The Patriots
Page 49
Here, in my hands, were dispatches from the orderly precinct of this phony justice: each page meticulously numbered and wreathed in the accoutrements of legality—seals, stamps, signatures. All the while eviscerated of any law. The subtle instruments of logic and reasoning were turned to cudgels in the hands of brutes. They could harass her, shake her, prod her, maybe even beat her into signing her death sentence. And yet some compulsory tribute to the principle of human freedom prevented my mother’s captors from forging her signature.
Her investigation had the imprimatur of a classic snowball case, with the interrogators doing their best to connect Florence to a broad conspiracy that inculpated more famous personalities. To that end, they were claiming she had passed secret materials to foreign agents by means of articles she had not written, but translated into English—articles containing classified information about agriculture and wartime industries. Whether any actual articles were submitted into the record was unclear to me. A representative sample of the deposition:
BYKOV: Do you deny the accusation that you translated into English classified materials by the orders of Epshteyn and Mikhoels?
F. BRINK: I deny that I was aware that the materials assigned to me were classified. They were all examined beforehand by Soviet censors.
BYKOV: Since you examined them and studied their content it follows that you were an accomplice to the articles’ undercover character. Testify to the hostile nationalist orientation you developed in Kuibyshev.
F. BRINK: I admit, in part, that while working for the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee I fell under the influence of those around me. I absorbed their hostile anti-Soviet attitudes and found myself acquiring a nationalistic stance.
BYKOV: And you held anti-Soviet discussions and invented lies against the Soviet Union.
F. BRINK: I categorically deny this. I never expressed dissatisfaction with Soviet government policy.
BYKOV: You admit to being poisoned by bourgeois Jewish nationalism but deny the criminal acts that are the natural consequence of it.
F. BRINK: I allow that I experienced some nationalistic deviation. It was not manifested externally.
BYKOV: But you admit that it existed in your soul?
Her soul? What business did they have asking about her soul? What was this, I thought, a trial or an exorcism?
—
The final verdict read:
The fact that you listened to anti-Soviet outbursts and did not rebuke others for their nationalist remarks means that you became a co-conspirator and nationalist.
Savages with chronometers. It was not merely that her interrogators had no understanding of logic. Their questions and conclusions were underwritten by an essentially primordial worldview: one’s thoughts and actions are either holy or sinful, pro-Soviet or anti-Soviet, with us or against us. This crude cosmology left no room for neutrality. Even the medieval Catholics of Europe had surmised, between heaven and hell, the zone of purgatory, from which salvation was still possible. Russian Orthodoxy had never accepted such a notion—its consciousness was incapable of recognizing anything but immaculate piety or irredeemable guilt.
I suspected Valya had not been able to retrieve my father’s documents for the same reason Mama had not been able to pass to him any parcels: my father had been killed too soon after his arrest. Was that, I suddenly wondered, his punishment for refusing to sign any of the papers given him? I felt sure he’d refused to play his part in the sham production in order to spare us. To protect Mama and me, he’d given no testimony that could implicate Florence in any way. I was likewise certain that, in some sane portion of her mind, Florence must have known this all along. Her refusal to leave Moscow after his arrest only made me angrier.
My suspicion was substantiated when I scavenged my mother’s documents for my father’s name and found it appearing in the testimony not in the capacity of “your husband Leon Brink,” but as “the spy and slanderer Brink,” and even, occasionally, “your accomplice Leon Brink.” It would seem, according to these papers, that my mother had no friends or intimates, only accomplices, conspirators, and collaborators. Every now and again she was accused of being, along with some other felonious character, a yedinomyshlennitsa—a word I’m at a loss to translate into English, because the concept would be a paradox in the American vernacular. It means, simply, a creature of identical single-mindedness with another. If such conformity of the mind were possible, the list of my mother’s yedinomyshlennikov included my father, various members of the Jewish Committee, and “the spy and slanderer Seldon Parker,” who after some confusion I recognized as my father’s friend “Uncle Seldon,” whose nicotine-stained fingers I associated in my child’s mind with matchbook horses and aluminum fish that he promised could tell my fortune.
It was in the midst of my scavenger hunt for something recognizable—something that matched my own jumbled, painful childhood recollections of the year 1949—that I came upon a thing that stopped me cold. I didn’t know how I could have missed it on my first perusal of the archives, since it was so close to the top of the monstrous stack. It was a list, three pages long, appended to my mother’s Order of Arrest, containing nearly every item seized on that terrible night when two uniformed officers of the MGB barged into the room in which my mother and I had been living on our own since my father’s arrest, seven months earlier.
TAKEN FOR DELIVERY TO MGB THE FOLLOWING:
* * *
1. Passport no. XXIII-CU no. 599812, issued 25 September 1936 by the 64th department of militia of the city of Moscow to the name of Brink, F. S.
2. Medal for Outstanding Labor in the Great Patriotic War of 1941–1945, and Certificate of Authenticity.
3. Bank savings book no.___ with remaining 1,024.45 rubles.
4. Wristwatch of foreign firm Voltan in yellow metal, no. 5648891 (on cap). Working, without a second hand.
5. Assorted documents in a foreign language—7 items.
6. Assorted photographs—16 items.
7. Assorted notebooks—4 items.
8. Forms and certificates—7 items.
9. Cutouts of geographic maps from Soviet newspapers—4 items.
10. Carbon copy paper—used. 1 pack.
11. Anglo-Franco-German dictionary.
* * *
SIGNED BY SUPERINTENDENT OF HOUSE,
* * *
TALKOVSKAYA, VARVARA ARTUROVNA,
* * *
WITNESS TO SEIZURE.
* * *
HOUSEHOLD ITEMS:
* * *
1. Dinner table—1, good condition, previously owned
2. Cabinet chairs—2, PO
3. Soft chair—1, old
4. Table servante—1, PO
5. Wardrobe closet—1, PO
6. Commode—1
7. Assorted metal beds—2
8. Book étagère—1
9. Assorted suitcases—2
10. Storage trunk—1
11. Photo camera, Komsomolets brand—1
12. Photo camera, foreign brand—1, broken
13. Assorted porcelain statuettes—3
14. Bronze bust of V. I. Lenin—1
15. Assorted table lamps—2
16. Reproducer radio—1
17. Assorted autopens—2, broken
18. Footstools—2
19. Daybed with springs—1
20. Mattresses, cotton—2
21. Bedspread, cotton—2
22. Blanket, wool, gray—1
23. Blankets, cotton—2
24. Sheets—6
25. Alarm clock, round—1, fixed
26. Suit, children’s, gray wool—1
27. Suit, children’s, brown wool—1
28. Pants, gray wool, children’s—1
29. Coat, children’s, semi-seasonal, mouse-colored—1
30. Jacket, children’s, wool, with lining—1
31. Jacket, men’s, brown leather—1
32. Jacket, men’s, canvas—1
33. Robes, women’s, as
sorted—2
34. Jacket, women’s, gray wool—1
35. Suit, women’s, steel-colored wool—1
36. Shirts, women’s, assorted—3
37. Summer coat, women’s, dark-blue wool—1
38. Shirts, women’s—tricotage and silk—2
39. Dress, checkered linen—1
40. Dress, black crepe de chine—1
41. Dress, blue silk—1
42. Silk pajamas, women’s, birch pattern—1
43. Netted table oilcloth—1
44. Jacket, men’s, canvas with fur lining—1
45. Military jacket, men’s, wool—1
46. Underwear, men’s, white wool—3
47. Shirts, men’s, assorted wool—2
48. Undershirts, men’s—2
49. Button-downs, men’s—8
50. Sweaters, children’s, assorted—3
51. Button-downs, children’s, assorted—3
52. Pants, children’s, assorted—4
53. Underpants, children’s—9
54. Tablecloths, assorted—3
55. Undershirts, children’s—4
56. Towels, assorted—3
57. Pillowcases—3
58. Blankets, cotton—3
59. Feather pillows, assorted—3
60. Ice skates with boots—3 pairs
61. Boots, children’s, assorted leather—2 pairs
62. Demi-boots, men’s—1 pair
63. Shoes, women’s—2 pairs
64. Galoshes, men’s—1 pair
65. Galoshes, children’s—1 pair
66. Galoshes, women’s—1 pair
67. School briefcases, children’s, leather—2 pairs, old
68. Violin, children’s—1
69. Metal box with drafting tools—1
70. Electric iron—1
71. Ties, men’s—9
72. Bowls, metal—3
73. Soup dishes, assorted—12
74. Bread box, clay—1
75. Small dishes—20
76. Pots—2
77. Milk pot, enameled—1
78. Teacups, assorted—10
79. Saucers, assorted—12
80. Vases, assorted—3
81. Shot glasses—6
82. Rinsers—2
83. Tablespoons—6
84. Forks—5
85. Teaspoons—3
86. Teapot, small, porcelain—1
87. Frying pans—2
88. Kitchen knives—4
89. Sugar bowl—1
* * *
Apartment has been sealed and all items given for safekeeping to Talkovskaya, Varvara Arturovna, superintendent of housing.
I ran my hand over the words like a blind person reading with his fingers, as if attempting to touch those shabby, precious, lost items. How quickly they returned to me in every poignant, awful, nostalgic detail. My mother’s “checkered” dress, of brown-and-green plaid, which brushed against me as, holding hands, she and I walked to the bread kiosk. My father’s aviator jacket, its collar savory with Shipr cologne. My own “mouse-colored” coat and battered school satchel, bought off another kid in the building, along with the violin my mother had maneuvered to obtain in the hope that I would become the next David Oistrakh. Even my little booties—two pairs—had been included in this criminal seizure. I could scarcely read the list without having my chest fill with the pressure of agony. Where had it all gone? The undershirts and porcelain figurines and ice skates and sugar bowl! For “safekeeping” to Talkovskaya, Varvara Arturovna, whoever the hell she was (the name brought to mind absolutely nothing). And where, then, was my mother’s jewelry—her pins and clip-on earrings and amber necklace and scarves? Where were her gloves? Pilferers! Thieves! Writing up our life like it was up for auction.
And at that instant, I was six and a half years old again, watching the two arresting officers—a man and a woman dressed in quasi-military olive-drab uniforms—opening the door of our wardrobe, running their hands over every hanging item of clothing, palpating the linings, sticking their busy fingers in the pockets before flinging every one of my mother’s possessions on the floor.
They’d taken down a framed photograph hanging above my parents’ bed, a studio shot of the three of us: my jug-eared one-year-old self seated between my young papa in his pulpy suit and my pompadoured mother, her lips cinched in a dark Cupid’s bow. They had taken the picture down to check that nothing was concealed behind it, and then, to make perfectly sure, they ripped open the back of the frame, while my mother—her face blanched and sleepless, her dry lips armored in nothing like the darkly painted heart in the picture—made some tactful imploring protest. And where was I? Seated on my little cot by the radiator, the floral curtain dividing my side of the room from that of my parents jerked open. What time was it? Four-thirty or five A.M.—the violet of the November morning just beginning to creep in through the drapes. I couldn’t move. A heavy hand was weighing down on my shoulder. It belonged to our neighbor down the hall, Avdotya Grigorievna—old “Aunt Dunya”—who cooked me barley soup after school while my mother worked. In the hubbub she had forced her way in the door and refused to leave—to intercede on my behalf, I imagine, though, given the way that trembling paw bore down on my shoulder, I might as well have been a bedpost holding her up. I was surrounded by her scent—the distillation of everything aged and sour and sleepy—while the pudgy young woman in a soldier’s uniform ransacked my mother’s closet. My bladder was held tight against the reality of this moment; I did not dare open my mouth to ask if I could leave the room to relieve myself, and instead concentrated all my focus on the discolored square of wallpaper where the photograph of my family had hung. And now the female officer paused in her scrutiny of our étagère to examine, with a sort of sardonic admiration, the small brass bust of Lenin on the top shelf. It was the same bust—I realized with a mute sense of catastrophe—that Mama took down from the shelf whenever she brought home walnuts. Where had she gotten this statuette, whose impressive bald head fit so perfectly into the curled palm of her hand while she smashed the nuts open with the base of V. I. Lenin’s thorax? Probably it was a reward for services well performed at some place of employ.
A corner of my heart had always suspected that Mama would one day be punished for her misuse of the bust of the grandfather of our nation. Moreover, I was convinced that only I could come to her rescue. I would redeem her incomplete loyalty to Lenin, just as soon as I could shake off Aunt Dunya’s leaden paw, with my full-throated recitation of the Pioneer Oath, which I had seen pasted to the classroom wall:
The Pioneer is true to the work of Lenin and Stalin. The Pioneer loves his motherland and hates her enemies. The Pioneer is honest and truthful. His word is firmer than steel! The Pioneer is as brave as an eagle. He despises a coward.
I imagined the male officer, who in his handling of our stuff seemed the more businesslike and less spiteful of the two, remarking that no one whose child could recite the oath so flawlessly could be an enemy. They’d instantly know they’d barged into the wrong apartment, would be very contrite (perhaps the man would give me his cap), and would leave us, with hearty handshakes, in peace. And then, almost as if I had willed it with the magic of my hope, the male officer, who had been sorting through a mess of papers on the table, scanned the room until his eyes fixed on me.
“Tell the kid to get up,” he commanded Avdotya Grigorievna. I stood up without prompting: It was my chance to get out from under Aunt Dunya’s henlike guard. I tried to will myself to clear my throat in preparation for my recitation. But he walked past me to the metal cot and, bending down to strip it of my flannel sheet and wool blanket, flipped the cushion mattress over to reveal its dingy bottom, overturning my pillow.
“That’s the child’s bed—can’t you see there’s nothing there?” came the warbling remonstrations of Aunt Dunya.
The officer ignored her and, taking out a large pocketknife, slashed the striped pallet along its belly like a fish.
; More shrill, frightened protests arose from the old woman as the man stuck his arm inside the mattress, looking for God knows what; the clots of stuffing fell like New Year’s cotton snow at my feet. I could not speak. I had begun to tremble. My wool stockings grew warm with an abasing wetness.
The situation was so chaotic that for some time no one noticed that I had pissed myself. The male guard was giving special attention to the space behind the radiator, while the girl in uniform, like a hawk, watched my mother packing a small suitcase. Aunt Dunya watched the guards, and the old Tatar janitor who had led the two upstairs now stood in the doorway, a ghostly witness, wearing the same sullen, impervious mask he always wore, no doubt having been made to play the official spectator to this scene many times before. And then my secret was out. “He’s wet himself!” my nanny nearly shouted, causing my mother to leap toward me.
“Stay where you are!” the uniformed girl brayed.
“Please, let me change him.”
Aunt Dunya was now trying to push down my wet bottoms. I hung on to the elastic, resisting. I refused to be unclothed, my shame compounded with terror at being stripped naked in front of these hostile strangers.
“Someone make him stop hollering,” the man shouted.
I was choking with snot.
Again, my mother’s voice: “Leave him alone. Let me change him.”
At last they permitted her to rifle through the disarrayed wardrobe for a pair of dry underwear and wool pants for me. I was in such a state by then that my mother’s efforts to peel off my wet stockings and change me must have been something like trying to clean the scales off a leaping trout. I don’t know how we managed it; I know only that when she had me dressed again she told me—with what sounded to me like a scolding, bruising me all the more—to leave the room with Aunt Dunya.