“You don’t say!”
“My father died in my childhood. I was rised—raised?—to respect Jewish people and religion, but I went my own way. I am atheist. This is almost inevitable.”
“You mean Soviet life?”
Levitansky smoked without replying as I grew embarrassed by my question. I looked around to see if I knew where we were. In afterthought he asked, “To which destination?”
I said, still on the former subject, that I had been not much a Jew myself. “My mother and father were totally assimilated.”
“By their choice?”
“Of course by their choice.”
“Do you wish,” he then asked, “to visit Central Synagogue on Arkhipova Street? Very interesting experience.”
“Not just now,” I said, “but take me to the Chekhov Museum on Sadovaya Kudrinskaya.”
At that the driver, sighing, seemed to take heart.
Rose, I said to myself.
I blew my nose. After her death I had planned to visit the Soviet Union but couldn’t get myself to move. I’m a slow man after a blow, though I confess I’ve never been one for making his mind up in a hurry about important things. Eight months later, when I was more or less packing, I felt that some of the relief I was looking for derived, in addition to what was still on my mind, from the necessity of making an unexpected serious personal decision. Out of loneliness I had begun to see my former wife, Lillian, in the spring; and before long, since she had remained unmarried and attractive, to my surprise there was some hesitant talk of remarriage; these things slip from one sentence to another before you know it. If we did get married we could turn the Russian trip into a sort of honeymoon—I won’t say second because we hadn’t had much of a first. In the end, since our lives had been so frankly complicated—hard on each other—I found it hard to make up my mind, though Lillian, I give her credit, seemed to be willing to take the chance. My feelings were so difficult to assess I decided to decide nothing for sure. Lillian, who is a forthright type with a mind like a lawyer’s, asked me if I was cooling to the idea, and I told her that since the death of my wife I had been examining my life and needed more time to see where I stood. “Still?” she said, meaning the self-searching, and implying forever. All I could answer was “Still,” and then in anger, “Forever.” I warned myself: Beware of further complicated entanglements.
Well, that almost killed it. It wasn’t a particularly happy evening, though it had its moments. I had once been very much in love with Lillian. I figured then that a change of scene for me, maybe a month abroad, might be helpful. I had for a long time wanted to visit the U.S.S.R., and taking the time to be alone and, I hoped, at ease to think things through, might give the trip additional value.
So I was surprised, once my visa was granted—though not too surprised—that my anticipation was by now blunted and I was experiencing some uneasiness. I blamed it on a dread of traveling that sometimes hits me before I move. Will I get there? Will the plane be hijacked? Maybe a war breaks out and I’m surrounded by artillery. To be frank, though I’ve resisted the idea, I consider myself an anxious man, which, when I try to explain it to myself, means being this minute halfway into the next. I sit still in a hurry, worry uselessly about the future, and carry the burden of an overripe conscience.
I realized that what troubled me most about going into Soviet Russia were those stories in the papers of some tourist or casual traveler in this or that Soviet city who is, without warning, grabbed by the secret police on charges of “spying,” “illegal economic activity,” “hooliganism,” or whatnot. This poor guy, like somebody from Sudbury, Mass., is held incommunicado until he confesses, and is then sentenced to a prison camp in the wilds of Siberia. After I got my visa I sometimes had fantasies of a stranger shoving a fat envelope of papers into my hand, and then arresting me as I was stupidly reading them—of course for spying. What would I do in that case? I think I would pitch the envelope into the street, shouting, “Don’t pull that one on me, I can’t read Russian,” and walk away with whatever dignity I had, hoping that would freeze them in their tracks. A man in danger, if he’s walking away from it, seems indifferent, innocent. At least to himself; then in my mind I hear footsteps coming after me, and since my reveries tend to be rational, two husky KGB men grab me, shove my arms up my back, and make the arrest. Not for littering the streets, as I hope might be the case, but for “attempting to dispose of certain incriminating documents,” a fact it’s hard to deny.
I see H. Harvitz yelling, squirming, kicking right and left, till his mouth is shut by somebody’s stinking palm and he is dragged by force —not to mention a blackjack whack on the skull—into the inevitable black Zis I’ve read about and see on movie screens.
The cold war is a frightening business. I’ve sometimes wished spying had reached such a pitch of perfection that both the U.S.S.R. and the U.S.A. knew everything there is to know about the other and, having sensibly exchanged this information by trading computers that keep facts up to date, let each other alone thereafter. That ruins the spying business; there’s that much more sanity in the world, and for a man like me the thought of a trip to the Soviet Union is pure pleasure.
Right away at the Kiev airport I had a sort of scare, after flying in from Paris on a mid-June afternoon. A customs official confiscated from my suitcase five copies of Visible Secrets, a poetry anthology for high school students I had edited some years ago, which I had brought along to give away to Russians I met who might be interested in American poetry. I was asked to sign a document the official had written out in Cyrillic, except that Visible Secrets was printed in English, “secrets” underlined. The uniformed customs officer, a heavyset man with a layer of limp hair on a smallish head, red stars on his shoulders, said that the paper I was required to sign stated I understood it was not permitted to bring five copies of a foreign book into the Soviet Union; but I would get my property back at the Moscow airport when I left the country. I worried that I oughtn’t to sign but was urged to by my Intourist guide, a bleached blonde with wobbly heels whose looks and good humor kept me calm, though my clothes were frankly steaming. She said it was a matter of no great consequence and advised me to write my signature quickly, because it was delaying our departure to the Dniepro Hotel.
At that point I asked what would happen if I parted with the books, no longer claimed them as my property. The Intouristka inquired of the customs man, who answered calmly, earnestly, and at great length.
“He says,” she said, “that the Soviet Union will not take away from a foreign visitor his legal property.”
Since I had only four days in the city and time was going faster than usual, I reluctantly signed the paper plus four carbons—one for each book—or five mysterious government departments?—and was given a copy, which I filed in my billfold.
Despite this incident—it had its comic quality—my stay in Kiev, in spite of the loneliness I usually experience my first few days in a strange city, went quickly and interestingly. In the mornings I was driven around in a private car on guided tours of the hilly, broadavenued, green-leaved city, whose colors were reminiscent of a subdued Rome. But in the afternoons I wandered around alone. I would start by taking a bus or streetcar, riding a few kilometers, then getting off to walk in this or that neighborhood. Once I strayed into a peasants’ market where collective farmers and country folk in beards and boots out of a nineteenth-century Russian novel sold their produce to city people. I thought I must write about this to Rose—I meant of course Lillian. Another time, in a deserted street when I happened to think of the customs receipt in my billfold, I turned in my tracks to see if I was being followed. I wasn’t but enjoyed the adventure.
An experience I liked less was getting lost one late afternoon several kilometers above a boathouse on the Dnieper. I was walking along the riverbank liking the boats and island beaches and, before I knew it, had come a good distance from the hotel and was eager to get back because I was hungry. I didn’t feel like
retracing my route on foot—much too much tourism in three days—so I thought of a cab and, since none was around, maybe an autobus that might be going in the general direction I had come from. I tried approaching a few passersby whom I addressed in English or pidgin-German, and occasionally trying “Pardonnez-moi”; but the effect was apparently to embarrass them. One young woman ran a few awkward steps from me before she began to walk again.
Though frustrated, irritated, I spoke to two men passing by, one of whom, the minute he heard my first few words, walked on quickly, his eyes aimed straight ahead, the other indicating by gestures he was deaf and dumb. On impulse I tried him in halting Yiddish that my grandfather had taught me when I was a child, and was then directed, in an undertone in the same language, to a nearby bus stop.
As I was unlocking the door to my room, thinking this was a story I would be telling friends all winter, my phone was ringing. It was a woman’s voice. I understood “Gospodin Garvitz” and one or two other words as she spoke at length in musical Russian. Her voice had the lilt of a singer’s. Though I couldn’t get the gist of her remarks, I had this sudden vivid reverie, you might call it, of me walking with a pretty Russian girl in a white birchwood near Yasnaya Polyana, and coming out of the trees, sincerely talking, into a meadow that sloped to the water; then rowing her around in a small lovely lake. It was a peaceful business. I even had thoughts: Wouldn’t it be something if I got myself engaged to a Russian girl? That was the general picture, but when the caller was done talking, whatever I had to say I said in English and she slowly hung up.
After breakfast the next morning, she, or somebody who sounded like her—I was aware of the contralto quality—called again.
“If you understand English,” I said, “or maybe a little German or French—even Yiddish if you happen to know it—we’d get along fine. But not in Russian, I’m sorry to say. Nyet Russki. I’d be glad to meet you for lunch or whatever you like; so if you get the drift of my remarks why don’t you say da? Then dial the English interpreter on extension 37. She could explain to me what’s what and we can meet at your convenience.”
I had the impression she was listening with both ears, but after a while the phone hung silent in my hand. I wondered where she had got my name, and was someone testing me to find out whether I did or didn’t speak Russian. I honestly did not.
Afterwards I wrote a short letter to Lillian, telling her I would be leaving for Moscow via Aeroflot, tomorrow at 4 p.m., and I intended to stay there for two weeks, with a break of maybe three or four days in Leningrad, at the Astoria Hotel. I wrote down the exact dates and later airmailed the letter in a street box some distance from the hotel, whatever good that did. I hoped Lillian would get it in time to reach me by return mail before I left the Soviet Union. To tell the truth I was uneasy all day.
But by the next morning my mood had shifted, and as I was standing at the railing in a park above the Dnieper, looking at the buildings going up across the river in what had once been steppeland, I experienced a curious sense of relief. The vast construction I beheld—it was as though two or three scattered small cities were rising out of the earth—astonished me. This sort of thing was going on all over Russia —halfway around the world—and when I considered what it meant in terms of sheer labor, capital goods, plain morale, I was then and there convinced that the Soviet Union would never willingly provoke a war, nuclear or otherwise, with the United States. Neither would America, in its right mind, with the Soviet Union.
For the first time since I had come to Russia I felt secure and safe, and I enjoyed there, at the breezy railing above the Dnieper, a rare few minutes of euphoria.
Why is it that the most interesting architecture is from czarist times? I asked myself, and if I’m not mistaken Levitansky quivered, no doubt coincidental. Unless I had spoken aloud to myself, which I sometimes do; I decided I hadn’t. We were on our way to the museum, hitting a fast eighty kilometers, because traffic was sparse.
“What do you think of my country, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics?” the driver inquired, turning his head to see where I was.
“I would appreciate it if you kept your eyes on the road.”
“Don’t be nervous, I drive now for years.”
Then I answered that I was impressed by much I had seen. Obviously it was a great country.
Levitansky’s round face appeared in the mirror smiling pleasantly, his teeth eroded. The smile seemed to have come from within the mouth. Now that he had revealed his half-Jewish antecedents I had the impression he looked more Jewish than Slavic, and more dissatisfied than I had previously thought. That I got from the restless eyes.
“Also our system—Communism?”
I answered carefully, not wanting to give offense. “I’ll be honest with you. I’ve seen some unusual things—even inspiring—but my personal taste is for a lot more individual freedom than people seem to have here. America has its serious faults, God knows, but at least we’re privileged to criticize—if you know what I mean. My father used to say, ‘You can’t beat the Bill of Rights.’ It’s an open society, which means freedom of choice, at least in theory.”
“Communism is altogether better political system,” Levitansky replied candidly, “although it is not in present stage totally realized. In present stage”—he swallowed, reflected, did not finish the thought. Instead he said, “Our Revolution was magnificent and holy event. I love early Soviet history, excitement of Communist idealism, and magnificent victory over bourgeois and imperialist forces. Overnight was lifted up—uplifted—the whole suffering masses. Pasternak called this ‘splendid surgery.’ Evgeny Zamyatin—maybe you know his books?—spoke thus: ‘The Revolution consumes the earth with fire, but then is born a new life.’ Many of our poets said similar things.”
I didn’t argue, each to his own revolution.
“You told before,” said Levitansky, glancing at me again in the mirror, “that you wish to write articles about your visit. Political or not political?”
“What I have in mind is something on the literary museums of Moscow for an American travel magazine. That’s the sort of thing I do. I’m a freelance writer.” I laughed apologetically. It’s strange how stresses shift when you’re in another country.
Levitansky politely joined in the laugh, stopping in midcourse. “I wish to be certain, what is freelance writer?”
I told him. “I also edit a bit. I’ve done anthologies of poetry and essays, both for high school kids.”
“We have here freelance. I am writer also,” Levitansky said solemnly.
“You don’t say? You mean as translator?”
“Translation is my profession but I am also original writer.”
“Then you do three things to earn a living—write, translate, and drive this cab?”
“The taxi is not my true work.”
“Are you translating anything in particular now?”
The driver cleared his throat. “In present time I have no translation project.”
“What sort of thing do you write?”
“I write stories.”
“Is that so? What kind, if I might ask?”
“I will tell you what kind—little ones—short stories, imagined from life.”
“Have you published any?”
He seemed about to turn around to look me in the eye but reached instead into his shirt pocket. I offered my American pack. He shook out a cigarette and lit it, exhaling slowly.
“A few pieces although not recently. To tell the truth”—he sighed—“I write presently for the drawer. You know this expression? Like Isaac Babel, ‘I am master of the genre of silence.’”
“I’ve heard it,” I said, not knowing what else to say.
“The mice should read and criticize,” Levitansky said bitterly. “This what they don’t eat and make their drops—droppings—on. It is perfect criticism.”
“I’m sorry about that.”
“We arrive now to Chekhov Museum.”
I lean
ed forward to pay him and made the impulsive mistake of adding a one-ruble tip. His face flared. “I am Soviet citizen.” He forcibly returned the ruble.
“Call it a thoughtless error,” I apologized. “No harm meant.”
“Hiroshima! Nagasaki!” he taunted as the Volga took off in a burst of smoke. “Aggressor against the suffering poor people of Vietnam!”
“That’s none of my doing,” I called after him.
An hour and a half later, after I had signed the guest book and was leaving the museum, I saw a man standing, smoking, under a linden tree across the street. Nearby was a parked taxi. We stared at each other—I wasn’t certain at first who it was, but Levitansky nodded amiably to me, calling “Welcome! Welcome!” He waved an arm, smiling openmouthed. He had combed his thick hair and was wearing a loose dark suit coat over a tieless white shirt, and baggy pants. His socks, striped red-white-and-blue, you could see through his sandals.
I am forgiven, I thought. “Welcome to you,” I said, crossing the street.
“How did you enjoy Chekhov Museum?”
“I did indeed. I’ve made a lot of notes. You know what they have there? They have one of his black fedoras, also his pince-nez that you see in pictures of him. Awfully moving.”
Levitansky wiped an eye—to my surprise. He seemed not quite the same man, modified. It’s funny, you hear a few personal facts from a stranger and he changes as he speaks. The taxi driver is now a writer, even if part-time. Anyway, that’s my dominant impression.
“Excuse me my former anger,” Levitansky explained. “Now is not for me the best of times. ‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,’” he said, smiling sadly.
“So long as you pardon my unintentional blunder. Are you perhaps free to drive me to the Metropole, or are you here by coincidence?”
The Complete Stories Page 51