On His List

She ran into the forest. Soaked to the core, her clothes were heavy with rain, and her bare feet began to numb from the autumn winds that had arrived early. The sun had not come out that day, as though it was in mourning with her. The raindrops on her cheeks disguised the tears that fell, and the black clouds resembled the hole in her heart that she believed would never heal again. It was her lover who had died. Like those men before him, he left her to rely on herself once again. She knew now that she had to be as strong as the White Cypress Pine tree she rested upon. She wished she had made a plan previously, when the unwanted tea leaves at the bottom of her cup foretold his death. The tea leaves had accurately predicted death before.

Antez was her neighbour. They were old friends and had lived next door to each other since settling in the capital in 1950. All her friends were Polish and most had met on the immigration ship to Australia after the war. She was Russian. Born Stanislava Annastasia Turgenev, she was taken from her family and sent to Germany by the Nazis when she was sixteen. At the end of the war she married a Polish man and was therefore unable to return to either of the devastated lands. There was no-one to go back to anyway. She assumed her parents and her siblings dead. Australia was her new home. She had two sons who married and two grandchildren. I am one of them.

After Antez died, she used her key to let herself into his house. He had no relatives or children, and so the few items he owned would be left for her to remove from his house before the government repossessed the dwelling. She found her love letters to him, and photos of lost souls in his homeland. It had been twenty-one years since he arrived in Australia and had heard no news of any surviving family. There were a few interesting gold rings that intrigued her, his immigration papers, and some notes written in German. Stanislava was multilingual in a self-taught, European kind of way, but she was baffled by the notes. She wondered how old they were and what they related to. Amongst his personal items there were Polish fiction novels and a dictionary for translating words into English. She already had one of her own, so she tossed it toward a box she was filling for charity. The red, vinyl bound book bounced off the side of the box and onto the floor. The vinyl, brittle with age, split at the edge and she noticed a piece of paper lodged inside its cover. She took it out and saw that it seemed to be the instructions for reading a code. Obviously, it was a secret, but from who? Where was the code?

The discovery of the notes motivated her to look closer at his possessions and the home where he had spent so many years alone. Her vision sharpened as she looked for clues and tried to understand the German notes. She wondered if they related to the code keys. The word ‘unter’ appeared frequently on the notes. It was the German word for ‘beneath’. As she shifted her weight onto her other leg, the floorboard beneath her squeaked. It was a sign. She found a torch and went outside to find an access for under the house. At best the house was only a metre in height off the ground, so she prepared to crawl through the spiderwebs and dust, hoping to not awaken any sleeping creatures. Afterall, Red Back Spider’s were common in these parts. She was beneath the bedroom when she noticed something different about the floorboards. She shon the torch between the boards, but she needed to go back inside for better access. The carpet was hard and stale with the smell of cigarettes and age. It was stubborn to budge, but she managed to lift a corner of the stiff woolen relic. Not hidden very well at all, was a whole lot of colourful notes. It was Australian currency in all its many and glorious shades. She estimated there was about twenty thousand dollars. More intriguingly, amongst the notes there were a collection of typed letters from the French Consulate, a small black notebook and a passport. A chill ran down her spine as she glared at the photo of herself. The passport was her own.

None of this made any sense to her. Especially her personal details on the Australian passport. It read Annastasia Cordan, 21 October 1929. Unless her twin brother was a woman, the photo was definitely of herself, and she had no idea why an alias had been made for her. She had not heard any news of her family’s survival since she was taken to Germany, and only knew that her father was an important Russian scientist, working for the Military. The Nazis told her that her peaceful departure to Germany would ensure his safe return after being taken in the middle of the night from the tiny rural town of Ulekchin, on the Mongolian border. It would also mean food for her mother and her siblings. Stanislava was bold and told her family she would be ok. As she was pushed into the back of a German motor vehicle, she turned and caught her last glimpse of her frightened family.

Every letter from the French Consulate mentioned her name. Why were they writing to Antez? She put the kettle on the stove to make herself a coffee. She decided to rest on the sofa to interpret the letters, but they seemed to just be repetitive statements to confirm her residence and employer in Canberra. None of this really had anything to do with Antez, especially since she was previously married twice and had no formal connection with him. Perplexed, she stacked the letters neatly on top of each other in the order she had read them and placed them on the glass coffee table. It was an odd furnishing for Antez’ antique dwelling. It had a large, chrome base that was actually a mood lamp. She had switched it on earlier to test if it still worked before she disposed of it. As she stood up she noticed how pretty the table looked from above and that was when she noticed the pattern. The stacked typed letters revealed a hidden image from the light shining beneath them on the glass coffee table - MFA.

Excitement coursed through her body as she used her vivid imagination to wonder what these letters meant. She now had possession of cash, hand-written notes in German, a secret code key, typed letters in French, an alias Australian passport and a little black book. She opened the notebook with anticipation, almost expecting something to jump out of it. To her disappointment, it was a list of women’s names and addresses, almost like employee records. Her heart sank as she pondered the idea that the women on the list may have been a list of lovers, like notches in his belt. She was sad to think she was not the only one, but it was she that followed her heart outside of her marriage and toward Antez. As she read the names of the women on the list, she realized her best friend Zoya was on the list. Zoya was the only other Russian she knew of who had married a Polish man and sailed to Australia with her. Was this a list of Russian / Australian women? Was someone watching them? So many paranoid thoughts ran through her mind. Then she noticed her own name, and the different symbols on the opposite page. She had seen the symbols before on the notes written in German. It was the code, and she had the code key.

It took her some weeks to decipher the code. There were many mixed and confusing messages amongst the discovered information. Stanislava wept when she discovered her father had been tortured and murdered on the same night he was taken from his bed while she was sleeping. She discovered the French woman and the Austrian man whom she had worked for in Germany had been instrumental in keeping her alive. She discovered her twin brother had died from illness when the Nazis starved their small town of food and supplies. She discovered Zoya’s name was actually Natasha and that Antez was not of Polish descent. He had defected and was given the job of protecting the identities of the two Russian women on his list. Their fathers, and therefore their mothers were at huge risk due to knowledge they may have consumed about the Nazis.

It became unclear now as to whether Antez really loved her. Was that a lie? She decided that her preferred memory was of the true passion she shared with him. Either way, it seemed he played a perfect role in her life to keep her safe. Regardless of whether he loved her, it filled her cup. She smiled up at the sky and spoke to him as if he was right there. She thanked him for everything he did when he was alive, and then for guiding her to uncover the clues he had left behind.

The puzzle also revealed one most beautiful and amazing fact that Antez was planning to reveal to Stanislava before his untimely death. The French Consulate had been working for twenty-one years to piece her family together and protect her from danger. The hidden image revealed by the typed letters was ‘MFA’. It was a message to Antez stating ‘Mother Found Alive’. Stanislava’s mother was actually still alive. An enormous wave of grief left her body as she wailed from the tiny house in Narrabundah where her lover had died. Her mother was alive. She was not alone anymore.