Victoria Dougherty
WELCOME TO THE HOTEL YALTA
1956
For those who love the cold.
“Death is the solution to all problems. No man—no problem.”
THE HOTEL YALTA
The ticketing agent’s heels squeaked across the linoleum, adding a tinny accompaniment to the man’s poor whistling. His shaggy walrus mustache didn’t help matters.
“Lístky, tickets, Fahrkarte!” the man droned—a welcome interruption to his little symphony.
Pasha Tarkhan slipped out of his first class compartment, intercepting the weary-eyed fellow.
“Lístky,” Pasha said, producing two stiff cards from his breast pocket.
The agent appeared a bit ruffled at first, as Pasha loomed over him—more than a head taller, dark and imposing, not the kind of man you’d want to meet alone. But the agent took the tickets, stamping and returning them to the Russian’s hand. Avoiding eye contact, he whistled a scarcely recognizable refrain to “Virgin and Whore,” an old Czech folk tune, then continued his stroll down the aisle. Pasha took up the song as well, concluding the last, weeping note as the ticketing agent disappeared into the next car.
Pasha looked down at the tickets.
They were neatly stamped with a round ČSSR insignia and a delicate grey cigarette paper was implanted between them. Pasha ran his thumb along its seam. Peering out the aisle window, he caught a glimpse of an old, mustard-yellow farmhouse before it all went dark. The train had entered a tunnel, and the Russian closed his eyes, relishing the grinding rhythms beneath his feet.
Pasha Tarkhan had loved trains since he took his first one from Tbilisi to Moscow when he was sixteen years old. It was a three-day trip that took him through Stalingrad, Tambov, and Tula in the coveted window seat of a crowded compartment smelling of days-old perspiration and live roosters. As a boy who’d never been out of Josefov (population 222), he found every hour of his journey a delight—even sleeping with his cheek sucked against the window like a piece of calf’s liver. His sore neck and back was a small price to pay for the opportunity to go to school in Moscow and fulfill his socialist destiny.
He took airplanes and luxury automobiles to most places now, but whenever he had the chance, he booked a seat on the rail. His car and driver couldn’t provide him with the shuffling and hard-stepping of the locomotive wheels, the smells of spilled cognac and fine cigarettes that always permeated the first class cabins, and best of all, the unspoiled views of the countryside that even the back roads couldn’t offer.
Traveling through Czechoslovakia was a particular treat. The southern part of the country reminded him of his native Georgia, which he hadn’t seen in the almost twenty years since he’d left for Moscow. Not the people or the style of housing as much as the rolling hills speckled with wildflowers, and curling rows of trees meandering in and out of the valleys like rivers. The climate was similar, too. The sun felt hotter in the southern Bohemian countryside than it did in Austria, only a few kilometers behind him. Hotter and brighter, like a Georgian summer. He remembered how dark his mother would get when she worked outside in the fields, tending to the sprouting grains.
Poor Mama, he thought. She’d begged him to come home once more before she died, but he was living in Rome at the time and couldn’t get permission to return. To be honest, he hadn’t tried. His life had taken him so far away from his farm-boy roots that he had no idea how to come home and explain to his parents and siblings what he’d become. He could’ve pretended, the way he did every day at work and at embassy functions with his comrades, but his family would’ve seen through him. His mother, especially, would have known that he was changed and that realization would’ve put his life in danger. She would’ve rather seen her son in a gulag in Siberia than have hidden a Judas from Stalin’s ever-watchful eyes. Josef Stalin had been her hero, and socialism her religion. In the end, it had been better to let her die with the knowledge that her boy, Pasha, was a high-ranking and trusted member of her government, and that she and her family in Josefov would always get their flour, sugar, and butter for free.
Pasha opened his eyes as the train exited the tunnel and the countryside he’d been delighting in came into view once more. He turned his attention back to his tickets. Reaching into his trouser pocket, he retrieved a packet of fine tobacco—floral and earthen in its scent. He unfolded the little paper between his fingertips and sprinkled the tobacco onto it. As he began the delicate process of rolling his cigarette, he read the neat, black script printed on the grey paper’s edge: BICK 3:00 PM TOMORROW.
Pasha ran his tongue over the black ink and finished rolling his smoke. He lit it, taking a deep drag and smiling at his memory of the comely Miss Bick and the safe house she would be offering him the next afternoon. She had tendered her bed in the past as well, but he wouldn’t be taking her up on that particular pleasure this visit. The information he would be passing was far too critical for him to don the casual air of an affair, and Pasha didn’t want to risk making her feel too at ease with the service she was providing. He would never want a helper to be jumpy and chance attracting attention, but then again, a woman in love could get sloppy and Miss Bick had murmured that endearment into Pasha’s ear during their previous liaison. It was a fine line to walk and one he didn’t particularly revel in, despite Miss Bick’s generosity in tending to his more immediate needs.
Miss Bick. He didn’t even know her first name, but she was the kind of woman who would’ve made a fine wife to a more conventional man. A doctor perhaps. Or a shopkeeper. If only she hadn’t decided to involve herself in matters of espionage.
Pasha often wondered if he’d be a happier man if he’d taken a job on the farm where his father repaired tractors. If he’d gone to trade school and chosen the life of a mechanic—a problem solver—his dreams would’ve remained as simple as his youthful perceptions of Soviet life. He would’ve married a local girl, had local children, and loved nothing better than the smell of manure baking in the summer sun. The farthest he would travel would be to the Black Sea, where he could rent a cottage for a few rubles and put his feet up. That, instead of going from city to city, meeting to meeting, party to party; drinking vodka and wine and eating rich food to excess while everyone talked of politics.
On one long trip, he’d gotten chest pains and had to be rushed from the Russian Consulate to a large hospital in Rome named after a saint—Saint James, perhaps, but he couldn’t recall. The chest pains turned out to be indigestion, but the whole episode hadn’t been for nothing. His nurse, Aprilia, had made a marvelous mistress until she married. He made a mental note to himself to send her a cashmere blanket when he returned to Vienna. Her son was almost a month old and all he’d sent so far were flowers.
She’d been the best mistress he’d ever had, from her glorious olive skin to her passionate anti-capitalism, which she loved to extol in front of his colleagues. For a man in Pasha’s position, it was important to have a mistress who was either a Soviet sympathizer or simply too stupid to have any of her own opinions.
“Yoo-hoo.”
Brandy France peeked her head into the aisle, summoning Pasha back to their compartment. Once there, she guided him down onto the bench and sat next to him, smoothing a crease in her yellow Chanel suit. She wore a matching hat with veil.