The Last Minute

65

Harp , Moldova

I find three photos of American girls on the web that look like ID or passport shots. It is at a website for people arrested for stupid crimes and the girls look attractive but rough, a bit down on luck. I assign three false names to them and email them to Vadim so he can craft fake passports.

I wait. I go out to the abandoned winery – there are too many of them in Moldova now – and Ivan and I practice what I am going to do.

‘I wish you would let me help you,’ he says. He is an old gentleman. He lost his leg in Afghanistan during the war, back when Moldova was Soviet. In recent years, when crime kept skyrocketing in Moldova, he taught me and Nelly both how to defend ourselves: how to kick, to punch with a fist, to gouge the most vulnerable areas: groin, throat, eye. Now I am taking everything he taught me before, everything I knew as an athlete, and I am trying to become a soldier in a matter of weeks. He corrects me gently when I aim the gun, when I draw the knife. This is a crash course and he says, more than once: ‘Girl, I’m only preparing you to get killed. Please don’t do this. You fail, tu mori.’ It means you die.

‘What should I do instead?’ I say. ‘Slave up some nice girls?’

‘Go to the police,’ Ivan says, but without much fervor.

I have already been on the computers, searching on the web for options. The United Nations has named Moldova as a critical point in human trade, with officials in the army, the police, and the government suspected of profiting from the slavery. Who am I supposed to turn to?

There is no one, I tell Ivan. Just me. And I have thought out my plan.

I was always good at lesson plans, and now I have a lesson for Vadim and the blond mohawk.

Ivan nods and then he tells me again: ‘This is how you strike with the knife, forward, lunge, no, not down like that, stay steady… ’

Every time I begin to feel afraid I push the fear down. Nelly and I used to wrestle on the bed, and Nelly was all wriggling knees and elbows, easy to get giggling, and I would have to wrap my arms around Nelly until Nelly stopped laughing and squirming. So I hold my fear the same way, in a calm, sure grip until the fear is silent.

I hang the sacks two meters high in the dim glow of the abandoned winery. The rough figure of a man lies in black paint on the rough burlap. Light shines in bars through the worn slats. Ivan watches me work. Light begins to shine in the bullet holes I put through the painted men.

‘Group of three,’ he says, ‘that’s good. A triangle in the chest. That will put him down.’

I don’t tell him I dream about shooting now, I dream about bullseyes, neatly patterned. He gets the ammo from a friend on the black market. I am eating up my savings; I don’t want to waste expensive bullets. I still have to pay for my travel. I think Ivan is paying extra for me to have weapons and I will somehow pay him back. If I live.

When we finish, we catch the bus back into town. Weapons and targets in knapsacks. We look so harmless. But our time has come to an end.

‘So you will see Vadim tomorrow?’ Ivan asks.

‘Yes.’

‘Will I see you again?’ His voice wavers. ‘What will I tell your aunt and uncle?’

‘You tell them I will be back. With Nelly.’

‘I don’t mean once you’ve… left. I mean if he kills you.’

‘Tell them you weren’t such a good teacher, then.’

I buy Ivan ice cream because he doesn’t drink any more. We stand in the sunlight, him on his crutch, licking at the chocolate in a wafer cone.

Ready, I think. Ready.