“Because you couldn’t live with yourself if you didn’t go.”
Mrs. Chimchak didn’t answer, and I stayed mute. I imagined she was reliving the excruciating. I counted to six slowly before asking my next question.
“What happened to you after you got on the train?”
“Once we entered Ukraine, I was arrested and taken to a government building. I was brought to a room with wooden floors. It was empty except for a desk and a spotlight. The man behind the desk was courteous. He asked me to stand at the opposite end of the room facing the desk. He told me there was an X painted in white on the wood. He told me to look at my feet, find the X, and make certain I was standing on it. He was very particular about that detail. I remember him asking me to be certain I was standing on the X.
“Then he pressed a button on top of the desk. There was a loud explosion — like a rifle shot — and I felt myself knocked backward. At the same time, the floor fell out from under me. I dropped into an abyss. I don’t know how deep it was. Ten, twenty feet. I’m still not sure. I landed on top of bodies. They were buried deep, one on top of the other. The floorboards closed high above me, but before they did a flash of light illuminated the bodies. They had red stains on their chests. I reached up and touched my chest. It too was bloody, but not over the heart. My wound was just below the shoulder. And then the floorboards closed and it turned dark.
“I heard several men moaning, talking incoherently. Not everyone around me was dead. Later, after I’d made my escape, I realized what had happened. The NKVD had created a device where a button on top of a desk fired a rifle that was hidden somewhere else in the room. Probably in the desk. The bodies fell under the floorboard. If the shot didn’t stop the heart, the prisoner would bleed to death. There was nowhere for him or her to go. Or so they thought.
“I am much smaller than the average man. That is what saved me once, when the shot was fired. The bullet went through my chest near the shoulder. It didn’t touch any vital organs. And then it saved me again, when I crawled around the entire basement of the building and found a water pipe. There was the tiniest sliver of light where the pipe went outside through the wall and it hadn’t been sealed properly. It turned out it was a makeshift building made of cheap wood, which was to be expected. The war had just ended. I was able to loosen the nail on one of the wallboards and slip out of the building. I managed to get back to Europe through the kindness of a few friends. They maintained an underground route from Ukraine to Germany via Czechoslovakia and Poland. This time I went to Austria, to a different camp, where I used my mother’s maiden name to create a new identity for myself.”
It was a surreal story, the kind you read about in history books or saw at the cinema, not the kind your childhood mentor tells you she lived. It took me a moment to digest it, accept the images of her being shot and landing among a pile of murdered men, and those still clinging to life with no hope of escape. There was one question, I realized, that still needed to be asked.
“Why did the NKVD sentence you to death?”
“The Soviet government considered all DPs traitors. If you were in Europe, in their minds, you were a collaborator. Didn’t matter if you were forced labor brought to Germany against your will by the Nazis, or you simply had no other place to go and you were trying to survive. One woman was sentenced to death when the NKVD found her shoes wrapped in an English newspaper. She’d picked it up off the floor in a camp and used it to protect her shoes. Once she was repatriated, her luggage was examined, and her choice of wrapping was found, she was executed.
“My sentence was a bit more justified. The Ukrainian Insurgent Army fought the Nazis and the Soviets. It had a unit of women who carried out missions of guerrilla warfare. I was one of those women.”
This was not a surprising revelation. There had been rumors that Mrs. Chimchak had been a soldier. A real soldier. But to hear the admission from her lips stunned me nonetheless. I remained quiet. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t have anything to say to something like that.
“Remember how I told you that when your godfather came back from Crimea he looked depressed?” Mrs. Chimchak said. “And how he perked up only when he started spending more money a few months later?”
“It’s as though Takarov had something on him. As though he coerced him to be an American distributor for his stolen arts and antiquities — I’m assuming they’re stolen — and then once the money started flowing in—”
“And Takarov died.”
“My godfather became a willing participant. But how could Takarov blackmail my godfather at his age? What could be so embarrassing to an old man with a poor reputation to start with?”
Mrs. Chimchak took a moment to consider the question. “Ambition blinds a man to his age and reputation. So don’t assume your godfather understood how others viewed him. He probably thought he was the only person in the community that knew he once frequented houses of ill repute. And as for the basis for Takarov’s blackmail, we must remember. Time heals all wounds but guilt never expires.”
“Unfortunately, I’m all too familiar with the concept.” I pulled out a pen and pad from my glove box. “Would you please repeat the exact address for that warehouse on Ledyard Street?”
Mrs. Chimchak gave me the number. She told me to be careful and call her after I took a look at the warehouse. She also gave me a final word of advice.
“Remember,” she said. “Black souls wear white shirts.”
CHAPTER 29
Nadia enjoyed the trip to the Connecticut shore with her family. Her father was in a good mood. She and her brother dug up soda bottle caps from the sand and tried to get as many different brands as possible. Their mother had made capicola and ham grinders with provolone cheese. She served them with giant pickles the size of zucchinis and chilled cans of Fanta Root Beer. Everyone was happy. On the way home they stopped for hot dogs, french fries, and butter pecan ice cream cones for dinner.
They listened to the Red Sox in the car. It was a close game, tied 2–2 in the ninth inning when the lights went out in Fenway. Why did the lights go out in Fenway? And why was her hair wet? Most importantly, why was she upside down?
The next thing she knew she wasn’t at Fenway anymore. Wait, she thought. She hadn’t been at Fenway. She’d been listening to the game on the radio, hadn’t she? It was so confusing. All she knew now was that someone was carrying her through the forest and rain was pelting her face. She was slung over a man’s shoulder. A woman with the face of a wild boar and the shape of a mutant pear swung a lantern as she marched behind them, a massive knapsack resting on her hunched back. Nadia could hear the man’s lungs heave with each step.
A few steps later Nadia understood. She understood that she’d been dreaming. She hadn’t been to the beach with her family, and she hadn’t gone to a baseball game at Fenway or heard it on the radio. She was still near the Appalachian Trail in the middle of her final night of the godforsaken survival test.
And two strangers had taken her.
CHAPTER 30
Ledyard Street was a half-mile road on the commercial outskirts of Hartford. It was as cozy as the fringe of any urban area, with shot-out lights hanging from abandoned factory buildings and chain link fences surrounding auto body shops and vacant lots.
Access to Ledyard came via the exact same route Father Yuri had taken when he’d whipped my car around the greater Hartford area. I’d driven it by myself and with my father hundreds of times. A left turn beyond Ledyard would point the driver toward Wethersfield and the Ukrainian National Home. A right turn put him a block away from Franklin Avenue and the Italian section of town. That is where Mozzicatto’s Bakery beckoned with fresh cannoli filled on the spot. It was the same bakery my godfather and mother had visited after he’d taken her to dinner. It seemed fitting that the warehouse where he’d stored his coveted merchandise was right smack in the middle of it all.