community. Do you think he could have been blackmailing someone? I know it’s a stretch but it is possible.”
“That sounds like nonsense to me. I knew your godfather pretty well. He was a drunk and a pervert, but he was not a blackmailer. He wasn’t mentally strong enough for that sort of thing. Try to get a corner parking spot. I don’t want some fat Ukrainian kielbasa-lover swinging his door open and denting my vintage Buick.”
Until that moment, I’d assumed my godfather’s murder was related to his business. Now, for the first time, I realized that wasn’t necessarily the case. He might have been murdered as a function of his involvement in some other scheme. Something related to his experience in a World War II Displaced Persons camp.
The Uke school was located behind the church. I drove around the lot like a zombie, still dwelling on my mother’s revelations. All the parking spots were taken. Families marched toward the school hall in their Sunday best carrying Easter baskets. My mother became frantic that the school hall had filled up and there would be no vacant spots on the tables for her to place her basket. She told me to drop her off and go find a parking spot on the street quickly, but I was barely listening. I was focused on the image of the letters DP on my godfather’s calendar.
I pulled over. My mother got out of the car and removed the basket from the back seat. Then she stuck her head back in the passenger-side door.
“One ride. One conversation. Don’t ever ask me about the past again. I know what this is about. I know how your mind works. Trust your mother. You’re not going to get any satisfaction trying to find out what your father did and didn’t do before he came to America. So take my advice, and let it go.”
With that, she slammed the door shut and left me shell-shocked.
My father had died when I was thirteen. He’d never spoken to me about his life in Ukraine before he immigrated to America, and I’d been too scared and young to express any curiosity. I’d never thought about his past. Now, thanks to my mother, I had another mystery to solve.
I parked on the street along the sidewalk facing Colt’s Park, and hurried to the school hall. I climbed the stairs to the auditorium on the second floor. It teemed with people. There had to be hundreds of them. The cumulative noise of their conversations was deafening. I wedged my way through a group of men I’d never seen before in my life and caught a glimpse of one row of Easter baskets. They sat atop a series of rectangular tables that had been arranged along the perimeter of the basketball court. Families huddled beside their baskets waiting for the priest to arrive.
At first, I didn’t recognize anyone. Then I bumped into my former geography teacher from Ukrainian school. She gave me a quick hug and told me someone had saved a spot for my mother near center court. I spied my mother farther down the column of tables, smiling lovingly and in animated conversation with a broad-shouldered man. His head was obscured by a father of four, who was standing beside his wife. I knew immediately that the broad-shouldered man was Marko. A combination of excitement and dread filled me as I pushed my way toward them. I vowed not to let him out of my sight until he answered all my questions truthfully this time.
My mother was the first to see me. She smiled. Her children had accompanied her to the blessing of the Easter baskets. It was every mother’s dream, and it gave me some satisfaction to have helped fulfill it.
“Look who stopped by to say hello,” my mother said.
I stepped around the father of four but it wasn’t Marko’s face that I saw. Instead I looked straight into the smiling eyes of Donnie Angel.