Natasha's Dream by Mary Jane Staples

That’s why you speak the language so naturally. You grew up bilingual.’
    Natasha, eyes dark with pain, stared unseeingly at her hands. ‘It hurts so much to remember things and to talk about them,’ she whispered. ‘He came after me, the commissar,and I kept running and hiding. He knew all about me, what I looked like and what my name was, so I began to tell people I was someone else. But so often people who had been kind to me would tell me to go, to run, that someone was after me and asking about me, and different names seemed to make no difference. Bolsheviks always know about names. They will say, “Ah, this man calls himself Sherpov, does he? Well, he was born Malinoff.” I think Bolsheviks would like to know the born name of everyone in the world and write them all down. Even in Poland I still had to run and hide. Someone helped me to get papers so that I could come to Germany. But even here, that man – the commissar – may still be looking for me.’
    ‘After seven years?’ said Mr Gibson, one eye on the shop.
    ‘Bolshevik commissars don’t behave like other people. They never – they never—’ Natasha groped for the right words.
    ‘They never close a file?’ suggested Mr Gibson.
    ‘Yes, that is it.’
    The man in the grey overcoat came out of the shop, strolling back the way he had come,except that after a few seconds he went into another shop.
    ‘Natasha, I think you should tell me exactly what happened on the day you lost your family and had to run for your life.’
    ‘No.’ She became agitated. ‘No, I promised to say nothing. Do you want them to kill me?’
    ‘Them?’
    ‘The – the Bolsheviks.’
    ‘Natasha, you can’t possibly be a worry to the Bolsheviks after all these years. I think you made that promise to people here, people like Count Orlov.’
    ‘No. No. Oh, the questions you ask – it is doing no good at all. It is better to—’ Natasha broke off as a boy with a club foot approached her. He wore a thick, much-darned jersey, an old peaked cap and patched trousers. He carried a wooden box with a long strap, the strap slung over his shoulder. His smile was cheerful.
    ‘Good morning, Fräulein,’ he said.
    ‘Hello, Hans.’ Natasha forgot her worries. ‘Your Excellency,’ she said to Mr Gibson, ‘this is Hans, who helped me with all my boxes and parcels.’
    ‘Good morning, Hans,’ said Mr Gibson in German, and Hans smiled.
    ‘He is a fine boy,’ said Natasha, ‘and does many things for a living. I think he is a shoe-black at the moment.’
    ‘Yes,’ said Hans, and cocked an appealing eye at Mr Gibson.
    Mr Gibson nodded, turned in his chair and offered his shoes for a shine. Hans placed his box on the ground, went down on his knees and took out his cleaning materials. He attended briskly to Mr Gibson’s shoes.
    ‘There, he’s a good worker, isn’t he?’ said Natasha, glad of the diversion.
    ‘Ah, Fräulein,’ said fourteen-year-old Hans, ‘as well as cleaning shoes and carrying parcels, I can do errands, run messages, sweep snow from doorsteps and beat carpets.’ He looked up at Natasha and caught the sympathy in her eyes. It was the sympathy of a young woman who knew how one had to struggle to survive. She had been transformed since yesterday. Yesterday she had been like a scarecrow, a scarecrow come to life, and all one could have said about her was that only in her animation was she any different from all the other scarecrows of Berlin. Today, she was hardly recognizable as the person who had gone into a hundred shops yesterday, and used him asa carrier. He had not known it was her when he approached the table a few minutes ago. Only when he was close had he recognized her. She had such big eyes. People who had gone hungry did have big eyes. Hunger made them grow larger and larger. Her eyes were soft now in their sympathy, and she had a little smile for him. Something tugged at his mind, but he could not think what it was.
    He finished Mr Gibson’s