CHAPTER SIX - From Siberia to Idrizovo prison

CHAPTER SIX - From Siberia to Idrizovo prison

The fog and cold rain over Idrovo Prison brought Dobrin back to reality. From his experience in the Siberian prisons he was well aware of the ways of prison. He pulled out a piece of paper and began to draw an image of Rumena standing there straight with her head held high looking unusually glorious and proud, hiding her less noble traits but not her expression of her infinite sadness. She looked like a tragic queen.

Even a man like Dobrin, who devoted little attention to Rumena’s requirements, felt somehow defeated and dejected, and when he showed her the drawing, with her perfect image, she turned to him and her face flared up like it had caught on fire. He found himself in Rumena’s arms.

“So, the further away I am from you the deeper I am inside you. My beloved Dobrin, fill your heart with joy with me. Don’t torment yourself, live a little! Know and take everything from me while you still have the power... Don’t forget that today is our thirteenth anniversary since we have been married and we have only been together a few months. You in Siberia and me in Poland,” said Rumena and smiled.

“Dear Dobrin how much happier would we be if we were in Vicho again? The tall grass studded with white buds, the purple flowers, that our people call irises, the blue and bright flowers and the ferns our souls so much desired... There was something sweet in the air that spring in 1948...” said Rumena then turned to Dobrin and said:

“Dear Dobrin did you really feel how much you had conquered with me?”

“Yes, my dear, I really felt…” replied Dobrin, grabbed her by the waist and they both laughed as they slowly headed for their bed.

“I was infinitely wild in my life and I slipped away with many but now I am all yours my love. However, I could not love anyone as I have loved you. But you know that by order of the Party they wanted me to marry a number of mutilated people who were

important to the Party? They suggested all kinds. So let us celebrate this day like a holiday of our love and never forget it in this world, and especially in the hereafter, because that is now in all of us...” said Rumena.

“Nothing is forever my dear…” said Dobrin with his eyes closed, but his joy and splendor could be read on his face.

“But your kiss was Russian, a Party brotherly kiss…”said Rumena and continued: “Maybe because of your eternal dreams of living under communism, your life has become absent from my home!”

“Why would you think it’s a Russian kiss?” asked Dobrin and smiled.

“Well, do the Russians not kiss three times…? The first for the Father, the second for the Son and the third of the Holy Spirit…? Oh, my dear Dobrin, you do kiss like a Russian, and you don’t even know for whom you kiss!” replied Rumena.

“In the distant 1948, there in the ferns, your kiss ripped something out of my soul. Now, this same kiss of yours reminded me of Brezhnev’s kisses welcoming people from the fraternal republics. I remember Brezhnev watching on television to figure out how to kiss an emperor. He watched Emperor Haile Selassie kiss Todor Zhivkov. Todor then attempted to hug him but the emperor did not accept his embrace, not like those from our republics,” said Dobrin.

“Please don’t mention the kings because you know where we are. The old Greeks too used to kiss, and a lot. This I have read in history. Plutarch assailed Pericles, the greatest ancient statesman, because he used to kiss his wife twice a day, morning and evening!” said Rumena and continued.

“And you, you don’t even do it once a week. Oh, my dear Dobrin the red lips need to be kissed because they are for kissing... There is nothing left to be revealed… no specific philosophical dialectic. This is my decade-long lament because of my inability as a woman to be kissed!” concluded Rumena.

“I admit it! I could never disagree with you… there…” confessed Dobrin.

“And you communists unknowingly have given up on so many things that the Lord God gives to ordinary human beings. Perhaps this is also how women discarded old communists like ‘old purses’ and replaced them with younger men. We both live painful lives and yet you still hold on to the faith that communism offers you... At least for the moment we have something to talk about before we age and completely lose our memories. It was an overwhelming experience for me when my parents divorced. I watched my mother go through tremendous emotional pain. I don’t want to get hurt the same way...” replied Rumena.

“I would not do that to you…” replied Dobrin.

“Oh, my dear Dobrin, I know you like I know myself. When I was alone in Poland, at night I spent my time with only one person and that was God. I was very happy when I thought of us being together. I was happy but had no idea whether you still loved me or not? I waited for the moment when we would meet again. One foggy day, I remember it was snowing hard when I received a letter from you... What can I tell you? For the last decade I had been in shelters with many beds side by side, speakers blaring, smelly feet, the places stunk like a morgue, tired women sleeping and dreaming after returning from the third shift… and the wet towels... The baths were filled with shaven hair, the taps were leaking like crying eyes... When I read your letter I screamed with joy. Finally I thought, in a few months we will be together again! It was as if you whispered to me ‘let us live again’, but not like this and not without our own home. It was yours and my obligation... I had expectations... I wanted our meeting to be nice, I wanted you to kiss me differently, not just plainly like a Party bigwig. I did not want the Party to come between us. The Party was telling me to leave you because they said you were a traitor to its political ideals. The organization NOF was declared a spy ring and deemed treacherous to the cause and a new organization was formed. It was called ‘Ilinden’. Do you see how easily the communists change their mind about things? But then, immediately after that, the great disappointment arrived. The party offered me to a man with one leg and two fingers missing from his

right hand. In everything he looked like a real animal. He had extremely strong jaws. His eyes were big and bloodshot. His gaze was unusually harsh and his body was compact with muscles. I don’t know why the Party wanted me to mind this awkward accident of war. Many girls were made ‘happy’... It was the Party’s obligation. At that time it was not important what you thought and how you felt. Truth and only truth… cruel and frightful truth... Now I don’t want to think about it, I don’t want to know that maybe one day everything will change, even our feelings, and that I will hurt a little less. But I never thought that our love, born in that warm night full of stars, would subside and freeze... My world, which was illuminated by the vibrant colours of joy, love and tenderness, suddenly blurred and mixed with the grey of a cold autumn day in a shelter in Zgozhalets, Poland. My love for you got mixed with what the Party demanded of me. Perhaps naively... but then I managed to find a bright beam through the yellow leaves and continued to live with the memories of it,” concluded Rumena.

Dobrin lay sprawled on the narrow iron bed with no room to turn. He did not open his eyes, but from his bare chest he looked pleased. The bed creaked. Rumena got up and felt like a good mood was coming over her.

“Do you remember?” she asked.

“Remember what?” replied Dobrin.

“Lying on our bed after we were married... Oh, that endless forest! The bed of ferns… the aroma of spring... Maybe it did not last too long but...” said Rumena.

Rumena rinsed a couple of shot glasses, cut two marinated cucumbers and filled the glasses with Russian vodka.

“I will drink to my lamentations Russian style...!” cheered Rumena.

Suddenly a very loud voice came over the loudspeaker.

“Attention! Attention! Dobrin Suvogorski please report to interrogator Strogov in pavilion one, room number two.”

The announcement was repeated several times. Rumena listened carefully. Then when the announcement was over she waved her hand in front the mirror like it was no concern of hers. She then picked up a pencil and began to write things on the walls, different things including slogans she had heard during the revolution and in the shelters.

They went silent. The only noise heard were the caretaker’s footsteps outside in the hall coming towards them.

Rumena, listening to the footsteps, remember what prison guard Zosia Polotskaia had told her a long time ago: “...Do you know how the interrogators kill? With a smile! The victim never suspects that death is approaching. Discussions, laughing, as if life was a wonderful thing, are carried on with a smile. And then… suddenly… bang. You are gone. Death comes suddenly...”