BARBAROSSANOVA
Episode 3, 0300 25 November 1942, west of Moscow, near Rzhev
By three in the morning, the alcohol had been flowing for half the night. The dugout was crammed with drunken men and women of Shtrafbat 8069 ... some nearly passed out, some arguing loudly, some openly fornicating. It was a "tomorrow we die, enjoy the present" atmosphere.
But I was not in the mood. I fought off three would be partners ... each of whom tried to kiss and paw at me ... and managed after a while to wedge myself into a corner, where I was less likely to experience rats scurrying over my body or have to fight off the amorous advances of my comrades in arms. Wiping my runny nose on my sleeve, I downed another gulp of vodka and allowed myself to slip back into my reverie.
*****
I was hustled down the corridor, up a flight of stairs and down another corridor toward an open door through which light played out onto the broken tiles of the corridor floor. There, my escorts shoved me inside. I stumbled forward, stopping myself from falling headlong on the floor by reaching out and grabbing the top of the large institutional-looking metal desk that stood near the center of the room. Pulling myself to my feet, I found myself looking across the desk, straight into Vassily's steely stare.
"Sit down," he said, gesturing toward a wooden chair facing the desk.
I continued to grasp the desktop, which was as cold to my touch as his stare was to my soul. Breaking his gaze, I glanced around me. His assistant, a heavy-browed, muscular behemoth who stood discreetly off to one side, fixed me with a malevolent look. When I hesitated to take a seat, the man took a threatening stop forward. I responded to that by quickly reaching for the chair and dragging it to me, its feet scraping on the cold concrete floor. I tucked my short little shift under my butt and perched on the edge of the chair with my knees pressed tightly together.
"Why am I here?" I asked. I shivered as I waited for him to respond.
"Because we ... that is I and Boris Baikal, my assistant standing over there ... need to debrief you following your failed mission to Berlin."
"Then why do I feel like a prisoner ... abducted against my will ... thrown in a cell ... given only this filthy little shift to wear? You could have just asked ... invited me ... to report? Am I under suspicion for some reason? I did my best to carry out my mission in Berlin. Assassinations do not always go as planned, you know. I did, in fact, on my own, succeed in getting closer to Goebbels than you might have imagined. It was a close run thing! I nearly succeeded in poisoning the man. Maybe I wasn't supposed to succeed? That has crossed my mind. How do I know that I wasn't set up to fail for some reason? How do you know I wasn't the victim of power struggles that might have been taking place back here in the Lubyanka? Have you thought of that?"
"Shut up! I will ask the questions here!"
Vassily stepped around the desk, walked behind me and grabbed me by the hair, jerking my head back, forcing me to look up at him.
"You were working for Yagoda all along, weren't you!" he snapped.
"What?," I croaked, "I have never met the man. Isn't he the Director of the NKVD?"
"Was the Director," corrected Vassily, tugging my head back harder and almost tipping the chair, with me on it, over backwards.
"Ouch! Let me go! I have nothing to say to you!"
"Boris! Come over here and lend me a hand," purred Vassily, raising me up off my chair by the hair. "Our guest appears to be in need of a little gentle persuasion!"
Resistance was futile. Within minutes the two men had me on my feet and had removed my blue-gray prison shift. While Vassily held my wrists together, Boris bound them with a rope and strung me up ... arms over head ... from a heavy iron ring bolted to the ceiling. I could feel the behemoth's hot breath on the nape of my neck as he completed knotting the rope overhead.
I was left dangling ... stretched out, toes barely touching the floor, and naked save for my knickers. The chilly air in the unheated office caused my nipples to harden and stand erect. I knew something unpleasant was going to happen next. A feeling of total dismay and helplessness swept over me.
Vassily ambled over to the desk, opened a drawer, and returned with a very large and wicked-looking pair of pliers in hand. The warning I had received from the girl ... the one who looked something like me ... back in the holding cell ... about Vassily being nicknamed "the dentist" set off alarm bells in my head! I clamped my mouth shut tight and tracked him warily over my shoulder, as he came close.
"Agree to talk! Tell us now ... all we want to know about your role in Yagoda's insidiously criminal web of treason and save yourself from a great deal of pain and suffering!" he said to me, his hypnotic eyes flashing as he moved the business end of the pliers closer to my upturned right breast.
I shook my head "no", eyes wide with fear at the sight of the opened jaws of his pliers.
Then ... to my astonishment ... he turned abruptly away, walked over to a rust-covered radiator near the far wall, knelt down and began to use the pliers to turn on the heat.
I breathed an audible sigh of relief ... realizing that he was playing me ... scaring me into compliance! He has nothing on me, I told myself!
But my sense of relief was premature. No sooner had I relaxed ... than without warning Boris laid into me with a heavy leather strap. I screamed as a lightning bolt of pain broke across my back! For the next several minutes the small chamber echoed with the repeated smack of Boris' belt on my bare skin.
My anguished yelps and cries mixed incongruously with the clanks and clunks of the heating system as Vassily struggled with the control valve. Pausing in his ministrations to my twisting, writhing body, Boris knelt in front of me to strip away my knickers, leaving me completely stark naked.
The punishing strapping resumed. I had been whipped at the hands of the Gestapo back in Berlin, but this was worse! I bawled and begged, raised my knees and arched my back in vain attempts to lessen the pain. Helplessly I spun slowly about, exposing myself, front and back to Boris' cruel ministrations.
But, as I took a particularly punishing one directly across my nipples, my drawn-out anguished scream was all but drowned out by the sudden combination of Vassily's shouted curse, the clatter of pliers hitting the floor, and the sharp hissing noise made by a jet of hot steam released from a broken radiator valve.
Vassily staggered back, shielding his eyes with one arm. Boris dropped his whip, mouth agape in surprise. Recovering quickly, he hastened to get me down and beat a hasty retreat from the room with me draped like a sack of potatoes over a broad shoulder. We gathered in the corridor. Others came running, calling for help as dense clouds of steam billowed out through the interrogation room doorway.
I couldn't see much as Boris turned to his boss for instructions. My wet hair was plastered to my face, which rested upside down against Boris' lower back while his large paw held me in place by firmly clutching my legs just behind the knees and pressing them against his chest.
But I heard Vassily say, his voice sounding breathless and shaken, "Take her to a holding cell ... one of the solitary ones ... really no point in interrogating her further ... she won't talk ... doesn't matter ... it will all come out under cross examination tomorrow at the trial ... mark my words, she will be Yagoda's undoing."
They threw me in a cell ... left me naked on an iron bed and chained to the wall by a collar around my neck. I laid there, alone with my thoughts for hours and hours. How could this have happened? If only this were a bad dream. If only I could wake up to find myself sprawled naked in bed between the warm comforting bodies of Katrin and Klaus back in Prague's Grand Hotel Bohemia rather than a dingy Lubyanka holding cell!
Eventually Vassily returned. He stood for a moment in the doorway, his shadow cast upon the dirty peeling brick wall behind me. Apprehensively, I raised myself up slightly to look at him as he opened his mouth to speak.
"You'll stand accused of high treason at tomorrow's show trial, along with Yagoda and more than a dozen others ... after which you'll be condemned to execution by firing squad. The outcome is inevitable. Such a shame. But I like you, and am telling you now that there is still a small chance of salvation. I am working on it. But I warn you that it will come at a price. That's all I can say for now. Sleep well, comrade. This could be your last night!"
Before I could respond, he abruptly turned and left.
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I am of course curious what Vassily has in mind.
Well, that first encounter didn't turn out too bad, if you ask me. And really, you should thank the guys profusely for their quick action to get you out of that room. Just think about the what would happen had they left you hanging there for ten more minutes!
Still, to have been whipped by both the Gestapo and the Cheka and still be able to talk about it--now that's something! Go Barb go!
At least she was spared the chloroform on this occasion.
The suspense continues in both timelines, each with the prospect of impending death the following morning.
But what is Vassily's latest scheme, and how will it affect Barbara?
Perhaps we will learn more in the next episode?
And you have focused on the most ambitious manip, consisting of about 45 layers in Photoshop - quite a balancing act in terms of visual consistency (and I kept losing track of which layer was where in the order!)
I have been collecting potentially useful source images over the past year, but have never previously crowded so many figures into one manip (eighteen, not including Stalin.) I spent some time moving them around to get the best interaction and convincing scale.
Sometimes I found that a figure, like the full frontal nude behind Barb, had a shadow on the side facing the main light source, which had to be accounted for by the introduction of a further figure. I think the toothless youth and his drinking buddy both came from a Russian street scene, so there is a degree of authenticity there!
As I commented to Barb, the overall effect I was looking for was something like one of Goya's nightmarish images, in which the protagonist feels emotionally isolated from the extremes of debauchery, albeit inextricably part of the scene, as she swigs vodka in resignation to her impending fate. It fits the theme of contradictions within the story.
Cataloguing sources is a nightmare - the same image might be filed under 'Seated Figures', 'Russians' or 'Facial Expressions', and I spend ages trawling through stuff to turn up suitable material.
As you say, 'Google Search' is often much quicker in the end, although it always leads to distractions.