Jason Overstreet - Beneath the Darkest Sky

“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!”

“Of course not,” I said.

“As soon as they found out I had a background in studying fish breeding, I was sent there. Guess they thought I might be a magic nigga! They quickly found out I wasn’t. After only two weeks they had my behind tilling soil through the rest of the summer. Shit was like quicksand. The lot of us damn near died ten times a day from exhaustion. And, as you can see, I’ve barely eaten. Now that I’m here and the State’s newest band of scientists is in place there, I’m likely headed to the mines very soon. These new scientists are apparently all Soviets and equipped with some mysterious groundbreaking methods. Please! It ain’t nothin’ but a bunch of damn pseudoscience. But enough about me! How in God’s name did you two end up in here?”

“You mean us four ,” I said. “They arrested Loretta and Ginger, too. They’re at some camp near Finland. And to answer your question, I still have no clue as to why we were arrested. They simply said we’d been involved in counterrevolutionary activities, a far too common and devastating label it seems.”

“This is pure evil… what’s happening here,” said Lovett. “I don’t even think the rest of the world knows about it.”

“They know people are being tried and arrested, but they have been shielded from the true horror taking place. Can you imagine if a reporter were privy to this? As far as myself, I’d simply allowed myself to become brainwashed by the State. I can’t believe it happened to me. Maybe I didn’t want to see it.”

“Maybe Loretta had convinced us not to see it, that somehow we were on the good side, that the bad guys, you know, the enemies of freedom and revolution, were the ones being arrested. I must admit, Stalin’s propaganda machine is extraordinarily powerful and convincing. He has everyone fearing that so many czarist families in exile are plotting and about to return to enslave the proletariat. Shit, he’s the one doing the enslaving!”

“Yes,” said Lovett. “What he’s masterfully done is convince so many that Trotsky is the devil incarnate. It took him a while, but he managed to pull it off. Every single soul in the Soviet Union, including members of the Central Committee and his own Politburo, are scared to death of him. I had an NKVD Trotskyist tell me as much while I was in exile. And I know that members of the CPUSA, both here and abroad, have grown fearful. Stalin’s reach, his spies and assassins, are quickly spreading across the globe. He’ll soon have one of them kill Trotsky. Mark my words. And the U.S. Government is infested with his spies. Shit, I know some of them. There was a time when I was willing to become one.”

“According to my friend Bobby, there are many famous and important Americans who may not have joined the Communist Party, but are unapologetic in their support for communism. If only they knew what was happening inside these fences. They’ve probably heard hints of it, as we had, but don’t believe it. You have to admit it was hard to imagine when we were on the outside. And I certainly had no idea that so many Americans were being purged.”

“We see what we want to see, Bronzeville.” He touched his half-cutoff ear and looked down at his muddy shoes, his frazzled garments, and filthy hands. “We see what we want to see.”

“True. All I can see now is my wife and daughter. I’ve had some very disturbing images running through my mind about them ever since Commander Koskinen told me what often happens to women in the camps. It’s killing me.”