A Terrible Country

by Keith Gessen

  “They’re good men. They’re not going to torture you or beat you or any of the stuff you see in Hollywood movies. They’re just going to ask some questions. Is that OK?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “Great,” said the officer, and stood up to leave, handing my passport to one of the FSB guys.

  I felt like some kind of performance was being put on for me, but I couldn’t understand what it consisted of. What did dawn on me, with some force, as the officer moved out of the room, was that he could leave and I could not. I was not allowed to leave. Just down the hall was the door that led back out to Sretenka, to my grandmother’s house, and the road where I could hail a hundred-ruble car to Yulia’s place at pretty much any time of the day or night. But on this side of the door was me. And these men—four men, the detectives older than me, the FSB guys about my age—could keep me here. It wasn’t terrifying or anything; it was just strange. I was sitting in an office like any other office, “taking a meeting” by the looks of it, and though it was not, I think, a friendly conversation, it was a conversation nonetheless. We were all people here. And yet these people could walk out the door and I could not.

  It occurred to me that I would do just about anything to get back on the other side of that door—back on Sretenka, out of this station, away from these people—and never have to think about them again.

  “So, Andrei,” began one of the young FSB officers, “please tell us about yourself.”

  This seemed like an innocent enough question, and I wondered if I should answer. I remembered the informal arrestee training we’d done with the old Marxist—don’t say anything. But he’d also said we should confirm our identity. So I answered. I told them about our emigration, that I grew up outside of Boston, that I had studied Russian literature. One of the police detectives claimed not to believe me, at which point one of the FSB guys whipped out an iPhone and offered to look up my profile on the university’s website. I hadn’t visited the site in months and wondered momentarily if I was still on there. But then there I was; there was even a little photo of me, and the FSB guy held up the iPhone in front of him, as if checking the photo against my face. “I think it’s him,” he said, showing the phone to the skeptical detective. The detective agreed that it was me.

  Now the other FSB officer, the one holding my passport, said, “Andrei, so, you’re an educated person. How did you get involved with this extremist group?”

  I laughed. “Extremist?” I said. “No. They’re not extremists. I met them through hockey.” This was not entirely accurate, but even at this point I felt I shouldn’t drag Yulia into it. I said, “Sergei Ivanov, who’s in October, is our goalie. He’s a good goalie.” I said this in a way that made it clear, I hoped, that no one who played hockey could be an extremist.

  “Oh?” said the FSB officer.

  “Yes!” I said. “They’re students, for the most part. They’re very sweet.”

  “Oh?” said the FSB officer again. He was taking notes and didn’t look up when he spoke.

  “Yes!” I looked around the room to see what attitude the others had taken. As I did so I remembered again the grizzled Marxist who told us to keep our mouths shut. But that was then, back in the Soviet era. These guys I was talking to were different; they had iPhones, and even if they weren’t different, still I could clear this up. If they only knew how harmless October was, this whole charade could quickly end. So I kept talking. “They have a reading group,” I said. “Usually it’s at Misha’s house. They discuss the news over email; occasionally they hold a public protest to bring attention to some event. They’re not extremists!”

  “Is that Misha Vorobiev?” said the FSB guy. I stopped and looked at him. They knew Misha’s name. So they knew about October. So they knew they weren’t “extremists.”

  I hesitated before answering.

  “Vorobiev, right?” the FSB guy said again.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “If they’re not extremists,” said the skeptical detective right away, “what are they, in your opinion?”

  “They’re run-of-the-mill European social democrats.”

  “What does that mean for Russia? We’re not exactly Europe, after all.”

  “What does it mean?” I didn’t quite understand.

  “Enlighten us,” said the police detective.

  “Well,” I began. They seemed to be all ears. And why not? Sergei had taught me that just about anyone could be convinced of the October cause if you just put yourself in their position and explained things in a sensible manner. These were still young men, living in a corrupt and dying country. They probably wanted things to get better.

  “Well,” I said again, “I think we can all agree that Russia is in a difficult situation. It makes a lot of oil and gas, but its economy is not diversified. The entire country is hostage to oil price shocks. For the past twenty years it’s essentially been living off the infrastructure built during the Soviet era, which is now deteriorating. Faith in public institutions is very low.”

  I looked around the room. The FSB officer was still taking notes. I took this as a cue to continue.

  “The government’s answer to this seems to be twofold. On the one hand, more liberalization of the economy, and at the same time more repression of political dissent. No offense.”

  They all nodded: no offense taken.

  “So what October says is, Look, the answer to the crisis is not to defund schools, hospitals, and infrastructure projects and put them in the private sector, where the money can be stolen by capitalists, but to make it the government’s responsibility to protect the people. All the people. And until the government is willing to do that, Russia will continue to suffer, and its people will suffer, and there will be unhappiness and unrest.”

  I looked around the room.

  “Maybe you’re right,” the FSB officer with the iPhone said.

  I smiled. I was very pleased. “Maybe,” I said humbly.

  “There’s one thing, though,” the other FSB officer said thoughtfully, looking up from his notes. “We used to have a communist government here. But we don’t anymore. And calls for the country to have a communist government again could be interpreted by some passionate people as calls for the overthrow of the current regime.”

  “I’ve never heard anyone at October call for the overthrow of the current regime,” I said quickly. This was not, it occurred to me, technically true. October defined itself as a “revolutionary party.” So in that sense they did advocate the overthrow of the current regime. And it turned out my new friends already knew that.

  “It says here,” said the FSB guy with the iPhone, showing me the October website, “that they’re a revolutionary party. So they do want a revolution?”

  “That’s just a figure of speech!” I said. “Everything’s revolutionary now. People say the iPhone is a revolutionary technology. Does that make you a revolutionary?”

  “OK,” the note-taking FSB guy now said, “let’s not get worked up. I think we can wrap this up now, right?” He was addressing Mr. iPhone.

  That guy nodded.

  “Great,” said the other.

  They both thanked me and gave me their hands to shake. Not knowing what else to do, I shook them. “Oh, one more question,” the FSB guy with the iPhone said, as if suddenly remembering it. “Which of your friends was there when you destroyed the bulldozer out in the forest?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I wasn’t there.”

  “They never talked about it?”

  “Not in front of me,” I said. This was a lie, as they could probably tell, but they let it go. They had enough, apparently. They thanked me again and left the room.

  * * *

  • • •

  Then it was over. The police detectives handed me my passport and my phone; they even said I should come by and see them if I was ever in
the neighborhood; and I walked out, back onto Sretenka, a free man. It wasn’t even seven o’clock; I had spent less than three hours in custody.

  A bunch of people were standing across the street from the police station: Yulia and Sergei and everyone from October, Elena and some other well-dressed youngish people, a guy from the Moscow Times whom Howard had once introduced me to, and another guy from one of the wire services. The October people were talking to one another while all the journalists were having intense conversations on their cell phones. They didn’t see me at first when I came out, and as I stood at the top of the stairs I had a strong impulse to walk quietly around the corner before they saw me and try never to talk to any of them again.

  I had thought, back in that room, that once I got out I would have such a newfound appreciation for everything, for the shitty bookstore with the strip club on the second floor and the Hugo Boss and the cars parked on the sidewalk, and of course my grandmother and everything else. Now here I was, and that’s not how I felt. Instead I felt like something had happened back in that room that I didn’t yet understand. But I had a bad feeling about it.

  Someone from the group saw me and called my name, and they came over to me in a bunch all talking at once and looking like they were happy and indeed lucky to see me. Yulia gave me a hug whose intensity I found embarrassing, given the mildness of what I’d just been through, and all the Octobrists gave me correspondingly solemn handshakes.

  Sergei was the first one to speak. “Everything OK?” he asked.

  “I think so,” I said.

  Something about the way I said this must have given Sergei pause, because he now said, “Yeah?” As in, was I sure everything was OK? Obviously I was not sure.

  “They asked me what October was,” I said. “And I told them it was a discussion group.”

  “OK,” said Sergei.

  “They were saying it was extremist but I told them that was ridiculous, that the group had no plans to overthrow the government.”

  “O-K,” said Sergei, more slowly than the first time.

  “I told them that I met you through hockey and that we met to discuss Marx at Misha’s place. That was about it.”

  “OK,” Sergei said again. He looked thoughtful. “I thought we’d all agreed that we don’t talk to the police.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “They just seemed pretty normal to me. I felt like I was recruiting them, to be honest.”

  Sergei took this in.

  “We can recruit the army, not the police,” he said quietly, like you’d say a quick catechism. Then he spoke normally again. “I’m sure it’s fine,” he said. “Should we all go out and get a drink?”

  I really did not feel like a drink. I felt like going home and taking a shower. I still had ketchup in my hair. I told Sergei as much, and he nodded.

  “Maybe tomorrow,” he said. I agreed.

  Yulia had been listening to all this. “I’ll come with you,” she said to me. I agreed to that as well.

  Now Elena and the guy from the Moscow Times politely approached and asked if they could talk to me. I said yes but kept walking in the direction of my grandmother’s, to indicate that I didn’t want to talk long. Elena put a microphone in my face and Howard’s friend took out his notebook and I told them that the whole thing was pretty innocuous and that I did not feel like I’d been ground under the heel of the regime and in fact I’d been happy to tell them about the activities of October—I thought it’d be nice to make a plug for October on Echo—and that was about it.

  Yulia and I walked the rest of the way alone. “Katya called me,” she said. “She says there are a bunch of articles already online about the American academic arrested in front of RussOil.”

  There was something bitter about the way she said it. I didn’t answer.

  “Did they beat you?” she asked.

  “No. Not at all.”

  “Then why’d you tell them about October?”

  “They knew all about it already!” I said. I said it in a pleading sort of way. The October website literally said that it was a “revolutionary” organization. What had I told those guys that they didn’t already know?

  “Oy, Andryush,” said Yulia. “Let’s go check on Seva Efraimovna.”

  “OK,” I said.

  We walked the rest of the way in silence.

  * * *

  • • •

  My grandmother was sitting at the table eating alone when we came in. “Andryush!” she said. “Yulia! Where have you been?”

  “Sorry, Grandma,” I said. “We got delayed. Everything’s fine.”

  “You must be hungry,” she said. “Let me cook you something.”

  She still referred to cooking things even though mostly what this meant now was reheating the food that Seraphima Mikhailovna had left in the fridge.

  Yulia and I agreed to eat but insisted that my grandmother sit while we heated up the portions.

  My computer was sitting on the windowsill. “Here, I’ll do this,” Yulia said about the food. “Have a look.”

  I did as I was told. There really were a bunch of articles about the American academic arrested by the despotic regime. On Facebook everyone was asking after my well-being, even Fishman. It made me sound like a brave martyr, which I found embarrassing. Maybe this was what Yulia was mad about. If I was such a brave martyr, why had the police let me go so easily, and with such pleasant smiles?

  Then my phone rang. It was my adviser.

  “Are you out?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “I just got home.”

  “OK, great. Jesus, you gave us a scare. Listen. I got the strangest call from Phil Nelson just now. He saw the news coverage and was asking about you. He even suggested there might be a line for you in the reconstituted GSLLD.” That’s what my adviser had taken to calling the Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literatures Department. A “line” was a job.

  “Wow,” I said. “Why—why would he do that?”

  “Who knows. I mean, Columbia just made some splashy hires. And you know Phil. He loves hugging babies and releasing prisoners. And our finances haven’t taken quite as much of a hit as they should have, I think. We might even get some of that Obama stimulus money. Anyway, when he called asking about you I told him you had a big article coming out in the Slavic Review and that you should have gotten the Watson job. So, heads up. If he calls with an offer, make sure he’s talking about a genuine line, not a visiting appointment. And ask him about housing.”

  “Seriously?”

  Housing was a subsidized apartment. They weren’t luxury apartments but they were spacious and they were in Manhattan; in fact it was about as close to socialism as you got in New York.

  “Yeah, why the hell not,” said my adviser. “If he wants to hire you to get some publicity, make him really hire you. OK?”

  “OK,” I said. “Thank you.”

  I had walked out of the kitchen as I talked with my adviser and now I came back in. Yulia was sitting with my grandmother and holding her hand. “You see,” my grandmother was saying, “all my friends have died. All my relatives have died. Everyone is dead except me. What’s the point?”

  “I know, Seva Efraimovna,” Yulia said. “I know.”

  When I came in she looked up at me with a question on her face, as if to say, “Who was that on the phone?”

  I shrugged, as if to say, “It wasn’t anyone important. It was a wrong number. It was nothing.”

  I really did feel like it wasn’t worth getting into, given that it could well end up being nothing, like the Watson job. My adviser had a pretty good sense of these things, but President Nelson was a guy who frequently changed his mind.

  “Who was that on the phone, Andryush?” my grandmother asked.

  “No one,” I said. “A friend from America.”

  “Ah, America,” my gra
ndmother said. “I went there once. I didn’t like it.”

  “And you were right, Seva Efraimovna, you were right,” Yulia said. Then she stood up and, to my surprise, brought her lips to my grandmother’s forehead. “Thank you for everything, Seva Efraimovna,” she said. “Thank you for taking me into your home. I am very grateful to you. Stay strong.”

  My grandmother didn’t understand where this was coming from but she loved to be touched, and she laughed happily. “Thank you,” she said to Yulia, who was now heading for the front hall. But it sounded to me like Yulia was saying good-bye to my grandmother.

  I followed her into the front hall.

  “What’s going on?” I said.

  “Nothing’s going on,” she said coldly.

  “Why did you just say good-bye to my grandmother?”

  “I don’t know that I’ll see her again.”

  “Why not?” I said, and then repeated: “What’s going on?”

  Still without betraying any emotion, she answered my question with a question. “What did you tell the police?”

  “Nothing! I didn’t tell them anything they didn’t already know!”

  “You know it doesn’t work like that.”

  “Like what?”

  “They were nice to you and pretended to think what you said was interesting, right? And you talked and talked. Yes?”

  That was approximately what had happened. My silence now confirmed it.

  “Oh, Andryush. You haven’t learned anything about this place, have you? You’re still such an American. You still believe in words.”

  “What’s wrong with that?” I said. “What else am I supposed to believe in?”

  “Who was that on the phone just now?” Yulia said.

  “My adviser.” In Russian the word is longer—nauchny rukovoditel’, academic supervisor, or nauchruk. “Nauchruk,” I said.

  “And did he tell you they have a job for you now?” Yulia asked.