The NKVD Problem — Chapter from the Novel "Stone" by Volodymyr Shablia
The NKVD Problem
Stone — Book One: First Steps Toward the Light and Back — Chapter 5
by Volodymyr Shablia
August 1941. The village of Tomakivka.
The black NKVD van known as a “Black Raven,” belonging to the Zaporizhzhia Regional Directorate, had been searching for Soviet Street in the village of Tomakivka for nearly an hour, and still could not find it. The village was not under the Directorate’s jurisdiction, and it was already close to eleven o’clock at night. After a sweltering day of hard work, most of the villagers were sleeping peacefully. Hardly anyone in the vast settlement even knew of the inconspicuous street, recently renamed “Soviet,” which looked more like a shabby lane than a proper street.
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| NKVD officers beside the dreaded “Black Raven,” the vehicle that came to symbolize arrest, disappearance, and fear in Stalin’s Soviet Union. |
At least, of the dozen or so local residents the state security officers had managed to encounter in Tomakivka, not one could—or would—direct them to the address stated in the arrest warrant. And their superiors had expressly forbidden them to disclose the name of the enemy of the people.
For the last twenty minutes, the streets had been completely deserted. Twice, the NKVD officers had gone into people’s yards, knocked on windows, and asked the terrified occupants to point them in the right direction. But one old woman was so frightened that she could not utter a word, while one peasant kept insisting that he was a poor man and a collective-farm member, and that all his property belonged to the collective farm.
Frustrated and having lost all hope, the NKVD men turned the vehicle around and, having got nowhere, headed back.
'Never mind. We’ll come back tomorrow in daylight, with a newer map of the settlement,' they decided.
The black van rolled briskly along the main street. Suddenly, its headlights picked out an old man shuffling along the roadside, apparently unable to sleep.
“Slow down. We’ll ask him too. You never know,” the state-security lieutenant in charge of the operation, sitting in the passenger seat, ordered the driver.
The vehicle screeched to a halt beside the old man.
“Old man, where’s Soviet Street?” the lieutenant asked without preamble.
At the sight of the black van and the NKVD uniforms, the old man was seized with terror. His legs stopped of their own accord and suddenly felt as though they were made of cotton. He stood frozen, staring blankly at the officer, his face contorted with horror.
“Don’t be afraid, old man! We don’t need your old bones. We just want to know where Soviet Street is. Tell us where it is, and we’ll be on our way… Well?” The lieutenant smiled encouragingly, with a hint of sarcasm.
The reassuring words had their effect, and the old man tried to turn the officer’s words over in his ancient mind, working them backward. The first thing he managed to grasp was that all he had to do was point out the road, and they would leave.
Delighted, the old man immediately pointed to the street where he himself lived.
“Why, here it is! Three houses down, on the left. Go this way. There it is!”
The vehicle set off in the indicated direction, while the old man, forgetting his age, bolted in the opposite direction as fast as his legs would carry him and disappeared into the nearest lane.
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Stone — Book Two: Difficult Roads to Hell
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