The conversation was one-sided. Vera wanted to know Margarita’s name. Her parentage. Her region of birth. The questions stopped short of her arrest. Margarita interspersed her answers with compliments on the lunch. With her third and most sincere, “You have no idea how wonderful this is,” Vera seemed to relax slightly. She tasted the soup and agreed. She glanced at Margarita’s bodice. “I don’t think they feed you well at that camp of yours,” she said and took another bite.
Margarita felt strangely self-conscious. “I’m naturally thin,” she said.
Vera looked at her as if there was a shared complicity in this admission. It disappeared with her next question.
“What happened to the other one? To Raisa?”
As though the outcome to a prisoner’s disappearance might be a benign one. Margarita looked down at her soup. “I really didn’t know her.”
Vera spooned through the liquid. “They say she’s ill.”
“We were told the same.”
“And is she feeling better? Perhaps we should save her job for her. For when she returns. It would seem only fair, don’t you agree?”
What if she told her of Raisa? Vera went on.
“My husband has an arrangement with the camp—but we’ve known Raisa for such a long time. Though I’m certain you are nice too,” she said without much conviction. “You probably miss your friends—the other—prisoners,” she added, unable to come up with a better word.
“I became sick at our last work site,” said Margarita. “I fainted from paint fumes.”
She frowned. “That’s terrible.”
Margarita considered her next spoonful. Perhaps she was being careless. Who was this wife? A clever woman trapped in muddy Siberia. Perhaps not so clever but smart enough. Fearful and frustrated. She was as much a prisoner as any of them. Her influence over the office workers imagined. She was the tyrant of nothing.
Margarita needed an accomplice. Willing—or not. Knowing—perhaps not. But she needed this woman to want to help her. She released the spoon and let it slide into the soup. She dropped her hands to her lap.
“Raisa’s dead.” Margarita said this much like a confession.
Vera shifted in her chair. “I really didn’t know her very well,” she said after a moment. “I knew nothing of her background—of her—” She didn’t say the last part. Of her crime.
Of course it made sense to distance oneself.
Vera continued to eat. On the sideboard, a clock ticked. Her eyes had widened; she rolled them upward as she pulled the spoon from her mouth. Fear seemed to bloom within her. The spoon made a faint ring against the bottom of the bowl.
“Was she—” Vera didn’t finish the question. What kinds of things cause death in a prison camp?
Margarita watched the woman tussle between curiosity and trepidation.
“She was a nice person,” said Vera. She lifted the side of the bowl and scraped its walls vigorously. She repeated these motions again with her next bite. With the third time she slowed. Purpose seemed to calm her. The bowl’s ceramic gleamed dully. When she caught sight of Margarita’s gaze, she’d recovered herself; she gave Margarita a slight wondering smile as if questioning her interest. It was only a dead prisoner, after all. What cause for alarm? The soup should by all means be finished. She licked the spoon front and back then dropped it into the empty bowl. It rang out as if she’d thrown it against the china. The clock chimed the hour.
“Are you married?” she asked. The subject was changed. She seemed more cheerful.
Margarita told her no.
“Boyfriend, then.” This wasn’t a question. “He won’t wait. If that’s what you’re thinking. They never do. Perhaps you’ll meet someone here. It happens.”
“Perhaps,” said Margarita. She tried to sound somewhat forlorn. The woman patted the table between them.
“It happens,” she said. “Not hungry? Oh well. I guess that’s understandable.” She carried the dishes to the sideboard. “Don’t forget to leave the sweater when you go tonight. Chances are good you won’t be back.” With those words, she was positively giddy. Raisa was gone. This girl would be gone too. Margarita had miscalculated. The wife now had the ammunition she needed. Her husband could make no argument. She would consider the lunch a win.
Margarita returned to the factory alone. Vera was cleaning her windows. Margarita glanced along the corridors she passed, at the closed doors, a shallow alcove here and there. Places to hide when the guards came for her. At her desk the pile of ledgers requiring her notation had grown. Others around her worked quietly. There was under the desk. They would look there first.
She went back to the apartment. She stood outside the door for a moment. The interior hall was quiet; the midafternoon light was uneven through the windows at either end. She heard a dull movement from within, a piece of furniture across the floor. She took off the sweater and folded it over her arm. She’d failed with the camp doctor but she wouldn’t with the wife. Fear was a better motivator. She knocked, then opened the door.
Vera had stepped down from a chair; one foot was still perched on the seat, the skirt of her dress bunched around her thigh. She reached to cover her bare leg as she lowered her foot. Her first reaction was alarm, even as she recognized Margarita. Margarita shut the door.
“I lied,” Margarita began. “I knew Raisa. I knew her well. She told me things.” She touched the table. “I don’t intend to keep those secrets as she did. Look what happened to her.”
Vera stared at her. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You have a beautiful apartment,” said Margarita.
The clock ticked.
“We’ve done nothing,” said Vera.
Margarita considered her next words. Nothing terribly specific. She may indeed have done nothing. Her fear would have kept her in check. Not that it mattered. Plenty of people had done nothing.
“How on earth did you come to acquire such lovely things?” Margarita picked up the figurine of a ballerina from the sideboard and inspected it. She set it down in a different spot.
“We’ve done nothing,” Vera repeated, her voice stronger. Partially restored. “I don’t know what you think you know.”
“You’re a clever woman,” said Margarita. She inspected the walls. There was a portion of wallpaper that did not align in pattern with the rest. A poorly rendered repair or something hiding beneath. Margarita smiled and touched the spot. “Prison is filled with clever women.” She became serious again. “Well, one less now, I suppose.”
Vera sat down.
“Raisa—I watched her die. Did you know this?” As if she had a power to be reckoned with. But this was truthful and Margarita envisioned those last struggled breaths. She remembered her own careless words to Anyuta. The way she’d come to have this job. Some would live and some would die. She could try to be unmoved by this.
Vera began to protest but Margarita cut her off. Enough had been said.
“Just beautiful.” Margarita laid the sweater on the table. She smoothed its threads with a gesture of possession. “Thank you for lending this.” She pressed down on the fabric. “I will see you tomorrow.” She took another careful look about the apartment, then departed, the door standing open behind her, and returned to her desk.
At the end of the day, the manager seemed regretful of the pile of remaining ledgers on her desk. She told him she’d take care of them in the morning. He scratched the back of his head, but said nothing other than all right. It’d been her first day, after all. It would be as she said.
Across the room, Vera stood, watching her. Once again, Margarita felt calculation in her every movement. Her desk, in slight disarray, she did not tidy. Her chair, she did not push in. She left them both as she intended to find them. The other woman did not move to object, her expression indiscernible.