Mother Russia (20 page)

Zoya is almost hysterical. “Trial! Who said anything about a trial! Where is it written you have to go down with the ship?”

“A little idealism,” Pravdin mimics her, “is good for the digestion, heartburn, headaches, neuritis, neuralgia and sexual potency.”

“Idealism is an ideal,” Zoya fires back, “not a formula for everyday survival.” She softens, touches his arm. “Dear Robespierre, you have been a real hero in a nonheroic epoch. You have lived up to the promise of your fingernails. But there’s no use beating your head against a wall.” She gestures with her fly swatter to indicate that the walls have ears. “Tell them where you hid the originals and it will be the end of it. Go ahead, tell the walls where the manuscripts are.”

“
Power to the powerful, power to the powerful, waak, waak
,” comes from the partly open door of Mother Russia’s room.

Pravdin laughs wickedly, turns toward the wall, opens his mouth to speak, shuts it as Ophelia Long Legs bursts into the kitchen gasping for breath from having taken the steps two at a time. “The militia which came yesterday—”

“Calm down, child,” Zoya orders. “You’d think it was the end of the world.”

“At the end of the world,” Pravdin quips, “go to America—everything happens fifty years earlier there.”

Ophelia takes three or four deep breaths, starts again. “The militia came back and left this in the postbox. It’s for Comrade Eisenhower. Here.” She holds out the brown envelope to Pravdin.

He takes it, opens the flap with a kitchen knife, reads,
rereads, passes it without a word to Mother Russia. Nadezhda reads it over her shoulder. “What does this mean?” demands Zoya.

“What this means,” Pravdin explains coldly, directing his words toward the wall, “is that I am obliged to move out of Moscow within seven days. My residence permit is what the bosses have canceled.”

“What is this ‘administrative surveillance’?” asks Zoya.

“Is Comrade Eisenhower in trouble or something?” Ophelia looks from one to the other.

“Administrative surveillance,” Pravdin tells Zoya, “means that sunset is what I can’t go out after, public places I can’t put my head into, more than one person at a time I can’t speak to, daily is when I have to report to the KGB.”

Nadezhda scribbles furiously, hands a note to Mother Russia. “He can trade them—the residence permit for the manuscripts!”

“Of course he can,” Zoya seizes the idea eagerly. “This is a negotiating situation.”

Pravdin flings his words at the wall. “
Der mentsh iz vos er iz, ober nit vos er iz geven
.“

“What language is that, American?” Ophelia Long Legs asks.

“What it is is Esperanto,” Pravdin declares. “It’s an old Talmudic saying I just rediscovered that means, ‘I know what it is I’m selling. And why.’ “

Pravdin buttons his Eisenhower jacket, tightens the laces on his sneakers, starts down the staircase, which creaks agreeably under his feet.
Count your blessings
, he reassures himself.
You’re reasonably healthy, you know what you’re selling and why, and you live in the last wooden house in central Moscow. Touch wood
. (His bony knuckles rap on the polished banister.)

He runs into Master Embalmer of the Soviet Union Makusky
on the front steps. “Are you still tending the Great Leader, the Living Light?” Pravdin’s nostrils flare; the odor of formaldehyde is unmistakable. “Hal I smell the answer! Attention! The cult of the personality is antisocialist and out of place in a country that prides itself on progress. One step back, no steps forward. The revolution
is
capable of regretting.”

Master Embalmer Makusky chews on his cuticles, not sure what to make of Pravdin’s outburst. “Those who are not with us—” he begins.

Pravdin finishes the sentence for him. “—will be stashed away in some holy of holies.”

Pigeons scatter. Emaciated squirrels claw their way up trees. An old man sunning himself on a bench angrily waves his cap, but Pravdin, out of earshot, hurtles on across Sokolniki Park oblivious to the small signs seeded around that say:

Comrades: the grass belongs to you, so

KEEP OFF

At Khokhlovka, a district of factories and warehouses, Pravdin can just make out scrawled in faded chalk across a billboard:

Nothing worth knowing can be teached.

He reaches for his chalk, substitutes “preached” for “teached,” adds underneath:

Fear and the pit and the snare are upon thee,

O inhabitant of the earth

(Isaiah: Deutero-Pravdin wonders which Isaiah was the real Isaiah?) Pravdin, chilled to his bones by a cold front that hasn’t yet reached Moscow, makes his way to the Druse’s warehouse.

Zosima opens the small rear door before he has a chance to ring.

“Marx-Engels-Lenin-Organizers-of-Revolution is whom I want to see.”

“There is no Melor,” says Zosima. “He is a figment of your imagination.”

“The Druse then,” Pravdin insists. “Is Chuvash also a figment?”

“Chuvash has been summoned,” she explains, avoiding his eye the way one avoids looking at a condemned man, “to the city of Ashkhabad.”

“What is he selling?” Pravdin sneers. “And why?”

“Services,” Zosima replies as if the answer is as plain as the comfortingly long lifeline on Pravdin’s enormous palm. “To open again to the faithful the door of mercy, to conquer Mecca and Jerusalem, to convince the world of the inevitability of the Faith, to demand obedience to the seven commands of Hamza, the first and greatest of which requires truth in words—”

“And so forth and so on,” groans Pravdin. The door clicks shut in his face and he is left staring into a peephole in which he has been reduced to the only occupant of a teardrop world.

At every intersection uniformed militiamen and auxiliaries with red armbands give Pravdin a casual once-over, but it isn’t until he is within sight of the Kremlin walls that he comes across a serious control point.

“Papers,” barks a beefy major.

Pravdin produces from a hip pocket his internal passport. The major scrutinizes it meticulously, compares with narrowed eyes the photograph against the original standing, appropriately deferential, before him, studies with suspicion the signature, glances at the word “Jew” penned in alongside entry three, takes in Pravdin’s Eisenhower jacket, his basketball
sneakers. Expressionless, the major snaps shut the passport, hands it back, indicates with a toss of his head that Pravdin is to continue on his way.

“Mother Russia is certified,” Pravdin berates himself under his breath as he hurries off, “but I’m the one who is out of his mind.”

“Were you addressing me, comrade?” the major calls after him.

“I was mulling over some lines from one of Lenin’s articles,” Pravdin explains. “You know the one; it’s called, ‘I know what is to be done.’ “

Automobile traffic thins, pedestrian traffic swells: delegations from factories, collective farms, schools, hospitals, drift toward Gorky Street to take their places on line for the great pass-in-review that will last seven hours. There is a good deal of tension in the air, an electrical charge that follows a thunderstorm. Police whistles hoot nervously, uniformed arms gesture excitedly, the flow is directed between freshly repainted yellow lines. Three men in black suits struggle with an enormous wreath across which is strung a banner that reads: “Lenin is the light.” Little girls with pigtails scamper around their heels, squealing at a game of tag. Half a dozen young men in blue sweatsuits trot by carrying aloft a poster that says, “Vladivostok Institute for Applied Science” and another that proclaims: “All Power to the Soviets.”

“Papers,” orders a crew-cut man with fat thighs in a tight civilian suit at the entrance to Red Square.

“Pravdin, Robespierre Isayevich,” Pravdin announces, holding out his internal passport, “at your beck and call.” He silently clicks the heels of his sneakers, half bows. “I am invited to the reviewing stand set aside for Heroes of the Soviet Union,” he explains, pointing to one of the four medals dangling on the breast of his Eisenhower jacket.

Beyond the civilian, just inside the entrance to the square,
the brass Army band strikes up the “Internationale” as it sets off in lockstep toward the reviewing stand. Instantly hats are whisked off heads, knees stiffen, chins jut forward, eyes glaze over, minds wander,

“Entrance during May Day,” the crew-cut civilian shouts over the music, “is by written pass only.”

Pravdin promptly flashes a laminated card, mumbles something about representing the Second Chief Directorate of GLUBFLOT. The civilian catches his wrist in an iron grip before he can put the card away, draws it closer for a better look.

“This is a menu from an ice-cream parlor,” he snaps. His eyes narrow; his voice takes on an ominous tone. “What did you say your name was?”

In the square the “Internationale” ends. Throaty cheers rise like balloons and hang for a moment over the cobblestones. A gleaming convertible with a pot-bellied marshal of the Army anchored erect in the back makes its way down an endless line of soldiers. From behind Lenin’s Tomb a thousand white pigeons soar with an audible flutter of wings into the still sky.

The parade, Pravdin senses, is off to a reasonable start. Touch wood.

“Pravdin, Robespierre Isayevich,” Pravdin supplies his name in a shaky voice. He leans toward the crew-cut civilian, presses two Bolshoi tickets into his palm. “I have friends in high places,” he pleads. “I could use influence, but I don’t take advantage of my name …”

“Pravdin,” the civilian repeats, pocketing the tickets, running a finger down a list looking for the P’s. His finger suddenly stops, taps the list twice. The crew-cut civilian looks up in surprise. “There is a Pravdin,” he says. He shouts a command to two soldiers, who advance toward Pravdin. He starts to back away on trembling legs.

“Honored Artist of the—” Pravdin calls out.

“Get him,” hisses the civilian. “There is a Pravdin.”

“Soviet Union—” Pravdin is yelling now at the top of his lungs, is yelling and backtracking and ducking under a barrier and scampering toward the holy of holies, the two soldiers hard on his heels, the civilian too. Soldiers converge on him from all sides.

“Frolov is a son of a bitch plagiarist,” Pravdin screams just as he is tackled from behind, is pounced on by three more soldiers, by half a dozen civilians, is pinned and smothered under blue raincoats and straitjacketed by men who are experienced in such matters.

“Aiiiiiiii,” Pravdin rants, “ridiculous is what we are here. So who needs to walk on water. So cotton doesn’t begin with
Q
. So who was hurt? Unarmed truth is a disaster for the digestion, heartburn, headaches, neuritis—”

A gag is drawn over Pravdin’s mouth. He struggles to speak, sinks back onto the cobblestones. Tears (of frustration, of anger, of fear even; who can say?) stream down his cheeks. A stain spreads along the inside of his thigh.

“What’s happening?” a woman on the fringe of the crowd demands excitedly. “What’s going on?”

“Only a gate-crasher,” her companion explains.

Perched on a flagpole overhead, well out of arm’s reach, a green-crested parrot observes with a beady eye the collision of molecular worlds, hears Pravdin’s inaudible whimpers, croaks:

“Waak, waak, help, help.”

CHAPTER 10

Crusts of snow …

Crusts of snow cling to the hard ground like moss. Dead branches slant through at ridiculous angles. The sloping terrain in between is dotted with thin ink-black puddles, many of them covered by a wrinkled, watery film of ice. Beads of frozen dew glisten in the honed air. Pravdin, pale as death (hustlers, like Hasidim, avoid the sun), wearing a frayed quilted jacket with a faded number stenciled on the back, trudges up hill parallel to the ski lift scavenging for odds and ends lost in the snow during the season. The sack tied to his belt jingles with loose change, false teeth, steel-rimmed eyeglasses, rings, wristwatches, also a ceramic eye. Something attracts his attention over to his right. A medal gleams in a
patch of sooty snow. Then another. Four altogether. Hero of Socialist Labor! The Order of the Red Star!! The Order of the Red Banner!!! The Order of Lenin even!!!! Pravdin polishes them on his sleeve, pins them on the breast of his quilted jacket, continues up the slope toward the tree line. He comes across a woman’s compact, a gold fountain pen, a ring of rusted keys, an identity bracelet with the name “Stasa” etched on it, a brooch with a likeness of Stalin inside. Pravdin shivers, starts back down, stumbles over the bleached skeleton of an animal he is afraid to identify, begins to run, sinks to the cold ground gasping for breath next to a sign that says:

Comrades: the snow belongs to you, so

KEEP OFF

In the distance an old man with a Roman nose and a Lenin-like beard angrily waves a ski pole tipped with cotton, but Pravdin hurtles on into the safety of a forest, stops short in terror when he sees the trees are made up of their component parts.

“Aiiiiiiiii,” screams Pravdin, sitting upright in bed, sweaty and weak and wide awake. A small observation panel on the bolted door slides open. “Pee is what I have to do,” Pravdin yells at the eye he knows is there.

“You don’t have a permit to urinate at night,” a muffled voice replies.

“How do you know it’s night?” Pravdin argues weakly. A cheek muscle twitches. His eyes water. “You’re lying. Day is what it is and day is what I know it is.” He falls back onto the pillowless cot. The four whitewashed windowless walls, sulfurish in the yellowish light behind the steel grille that stays lit all the time, appear to tilt on their axes. “Turn out the light at least,” Pravdin begs. “I can’t sleep and I can’t not sleep.” The observation panel slams closed; the sound reverberates in Pravdin’s skull. “The worst thing was the slamming
of door,” he remembers Mother Russia saying. He tosses to one side, then the other, stares at the hands on the wall electric clock, which are moving in a counterclockwise direction, giving Pravdin the sensation of going back in time. “The future may be futureless,” he moans, “but there may be a past, there may be a Pravdin.” He relives the interrogation in the KGB complex on Dzerzhinsky Square, remembers staring for what seemed like an eternity at the unbroken red wax seal on the office safe, recreates Melor’s voice repeating over and over, “Article one ninety dash one of the Soviet legal code makes it a crime to disseminate falsehoods derogatory to the Soviet state and social system.”