Red Sniper

“What do you think is wrong with him?”

“I think he has a fever, and he may be malnourished as well,” she said.

Whitlock just stared. Other than Ramsey, he had not heard anyone else speak English in months. “It didn’t help that he was worked like a dog today.”

The girl took hold of Whitlock’s wrist and turned it to reveal his raw hands. She made a sound like oh. The mask that she had forced her face into slipped. “Let me do something about those hands,” she said.

She sat him down and bathed his hands in a basin of warm, soapy water. The water soon turned pink. Then she smoothed ointment over the sores, and wrapped his hands in bandages. Whitlock couldn’t take his eyes off her.

“A Russian who speaks English,” he said. “Imagine that.”

“Half Russian,” she said. “You see, my father was an American.”

Whitlock wanted to know more, but the small, weasel-like man appeared to usher him out. The Russian out of place in the white-washed and well-scrubbed surroundings.

He grabbed Whitlock’s bandaged hands and stared at them as if in disbelief, muttered what was clearly an oath of disgust, and then gave him a shove toward the prison barracks.

• • •

Whitlock thought that he might never see his Russian angel again—or Ramsey either, for that matter. Although the prisoners were given a fair amount of freedom to wander the compound in the small amount of free time they had, the infirmary itself was off limits, guarded by stern Russians with rifles that had fixed bayonets. Mostly, Whitlock marched out every day to the work site and swung his pick, helping Uncle Joe Stalin build his railroad.

It was lonely, not having anyone else to talk to. The other prisoners mostly ignored him. Two bunks over was a zek who was in the habit of talking to his chunk of break every evening. The poor man would stroke the bread, smile at it and speak soothing words. Whitlock could not translate the words, but he understood the tone. And then the man would devour his scrap of bread in a few bites, smiling with a look on his face that bordered on ecstasy.

Whitlock wondered how long it would take him to end up like that.

One evening a week later, he returned from digging the railroad bed to find Ramsey back in his bunk. He did not quite look rested or fit, but he was in much better shape than he had been.

“They nursed me back to health,” Ramsey said. “So that they can work me to death again. What’s the sense in that?”

Whitlock did notice that Ramsey’s hacking cough seemed to have subsided. “Well, you sure as hell sound better than you did.”

“It wasn’t the cough that carried him off, it was the coffin they carried him off in.” Ramsey winked. “In other words, I’m not dead yet.”

Whitlock grinned. “Glad to hear it.”

He was even happier when the nurse from the infirmary appeared in the barracks.

“I came to check on your hands,” she explained. “And on your friend.”

The air inside the barracks was cold and foul, but at least they were out of sight of the jealous nurses and definitely out of earshot of anyone else who could speak English. She asked Ramsey how he was doing. Her bedside manner was businesslike.

The nurse had brought along a bag with more ointment and fresh bandages. Whitlock’s hands were still a mess from the unrelenting labor. Given time, they would harden into leather. For now, he was glad to let her spread more ointment and wrap his hands in more bandages.

“I’m Harrison Whitlock,” he said. “My friends call me Harry.”

“Inna.”

“EE-nah,” he repeated. “Just Inna?”

“Inna Mikhaylovna.” She hesitated, then added, “My last name is Turner.”

Whitlock raised his eyebrows. “So, your father really was American.”

“Michael Turner. He emigrated here,” she explained. “Some Americans did that, thinking that Communism was the best hope for the future.”

“What about you? Were you born here or in the states?”

“I was born here. My mother was Russian.”

“So I guess that makes you half American. Your father must have been an idealist to move to Russia.”

“No, he was a fool. I loved my father, but he should have stayed in America.”

She finished bandaging his hands. The last item that her bag contained was a book, a battered copy of The Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters. She glanced around before taking it out. “This is what I know of America,” she said. “That is, besides what my father told me. I thought you might want something to read. Please don’t tell anyone I gave it to you. American books are forbidden.”

“My lips are sealed.” He examined the book and his face lit up. “Thank God. The only thing I’ve been able to get my hands on were some pamphlets on Communist Party speeches translated into very wooden English. Some kind of propaganda, I gather. The worker is the backbone of society and all of that. Dreadful stuff.”

They talked for a while about the poems, and about life in the camp. Inna had completed her medical training, but now that the war was over, she had been sent here to northern Russia instead of the front lines.