New Wife: John Eleven

[Found in a locker in Union Station, DC in August 1954. Excerpt of the first half here.]

To the Central Intelligence Agency:

My name is Dmitri Yuryevich Bortnikov, also known as John [Eleven]. I was working for the Soviet Union, but I am writing this in order to signal my intention to defect.

I was born in 1919 in Kiev to a minor noble Russian family ^[1] who perished in the Civil War. I do not have any memories of them, fond or otherwise, I only know what I was told in the orphanage. At age 6, I was adopted by a cruel and harsh widow who worked as an agricultural inspector in a rural village; the name of the village is unimportant. I got my patronymic and surname from her. She also adopted a little Jewish girl, who was my same age. We were treated as if we had resided in the same womb at the same time, though this was a falsehood, and yet the little girl treated me as a little brother. The name of the little girl was Miriam Yuryevna Bortnikova, but to the United States, she is Mary [Eleven], my wife.

I must explain that I have not gotten into an incestuous marriage. I have controlled my feelings and I know that Miriam is not my soulmate. I know incest is an affront to the eyes of God and even the godless Soviets do not allow incest. I was only in this marriage as a cover for our espionage. I will explain how I came to this position.

As children, Miriam and I excelled at different skills. Miriam was a clever chess player and I was a strong and graceful ballet dancer. Our adoptive mother was proud of us and showed us off to visiting officials, asking me to dance and Miriam to play a game of chess with them. She was more proud of Miriam, though, since my sister’s personality was more like hers and my personality was like her late husband’s. I do not think Miriam realizes how much our mother’s limited affection was used on her. I saw my mother be so cruel to the Ukrainian peasants, never letting them fall behind quotas, even as it meant the death of their families.^[2] She also never let me make a mistake.

Unfortunately, I fell behind. As I grew into puberty, something unexpected grew in me that prevented me from being as free and graceful with my movements. An appendage that stuck out, made me look as grotesque and vile as the satyrs of old, when I wanted to look like a nymph. My mother was disgusted as well and had to explain I was not lecherous, just malformed. I learned to take on a placid demeanor to put people at ease. In any case, my ballet career was over. I was a fine student, but without my magical skill of ballet, my mother did not find me very valuable. I was as worthless as a peasant with a brown thumb.

The War came. I was assigned to be a sniper, and I did excel at that. Perhaps I could have won my mother’s affection with that, but alas, she died from a bullet that was ruled to come from the Nazis. My sister wanted to be a sniper, but she did not have the talent for it and did bureaucratic work during the War.

After the War, I met the love of my life: Erzsébet Erzsébetzy (Vörös Betti). She had also been neglected and abused by her powerful parents, and was of noble blood too. Her creamy blue-tinted skin and blue-green eyes mark her as noble. She is noteworthy for poisoning her family, but if you had heard what they did, you would agree it was valid. Though she is currently a Communist, that is only out of hatred for her Fascist parents and I am sure she can be convinced that Capitalism and Christianity are the right way. After all, there are no die-hard Hungarian Communists. Hungarians are too proud to suffer under Soviet tyranny.

Anyway, Betti did not consider my deformity to be a deformity. She said it reminded of her family’s butler, who had to wear special underwear so as not to embarrass his repressed household. He was her first lover at age 14, since her father could hardly be considered a lover. They plotted together to murder the family and then ran off to the Hungarian underground. She became with child and, since this was no time to raise a child, had an abortion. However, the abortion left her infertile. I will never have biological children with her, but perhaps it is fitting that our child is adopted. She survived the War to become my lover. I learned that my body could be a source of joy instead of woe with her. She was the one who convinced me to go into espionage. However, I could not convince her to marry me, since she believed I deserved to marry someone who could have my children.

My sister, having failed to be the chessmaster that our mother wanted her to be, joined Soviet intelligence too. I heard news that she was recruited by Vörös Betti, both in the office and in bed. At first, I was shocked and offended at being cuckolded by my own sister, but Betti explained that she was seduced. My dove had fallen prey to my sister’s seduction. Still, I stress that with the light of Jesus Christ, she will heal from this.

So, my sister and I both worked for the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which is now the KGB. In late 1951, we got our current assignment: go to the United States as Deep Cover Illegals,^[3] pretending to be the married couple, Mr. and Mrs. John [Eleven], and run a televised children’s puppet show that would send messages to the other spies. Betti would go as our maid, which our supervisor did not like, but our supervisor’s supervisor was very keen on. We went to Canada and established a presences there, adopting a child but not socializing, only leaving a paper trail. Then, in February 1953, we moved to Northern Virginia, where we live now.

We lived with as mixed a group as you can find in the American suburbs: an Italian family, a Greek family, an Irish family, a family that turned out to be Negro, several Catholics, and a Quaker family. The Quaker husband was a pleasant man, seemingly boisterous and joyful, but with a melancholy inside I foundfind familiar to my Slavic soul, though naive of the evils of Communism, like many liberals are. The Negro husband was unpleasant, not because he was a Negro, but for the more Jewish aspects of his personality. Still, I was friendly with all the husbands and fathers, though none of them were my friends.

Then, Dr. Johan Engelbert disrupted our plans. At the Independence Day neighborhood party, he announced that he was running a self-improvement seminar. I was suspicious and did not want Miriam to go, but she insisted she could handle herself. I was left alone with our adoptive daughter, Sandy, while she spent a month in Deep Creek Lake. Dr. Engelbert had supplied childcare, but I did not trust that.

While Miriam was gone, it was just me, my beloved Betti, and Sandy. I was playing with Sandy in my lap, and she said, “Dada, where’s Mama?” And my heart burst at the seams with a golden light. When I thought about telling Miriam about this, I realized she would only care in that it was good for our cover that our adoptive child thinks of us as Mother and Father. She would not get that it is a miracle that children speak at all. In that moment, I wept. Something broke in me. I did not want to live in this body, in this life, in this curse. I wanted to be formed as something different. I wish I could be the Swan Princess, not this pathetic man.

I realized what I really wanted was to be a father with Betti. I want to marry her in a Russian Orthodox Church and call her my wife, and Sandy, our daughter. Betti is much more loving of Sandy than Miriam can ever be. I don’t think Miriam can love. I did not want to be a godless Communist Soviet anymore. Miriam had been emasculating me, in her ungrateful Jewish way.

Miriam came back from the camp, very sunburnt. When asked what happened, she told me one night she broke into the camp supplies and found the vitamins they were to be injected with were indeed just vitamins. It was all just a self-improvement seminar and nothing I said or asked her could make her stray her from that line. It was then I realized she was in on it. I knew I had to trod carefully, lest she know that I know. I had to get Sandy and Betti out safely.

You see, Dr. Johan Engelbert is a wicked and dangerous man, capable of any evil. He is the lecherous man people mistook me for as a youth, the real satyr. He seduced every wife in our cul-de-sac, with my wife being his favorite. He is secretly working with Nueva Germania, since soon after the seminar, that country’s fascist spies showed up on our block. Worst of all, he’s not even Dr. Johan Engelbert — he is Dr. Levi Levi, a Polish Jew.