She is sent to infiltrate Svetlana Alliluyeva's closest circle. There are suspicions she is going to defect. She is meant to stop her.
They meet in Moscow, totally by coincidence, of course. Svetlana walking when a mugger bursts out at her, steals her bag. She is thrown to the ground among shouts of outrage. The mugger takes off running. Mariya clotheslines him at the end of the alley and returns her purse.
A month later, they are best friends.
Mariya was drawn in more than expected, by her thoughts and speech and ideas. She's like a flame in night, a mind among mindless, even with who she is, a daughter of Stalin, she is pure of the Russian way. Dirty, she means, dirtied and compromised by Western ideology. Of course, that is what she means.
Svetlana laughs at one of her jokes she had to memorise for any situation, and she feels a kind of warmness in her chest, alien since...forever.
She wonders if this is betraying her country, her mission, but doesn't come up with an answer.
Later that night, after dinner on Svetlana's couch, next to the fireplace with food in their bellies and wine in their hands, Mariya feels the kind of normalcy she's always craved more than anything. She's jeopardize dmissions just to watch a couple wander through a street together, or a mother and daughter look at clothes in a shop window.
Now, here she is, after dinner with a friend, sitting at her place and talking. It is wonderful. She closes her eyes and wishes she and Tatianna could have done this, she would have loved it more than anything, she was more obvious than Mariya about her desire for a normal life. Their friendship was not the only thing she was killed for.
"My father is dead," she says, hushed, quietly, like it's the greatest of secrets. "He has been dead for how many years now? Fourteen? I should be free. Yet, Brajesh is gone, I shall never get him back."
There was silence between them, Svetlana's outburst fading like a firework.
"Then, at least, say goodbye," Mariya whispered, her voice rough.
This is against her orders.
"What do you mean?" Svetlana asked.
"Go to his homeland, just like Russia is for you, India is for him. Scatter his remains, stay there for a while. Learn, live."
She doesn't care.
There was silence. "What if I don't come back?"
Mariya shrugs, "then, I will have to believe you are really free."
"I have a son and a daughter," Svetlana argues weakly.
"I'm sure they will be happy for you. You have given them life, and now, if you want to live yours, they should not stop you."
"You're crazy."
"Crazy, me?" Mariya laughs, high on this combination of late-night air and a dizzying dose of vanilla life, "whoever said!"
Svetlana smiles. "in this regime of oppression? Yes, you are, for even daring to think these things, lest speak them. It's an you are an enigma, smart and minded."
"Shush," Mariya hushes, "fear their ears."
Svetlana reaches for her hand, "come with me," she persuades. "Please."
"Won't it be suspicious? Two women like us?"
" Любовь, you are young enough to be my daughter."
"I do not know," Mariya says, chewing her lip. 'What if we get caught?"
"We will not get caught. Do you know how many flee this place?"
Mariya plummets to earth, she remembers with a sudden bout of clarity who she is, why she was sent her, exactly how telling Svetlana to go is a bad idea. She forgot she was Mariya, got lost in the daydream of Ada.
"No," she dismisses suddenly, extinguishing the warmness between them. "I can't, and neither should you."
"What has spooked you?"
"Who I am, Lana," she says. "Who you are. It's insanity. You'll die."
"Better dead than…" she waves her arm in a vague culmination of everything, "this."
"No, better alive and with your children."
Svetlana signs, looks into the fireplace. "I would like to think I am mentoring you, but I'm afraid you are the one teaching me."
"The mother and the child, indeed."
"Do you want a child?" she asks, and Mariya balls. She has heard rumours, rumours she stubbornly ignored, that all widows get a sterilization done.
She is as fertile as earth. She doesn't know why.
"I do not know," she says, "maybe, one day." It is true, she has watched mothers push their prams or swaddle their babies to their chests, it is a normal part of a normal life, motherhood, but she knows that it will not be allowed inside her mother, Russia.
"Hm," Svetlana hums, looking towards the fire, "It is the most wonderful feeling."
Mariya swallows, "I can imagine."
"Hopefully, maybe, one day, you will not have to," Svetlana parrots, smiling.
"Yes," Mariya smiles.
A week later, Svetlana requests to visit India, release her informal husbands ashes.
Mariya tells them to let her go. She knows why Svetlana is going, and it's more than solving her grief for Brajesh. She doesn't care the consequences.
Another three months, and Svetlana is defected.
svetlana alliluyeva was the daughter of stalin, and she's actually had a really cool life.
she was born in 1926, so a couple years after her father took power. she was married a bunch of times and had a couple kids but that doesn't really matter with what i mentioned:
so, when she met this indian dude Brajesh at hospital, and they fell in love, but he died (cos he was in hospital duh) and she went to india to i dunno. make peace or something? anyway after living there for three months she gave herself in to the indian government. she lived in the UK and america and died a few years ago.
idk man i just like her. like, she caused all this mess when she defected because like Stalin's Daughter ! y'know
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