Tom Smith - Secret speech

Raisa held Fraera’s hopeful stare, answering:

– He knows.

Once again Fraera looked disappointed:

– I don’t believe you.

– It took many years for me to tell him but I did. He knows, Fraera: he knows it all. He knows I can’t have children, he knows why, he knows that the only child I will ever give birth to I gave away. He knows my shame. I know his.

Fraera touched Raisa’s face:

– That is why you married Leo? You sensed how desperate he was to be loved. He would gladly have accepted the opportunity to be father to your child. You saw him as an opportunity. You would bring your child back from the orphanage.

– No, I knew my child had died before I met Leo. I went to the orphanage as soon as I was strong enough, as soon as I’d found a home, as soon as I was able to be a mother again. They told me that my son had died of typhus.

– So why did you marry Leo? What reason was there for saying yes to him?

– Since I’d already given up my son in order to survive, in comparison it didn’t seem too much of a compromise to marry a man I feared rather than loved.

Fraera leaned forward and kissed Raisa. Pulling back, she said:

– I can taste your love for him. And your hatred of me…

– You have taken my child.

Fraera stood up, walking to the door, buttoning up her shirt:

– She is not yours. As long as you love Leo you leave me no choice. Your love for him is the reason he can live with himself. He has committed unspeakable crimes and yet, despite this, he is loved. He has murdered and he is loved. And by a woman any man would admire, by a woman I admire. Your love excuses him. It is his redemption.

Fraera fastened her jacket, returning the cap to her head, disappearing into her disguise.

– I spoke to Zoya before I came to see you. I wanted to hear what life was like in this sham of a family. She is intelligent, broken, messed up. I like her very much. She told me that she made you an offer. Leave Leo and she could be happy.

Raisa was appalled. Zoya was supposed to be a hostage. Yet she was confiding in Fraera, talking about Raisa, equipping their enemy with all the family secrets she needed. Fraera continued:

– I’m surprised you could be so cruel as to dismiss her request with a declaration of love for Leo. This is a girl so disturbed that she takes a knife from your kitchen and stands over Leo while he sleeps, planning to cut his throat.

Raisa’s guard fell. She didn’t know what Fraera was referring to-what knife? A knife held over Leo? After several attempts Fraera had finally landed upon a weakness-a lie, a secret. She smiled:

– It seems there is something Leo hasn’t told you. It’s true, Zoya used to stand by his side of the bed, holding a knife. Leo caught her. And he didn’t tell you?

In an instant Raisa fitted together the discrepancies. When she’d found Leo sitting at the kitchen table, brooding, he hadn’t been concerned about Nikolai, he’d been thinking about Zoya. She’d asked him what was wrong. He’d said nothing. He’d lied to her.

Fraera was now in control:

– Bearing that incident in mind, think about what I’m about to say carefully. I will repeat Zoya’s offer. I will return Zoya to your care, unharmed. In exchange you and the girls must never see Leo again. Love the girls, or love Leo, that has been the reality of your situation for the past three years. And Raisa, now you must choose.

Leo could barely stand, let alone dig. Working in a crude system of trenches three meters below the topsoil, his pickaxe pinged uselessly against the permafrost. There were vast smoldering fires, like the funeral pyres of fallen heroes, slow-burning to soften the frozen ground. But Leo was near none of them, deliberately located by the leader of his work brigade in the coldest and most remote corner of the gold mines, in the least-developed trench system where, even had he been at full strength, it would’ve been impossible to fulfill his norm, the mininum amount of rocks he needed to break in order to be fed a standard ration.

Exhausted, his legs quivered, unable to support his weight. Swollen and bubbled, his kneecaps were sunk behind sacs of fluid, swirls of purple and blue. Last night Leo had been forced onto his knees, his hands tied behind his back, his ankles lifted and bound to his wrists so that his entire body weight was supported on his kneecaps. To keep him from falling over he’d been secured to the steps of a bunk. Hour after hour he’d been unable to relieve the pressure: skin stretched tight, bone grinding against wood, sandpapering his skin. At each shift in position he’d cried out and consequently been gagged in order that the prisoners might go to bed. They’d slept while he’d remained on his knees, teeth chomping like a mad horse against the filthy rag, which the prisoners had prepared by rubbing it across their weeping boils. While snores had crisscrossed the barracks one man had remained awake-Lazar. He’d watched over Leo the entire night, removing the gag when he’d needed to vomit, retying it after he’d finished, displaying a paternal dedication: a father tending to a sickly son, a son that needed to be taught a lesson.

At dawn Leo had spluttered back into consciousness as ice-cold water had been poured over his head. Untied, his gag removed, he’d slumped, unable to feel his feet, as though his legs had been amputated below the knees. It had taken several excruciating minutes before he’d been able to stretch them and several minutes more before he’d been able to heave himself up-hobbling-aged a hundred years. His fellow prisoners had allowed him to take breakfast, to sit at a table, to eat his ration, his hands shaking. They wanted him to live. They wanted him to suffer. As a man wandering in a desert might dream of an oasis, Leo’s mind concentrated on the shimmering mirage of Timur. Since it was impossible to make the journey from Magadan at night there was only a narrow window, in the early evening, when his friend, his savior, might arrive.

Arms shaking with fatigue, Leo lifted the pickaxe above his head, only for his legs to give way. Falling forward, his puffy knees slammed into the ground. On impact the fluid sacs burst, popping like ripe adolescent pimples. He opened his mouth, a silent scream, his eyes streaming as he toppled onto his side, taking the pressure off his knees and lying at the bottom of a trench. Exhaustion smothered any sense of self-preservation. For a brief moment, he would’ve been content to shut his eyes and go to sleep. In these temperatures he’d never have woken up.

Remembering Zoya, remembering Raisa and Elena-his family- he sat up, placing his hands on the ground, slowly pushing himself up. He was struggling to his feet when someone grabbed him, hissing in his ear:

– No rest, Chekist!

No rest, no mercy either-that had been Lazar’s verdict. The sentence was being carried out with vigor. The voice in his ear didn’t belong to a guard: it was a fellow prisoner, the leader of his brigade, driven by an intense personal hatred, refusing to allow Leo a single minute where he didn’t experience pain or hunger or exhaustion, or all these things together. Leo hadn’t arrested this man or his family. He didn’t even know the man’s name. That didn’t matter. He’d become a talisman for every prisoner: an ambassador for injustice. Chekist had become his name, his entire identity, and seen in that way, everyone’s hatred was personal.

A bell was rung. Tools were downed. Leo had survived his first day at the mine, a modest ordeal compared to the upcoming night-a second as yet unannounced torture. Dragging his legs up the ramp, limping out of the trench, following the others back, his only source of strength was the prospect of Timur’s arrival.