Actually, The Gestapo Picked Her Up



<I>”I rise from the grave with my red hair – and I eat men like air”

                                                                                       -Sylvia Plath, Lady Lazarus </i>

 

The collective dragged her up by her bootstraps and made her a woman.  Some credit, however, must be given to her father.  Pytor Cocktease was a man of the Party.  His father had guarded Lenin, and he had been a proud KGB agent until (to his everlasting horror) the Gorbachev regime collapsed into democracy.

 

He had met Olga Yevenovich at a meeting and fallen hopelessly in love with her calm grace.    They were married in Moscow, on a May afternoon.

 

 Here, he thought, was a woman he may breed strong sons upon.

 

But he only got a pale-skinned, green eyed, skinny little girl named Masha.

 

***

 

“On your toes!  KICK STEP KICK!”

 

Tears glimmered in the corners of Masha’s eyes, her tender feet aching.  She was ten, a new student at Mme. Devenovitch’s ballet school.  She had been informed she had potential by her mother – that was all the warning she received before being uprooted and placed in the care of the school.

 

Masha, callow in her youth, was too young to manage a judgment of her own talents – later, she will wonder if she might have made rank as a world class ballerina – if she could have danced with the Bolshoi, in New York or Paris. 

 

One afternoon, her father turned up at the school, and Masha was summoned.  Her things had already been packed by Mme – she was to leave the school.  “An excellent student, but her father withdrew her from my care,” she would tell anyone who would listen in the years to come.

 

Alone in their car, her father informed Masha stiffly of her mother’s death.

 

“You are my child alone now.  You will be my left hand in all matters.  Understood?”  His fingers squeeze the steering wheel, her answer already forgone.

 

Ten year old little girls do not have much power.  Were Masha fully cognizant of her options, she would not have said yes.

 

Or perhaps she would have.

 

*** 

 

She worshipped her father, and therefore did not think to question his logic.  At ten, she learned how to fire an automatic weapon; at thirteen, she was introduced to basic swordplay. 

 

He bought her a rabbit at fourteen, then ordered her to slit its throat and cook it for dinner.  She learned quickly not to attach herself to any one person or thing.  Her loyalty was to him.  Her loyalty was to Mother Russia.

 

***

 

At seventeen, on her first mission for the KGB, she separated a traitorous nuclear physicist from his head.  Blood gushed into her boot and pumped vigorously over her toes.

 

She kicked him just for ruining her new stockings. She told her father that, and he grinned.

 

“Masha, it is time for you to become a true assassin.  It is time for you to receive your code name.”

 

“Yes, father?” he skin tingled anticipatorily.

 

“Your hair is red, like fire.”  He clasped her shoulders in a bearish grip.  “You explode like a bomb when provoked.  A molotov cocktail.  Your name, child, is Molotov from now on.”

 

***

 

“SHOOT HIM!”

 

The gun trembled in Molotov’s grip.  The blond giant stood between her crosshairs.  Accessible.  Ready to be killed.  Meat on the hook.

 

Her finger vibrated on the trigger.  Hesitation.  She must, and cannot, and it makes her feel ill.

 

The blond man knelt, staring into her eyes as he lined the sight of bazooka up with her head…

 

“MASHA!  SHOOT THE BASTARD!”

 

The sound of her name unnerved her so utterly that she dropped the gun.  A bullet whistled by her ear, blowing a lock of her red hair away.

 

Her father fell to the motel room floor, clutching his chest.

 

***

 

“Promise me,” he gasped, his lifeblood dripping onto the carpeting.

 

“Anything, father.”  How insignificant he looks, this big giant man who was once her father.

 

“You will not let the bastards touch you, Masha.  Promise me that…you will protect your virtue for mother Russia.”

 

It was, she decided, just the sort of request a woman should take literally.

 

Knife in hand, she broke for the street, ready to confront her father’s murderer.  The fool, she decided, will pay with his life….

 

***

 

<I> Greasy, slicked-down body
Groovy leather trim
I like the way you hold the road
Mama, it ain't no sin
Talkin' 'bout love, talkin' 'bout love, talkin' 'bout…</i>

 

The laser beams reflected off the tip of her knife. 

 

He squatted in front of the controls, staring at her.

 

There was a running tackle, a violent struggle.  Her knife penetrated his chin – his fist pummeled her neck.

 

He looked up at her and grinned in the hallucinatory light.

 

<I>“Do it again.”</i>

 

***

 

The war was over.

 

She stood in Red Square, listening to the people exult their joy, completely befuddled.

 

Her devotion, her life, her very heart…gone.

 

What would her father think?

 

(When the wall tumbled down, she shed a tear for him).  

 

***

 

How easy it is, she thinks, to kill.  How easy to put your mind temporarily away and simply do.  Immune to suffering as she is, sometimes her own lack of emotion causes her to pause.

 

Is she a monster?   No.  A monster would not love so unreservedly.  Perhaps she is simply a creature of her circumstances…but those circumstances, now under her control, are similar to the ones that greeted her as a child.

 

She stands in the flames without being consumed by them, the heat kissing her skin.  Fully Molotov, forever Molotov, with no sign of cowardly little Masha left. 

 

But under her skin the little girl dances, her balance perfect, her eye on the clock.  Waiting for the hands to point at the sun.  Waiting for it to tell her she can go home.


The End