There are conversations we do not have |
|
RD Savage
11/08/97 © 1997 ¹A
survivor speaks
of her idealistic father taking her family to the new USSR. He,
ultimately, disappears.
Her brother, ultimately, disappears. She marries, her husband dies in WWII. She goes to work in the British Embassy to support her mother and daughter, and the secret police come to her, ask her to spy. She declines. They ask, ‘do you want your daughter to be completely an orphan?’ She spies ineptly. Finds, one day, a friend. But they cannot spend time together, the risk is too great, they must act like they do not know each other. When they meet on the street they look past each other as they pass. She struggles, depressed, angry, and one day her friend says, “You must learn to wear a mask in your eyes.” She speaks of this on the radio, the 50th anniversary of the 1917 revolution, how one must not risk your feelings being seen in the eyes. She is, finally, free and you can hear in her voice that now there is nothing hidden in her eye. |