by D. R. Bell
He drives for a couple of minutes without answering then says, “Yes, I do. Unfortunately, I can’t prove it. Most of the people we convict are guilty as hell. But when you put away a person and you don’t believe he is guilty…it’s hard to sleep at night.”
I change the subject. “Is it difficult to make someone unconscious by pressing on his neck?”
“Not for a well-trained person. You cut off the blood flow without cutting off the oxygen. Police used to apply chokehold; it’s not as popular now because of the risks. But if you don’t expect it, a strong, practiced person that approaches you from behind will put your lights out in seconds.”
We drive the rest of the way in silence. As Rozen drops me off, he leans out the window and hands me a manila envelope:
“This is a copy of the papers that were found in a book on Streltsova’s nightstand. She must have been reading and marking them.”
“Did you give them to my father?”
“Yes. Interesting that her computer was gone and we could not find any of her working papers, but for these few pages. It’s like someone carefully removed her work, but missed what was stuck into a book. And Kron did not have any of Streltsova’s materials. I think Melissa is right, the answer is in Russia. Be careful. Don’t look around, but there is an unmarked car with two detectives across the street. I was keeping an eye on the rearview mirror and noticed the same van appear behind us a few times. The detectives will watch you drive off and see if anyone follows.”
As I retrieve my things and the rental car from the hotel, my Blackberry rings. It’s Zorkin. “Pavel Vladimirovich, I found the man! His name is Anton Rimsky; he used to work with your dad.”
“Great, let me write down his number.”
“Unfortunately, he does not have a phone. Probably living off a state pension, does not have the money.”
“How I am going to contact him then?”
“I have his address, you can come see him. Or write to him.”
I know Zorkin’s vulnerability, the power of his greed, so I go for the throat. “Look, Mr. Zorkin, I am half a world away at the moment. I told you I need to talk to this man.”
“You said you needed me to find him,” whines Zorkin, “and I did.”
“So tomorrow you go to Anton Rimsky, bring your phone with you, call me and hand the phone to him.”
“I have a very busy day tomorrow,” complains Zorkin in a defeated voice.
I add one last kick. “And remember the eleven hour time difference.”
I call Jennifer from the car.
“Sweetheart, it’s dad. Is it OK if I come see you and Simon later today?”
She squeals with delight, “Yes, yes, this is great!”
“Let me talk to mom.”
“I’ll let her know.” Poor Jennifer is afraid that Karen will block my visit.
“No, sweetheart, it’s for me to let her know.”
“OK,” Jennifer sighs. “I’ll go look for her.”
I hear voices in the background, then Karen comes on. “You are going to just show up without bothering to let me know even a day in advance? You are such an ass.”
“Karen, I am sorry, I am in California on business, I did not know whether I’d be able to visit. I am not going to inconvenience you or your parents. I will stay in a hotel somewhere nearby, I’ll come take Simon and Jennifer to dinner tonight and perhaps breakfast tomorrow.”
“We have guests and dinner plans tonight,” Karen informs me, “you can’t take the kids.”
“I want to see my kids!” I grip the wheel so hard, the car swerves and I am hit with a horn blast from the car in the next lane.
“Well, then you should have…” Muffled conversation in the background, then Karen comes back on. “All right, my dad says you should come and stay here.”
I am dumbfounded; the man hates my guts. Let me correct that, he hates failure. He liked me well enough in the beginning, when the reflection of Karen’s and mine notoriety was good for the new congressman. Now he is afraid that my problems will somehow be used against him during the upcoming election.
“You are coming for one night only, right?” confirms Karen.
My Blackberry phone rings again. It’s Rozen. “You were not mistaken, someone was trying to keep you company.”
“Who?”
“It’s a local private investigator. He pulled from the curb just after you drove off. The detectives followed him until the next exit on the 101 freeway, then brought him in. He usually does medical disability cases, stakes out people that cheat insurance companies. Yesterday, in the late afternoon, he received a call from someone offering him a thousand a day to follow you and report on your movements. Soon after, a messenger delivered an envelope with payment for two days, your picture, and the message that you were likely to be at the police department. He’s been following you since.”
“So who hired him?”
“He does not know. He is not exactly a selective type. We are trying to find the delivery person, but it does not look promising.”
By the time I get to L.A., it’s past three and the traffic has built up. I resign myself to a slow slog. Gas pedal, brake pedal, gas pedal, brake pedal…
January 1986. The country has a new leader, Mikhail Gorbachev. He just met with Ronald Reagan; a smell of détente is in the air. A group of American students on their winter break come to visit Moscow and the Moscow State University. A few of us, the supposedly more reliable and presentable ones, are chosen to go meet with the Americans. I often wondered if whoever qualified me for this meeting has been demoted later. But one can’t blame him or her; not only was I a good student with no blemishes on my record, I spoke decent English and had just defended my doctoral dissertation. Perhaps the idea was to impress the Americans with our brain power. Not wanting to rely on the intellect alone, I went to a banya the night before and sweated all the dirt and smells out of my pores.
We meet in a designated room of the Lenin’s Library; the organizer must have thought that choosing a library would give the whole affair some kind of intellectual undertone. The meeting starts awkwardly, with introductions and forced conversations. Turns out “the others” don’t have horns or hoofs and seem to be very similar human beings. There are a dozen of us and perhaps ten Americans. I am introduced as “one of our brilliant young physicists.” At that, two pretty American girls smile at me. I look aside in embarrassment, then steal a glance at the girls and suddenly lock eyes with one of them. Everything freezes for a second. I feel the jolt of recollection, as if I have met her before, although this is of course utterly impossible. Her expression turns serious, smile disappears. My face is hot, I must be turning crimson. I feel like everyone is staring at me, so I stand up, mumble something and escape. Now everyone is really staring. In the restroom, I wash my face with cold water and wait for palpitations to subside.
When I get back, the organizer announces that it’s time to “visit the Red Square and then go to a restaurant.” We are told to stay together as we start walking to the square in a bitter cold. Snowflakes are dancing in the air like little dervishes. The two American girls are just in front of me, they are clearly freezing. I hear a whisper in my ear, “Pavel, let’s split. It’s too damn cold, I have a flat nearby, and I just cashed in the Kremlin store coupons.”
It’s Leonid Krasnov, usually known by the diminutive Lyonechka. He is a graduate student in my department, smart but much more interested in parties and girls than in physics. He can get away with pretty much anything because he comes from a pure lineage of old Bolsheviks: his great-grandparents defended Moscow from the White armies, his grandparents were Party’s stalwarts that managed to avoid Stalin’s purges and died from natural causes, rare case for the people of their time and position. Many nights they must have woken up in a cold sweat, hearing noises and heavy steps, but there were no knocks on their door. Now his parents are important diplomats in the Foreign Service. They live abroad and Lyonechka has a free reign of their l
arge three-room apartment in the center of Moscow, making his friends indirect beneficiaries. By the Soviet standards, the apartment was richly, even over-the-top decorated: paintings, Persian rugs, crystal goblets, delicate jade vases, extensive collection of good books – all displayed as a sign of social prestige.
Foreigners don’t understand what having an apartment meant in the 1980’s Soviet Union, where privacy was at a great premium. Lyonechka, despite his slight stature and rather bland looks, was one of the most popular people in the University. Young lovers were always asking him for permission to use the apartment for their trysts. I admit to using the flat a few times with Anya. Rumors flew that even some of the faculty took advantage. To Lyonechka’s credit, he was generous with his favors and did not try to profit from his position beyond reason, although he’s been known to sleep with some of the girls that needed a place to stay for a few days. Lyonechka also threw great parties that featured alcohol and food from the Kremlin food store. One had to have special coupons to shop there, which Lyonechka’s parents had been receiving monthly. I’ve been to a few of these parties, they pretty much always ended up in general intoxication, sex, and women’s underwear disappearing – which Lyonechka was supposedly collecting. There was only one rule: Don’t break things. Two students that broke a vase by drunkenly tossing it back and forth had been permanently banned from the apartment.
In these circumstances, Lyonechka was trouble and I obviously should have known better. But the thought of delicacies and having a shot of vodka on a bitterly cold day clouds my judgment. I was not the only one seduced by Lyonechka’s offer: somehow six of us separate under the cover of falling snow – Lyonechka, me, Olga and Vadim, a couple from the theater department, and the two American girls that smiled at me in the library. Lyonechka quickly ducks into a back street, and we follow, giggling in a youthful excitement of doing something that we are not supposed to do. One of the American girls, the one I locked eyes with, puts her arm through mine. Despite the cold, my face gets hot again. I hope she does not see it. I did not get her name during the introductions, so I ask her in a stammering voice.
“Karen Baker,” she says.
“I am Pavel Rostin,” I reciprocate.
“I know, you are the brilliant physicist.” She laughs.
Her teeth are chattering. I free my arm and put it around her shoulders. She snuggles to me and puts her arm around my waist. Her touch feels natural and familiar, like we have gone together for years.
Lyonechka was telling the truth about cashing in his Kremlin store coupons. The kitchen has caviar, smoked salmon, sausages, meats, salads, fruits and plenty of vodka and champagne. I sit next to Karen Baker. The flat is warm, so we peel off our heavy overcoats, hats, jackets. Karen is almost as tall as I am, with straight blonde hair reaching half-way down her spine, a cute button nose, brown eyes, and a beautiful smile showing two rows of perfect white teeth. Her skirt is riding up, showing nice legs. I feel the heat of her body next to mine.
Karen is a senior in college, studying history. We are all having a great time trying to converse in broken English. We drink for friendship between our countries, for world peace, for victory over the Nazi Germany, for beautiful women. In the back of my mind, I think that someone must be looking for us and this will not end well, but I chase the worry away with a drink.
After a third glass of vodka, I lose some of my inhibitions, stand up, and read my bad version of one of Pushkin’s poems:
My angel, perhaps my sins
Make me unworthy of your love.
But please pretend!
Your one look will easily deceive me,
And I am only too happy to be deceived!
Everyone laughs and applauds. I am not going to tell them that last year I worked with a tutor to improve my English by making translations of Pushkin’s poems. Of course, my translations are amateurish, and normally I would not dare to utter them in public, but vodka is a great equalizer.
In my mind, I see Anya’s image. We’ve been making out on this very couch not long ago. After three years of dating, her parents treated my as their son-in-law. Hot feeling of shame washes over me. I chase the thought away, I am here, I am free, I am excited. I don’t need the guilt. I have to understand the jolt of recollection that surged through my body when I locked eyes with Karen Baker.
Olga asks me to read more, and I oblige:
I love you, even though
I am mad at myself for this passion,
As I confess in despair at your feet.
Lyonechka enjoys watching me making a fool of myself, and he laughs. “Poetry in Russia is a serious business, especially with women.”
“Yes, poetry in Russia is respected, it gets people killed,” I reply. In response to puzzled looks, I explain, “It was not me who said it, it was Osip Mandelstam. He was killed by Stalin’s goons.”
Karen leans to me and whispers, “Read some poetry just for me.”
Her breast is hot against my side. She smells good. I whisper back:
I remember the magic moment
When you appeared before me,
A fleeting vision of perfect beauty.
Olga starts making out with Vadim, her boyfriend. I lean over to Karen and carefully kiss her lips. She swings her arm around my neck, and her tongue slips into my mouth. I touch her breast; we are still locked in a kiss and I feel how her breathing quickens and her other hand presses on the top of my leg. I never wanted someone this bad. The couple that was making out disappears. Now Lyonechka and the other American girl start kissing in the corner of the room. Karen pulls my hand, and we go to a bedroom, but it’s already occupied by the first couple, unmistakably having sex. We wander through a dark apartment and find another room. We are so excited, we can barely wait to close the door.
I wake up in the morning from the cold. Snow is still falling outside. Karen is quietly snoring next to me; we are covered by a thin blanket of unknown origin. I move her hair and uncover a small, delicate ear. I look at her and then shut my eyes from the wave of tenderness that spreads through my body. Her image is engraved in me as if we have known each other for hundreds of years. I suddenly can’t imagine the world without this girl that I’ve met only a few hours ago. She wakes up, looks at me, kisses me hard and whispers, “More poetry, please.”
I recite Akhmatova’s words about love:
Love is like a snake,
It coils, enchanting the heart.
“You are a strange physicist,” murmurs Karen. We warm each other up by making love again. Then the other two couples show up, wearing blankets. An argument ensues between Karen and the other American girl; we figure out that the other girl is concerned about being away from their group, which Karen does not want to go back to yet.
The other girl laughs, points at me, and says “She wants to marry you!” Everyone laughs, except for Karen and me. I realize that we’ll have to part soon and for a moment I can’t breathe. We find more food and stay in until the late morning. The snow stops, the sun makes an appearance, and we all venture outside and go to the Alexander Gardens by the Kremlin walls, fresh snow sparkling and crunching under our feet.
Karen holds on to my arm and starts crying. The other American girl says, “She does not want to leave,” and looks at me as if I am the one at fault here. At that, Lyonechka comes up with “We can get you married today.” We laugh because it’s ridiculous and completely impossible, but he insists: “I know a refusenik that lives not too far, he applied to emigrate back in 1978, never got the permission, so he became a rabbi. He can marry you.”
This makes no sense whatsoever, but we don’t want the adventure to end yet, so the four of us take the metro to refusenik’s flat. Olga and Vadim peel off, sensing trouble. The unfortunate refusenik is there and foolishly lets us in. We explain our purpose. His first question is, “Are you Jewish?” I am not. Turns out neither is Karen.
The rabbi walks out of the room and comes back with a bottle of vodka. “I am sorry,
I am not experienced. This requires some thinking.” He drinks and deliberates out loud. “I don’t think there is anything in the Jewish tradition that forbids me from officiating at non-Jewish marriages. It will not be a valid wedding under Jewish law, halachah, but since you are non-Jews, it does not matter to you. As long as you make a commitment to each other in good times and bad, yes, I think I can marry you.”
In good times and bad…That’s the tough part, is not it?
Karen and I walked out of the refusenik’s flat with a handwritten marriage certificate drawn on a piece of lined notebook paper, still treating this as an adventure, not quite comprehending what just happened. Lyonechka and I took Karen and her friend to the hotel they were staying in. Karen threw her arms around my neck and kissed me, giving rise to lewd smiles of a small assortment of KGB and “Intourist” personnel around. As she was about to enter the hotel, Karen turned back to look at me, her eyes full of blame: “How can you let me go?” An overweight woman from the delegation grabbed her arm and gave me an angry stare. I almost screamed: “Don’t touch her! Let her come back!”
Less than a block away, I am stopped by two plain-clothed officers. I expect to be taken to the infamous Lubyanka, but they just question me in their car. I am given a dressing down, reminding me how I did not behave in a manner appropriate to the Soviet standards. Turns out there was a major commotion about the American tourists that disappeared, and our chaperones contacted the university. According to the propiska, the Soviet system of residence permits, both Lyonechka and I lived in the dormitory. It was only this morning that someone at the university figured out where we were given Lyonechka’s involvement – but they must have missed us by a few minutes.
Before they let me out, one of the officers asks conspiratorially, “So, how was it fucking an American? Did she have any special tricks?”