Read Online Second Fiddle by Rosanne Parry - Free Book Online Page A

punished me for asking to go home.” He pushed up his shirtsleeve. There were clusters of round pink scars up and down his arm that were still puffy and new. “Cigarettes,” Arvo said.
    I wrapped my arms around my knees and hugged them to my chest, but I couldn’t look away. “They tortured you?” I said. “Why? My dad would go to jail if he did this to a soldier of his. He’d go to jail even if he did this to an enemy soldier.”
    “Three days ago they changed their minds. They said I could go and serve my last years of duty in Estonia.”
    “But there was a catch,” Vivian said.
    “A catch?”
    “You had to do something for them, something bad,” Vivi said.
    “Yes, I must carry a package on a train to Istanbul and then to Baghdad, a dangerous package, too dangerous for their own Russians to carry.”
    “Like a bomb?” I said.
    “A poison. A gas. If it broke open, it would kill everyone for kilometers in every direction.”
    “Oh my gosh,” I said. “We have to tell my dad.”
    “We have to tell
my
dad,” Giselle said. “Poison gas—on the train—that’s crazy!”
    “No!” Arvo shouted. “Please! No.” He quieted his voice and looked up at the bridge and then back at the road. “I tried. I told them two days ago.”
    “How? Who did you tell?” Giselle barged in.
    “I am translator. I have radio. I contacted the American army. They promised to help. I traded my freedom for their poison gas. But I was betrayed. My officers found out, and they beat me. If not for you angels, I would be a dead man.”
    “The HAZMAT trucks at the motor pool last night and the overtime at the hospital—that was all for you,” I said. “Arvo, you have to come back to Zehlendorf with us. They’re looking for you! They’ll be so glad we found you!”
    “No, listen to me! They betrayed me. You angels, what do you know of the world? There is a spy, a Soviet spy. Bring me to the Americans, and he will know!”
    “So?” Giselle said. “We aren’t going to give you to him. You’ll be fine. We’ll keep you safe.”
    “I am nothing. If I go with you, they will know. They will find my mother and sister. They will make them suffer.”
    “What?” Vivi said.
    “In the Soviet Union people disappear. A car comes in the night, and people are gone forever.”
    “Like to Siberia? Like in the movies?”
    “Yes, just like that. Please, my sister is a schoolgirl like you. How could I let something—anything—happen to her?”
    Arvo looked at me, and he had that worried wrinkle in his forehead just like Tyler gets. I spent about two seconds imagining my brothers in Siberia.
    “I won’t tell,” I said. “I promise.”
    I looked at Vivian, and she slowly nodded her head, but Giselle was still thinking.
    “Look, I know Communism is bad, but how can you be this bad to your own people? It doesn’t make sense,” she said.
    “Communism written down in books seems very sensible,” Arvo said. “Everyone gives what they are able to give. Everyone gets what they need. No one is rich, but no one is poor. It seems like a good idea. But it doesn’t work! There is corruption from the smallest town to the largest city. A fewmen in power live like kings and the rest of us are the paupers of the world.” He looked from Giselle to me to Vivian. “How can I make you understand? America is a charmed country. You have laws
and
policemen who obey the laws. You have grocery stores
and
food in them all the time. You can read whatever book or newspaper you choose.” He paused and looked at the ground. “You can say the truth and not be afraid. Do you know the price of that?”
    “They would actually put your family in jail if we brought you to the American army base?” Giselle said.
    “I could name one hundred people from the neighborhood where I grew up. Gone. Not to jail—to hard labor, to the mines.”
    The mines. I shuddered. The mines were the reason Dad left West Virginia and joined the army. They were the reason I