Someone banged on the barrack’s door. Groggy from sleep, Abram looked at the green dented alarm clock sitting on the floor next to his nary. It was 2:30 in the morning.  The banging was becoming more insistent. A raspy smoker’s voice yelled: “Open up, there was an accident at the factory, and we need you to come right away.”

Abram pulled on his pants and went to open the door. As soon as he twisted the key in the lock, the door swung inwards, hitting him on the face and driving him to the opposite wall. Abram fell on the floor, blood trickling from his nose and pooling in his beard. A short fat man in an NKVD uniform burst into my room, followed by two soldiers armed with rifles.  The fat man’s uniform looked like it just came from a factory – not a spot of dirt on his pants or jacket, and the leather on his belt and his gun holster gleamed a soft brown.  He certainly looked like he enjoyed the power of his job.

“What the hell is going on? I’m trying to sleep here!” Anatoly, one of Abram’s barrack mates, stumbled into the corridor, trying to rub sleep out of his eyes. The fat NKVD officer pulled his gun and pointed it at Anatoly. “Go back to bed! This does not concern you!” Anatoly quickly disappeared behind the wall and the officer turned his attention back to Abram.

“Are you Abram Payes?”

Abram nodded, trying to stop the bleeding from his broken nose. The officer turned to the two soldiers behind him and waved his hands. They walked over to Abram, grabbed his arms, and lifted him to his feet.

“Abram Payes, you are under arrest for anti-Soviet propaganda and espionage.” 

The fat officer opened his leather satchel and produced a thin folder.  He licked his thumb and shuffled through a few sheets of paper.

“You are charged with treason under Article 58, Subsection 1a, contact with foreigners with counter-revolutionary purposes under Article 58, Subsection 3, and anti-Soviet propaganda under Article 58, Subsection 10 of the USSR Penal Code.”

The officer shoved the papers back into the folder and looked up.

Abram was so completely and utterly shocked by the absurdity of the situation that he could not even say anything in his defense. He knew that people were being arrested in the middle of the night, but no one ever actually spoke of it. One day the person was there, the next day he wasn’t. People and their things quietly disappeared, replaced by someone else within a few days. Abram never thought that he could be one of those people. After all, he kept to himself and did not talk to anyone about any even remotely political topic. He worked hard and did his job well. There was absolutely no reason for which Abram could be labeled as an “enemy of the people”.

The NKVD officer told Abram to put on the rest of his clothes and led him to a horse-drawn cart. They told Abram to lie down in the back; the two soldiers sat on either side of him with their riffles vaguely pointed in his direction.  The officer sat in the front with the driver.

Slowly, Abram’s shock began to wear off. He wiped off the dried blood from his lips and tried to address the officer.

“Comrade, I swear that had not done anything wrong.  I don’t know what I’m being accused of, but I did not do any of the things that I am being arrested for. I am a good worker, and anybody can vouch for my character.”

The officer pretended not to hear Abram. Abram sat up and and tried to touch the officer on the shoulder to get his attention, but one of the soldiers slammed the butt of his gun into Abram’s forehead. The officer turned around and screamed.

“You all saw it. He tried to attack me and escape!” He told the driver to stop the cart, slowly climbed down, walked around to the back, and crouched until his face was only a few centimeters from mine.  Very quietly, he said: “If you move again, I will personally shoot you on the spot.” By the look in his eyes, Abram could tell that the officer wasn’t threatening him – he was simply stating a fact.

After a jarring half-an-hour ride over rough frozen roads they arrived at a village. It could barely be called a village – just a couple of decaying wooden huts in the middle of a forest clearing. By the door of one of the huts two older men armed with trophy German Parabellums sat on ammunition crates and smoked. They did not look nearly as pristine as the NKVD officer.  Their uniforms were mismatched and worn.  One of the soldiers wore a fur hat with floppy ears.  The other had a pilotka folded under the shoulder loop of his jacket.

The NKVD officer addressed one of them by name and the man dropped his cigarette and slowly walked up to the cart.

“Got another one for you,” – said the officer. “He is your responsibility until Thursday. The day after tomorrow captain Streshnev is coming back, he’ll decide what to do with this Zhyd.”

The two soldiers who guarded Abram unceremoniously lifted him up and tossed him over the edge of the cart. The cart was fairly low, but when Abram hit the frozen ground with my back all the air flew out of his body. He lay there, gasping and watching the cart with the NKVD officers and two soldiers disappear behind a bend in the road.

The second guard slowly got up from his crate by the hut door and walked up to Abram. He leaned down, studying Abram’s face for a few seconds. He straightened up, stretched with a loud groan, and tossed his cigarette butt in my face. Suddenly, his face changed from a tired, almost nostalgic expression to the one of utter fury. “Get up, you fucking traitor!” he screamed at Abram. “Get up right fucking now!” – he swung his leg kicked Abram in the hip. He grabbed the front of Abram’s shirt, lifting him off the ground and dragging him towards the hut. The soldier propped Abram against the wall and screamed again, right in my face. “I fucking hate your kind. You fucking Zhydy! It wasn’t enough that you hoarded all the money, now you want to sell our country to Hitler!” He hit Abram again, this time in the stomach. Abram slid down the wall, once more gasping for breath.

The second guard quietly stood to the side and watched us.  He crouched down near an ammunition crate and pulled out a small pouch from his pocket.  The guard tore off an edge from a newspaper, shook a bit of tobacco out of his pouch, and slowly rolled a cigarette.  He licked the edge of the paper, lit the cigarette, and walked up to the man who was beating me. “Relax Kolya. Here, have another cigarette. Captain Streshnev will deal with him in a few days. He’ll be sorry that he ever tried to sell out to the Fascists.”

The two men lifted Abram up from the ground and tossed him inside the hut. The door slammed, plunging the small room in complete darkness. For a few minutes, Abram just laid there, trying to catch my breath. Just a few hours ago he thought that his life had stabilized, that he managed to get away from the Germans and from the war, that he did not have to look over his shoulder every moment of every day, holding his breath every time someone would utter the words ‘Jude’, ‘Zhyd’, or ‘Evrey’. And now, he was lying on the dirt floor of a hut in some unknown Ural village, beaten and bloody, with two guards standing outside of the door and the future even scarier than it was when he was at the German labor camp.

For the next two days Abram was left in the dark. Once, on the day after his arrest, the door opened a little bit and someone’s hand slid in a tin of water.  Upon closer inspection, the tin used to contain tushonka – canned stewed meat that the Americans sent as part of their war aid.  The water strongly smelled of smoky fat and rust, but Abram was so thirsty that he did not care. Other than that, he was left alone with no food and no light. To kill the time and to feel like he was doing something, Abram started pacing the dark room, keeping his hand on rough-hewn wooden walls.  Eleven steps wide and twenty-two steps long.  Walls made of large pine logs, with every crack packed with dried moss.  Something hanging on the wall to the left of the door, just a few centimeters above Abram’s head.  Feels like a picture in a wooden frame, or an icon.  A pile of straw next to the wall opposite the door.

In the afternoon of Abram’s third day in the hut, the door swung open all the way; the light poured in, blinding his eyes and leaving him disoriented. Abram felt a couple of hands roughly grabbing his coat and dragging him outside.

“Davai”, said one of the guards. “Let’s go!” He pushed Abram forward. “Take good care of him.”

Abram opened his eyes and saw a new man, unshaven and dressed in a vatnik and valenki, carrying the biggest hunting gun Abram have ever seen. The man’s vatnik has seen better days – a few unmatching patches decorated one of the sleeves and a side of the garment and two ammo belts crisscrossed his chest. The man’s shapka looked worse than his vatnik – the fur was sticking out in clumps and several bold spots seemed to absorb light. One “ear” of the hat was pointing up and the other one was pointing down. The man coughed violently as he sucked on his cigarette.

“What’s his name?” asked the newcomer, pointing at Abram with his cigarette.

“Abram Payes. Zhyd!” replied one of my guards.

The new man pointed his yellowing finger at my chest and quietly said: “My name is Volodimyr. We are going to see Captain Streshnev. You will walk three steps in front of me. We got a long walk, so if you have to piss or do anything else, you better ask me first. One step to the left or to the right will be viewed as an attempt to escape and I will shoot you.” Vladimir waved his enormous gun in the air. “And trust me, I will not miss. I’ve been hunting in these here forests for thirty-five years and I can hit a fucking squirrel in the eye from one hundred meters.”

I nodded. One of the guards leaned to my ear and whispered: “I hope that you try to run, Zhyd.”

Volodimyr nodded to both guards and waived at me. “Remember, three steps in front of me.”

Abram began to walk. Volodimyr walked behind him, somehow managing to hold his gun, roll his vile-smelling cigarettes, and talk at the same time.

“So, “asked Volodimyr, “Why did you do it. Did they give you a lot of money?”

Abram did not answer.

“Captain Streshnev told me you are from Poland?” the guard continued.

Abram nodded.

Volodimyr spat on the side of the road and lit another cigarette. “Well, my friend, let me tell you this. Whatever you did or did not do, you are pretty much fucked now. The good captain is a master of his job – every accused who came into his office signed a confession. You’ll do the same.” For a second, the guard’s voice sounded almost sympathetic.

“What will happen to me? I didn’t do anything wrong.” Abram stopped and turned to look at Volodymyr.

In a blink of an eye, Volodymyr’s rifle moved up, barrel pointing at Abram’s face.

“Three steps in front of me at all times!”  For a few minutes, Volodymyr was quiet. “Look, I don’t know what you did and honestly, I don’t want to know. They tell me that you spread enemy propaganda. In any case, my advice to you is to confess right away. Streshnev will get your confession sooner or later anyway.”

After what felt like hours and hours of walking, Abram and Volodymyr made it to a kolhoz – a collective farm large enough to have brick buildings and even a few tractors. Volodymyr guided Abram to a large concrete and corrugated metal building at the edge of a field. From the outside, the building looked to be a machinery repair depo, with gates large enough to admit tractors and combines.  

The two men walked into the building through a small side door.  A long narrow corridor led them past a series of what looked like machine shops.  Eventually, they came to a door with a wooden plaque that read “Predsedatel kolhoza” (collective farm manager).  Volodymyr told Abram to face the wall; with one hand holding the riffle behind Abram’s back, he knocked on the door.

Captain Streshnev turned out to be a tall heavy-built man in his mid-thirties.  Streshnev’s office was immaculate.  A large ornate wooden desk that was probably expropriated from some hapless kulak stood in the middle of a large room. Bookshelves lined the back wall of the office.  Top shelves prominently displayed works of Lenin and Stalin, while bottom shelves were filled with rows upon rows of folders.  On the wall to the right of the door large portraits of Stalin and Lenin hung side by side. To the left of the door there was a row of chairs upholstered in red velvet. The captain sat behind his desk.  He had several piles of neatly stacked papers in front of him.  He would pick a paper from one pile, quickly scan through it, make some notes, and move it to one of the other piles.

When Volodymyr led Abram into the office, Streshnev briefly looked up from his work and nodded towards the row of red chairs. Volodymyr put his hand on Abram’s shoulder and gently pushed him into a chair closest to the door.  He nodded to the captain and quietly walked out of the room.

The room was eerily quiet.  The only sounds Abram could hear were the crinkling of paper, the scratching of Streshnev’s pen, and the barely audible tick-tock sound of the captain’s wristwatch.

It was hard to judge the passage of time, but it seemed like hours had passed before the captain looked up from his work and acknowledged Abram’s presence.  Streshnev stared at Abram for a long minute. Then he nodded, as if agreeing with himself on some preconceived notion, and pulled out a sheet of paper from of his desk drawer.

“Your full name?” – asked Streshnev.

“Abram Shimonovich Payes.”

“Date of birth?”

“November 15, 1915.”

“Place of birth?”

“Grodno, Poland.”

“Nationality?”

“Jew”

Streshnev went on to ask where Abram served in the army, where he worked before and during the war, when he was captured by the Germans, and how h survived being a Jew, and how he escaped. He asked his questions in an indifferent droning tone, thoroughly recording every word.

Abram explained that Germans did not know that he was a Jew because he don’t look like one.

Streshnev put down his pen, looked up at Abram, and all of a sudden began to laugh. “They did not know that you were a Jew because you do not look like one? That’s a new one, that one I haven’t heard before.” Then his face became serious again and he said, “How can you not look like a Jew if all Jews look like you?”

Suddenly, Streshnev became angry. He slammed his fists on his desk and leaned forward. He yelled so loud that the fat on his face jiggled with every word. “Ebaniy predatel! Vonuchiy Zhyd! You will tell me right this instant how you became a German agent what assignments propaganda did you distribute for them? If you don’t, I will take you outside right now and shoot you kak sobaku!”

Abram tried to argue. He tried to tell the captain that there were a number of people who would vouch for me.

Streshnev refused to listen.  He kept screaming his questions over and over, banging his ham-sized fists on the desk.  Eventually, he seemed to calm down.  He poured himself a glass of water from a grafin on his desk and slowly drank it.  He sat the empty glass back on a silver tray next to the grafin and walked to the door.  He peered outside and called someone. 

Streshnev sat back in his chair and stared at Abram.  Abram looked down at the polished wooden floor.

A few minutes have passed.  Someone tentatively knocked on the door and Streshnev told them to enter.  A small wiry man walked into the room.  The newcomer was tiny – the top of his head probably barely cleared five feet.  He was smartly dressed in an immaculate uniform, with galife pants tucked into shiny black leather boots.  He looked at Streshnev and saluted.  

The captain did not say anything – he leaned back in his chair and nodded in my direction.  Abram has never seen a person move so fast.  As if by magic, a length of pipe appeared in the newcomer’s hand.  In one fluid motion he turned around and swung the pipe against Abram’s shoulder.  Abram toppled from the chair and fell sideways on the floor.  The tiny man leaned down and hit Abram again.  And again.  And again. Abram tried to make himself as small as possible, rolling into a tight ball, protecting his head with his arms.  As the blows rained down, he kept wondering how Streshnev managed to keep the room so clean – it must have taken a lot of work to clean up all the blood from the floor.

Abram passed out… When he regained consciousness, several soldiers dragged him outside and tossed him headfirst into a cattle trough full of icy water.  While Abram sputtered and flailed, the soldiers leaned against a wall and started rolling cigarettes.

Abram climbed out of the trough and lay on the ground shivering.  The soldiers took their time, smoking and telling jokes. After a while, they seemed to remember that they had a prisoner to deal with.  “Davai, get up!” – yelled one of the soldiers. Abram struggled to get up.  A soldier grabbed the back of Abram’s shirt and jerked him up to his feet. The other two soldiers picked up their rifles and followed Abram back to Streshnev’s office.

Our interaction from a few hours ago was repeated, word for word, action for action.

“Your full name?”

“Abram Shimonovich Payes.”

“Date of birth?”

“November 15, 1915.”

“Place of birth?”

“Grodno, Poland.”

“Nationality?”

“Jew”

“When were you recruited by the Germans?”

“I was never recruited by anyone!”

“Who do you report to?”

“No one, I have no idea what you are talking about.”

“How do you receive information from your superiors?

“…”

“Do you work for the Gestapo?”

“…”

The tiny man with a pipe made another appearance and beat me until I passed out again.

This went on for days. Eventually time lost all meaning.  Abram could not remember how long each interrogation lasted, or how many cycles of questions  beatings  icy water he had endured. He did not remember sleeping or eating.  Everything hurt.

During what must have been the sixth or the sevenths interrogation session, when Streshnev asked about the Gestapo, Abram told the captain that he had never met anyone who worked at the Gestapo, but was sure that Streshnev would fit right in.

For a few seconds the captain froze, hands pushing against the edge of his desk, front legs of the chair slightly off the floor. He slowly stood up, walked around his desk, and put down his pen.  He motioned for the tiny man to step out of the room.  Then, just as slowly, he walked to the door and called the guards. He whispered something to them, then turned to Abram and said: “This is your last chance. Either you tell me about your anti-Soviet activities right now, or I will order my men to take you outside and execute you.”

“I swear to God that I have never met anyone from Gestapo”, I pleaded once more.  “I have never done anything to undermine Tovarisch Stalin. I even went to jail in Poland for trying to promote the Communist party!”

“We are communists, and we don’t believe in God”, replied Streshnev. He nodded to his men. They lifted Abram up by his armpits and dragged him into the small clearing behind the building. The ground was full of discarded tractor parts, rusty tools, and pieces of sheet metal. One of the soldiers hit Abram in the back with the butt of his riffle.  Abram fell to his knees and another soldier pressed the barrel of his gun to the back of Abram’s head.  The soldier counted “one-two-three” and pulled the trigger.

A loud shot rang out, rebounding from the corrugated metal of the building’s walls.  With the edge of my vision, I saw the guard’s arm jerk back, pushed by the recoil of the gun. A small flame erupted from the barrel, burning my skin. Before I realized that I was still alive, I heard both guards laugh hysterically. “Captain told us to fire blanks, predatel’. Next time we’ll shoot you for real!”

Questions and beatings went on for a few more days.  Captain Streshnev wrote a confession in Abram’s name and every day he would demand a signature.  Abram stopped trying to insist on his innocence, but still was not past that edge where he would sign the confession and doom himself to 10 years of hard labor.

One day, while Abram was blankly staring at the confession in front of him, a gray-haired man in his sixties walked into in Streshnev’s office.  The man wore a grey civilian suit and had an air of tremendous authority. Streshnev was obviously terrified of him. 

“This Zhyd refuses to cooperate,” – Captain Streshnev handed the man in grey suit my unsigned. “All that suka has to do is sign. He knows that he is guilty, we know that he is guilty. We even have witnesses to prove it.”

The man in the grey suit looked at me, thought for a moment and said, “You have one hour to sign this confession. One hour.” He turned and walked out of captain Streshnev’s office. Streshnev followed him out, handing me a pen on his way out. 

There was something absolutely terrifying about the man in the grey suit.  It is difficult to describe what Abram felt when he looked into the man’s eyes.  One thing Abram knew for sure – the man in the grey suit was responsible for thousands of lives and tens of thousands of deaths.  The way he carried himself, the way Streshnev was afraid of him… It was clear that for the man in the grey suit signing someone’s death warrant was as easy as smoking a cigarette.

Abram signed the confession.

An hour later two soldiers walked into the room; one of them picked up the confession from Streshnev’s desk, quickly glanced at my signature and put the paper into a folder. The other soldier led Abram out of Streshnev’s office and into an adjacent building.  Abram has heard of traditional Soviet approach to executions.  A prisoner was told that he is being transferred to a different cell.  While being escorted down a corridor, the guard would simply put a bullet into the back of the prisoner’s head.  Throughout the entire short walk from Captain Streshnev’s office Abram waited for that bullet.

The guard opened the door and pushed Abram to the floor.  The door slammed closed, and the deadbolt clicked home.

No one came to interrogate Abram for several days and no one brought him food or water. Just as he began to think that they simply forgot about him and left him to starve to death, a man showed up and led Abram to a holding area that already contained eight or ten other people, including two guys that he used to work with at the factory.

The other prisoners told Abram that one of them was accused of being a Japanese spy; the other one was arrested for spreading anti-Soviet literature. As it turned out, the “Japanese spy” was an officer on a merchant vessel and married a Japanese woman before the war. The other guy told me that he used to be a university professor and essentially arrested for corresponding with British scientists. Apparently, they also survived days and days of interrogation and beatings; they also confessed to all accusations.

The former professor, a man by the name of Glazov told Abram that most likely they would be sent to the front as part of a shtrafbat to wash off their sins against the Soviet Union with blood.

The Soviet Union was losing the war.  The Red Army, underfed, underequipped, with no competent commanders was rapidly losing ground.  The German troops advanced farther into the Soviet territory every day, burning villages, killing everyone suspected of being a communist, sending droves of civilians and POWs to labor camps.  Sending millions of Jews and gypsies to ghettos or to death camps.  Abram felt caught between two evils, neither of which was lesser.

The next day Streshnev called Abram into his office again.  As Abram approached the captain’s desk, Streshnev slid a sheet of paper towards him.  It was an addendum to the confession Abram already signed a few days ago. 

“I, Abram Shimonovich Payes, confess to spreading anti-Soviet propaganda among my coworkers at factory #7, where I had worked as a fitter until my arrest…”

Abram stopped reading and looked up at Streshnev.  “I have no idea what this is.  I have never…”.

The captain did not let Abram finish.  He yelled for someone, and a moment later a came in with a man that Abram vaguely remembered from the factory. The man looked scared and fidgeted a lot, his hands constantly kneading the bottom of his jacket.

“Do you recognize this man?” – asked Streshnev.

“I’ve seen him at the factory, but I don’t recall his name,” replied Abram.

 The captain turned to the newcomer. “Do you know the prisoner?”

The man looked down at the floor and mumbled something. “Speak up!” barked Streshnev. “Yes,” mumbled the witness. “He is Abram Payes, a machinist from the second brigade.”

Streshnev looked at me triumphantly. He turned to the man once more. “Tell me what you told us yesterday.”

Without looking up, the man whispered, “I was at the mess hall last week and I overheard Abram complaining about the food. We were having soup, but there weren’t enough spoons. Abram was upset, and he said: ‘What kind of country is this where workers cannot even get spoons to eat their lunch.’”

Streshnev asked the man if he were willing to repeat his testimony in front of judges. The man nodded in agreement and Streshnev shoved the confession in front of Abram again.

Abram signed.

Suddenly, Streshnev demeanor changed; in once second, he went from being a snarling animal to acting as if Abram was his best friend.

“Are you hungry? Would you like a cigarette?” Abram nodded. Streshnev called to a guard and ordered him to bring food. He clapped Abram on the shoulder and handed him a cigarette. Abram lit up, the sound of rushing blood in his ears drowning out Streshnev’s happy chatter.

With a stroke of a pen Abram became a traitor who spread anti-Soviet propaganda and a German spy who worked for Gestapo.