The Forbidden Zone

by Michael Hetzer

  Oleg glared at him. “We were friends once.”

  “We still can be,” said Victor. “It’s up to you. Now, if you will excuse me, I really must take this call.”

  Oleg started out of the room. Victor was about to put the receiver to his ear, when Oleg turned and said from the doorway, “Did you hear about Boris?”

  “No.”

  “They found his body in the Moscow River last night.”

  “Jesus.”

  “He had a bullet in his head.”

  Oleg disappeared up the corridor. Victor went numb with shock. He stared at the spot where the director had stood.

  A tinny voice called out through the phone. “Allo? Is anyone there? Allo!”

  Victor was unable to move. He waited a few more seconds and then, at last, found the strength to lift the phone to his ear. It seemed to weigh a hundred pounds. “Dr. Bonderov? Yes, sorry about that. I . . .”

  Victor’s mind drifted again. A bullet in his head?

  “Victor Borisovich?” the voice said.

  Like Sigmund.

  “I . . . Something . . .” Victor stammered.

  Poor Boris.

  “Are you there?”

  We were friends once.

  Victor composed himself and said, “Yes. Thank you for calling back.”

  Victor managed to suggest they meet for lunch at the Baku, a fashionable Central Asian restaurant on Gorky Street. Victor knew the head waiter there, and, by slipping him a few rubles, he could get a table anytime. Bonderov was interested. The meeting was set.

  Victor arrived at the restaurant at one o’clock. Dr. Bonderov was already behind their table nibbling at fresh onion stalks. He rose to greet Victor, and a greasy wisp of hair fell into his face. He offered Victor a delicate hand. They shook.

  “Shall we have a few drops?” Bonderov suggested.

  He unscrewed the vodka bottle and filled two water glasses. They drank to their health.

  Bonderov was about fifty years old with an average build, dark hair and a teenager’s stringy mustache. He wore a wrinkled suit that was out of style by fifteen years. The tie was loose and pulled off center. None of this particularly bothered Victor, who was accustomed to working around the eccentrics of the scientific world, but somehow it was not what he had expected.

  Oksana arrived, and both men got to their feet. Bonderov’s eyes widened. She wore a dusty blue dress that showed her figure well and somehow made her skin appear even fairer than usual. Bonderov’s chest swelled. Suddenly, he remembered his manners. He pushed his hair back up onto his head and apologized for having started without them. He suggested another drink in honor of “ladies present.” He poured the vodka, holding the bottle over his glass a second longer than Victor’s. Oksana smiled politely as the men drank to her.

  They ordered their food and ate. The talk was idle. Bonderov told them about his work as a procurement officer at an institute Victor had never heard of. Bonderov was divorced. He had two kids whom he didn’t get to see often enough. He described them as “the shining beacons in my perpetual night.” The vodka had elevated his rhetoric.

  Oksana mentioned Grisha, and Bonderov asked several questions about the boy’s age, health and interests. He laughed. A nice laugh. It was the first curiosity Bonderov had shown in his hosts. Though an hour had passed, the subject of the meeting was still a mystery to him. Bonderov struck Victor as a man with nowhere to go.

  The waiter cleared the table, took away the empty vodka bottle and brought coffee. Victor said, “Perhaps I should tell you why I invited you here.”

  Bonderov started, as though he had just remembered that they weren’t all pals having lunch.

  Victor said, “I need some information about special psychiatric hospitals.”

  Bonderov’s expression did not change.

  Oksana said, “I work at theIzvestiya archives. I found several articles about you in the late 1950s.”

  She put them on the table in front of him. One had a picture of a serious young man. Dark. Dashing. Same mustache. The caption read, “V. N. Bonderov.”

  He paged through the clips, his face blank, as though it were the first time he had ever seen them.

  Victor said, “You were on a commission investigating Western claims that psychiatry was being misused in the Soviet Union.”

  Still no reaction.

  “Itwas you, wasn’t it?” Victor asked doubtfully.

  Bonderov looked up. “Is it so hard to believe by looking at me?”

  “Not at all,” Oksana cooed.

  Bonderov dropped the clips on the table. “If I had known what this was about, I would never have come.”

  “Why?”

  “Why?” he mimicked as though he couldn’t believe such a question. He lit a cheap cigarette and blew smoke out his nose.

  “There was a lot written about the commission,” said Oksana. “First Alexei Ulyanov, the dissident, convinced the Central Committee that psychiatry was being abused. That was 1955. The Central Committee assigned an investigative commission, and you were given a post. You had access to all hospitals, physicians, patients, records. The last article I found was one year later about how you had wrapped up your work and had submitted your recommendations. Then . . . nothing.”

  Victor leaned forward. “What happened?”

  Bonderov shook his head. “What is your interest?”

  “My husband has been committed,” said Oksana.

  “I’m sorry,” said Bonderov. “Which asylum is he in?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “Officially, he was killed in Afghanistan,” said Victor. “We have received reliable information that he is alive, and in a psychiatric hospital.”

  Bonderov puffed furiously on his cigarette until he was visible only through a smoky haze. He shook his head. “I can’t help you.”

  The restaurant was nearly empty now. Victor glanced toward the kitchen. Their waiter looked at them anxiously.

  “At least tell us what happened with the commission,” said Victor.

  “The commission,” Bonderov said dreamily. “All right. What could it hurt? The commission was theater. But no one bothered to tell us that.” He shook his head. “We were so naive. Stalin was dead and Khrushchev was making reforms. We thought psychiatric hospitals would be part of it.”

  “What did you find out?”

  “The charges of Ulyanov and the West were substantially correct. Poets, writers, intellectuals, musicians, all sorts of people were being systematically declared insane and put in psychiatric hospitals. They were being given dangerous doses of drugs without the slightest medical justification. Psychiatrists, installed by the KGB, gave names to fictitious illnesses in order to make it all seem scientific. It was torture, really, but under the guise of psychiatry. For those of us in the profession, it was a terrible shock. These men had taken the Hippocratic Oath.”

  “What did the Central Committee say?” asked Victor.

  “Nothing. We never heard another word. Days turned to weeks, then to months. After a while, my phone calls were not even returned. But I was young and eager. And stupid. I kept pushing. I tried to get another article published inIzvestiya , but the editors all refused. They had their orders. Eventually, because I was being so thick-headed, my bosses made it known to me that in the interest of my career I should let the matter drop.”

  “And you did, of course,” said Victor. A note of recrimination crept into Victor’s voice.

  Bonderov’s face flushed. “What haveyou done about it, comrade?”

  “You’re right,” said Victor. “I’m sorry. It’s not your fault.”

  “I’m not one of these goddamn dissidents. I’m a patriot. I tried to work within a system that I thought genuinely wanted reform. But the system didn’t want it. Who am I to argue with that?”

  “You did more than most,” said Oksana.

  Bonderov shrugged. “Anyway, I found out a couple o
f years later who killed the report.”

  “Who?” asked Victor.

  “Khrushchev himself. He gave an interview, published in the newspapers in 1959.”

  Bonderov began to quote, as though from scripture:

  “‘A crime is a deviation from the generally recognized standards of behavior, frequently caused by a mental disorder. To those who might start calling for opposition to communism, clearly the mental state of such people is not normal.’”

  “Khrushchev,” Victor breathed. The former Soviet leader was like a god to him. In Victor’s view of the Soviet Union — a view supported by his mother — all its present deficiencies began with the coup d’état that toppled Nikita Khrushchev and installed Leonid Brezhnev in 1964. Bonderov’s picture of a repressive Khrushchev shocked Victor.

  Bonderov said, “Khrushchev, our great reformer, gave us the foundation for punitive psychiatry. Its edict is: If you don’t agree with us, you must be insane. And to think I bothered to go to medical school.”

  There was a pause and Oksana asked, “So what happened to you?”

  Bonderov laughed bitterly. “I was the fall guy. The other members of the committee were astute enough to distance themselves from the report. They saved their careers. But I had gone too far with those interviews you dug up inIzvestiya. I got thrown out of the Party, then the institute.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Oksana.

  Bonderov shrugged. “So you see, I’m not the person to help you. If you’re looking for a light bulb, I’m your man. I can’t help you with this.”

  “Maybe I can help you,” said Victor.

  “How?”

  “I could help you get a job. I know people.”

  “Who?”

  “My college roommate was Dr. Igor Shamayev.”

  “Of the Nevsky Institute in Leningrad?” asked Bonderov. “That Shamayev?” He thought about that. “You would talk to him? You would do that for an old drunk like me?”

  “Why not?”

  Bonderov put out his cigarette and took a sip of his coffee. “What do you want?”

  “I need to know everything about special psychiatric hospitals,” said Victor. “Where are they located? How are people put into them? Who are the doctors? What are the drugs used? How are the patients treated? What is the security? What are the laws? Visitation rights? Mail privileges? I don’t suppose there is a book — ”

  “A book?” Bonderov scoffed. “In the West, perhaps, but not in the Soviet Union. Maybe you would like to write one.”

  “Maybe I would.”

  Bonderov looked at Victor with astonishment. His gaze fell. “Would you really be willing to talk to Dr. Shamayev about me?”

  “I said I would.”

  “I was a good psychiatrist, you know,” said Bonderov. “Once. I got into the profession because I wanted to help people. And I did — while they let me. I’ve kept up with the technical journals. It would be nice to practice again.”

  Bonderov lit another cigarette. His eyes glowed, and he smiled slyly. “Maybe I could get you a copy of the commission’s report.”

  “You saved a copy?”

  Bonderov nodded. “But first, there are a few things you should know, just so you have a realistic view of your predicament. I’m afraid you really don’t. You may have been feeling some relief that your brother is in a psychiatric hospital and not a prison camp. Most people do. Don’t. A psychiatric hospital is far worse than prison. There is no term to your sentence, no realistic, legal recourse to indefinite incarceration. And while you are there, you are at the mercy of the whims of sadists — from the orderlies right up to the doctors. They are armed with powerful drugs and have free rein to use them. You know, I think the scariest single thing in our report was the existence of these monsters in white smocks. We found them at all the hospitals. They were drawn there like sharks to the smell of blood.”

  Bonderov looked at Oksana. She was looking at her hands in her lap.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t — ”

  “No,” said Oksana, raising her head. “Go on. Please.”

  “Okay. It all starts with the Serbsky Institute.”

  From the street, the Serbsky Institute could have been mistaken for a bakery.

  It was nestled in a city block in a prestigious district of central Moscow, not far from one of the capital’s most popular groceries, Smolensky Gastronom. Victor had been to the store many times for hard-to-find items, which lately had been almost everything. He had never suspected that extraordinary events were taking place next door.

  The site was surrounded by a high cement wall with a guard at the gate, but what institute or factory in the Soviet Union wasn’t? Even if a curious Muscovite bothered to read the metal plaque, “The Professor V. P. Serbsky Central Scientific Research Institute of Forensic Psychiatry of the Ministry of Public Health of the U.S.S.R.,” how could he guess the truth — that the innocuous complex was the launching pad to the world of special psychiatric hospitals. The Serbsky was to psychiatric prisons what the KGB’s Lefortova Prison was to the gulag.

  The signs of the Serbsky’s true purpose were obscure, but not invisible — especially for someone like Victor Perov, who had read the Ulyanov Commission’s report, Valery Bonderov had come through on his word and given Victor a long-concealed copy of the secret report, so now, looking at the Serbsky from the street, the signs were unmistakable.

  Standing across the street with his back to the Moscow River, Victor could just make out the roofs of the guard towers. Atop the wall, barbed wire was strung in five strands across posts that angledinward. Unlike the loose, rusty wire that might encircle a Moscow bakery, this wire was as taut as a guitar string. Its icy barbs seemed to scratch the sky. At the gate, the guard wore an Army uniform, not police. Bars covered the windows on the top floor of a long barracks.

  Victor Perov shivered when he saw those bars. Not because bars don’t belong in a mental hospital. The vast majority of people who passed through the Serbsky were genuinely ill. Some were dangerous to themselves and others. Some had committed crimes. Victor shivered because he had not wanted the Serbsky to exist at all. Having read the Ulyanov report, there was a part of Victor that held out hope it was a bizarre hoax. The bars brought the fiction to life.

  It was four-thirty Thursday afternoon, the day after his lunch with Dr. Bonderov. That meeting had convinced him that time might be short for Anton. The drugs of punitive medicine produced a number of side effects, including memory loss, paralysis, alteration of personality, and psychoses such as schizophrenia, depression and paranoia. Anton’s own independent spirit would be an enemy in the oppressive regime of a special psychiatric hospital. If they ever managed to break him, Victor doubted his brother could ever be brought back. A time bomb lay under his Anton, and Victor could almost hear it ticking. Already a week had passed since Victor’s meeting with Katherine Sears in Zagorsk. Seven lost days. But Anton wasn’t the only one living in the shadow of a ticking bomb. How much longer would the forces that held Anton — presumably the KGB — permit Victor to operate freely in his search. A month? Two months? It depended on so many factors. He and Yevgenia enjoyed tremendous standing within the Party, and people like Oleg would defend Victor — for a time. Then a lifetime of service would be discounted, and Victor would be no more immune to arrest than Anton had been. Yevgenia’s power was far from unlimited, as the fate of Anton revealed. Victor would be counting the minutes now, for every one was precious until he located his brother.

  That morning Victor had made an appointment with Dr. Petrus Bruk, the man Bonderov said was currently in charge of the Fourth Department, the KGB arm of the Serbsky responsible for “politicals.” Bruk, a KGB colonel, dealt with the 10 to 15 percent of the inmates at the Serbsky who were not sick, not in need of treatment, but whose condition fit only Nikita Khrushchev’s definition of mental illness. In the early 1970s, the U.S. government had labeled Bruk a “psychiatrist/ murderer.”

  Oksana had paled w
hen Victor told her about the appointment, but he had argued that it was the safest, indeed the only, way.

  “Russians are suspicious when they don’t know your motives,” he said. “If I am going to do this, then I have to be up-front about it.”

  Victor circled the Serbsky complex until he reached the gate at the end of a quiet lane. An armed guard sat behind a Plexiglas booth. Beside him was a circular cage like the rotating door of an expensive hotel, only this one was made of cast iron and shaped into interlocking comb’s teeth. In front of that stood a KGB guard holding an AK-47.

  “I have a five o’clock meeting with Dr. Petrus Bruk.”

  “Papers.”

  Through a slot in the glass, Victor slid the guard his internal passport and Party card. The guard studied them and made a call. He hung up and slid the papers back.

  “You can wait over there,” he said, pointing to two chairs opposite the gate.

  Victor sat down. People came and went. They flashed folding, cardboard identification cards at the guard. The check was not perfunctory as in most institutes — as in Victor’s own institute. The guard examined each pass before pushing an invisible switch, which, with a click, allowed the rotating cage to turn.

  After ten minutes, a husky nurse wearing a permanent frown appeared on the inside of the turnstile. The guard motioned for Victor to pass. Victor pushed his way through the cage and stepped onto the grounds of the Serbsky Institute.

  The nurse clipped a white VISITOR badge on Victor’s lapel and turned on her toes. She led Victor rapidly across a narrow outdoor walkway to the side entrance of a long building. The grounds were strangely silent. Wind whispered through the branches of a tree. But there was something else, too, a desolate cry like the howl of a faraway wolf.

  “Whatis that?” he asked.

  “What is what?”

  “That crying sound.”

  The nurse stopped and listened a moment. “I don’t hear anything.”

  They went on. Another armed guard was posted beside the entrance to the institute building. The nurse flashed her badge. The guard’s eyes found the badge on Victor’s lapel, and he nodded. They went inside and Victor was met by the unsettling, medicinal smell of a hospital. They climbed stairs to the third floor, a fact detailed in the Ulyanov report — the Fourth Department was located on the third floor of the Serbsky. It was a minor fact but it gave Victor the feeling he was entering a storm.