Nights in the Basement

Tatiana stayed with Catherine for a week.  She taught Catherine how to do makeup, so she looked old.  And she adjusted Catherine’s posture and walk.  More importantly, she held Catherine while she cried.  Every evening.  Catherine came up from the basement, broom in hand, head hanging low.  It looked like she could barely make it up the final stairs.  She was not acting.  Her husband was buried deep in some forest, and her job was to sweep up torture cells.  She needed arms around her and a shoulder to cry on.

Those first few nights Tatiana did the cooking.  Catherine didn’t do much eating.  She leaned over her plate, took a few bites, asked for permission to go to bed.  Tatiana cleaned up the kitchen, then joined her in the small bed.  She slid on top of Catherine and wrapped her arms around her.  No words the first two nights.  Just tears.  Finally, a few questions.

“How much longer?”

“We know they are searching for you.  Someone is posted in your room, and two others sit in the hotel lobby playing chess – and watching.”

“Can you hide me someplace else?  I hate it here.”

“You are invisible here.  And the building has good security.  We can protect you here.”

“Don’t make me go into the basement.”

“It needs to be cleaned.”

“It needs to be dynamited.”

“The history is important.”

“People come, they go, they walk through in ten minutes.”

“What do you expect people to do?  It is a basement.”

“Thousands died there.”

“That was almost ninety years ago.  Stalin is dead.  Russia has moved on.”

“He is still alive in that basement.  I can feel his hate.  And their fear.  And their bravery.  And their loss.”

“Just sweep the floors, Catherine.  You may be doing it for months.”

Catherine closed her eyes.  It was hours before she slept.

At the end of the week, Tatiana spent a day bringing up box after box of food.  It was almost impossible to move around the kitchen without stumbling over food.  Catherine understood the meaning of the food.

“You are leaving me.”

“Yes.  It will be safer if I am not around.  They might follow me to you.”

“And I am to sweep.”

“And write.  I have a project for you.” 

She pointed to a notebook she had placed on the kitchen counter partially hidden by several cans of beans.

“Get your mind off the basement.  Write about Yuri.  A memoir.  Your meeting, your time together, your conversations, your love.  It’s a good project for you.  It will get you thinking about your good times, not the basement.  Think of it as a long love letter to your husband.”

Catherine stared at the notebook for the next three days.  Tatiana was gone, she was alone, she swept, she wept.  Then finally she began writing.  She started at the beginning.  That morning at the playground.  Her name called.  Her appeal to Yuri.  His demands.  Her promises.  And then she described his face.  She could still remember every detail.  Pride.  If she had to put a label on his expression, it would be “pride.”  He had been successful.  He had gotten something he wanted – her.  Somehow that made her feel better as she reflected back on that day.  He desired her.  She was important to him.

Writing filled her evenings, but not her days.  Two trips to the basement.  At noon to sweep the morning litter.  At closing to sweep again.  They were different experiences.  People were around at noon.  Never very many, but a few here and there.  Some were respectful, some were silly.  Most took pictures – the initial office, the cells with bars, the odd collection of hats and books and Bibles. 

She watched them.  Once she scared them.  A few teens wandered off from their parents and were pushing a young girl into a cell.  Catherine saw where they were headed and got into the cell first.  Black dress against a black wall.  She was invisible.  She waited in a corner of the cell and watched.  When she was ready, she came out from her corner, broom over her head, moaning like a ghost.  The teens screamed and ran.

She thought they should all scream and run – teens and adults.  The basement of terror.  Surly it had felt that way to the thousands who had been prodded down the stairs and into the cells.  Pushed into cells already filled with the sick, the injured, and the dying.  Looking into the eyes of men coughing from TB or sitting over a bucket in the corner shitting their insides out.  Men in pain from one beating, waiting for the next.

The smell of death.  The noises of pain and despair.  The sight of normal men now torn down past pride and hope.  The museum contained none of that.  Empty cells.  Concrete block walls.  Rusty cell doors.  People shuffled through, looked, paused, looked, paused, looked, and left.

Catherine swept up the corners of the cells.  The dark corners.  Not so bad at noon when tourists were around.  Very bad when the museum was empty.  She cried every night, her broom sweeping up ghosts and an occasional cigarette butt.  She finished her job, went upstairs, and knew from the cans of food all over the kitchen she would be sweeping many more weeks.