Beautiful Assassin Read online

  Only when I’d proved that I could kill as well as any man did my comrades begin to accept me. Still, there were many like the Wild Boar, who treated the women soldiers with contempt. He would give us menial jobs like digging the latrine or carrying the pails of soup to the front lines, or stripping the German dead of ammo and rations. The Wild Boar scorned our fighting ability, questioned our courage under fire. He cracked jokes about us and made condescending remarks. He called us shlyukhi. Except the pretty ones. With them he was friendly. Too friendly. When I first arrived in his unit, I’d heard the stories about him and was warned to keep my distance. Despite the lectures by the political commissars and the NKVD officers warning against fraternization between the sexes, how such things could cause problems and would therefore be dealt with harshly, that still didn’t stop some from having affairs. In the loneliness of war, relationships inevitably formed between men and women. You could not stop it with government decrees. But there were some men like the Wild Boar who used their influence to pressure or lure women into doing their bidding. He would especially befriend the new recruits, who arrived weekly to replace those that had been killed, with small favors—a piece of cheese, a cup of vodka, a pair of silk stockings many liked to keep in their pockets to remind them what silk felt like against their skin. A few of the women in my unit would respond to his advances, out of fear of how hard he could make things for them or from simple hunger, or even out of the gnawing loneliness the war had brought into our lives, a loneliness that made even the Wild Boar’s company seem appealing.

  When I’d first arrived with the Second Company, he used to come sniffing around me, too. He would tell me how pretty I was, offering me things, chocolates and tins of sardines, bragging how he could get anything I wanted, anything at all. It didn’t matter to him that I was married. When I told him, he laughed. He said we were at war and could die at any moment. I’d managed to keep him at bay, sometimes using cleverness, other times with not-so-veiled threats of going to Captain Petrenko, or even to the NKVD officer, Major Roskov. Then when my work as a sniper during the siege of Odessa got me promoted to sergeant and I was, at least technically, his equal in rank, he left me alone. Though, of course, I knew he was jealous of me. He didn’t like the fact that I was educated, that I spent my free time writing in my journal, that I read. That I wasn’t intimidated by him. And he certainly didn’t like all the attention I’d gotten of late. “What courage does it take to sit in a little hole and kill at three hundred meters?” I’d overheard him say once to another soldier. Lately, I had begun to notice how the Wild Boar had become friendly with Zoya, talking with her, offering her food and small treats. She was young and naïve, and perhaps he thought he could take advantage of her some night out behind the latrines. I had cautioned her about him.

  The Wild Boar wasn’t a man to have his authority questioned. He got up and came over toward me. He squatted on his haunches and waved the thick sausage in front of my nose tauntingly. To be honest, its smoky flavor set my mouth watering. When one is hungry, one will do almost anything for food.

  “Go ahead, Sergeant,” he said. “Think of it as a reward for getting that kraut.”

  “I am not hungry,” I lied, this time without bothering to look up.

  “It is a simple compliment I am paying you, Comrade Levchenko. Surely such bravery as yours deserves recognition,” he said, his tone edged with sarcasm.

  “I said ‘I’m not hungry.’”

  “I am only being generous.”

  “I know all about your generosity, Gasdanov.”

  At this he snorted. “And what the hell does that mean?”

  “I think you know what it means.”

  “What is it with you, Levchenko?” he said, dropping any pretense of being cordial. “Has all the big talk gone to your pretty little head?”

  “I just don’t want your sausage.”

  “Is my meat not good enough for the likes of you?” he replied, dangling the sausage obscenely between his thick legs. Smiling, he glanced over his shoulder at Drubich and the others, to see if they thought his joke funny. Drubich, his lapdog, sniggered nervously, but the others were reluctant to openly choose sides. Both of us were, after all, sergeants. The Wild Boar, a decorated veteran who’d fought in the Winter War against Finland in ’39, was known as someone you crossed at your own peril; and while I was a woman and only newly promoted, they’d seen the way the higher-ups had treated me with deference. And there was the official-looking document that Captain Petrenko had nailed to a beam in the bunker several weeks earlier:

  This is to certify that Senior Sergeant Tat’yana Aleksandrovna Levchenko, 25th Division, 54th Regiment, 2nd Company, is a sniper-destroyer of the invading German fascists. She has single-handedly eliminated 244 of the enemy. The Soviet people offer her their heartfelt thanks.

  Army Military Council

  Closing my journal, I stared at the sausage, then eyed the Wild Boar coldly. “Your sardel’ka, Comrade Gasdanov, is far too small to satisfy my hunger,” I said to him. At this, Nurylbayev and Drubich and a few of the others dared to let out a chuckle.

  The Wild Boar stared at me with his gray little pig eyes. “The hell with you then,” he said. Snubbed, he turned his attentions back to Zoya.

  “Have some more, Corporal,” he said, squatting in front of her.

  This time, taking my lead, she told him, “No, thank you, Sergeant.”

  “Go on,” he said, insisting. “Don’t listen to her. You’re skinny as a scarecrow.”

  “No,” she repeated.

  “Men like women with some meat on them.”

  “Leave her alone, Sergeant,” I interjected.

  “Butt out. This is not your business, Levchenko,” he replied, pivoting on his heels and pointing the dagger threateningly at me.

  “I can make it my business,” I said.

  “Is that so?”

  “It is.”

  He leaned toward me so that the others wouldn’t hear him. This close I caught a whiff of his sour breath, a strong metallic smell like diesel fuel. “The big hero,” he said mockingly. “The famous kraut killer. Huh! You think I give a shit about all that, Levchenko?”

  “I don’t particularly care what you think, Sergeant.”

  “Wait till it comes to real fighting. When you have to look a man in the eyes and kill him. Then we’ll see what you can do.”

  “If it’s trouble you’re looking for, Gasdanov, I can give you all you want.”

  “Do you think your threats scare me?”

  “The major would be very interested to hear about your ‘activities.’”

  Major Roskov was NKVD, one of the blue caps, the Party’s secret police among the troops. Along with the political commissars, the NKVD, or chekisty as many called the hated and feared secret police, saw to it that the Party’s political will was carried out even at the front lines. They wielded much more power than the military officers, and they could countermand any orders given by the military. They also had spies everywhere and were well known for their brutality. Even before the war, we’d heard the rumors about what they’d done to the Poles in the woods at Katyn. And we’d seen firsthand how they would shoot anyone who dared retreat. They’d established what were called “blocking detachments” in the rear of our lines, machine-gun emplacements whose sole purpose was to shoot, not Germans, but our own retreating troops. Everyone in the company gave Major Roskov a wide berth and was careful what they said around him. Even Captain Petrenko, who didn’t take shit from anyone, was usually guarded around Roskov. The blue hats would come around, disciplining those who had spoken out against some action of the military or handing out medals or giving political lectures to urge the troops on against the Germans. Though some of the blue hats were bold fighters, most led an easy, often pampered existence, usually far from harm’s way, slinking back only when a battle was over to lap up whatever credit they could garner. But they could be brutal when it came to discipline. While I detested men like
Roskov, I realized that sometimes they could be useful. Like now.

  “The devil take you both,” cursed the Wild Boar, who stood and spat on the ground near my boot. As he stomped off, he muttered under his breath, “Fucking shlyukha.” Whore—what the German had called me. Drubich got up and followed the Wild Boar through the canvas door of the bunker and out into the night.

  I looked over at Zoya.

  “Remember what I told you about him,” I said.

  “I know,” Zoya replied. “But I was hungry.”

  At this, I recalled the chocolate I’d taken off the German. I removed it from my pocket and tossed it to her. “Here.”

  Zoya got up and came over and sat down beside me. “We’ll share it,” she said.

  She was a small woman, with thin wrists and the delicate bones of a sparrow. She was pretty in a peasant sort of way, with a broad, heart-shaped face and the high cheekbones and hooded eyes of a Kalmyk. Though she cursed and fought like a hardened veteran, she was still just a girl, naïve and unworldly, especially when it came to men.

  “How is your head, Sergeant?” she asked me.

  “Not so bad,” I lied, touching the bandage. “What’s the news from home?”

  She nodded thoughtfully. “I received word from Maksim that our mother was still the same. The doctor doesn’t know if she will recover. My brother blames me for her falling ill.”

  “How was it your fault?”

  She shrugged. “He is angry that he had to stay and take care of her. Help out with the little ones. While I get to go and fight.”

  “You’re the oldest. You don’t have a family of your own. It was your duty.”

  “He thought my duty was to stay home. That as the eldest boy, it should have been he that went off to fight for the Motherland.”

  “But your brother is only fourteen.”

  “Not even. It doesn’t matter though. He still thinks a girl’s place is in the home.”

  “Ach,” I scoffed. “Too many men think like that.” I glanced around the bunker. The air raid had stopped, and that unnatural glasslike stillness had taken over as it always did after their bombing runs, where it seemed that every noise had been sucked away, leaving the earth with the feel of an empty cathedral.

  “Let’s get some air,” I said, shoving my journal into my pocket. I wanted to be able to talk freely.

  Outside we made our way along the trench for a while, passing a sentry. It was Corporal Nurylbayev, a tall, potbellied man with bowed legs.

  “Evening, Sergeant,” he said. Nodding toward the west, he added, “Looks like the krauts hit something.”

  The usually darkened city below us burned brightly. A tire plant near the wharf was engulfed in flames, sending up dense plumes of tar-black smoke. A sweet, chemical stench was already wafting up into the surrounding hills, one that made your stomach retch.

  We picked a private spot and sat down, our backs against the dirt walls of the trench. I took out my pack of cigarettes and offered one to Zoya. That was another change the war had produced in me. When I was single, I’d have the occasional cigarette, mostly as an affectation. At university I used to wear a beret and smoke brown Turkish cigarettes, and think myself quite the bohemian, a kind of wild-spirited Akhmatova. After Masha was born, I put aside my bohemian ways and stopped. Now it was something I did without thinking, something I needed as one does air or food. This despite the fact that most of the cigarettes we got were ersatz tobacco, made from chicory or dried potato peels or roots.

  The evening was warm, oddly quiet, not a breeze stirring.

  “Too many of them still think that all we are good for is to cook and clean and make babies. Like that pig Gasdanov. What we do in this war will change things, Zoya.”

  “Do you really think so?”

  “Assuredly. We will show them women can do anything we set our minds to.”

  “Including killing?” she said uncertainly.

  “Yes, even that. You have heard of Anka?” I asked.

  She was the famous machine-gunner who’d fought with the great patriot Chapayev in the civil war after the revolution. Over the years her story had grown into mythic proportions. Whoever she’d been in reality, she’d long ago crossed over into legend. But it was a myth a young girl could latch on to and hold as a model of womanhood.

  “Of course,” Zoya replied. “What schoolchild hasn’t read of her?”

  “Well, we shall become modern-day Ankas, you and I.”

  Zoya shrugged her narrow shoulders. “I fight only to drive those devils from our soil.”

  “Do you think I want that any less than you? But we are fighting and dying just like men. And after the war, shouldn’t we take our rightful place beside them, not as their maids or whores?”

  Despite all the talk that the revolution had given women the same rights and opportunities as men, we knew the truth—that we were still second-class citizens. It was men who made the decisions, who had the real power and control. They were the ones who decided what everyone would do, how we women would live our lives, what choices we would have, if and when we had children, even what we would think. But sometimes I let myself believe that the war might actually change things. That if we showed them we were as strong and brave and tough and valuable as they, perhaps they would allow us the same freedoms and opportunities. The women I fought with made good soldiers, as good as or better than the men. We had more endurance and more patience, and with us the fighting had less to do with ego. Men fought out of pride, to show off in front of their comrades. Women fought to protect their home, their children, their loved ones.

  “Yes,” Zoya said, but I could tell she was unconvinced. Zoya was old-fashioned, a simple country girl with backward notions. “But a woman should be a woman, and a man, a man.”

  “And yet we are doing things now that only men used to do.”

  “You know what I mean. When I get married, I want a man who is strong. Who has broad shoulders. I wouldn’t want to be with someone who is weak.”

  “Nor would I,” I said. “But there are different kinds of strength. There is the strength to be gentle. The strength to be kind and generous. Those are the qualities of a real man.”

  Zoya nodded.

  “And your husband, he has such qualities, Tat’yana?” she asked.

  Her comment caught me a little off guard. “He is a good man.”

  “I bet he must be very handsome.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “To have a wife so pretty and smart as you. Do you have a picture of him?”

  I reached into the inside pocket of my tunic and removed the small, worn leather case in which I kept my personal effects—a photograph of my parents, a poem I’d had published in a literary magazine before the war, a ticket stub to a symphony Kolya and I had gone to in Kiev, my wedding band, a locket of hair I had clipped from my daughter’s head before we laid her to rest. The lone photo I had of Kolya, Masha, and myself. It had been taken at the park Vladimirskaya Gorka in Kiev, down near the river, the summer before the war. In good weather, a man would set up his camera there on Sundays and take your photograph for a few kopeks. In it Kolya was holding Masha in his arms while I stood next to him. She was two. She wore a blue cotton dress I had made for her, and I’d put a matching blue ribbon in her fine blond hair. It brought out the blue of her eyes. Though I’d told Zoya about Masha, I hadn’t shown her the picture. Hadn’t shown anyone. Perhaps because I didn’t want to go anywhere near that terrible place inside me. Nonetheless, I carefully extracted the photo and handed it to Zoya. I removed another cigarette and lit it, then held the match so she could inspect the photo.

  “That’s him. Kolya,” I said.

  “He is quite handsome,” Zoya remarked.

  While I knew she was being kind, Kolya did have a certain boyish charm despite being over thirty in the picture, with his blond hair that fell casually in his face, beneath which his blue-gray eyes stared soberly out at the camera like a diligent student list
ening to a teacher’s lecture.

  “Have you had any word from him?” she asked.

  I shook my head. I’d had only one letter from him since the previous summer. He had gone north to fight in the defense of Leningrad, and we all had heard how badly things were going there.

  “I’m sure he’s fine,” she said, trying to reassure me. “You must love him very much.”

  I took a drag on my cigarette.

  “What is it like to be in love, Tat’yana?”

  What could I say in answer? How does one explain one’s life to another, make sense of the convoluted longings of the heart, or those longings that are stifled? That I was fond of Kolya. That I respected him. That he was a kind and gentle man, a good friend, a wonderful father. But that I didn’t love him. That I’d never loved him. I felt almost embarrassed to admit what seemed now, during such difficult times, a petty and selfish notion—love!—a feeling that I had put too fine a point on.

  “Have you heard of the poet Tsvetaeva?” I asked.

  I wasn’t surprised that Zoya, who could hardly read, shook her head.

  “She said this about love: ‘Ah! is the heart that bursts with rapture.’ You will know that you are in love when your heart feels about to burst.”

  “I have never been in love,” my young friend replied.

  “Surely you must have had a crush on some boy in your village, Zoya,” I said with a smile.

  “No,” she replied.

  “Not even once?”

  “My parents were very strict. Now with the war, I fear that I will die and not know what it is like to love someone.”