Dancing on Thin Ice

by Arkady Polishchuk

  BUT LET’S BACK UP. Earlier, in Brooklyn on the very day I was with Tom and Svetlana walking above the pier—naturally, a meeting I told no one about—I had numerous calls from Mrs. Olga H. She was very nervous that day. Since our first meeting she had kept telling me that the city was full of Russian agents and begged me to be on guard. She asked me never make friends with random people on the street, especially with women—they could be Soviet agents or prostitutes, or both. This particular warning was given after I got acquainted with a young woman while traveling on the bus to the H.’s home. In fact, she was the very first stranger in New York with whom I overcame fear of not being understood and dared to converse; I needed to ask for directions, and she helped. It was a long trip, and we talked. She was well-read, smart and terribly lonely. We both were excited, although for different reasons. The woman could hardly move, had a tic, and her face muscles were twitching. Not too many people dared to talk with her. We called each other from time to time, but I kept it secret from Olga despite her order not to call this woman who “could’ve been ordered by someone else” to sit next to me.

  I knew the roots of Olga’s phobia and tried my best not to cause them pain.

  She and her husband Reverend Blahoslav H. escaped from Czechoslovakia in 1948 after communists had established total control over the country. At their office on Riverside Drive they felt surrounded by enemies, and their past still haunted them. The small Research Center for Religion and Human Rights in Communist Dominated Areas, created by them, had an office in a sizable building of the World Council of Churches. They complained that the influential Council had cozy relations with the Russians, took part in the so-called fight for peace, and supported radical national liberation movements.

  Soon they made me a member of the Center’s board of directors and a member of the editorial board of their bi-monthly Religion in Communist Dominated Areas—RCDA. Olga translated and published my material. It was she who translated that ill-fated article for National Review that almost undermined my amicable relations with Ira Fybish.

  Olga and Blahoslav were very good to me and continued helping me solve the everyday problems of a newcomer—she taught me where and how to buy food, how to pay bills, use a street laundry, fight immortal New York City cockroaches, and confront the other countless vagaries and demands of everyday life.

  One unfortunate summer morning they invited me for a dinner. Instead of taking a bus, I decided to continue my American education by crossing Central Park on foot. Crime was rampant in the city, and I had heard stories about violent attacks in the deteriorating park. So first, a magnifying glass in hand, I studied my route traversing the park to their home in uptown Manhattan using a Big Apple map. I planned to cross the lower part of this narrow, stretched out piece of rectangular land before dark.

  Since my early childhood darkness has frightened me, especially in forests. Of course it might be obvious by now why this lion-hearted hero at night sees a tiger in every pussycat on the dark road and a psychotic killer in every innocent shrub—although if I have a companion, male or female, then I return to my senses. Almost.

  When I reached the southernmost entrance of Central Park at Fifth Avenue, the afternoon was fading faster than I had anticipated. The grayish clouds were coming out of nowhere, but I still hoped that they might move away and the sun would return some daylight to the darkening park. The tops of buildings, even far away, beyond the park, raised hopes in my heart that I would be able to cross these dangerous grounds before nightfall.

  Entering the park, I discovered bedrock protruding frequently from the ground. Heavy clouds were rapidly gathering over my head, and not a soul was in sight. Stones, boulders, cliffs, and even the bedrock were crawling with graffiti, this threatening art display of competing gangs’ signatures.

  My years-old scholarly conclusion was confirmed again: in the darkness the trees have a tendency to multiply and gather together, but until this afternoon this eagle-eyed observer was unaware that the stones and rocks tend to hide in the ground until you hit them with your foot or shin. As the sky kept darkening, I stumbled and dropped my glasses. I fumbled blindly in the dirt for a while, and was fortunate enough to find them. My vision had been poor since I was a boy when my right eye was damaged by a knife in a street fight.

  From time to time I stopped to look around in the dark, urban forest. I passed a small pond on my right dimly reflecting some city light emanating from the low, gloomy sky over a wall of obscure trees. Some fifteen minutes later I discovered a pond to my left; as if made of tar, it did not reflect any light at all, and looked like a huge bottomless black hole in the ground. I feared that it was the same pond and that I was moving in circles. Hearing suspicious sounds coming from different directions, sometimes very close to me, my shirt, sneakers and head became soaked with sweat. I was lost in the wilderness of New York City.

  Yet I kept moving among hostile trees, most likely in the wrong direction and thinking about the imminent rain. I was preparing to turn back, when I saw a break ahead. The branches stopped whipping my head and shoulders, the trees parted and let me out of their vicious embrace. Behind a strip of grass I saw a street, a subway entrance and a lot of young black men, some of whom were looking at me. No white people in sight—the first time in my life. When I stepped onto the asphalt, some, while continuing to smoke marijuana, were studying this white, and I was sure, foul-smelling idiot coming from the dark park.

  I decided to pick out of this gang the most dangerous looking guy. It was not difficult; he stood right in front of me, or more precisely, he towered over me, his neck thicker than my torso, and menace flared in the whites of his big dark eyes. His voice and curly beard reminded me of short-tempered Zeus, the supreme deity of the ancient Greeks. I lifted my face toward the skies and asked where I was. For a while he was laughing like thunder, loudly slapping his powerful thighs; after that he asked something that I could not grasp. Then he began stretching the words, probably, in order to help this jerk take in the English language. This time I understood “what” and “in the park?” I liked his way of talking to me and said, “I got lost.”

  Zeus thundered again, this time supported by lesser gods. After having a good laugh, he rumbled in a motherly tone, “D’you know where you are?”

  “No,” I said, “I was going to see my friends.”

  They laughed at me, and I joined them. The whole thing now seemed ridiculous to all present.

  “Do you know where your friends live?” asked the Olympian, who couldn’t have been more than twenty years old.

  “Yes, I do,” I said with obvious diffidence. “Maybe I should call them.”

  “OK, I’ll take you to the phone booth, I’ll tell them where we are,” thundered my protector Zeus, and we went to a nearby corner.

  I already admired him and admired his not very sober silent friend who did not want to miss the action and, staggering, accompanied us to the booth.

  When I called Olga, she interrupted me before I could explain my predicament. “What happened?” she demanded. “Why didn’t you call? Where are you?”

  “I’ll tell you later,” I said in Russian. “Could you please pick me up? I’m probably not far away from you. Here is a gentleman, he’ll tell you where we are.” The word ‘gentleman’ I said in English.

  Zeus grabbed the receiver and quickly gave Olga all the necessary information. “She’ll be here in ten minutes,” he said. “Now, tell me where you’re from?”

  “From Russia,” I said.

  “You all don’t have blacks over there, right?”

  “Well, there are some, but they’re usually students selected by the Russian embassies. The government wants to educate only the future communist elite of African countries.”

  “I don’t get it,” said Zeus. “Who’s paying for their education?”

  “The Moscow rulers.” I avoided the word “Soviets,” which was by then out of fashion. Our conversation drifted for a while, and then came his sur
prise question.

  “Are Russians—Christians?”

  “Not too many,” I said. “For sixty years they’ve been teaching that to believe in God is ridiculous, that only fools can believe in God. We learned this in kindergarten, before learning how to read.”

  “What do they believe, then?”

  “They believe they are building paradise on Earth.”

  “So, this is their religion?” Zeus asked, intrigued.

  “Exactly. They call this religion ‘atheism’.”

  “But you also have Jews in Russia. Many recently came to Brooklyn. They believe in God, they were given the Old Testament. Jesus was sent to them.”

  “Well, Jews were brainwashed by communists just like everybody else. Never in their life back in Russia had they seen the Bible or a church.”

  “A synagogue,” Zeus corrected me. “So, they run to America from paradise?”

  “Yes.”

  At this moment Olga and Blahoslav arrived. I said, “Sorry, I’d love to stay here and talk with you but I have to go.”

  “It’s OK, brother,” said Zeus, “God bless you.”

  I shook his immense hand longer than it was required by good manners and said, “Thank you very much, brother! You’re good.” Then I shook the hand of his silent buddy and said, “You, too.”

  My friends were angry. Nonetheless I opened the car window and yelled, “What’s the name of this station?” I did not hear his answer, the car was moving away too fast. So, I told them that I had this peculiarity that I call topographical cretinism: “I’m often unable to find my bearings on the ground, especially at night, and, if in a forest, at any time of the day. Sorry if I ruined your evening.”

  The first heavy drops of rain were making their way down the windshield. Thunder was coming from heavens; Zeus was laughing.

  One hot Indian Summer day I told Lyudmila (Lucy) Thorne about my travel through Central Park. She was outraged. “The KGB is right,” she said. “There are some mad dissidents in Russia.”

  We were walking in the New York gluey heat, and I could hardly drag my shoes along the sidewalk. Suddenly, I saw a bookstore window with a long row of red volumes—The Complete Works of Josef Stalin.

  “Lucy! Look at this!”

  “So what?” she said, lowering her voice. “And please don’t yell.”

  “Wouldn’t you yell, if it were The Complete Works of Hitler?”

  “No, I wouldn’t,” she said. “Welcome to America. We have freedom of speech.”

  “Including the hate speech?” I asked, getting angry.

  She grinned. “Now you’re emanating heat.”

  With a faked “Hah-hah-hah,” I stepped in the door of the store.

  “What are you doing?” she shouted after me. “You better behave! They’ll call the police!”

  Lucy remained safely outside. I grinned at her through the glass door; she flashed a quick, uneasy smile. In fact, all I wanted was to understand the people who worked there: had their hatred of capitalism blinded them, or were they misinformed, or ignorant, or, speaking in plain Newyourkish, meshuga. At the counter stood a young woman with irresistible American white teeth.

  I pointed at the red volumes. “He killed many millions of people.”

  “But some of them were guilty,” she said after a moment.

  She still had the sweet smile on her lovely face. The quiet sound of her voice turned into an unbearable bell ringing in my head. I got a lump in my throat and left the bookstore, not uttering a word.

  “What happened?” Lucy asked, stroking my chest. “You’ve turned pale.”

  “She told me that some of them were guilty.”

  “Who are ‘some’? Guilty of what?”

  “Don’t you understand?! She said that some of the people murdered by him were guilty. What is it? Indoctrination? Another crazy cult?”

  “An incurable disease.” I heard melancholy in her voice. Lucy swore in Russian, “Wait until you move to California to work for that mission. Where are they located?”

  “In Glendale.”

  “Just don’t settle in Santa Monica,” she said, turning to me with a wry look.

  “Why?”

  “They call it the People’s Republic of Santa Monica,” she said. “Jane Fonda lives there, and her radical leftist husband is the town’s mayor.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  A Jew Who Spoke in Tongues

  PAUL POPOV picked me up at the Los Angeles airport as the haze of smog crept over our heads. “Welcome to sunny California!” he said, and told me about his plan he had outlined to me days before over the phone. I still was unable to take it in and said, “In Europe I had an Austrian travel document.”

  How could I go to Canada without such a document? What border guard would take seriously this tiny rectangular scrap paper with my Social Security number, which could easily have been forged by a devilish kindergartener? Stripped of my Soviet citizenship, I had to wait for an American Green Card for one more year.

  “Don’t worry, Arkady,” my carefree driver said. “We’ll fly to Vancouver as soon as our posters with your children are ready. Nobody will ask you for any documents. We’re not in Russia.”

  He did not know what every Russian kid knew. In the Soviet Union, an illegal border crosser would be shot dead right at the border or sent to the Gulag for fifteen years. I knew this from early childhood: my Motherland was surrounded by mortal enemies who were trying to penetrate our impregnable borders to do terrible harm to Russian children. At the age of seven I had decided to join Soviet superheroes from my favorite movie The Border Under Lock and Key. All three times I saw it, my heart pounded like a hammer in my chest. With my German shepherd we could find the enemy by sniffing the border air, just like Moktar and Joolbars, two highly intelligent four-legged movie stars. I was ready for patrolling our Sacred Borders. Yes, we called them Sacred. That is why Border Guard Day is still officially celebrated in Russia.

  On the plane to Canada I pretended to be asleep. At Vancouver International Airport nobody asked me or anybody else for anything. Paul looked at me with certain sympathy. I was a little embarrassed and tried a recently learned reckless “okey dokey!” to show that I was no longer concerned with the consequences of my illegal arrival abroad.

  In the huge Vancouver Convention Center, preparations for the upcoming Twelfth Pentecostal World Conference were nearing completion. About sixty thousand pastors and laypeople from seventy-eight countries planned to worship Jesus Christ together there. The Conference’s Advisory Committee Chairman Thomas Zimmerman was informed that, in order to draw attention to the tragic plight of the Russian Pentecostals, I would spend the entire conference of the Pentecostal Fellowship fasting in front of the Convention Center. At that time Zimmerman, the General Superintendent of the US Assemblies of God, was trying to establish relations with the Soviet official All Union Council of Evangelical Christians-Baptists. His efforts were in vain. The regime viewed Evangelicals as a foreign influence, even spies. The persecuted majority of Pentecostals still belonged to unregistered underground churches.

  I tried my best to be tactful. Our small group quietly stayed at a reasonable distance from the main entrance. From our cardboard posters, the Russian kids were watching with sad eyes thousands of Christians passing by. Many of them ignored us. Some would stop. A young fellow with a Southern accent stared for a couple of minutes at the portrait of twelve-year-old Nick Pishchenko, as if trying to look into the eyes of the boy. Then in the same manner he studied me and finally asked, “Is that true?”

  ‘My’ exposition during my hunger strike at the Twelfth Pentecostal World Congress held at the Vancouver Convention Center in 1979. The signs say: “Zhenya Galushkin (8): ‘I get beaten at school because I’m a believer’”; “Does ‘Go Ye into All the World’ Mean Romania” (brought by a Romanian exile who joined us); “Nikolai Pishchenko (12) Russia: ‘Our teachers in school teach us that the believers sacrifice their children. Thus, they teach our schoolmates t
o hate us.’”

  “Give me your address,” I said, “and I’ll send you a photocopy of his letter in Russian.”

  “Are you familiar with the child?”

  “Yes. I was his guest.”

  “Where does he live?”

  “In the south of Russia, near the Black Sea.”

  “I’ll talk about him in my church.” With these words the fellow pulled out a pen and wrote down an excerpt from a letter we had placed on the poster under the boy’s portrait: “Our teachers tell us that believers offer their children as sacrifices and thus they make all the other students hate us.”

  One young woman asked me angrily, “Why do you do this? We came here to worship Jesus. Do you understand what Gentiles might think of us?”

  I said, “Yes, in fact, I do.”

  Paul and some Canadians called local media outlets, but nobody came; they were not interested. For three days it was rather quiet. We heard the worshipers, praying and singing; the solid doors stayed mainly closed, and the powerful voices of the thousands inside the Convention Center were muffled and inaudible.

  We had a couple of sympathizers on the Advisory Committee of the Conference. They—Paul was asked not to mention names—had privately suggested to him that I should continue fasting, although I had no intentions to quit. They suggested to the participants of the Conference to pray for persecuted Christians of the world. I would have prefered them to be more specific and to name the USSR. But it wouldn’t have done any good—the Soviets did not believe in the power of prayer—for them it would be like inaudible voices behind these solid doors.

  Meanwhile, kind-hearted Doris, who visited me in New York and won my heart with her desire to help, began worrying about my health. She took me by the hand away from our group, passed me a white plastic bottle and said, “You should drink more.”