Katka threw herself into learning English, dedicating herself to speaking without an accent. She searched every magazine stand and library for the few English-language magazines allowed in Slovakia, and some that weren’t. American movies, even though most were way out of date, were high on her list. American singers were idolized, and smuggled records reached Katka’s avid hands. She memorized lyrics and practiced in front of a mirror to get all the nuances of speech and idiomatic phrasing. It kept her sane. Then things got worse for Jana.
Dano became an outlaw. He was no longer wanted just for anti-state activities in the political arena; he had turned to hard crime to pay for those activities. Like Stalin before him, Dano supported his revolutionary activities through bank robbery.
Three armed men walked into a bank in Kosice in March and held it up. All wore masks, the leader of the group announcing to the customers that the Revolutionary Democratic Party had commenced the next phase of its activities against the government and urged them to join in overthrowing the current despotic regime.
The robbery was reported by the government-controlled media; the call to arms against the government was not. The case was assigned, on paper, to the local police. In reality, the Secret Police led the manhunt. Jana didn’t find out about the call for a new national movement until Trokan summoned her. In his office were two Secret Police officers waiting to question her.
Trokan instructed her to cooperate with the Secret Police, to answer all their questions honestly. If she did not, he informed her, she would be dismissed from the force. When Jana and the officers walked out, her eyes met Trokan’s. Enough passed between them for Jana to know that he was powerless to help her.
They led her to a conference room in another part of the building that had been set aside for her interrogation. A stenographer was already there, along with a uniformed officer operating a backup tape recorder. The two interrogators started in immediately, asking if she was Daniel’s wife, and if they were living together. Jana replied that they had been married; they were now divorced. Where was he, they asked? Jana replied that she did not know. At that point, the two officers told her the whole story of the bank robbery, omitting nothing.
The histrionics of the chief robber in making his pronouncements were redolent of Dano at his theatrical best. No question: Despite the mask, in her heart Jana knew it was Dano. He had never wanted merely to act, if people on the street failed to recognize him.
The shock to Jana was palpable, physically startling, as if she had been backhanded across the face. The shock she felt was helpful, to a degree. There was no way to fake her physical response. The interrogators saw it; their attitudes became less threatening.
When had she last seen Daniel? they wanted to know.
“Four years ago.” Her voice was barely audible. “He left. We were not getting along.”
“Did you know he was going to commit this crime?”
“If I had known, I would have reported it.”
“He is an enemy of the state, armed, dangerous to everyone.”
“If he robbed a bank,” Jana reluctantly agreed, “he is an enemy of the people.”
The questions went on for two hours. Odd, thought Jana, they use the same interrogation techniques she had learned. The words droned in her ears, her answers becoming pure reflex. They went over Dano’s past with her, their mutual friends, schoolmates he was still involved with, the theater people he associated with, every aspect of their public and private lives, including Jana’s political beliefs.
“No,” she told them. “I am not political. I am a police officer, and the only ‘party’ I belong to is law enforcement.”
They finally concluded the questioning. To Jana’s surprise, they excused her to go back to work. Even Trokan was amazed when she returned to her office for duty. No arrest? No reprimand? No suspension? The next time, she knew, would be different. And she knew there would be a next time.
That night Jana went directly home after work, waiting for Katka, who was with her English tutor. There was no question about what Jana had to do. The hunt for Dano would intensify; they would eventually suspend Jana from the force. Katka and she would be watched day and night. They would become nonpersons with the neighbors, who would be afraid of being seen with either her or her daughter. Katka’s friends would shun her. Even the stores would discourage their patronage.
After her grandmother’s death, being told that her father was a criminal would be too much. It would be like living in Hades for her daughter. Jana had to get her out of the country.
Katka came home. Jana sat her down over lemon tea and a few biscuits. Jana took an oblique approach: She told Katka that her study of English had progressed so well that Jana had decided Katka should be rewarded by a trip to America.
Katka was overjoyed. America was Katka’s ultimate dream. Now she might get to really eat hamburgers in the United States of her fantasies. It would be difficult, Jana warned her, trying to calm her down. People would be jealous of her going, so they had to keep it between themselves, Jana cautioned her, while outlining her plan. It, she knew, depended upon everything going exactly right.
First, they needed to contact Jana’s aunt, her mother’s sister in America. The two sisters had not been close; they had not spoken in the last few years of her mother’s life. Jana had sent her aunt a notice of her sister’s death. There was only a brief response. No matter. Jana would call her that evening. The call had to be made quickly, before a tap was put on the line.
There was a good chance that her aunt would take Katka in when she arrived in America. Aside from the fact that Katka was her grandniece, the woman was a rabid anti-communist and would welcome the fact that Katka had fled Slovakia.
Katka would go to school there. Chicago and the surrounding area had lots of Slovaks who had immigrated, so there would be something of her own culture there for her. Jana knew of at least two instances where refugee status and travel permits had been arranged by the Slovak Benevolent Association. Their Chicago relatives belonged to it. The relatives might know American congressmen who would help. All Jana needed to do before these things could be arranged was to get Katka across the Austrian border.
That night, Jana made the call to Chicago, telling the telephone control authorities that she had to talk to her relatives about money for her mother’s gravestone. Brief exchanges of carefully worded letters followed the phone call. With the help of the Benevolent Association, and of congressmen only too glad to aid their constituents in a matter like this, the U.S. State Department agreed to furnish the necessary papers when the time came.
Jana found a smuggler who helped people seeking asylum. Within two months Katka was gone, smuggled across the Danube on one of the coal barges that plowed the river. A brief phone call let her know that Katka had been deposited in Vienna, then quickly flown to Denmark. Ten days later, another call followed, from Chicago, telling her that the dishes had arrived, none of them damaged . . . and she knew Katka was safe.
Medical excuses can only work for so long. Jana knew that Katka would be reported absent from school, or some nosy neighbor would start inquiring about her daughter’s whereabouts. There was only one course for Jana to take. The next day, she phoned Trokan and told him that her daughter had disappeared.
Trokan was silent, assessing what she had told him. Eventually he asked her for more detail. Jana informed him that Katka, well known in the neighborhood to be a rabid admirer of all things American, had probably slipped across the border to Austria.
Trokan listened, then told her that she had to write a report, then inform the Secret Police of what had happened. If she was not sure that Katka had gone over the border, maybe Jana might also include the possibility that the girl, loving her father as she did, might have made contact with him and had been persuaded to join the criminals.
Trokan was trying to be helpful. If Jana reported that her father had abducted Katka, the Secret Police might feel that Jana was a victim. They might then ease up on her. But Jana could not bring herself to add any more reasons for the state to pursue her ex-husband.
Jana sent her report to the Secret Police. Almost immediately she was suspended without pay, pending a decision of the minister. They had begun the process of making Jana into a nonperson. It was not a surprise. Jana had been there before. She could live with it. Better that Katka be safe and sound where her clouded future in Slovakia could not touch her.
How wrong she had been.
Chapter 37
T
he apartment Sasha had found to use as her safe house was really quite cheerful. The living room and bedroom were papered in yellow polka dots, covering walls and ceiling. Reproductions of flower paintings carried out the theme of the yellow wallpaper, adding touches of pale blue. Over the French doors there was a large half-moon insert of glass that let in more sun, keeping the flower paintings happy. It would be cheerful and pleasant for most people. But Sasha, who had come to hate the wallpaper, now thought the flowers were ugly and wanted to tape over the glass above the French doors.
Tourists coming for a week would have loved the apartment, a cheerful sanctuary, a place from which they would sally forth into the noise of the streets to buy a croissant at a boulangerie, sample a fish soup specialty in this town of seafood gourmets, browse the shops for souvenirs, or merely view the quaint old buildings. For Sasha, a prisoner in a town she could no longer even walk about in safely, the apartment had taken on a cell-like atmosphere redolent of a dungeon. To her, the apartment had become ugly.
She had no choice but to stay indoors after seeing the Manager yesterday. Since then, the streets were quarantined for her; the only place she could continue to exist was indoors. Where the Manager was, there were the legions of the organization.
They would be patrolling the streets, probing for her whereabouts, showing photographs of her, telling everyone they talked to one tale or another that would make them sympathetic to helping to identify her. Or frightening people into talking. Or paying people to find the lady with the Russian accent who had never learned to talk French properly. She had a week at most, if she were lucky, before they were led here. No matter how she made herself up, she was too distinctive to disappear.
Sasha went to the refrigerator for the fifth time that day. It had not changed: an opened jar of orange marmalade, two small cups of plain yogurt, and a half-full bottle of Eau Minerale open for too long. She ransacked the cupboards again. The same story: a half box of brown sugar and one of herbal tea purchased by a prior tenant. Sasha had been brought up on real tea and hated the smell of the herbs in the boxes’ little teabags. On a sudden impulse, she grabbed the tea box and stuffed it into the garbage where it belonged.
No question remained after she completed her latest survey. No food, and her belly was sounding alarms indicating that it needed to be filled. Sasha had to find a market, quickly purchase as many staples as she could, then slip back to the apartment.
The idea of going out into the streets brought fear back into her throat. Indoors, she could repress it for brief periods of time, watch television, make up little stories for imaginary children, think about the good times she had had with Pavel. There was no way to stifle her fear when she went out. But there was no choice now; no alternative. She had to go.
Sasha dressed as nondescriptly as she could. She had very little to choose from in this place; most of her clothes had been left behind when she fled. But she scoured up a drab brown blouse and pants, and put her winter jacket on, not because it was cold enough to warrant it, but to make her upper body formless and lumpy, disguising her shape.
Her hair, which she had restyled three times that day to keep herself occupied, needed to be less sleek, so she tousled it enough to make its outlines fuzzier. Then she grabbed her purse, and was ready to go, when there was a knock at the door. Sasha died a little. So quick: Only a day, and the apartment prison was ready to become a coffin. They were here.
She thought about screaming, the neighbors coming to her rescue. Unlikely. The French maintained their distance and would put her shouts down to a domestic dispute which was none of their business. The police? It would take too long for them to arrive. She would be dead by then.
A thin, reedy voice speaking Russian came through the door. “Sasha, its Rachel Lermentov. Are you there?”
Rachel Lermentov was the old lady who, with her husband, had arranged for Sasha to stay a few days at the Hotel Victoria when she had first fled. Sasha walked to the door, leaning close to its wood paneling.
“Mrs. Lermentov? How are you?” Sasha did not open the door. “I hope you are well.”
“I’m fine, Sasha. Are you going to let me in?”
Sasha thought about opening the door. It was Mrs. Lermentov’s voice. She did not seem to be under pressure to get Sasha to open the door. There was
probably
no one with the old lady. It was not enough. Sasha could still not bring herself to open the door.
“Mrs. Lermentov, I’m not feeling too well. I think I have the flu. If you come inside, you might get it from me.”
“We have not heard from you, so my husband told me to make sure you were okay.”
“I’m fine, except for the cold.” She thought about how sweet it was for Mrs. Lermentov to come all the way across town to see her.
She thought about it again. When she had left the Lermentovs at the hotel, Sasha had not told them where she was going to live.
“I really would like to see you, dear.” Mrs. Lermentov’s voice took on a wheedling tone. “If you are too sick to come out, I’ll go to the store for you. But I need to go through your cupboards to make a list.”