by Marek Halter
She murmured, “You called him ‘that guy.’ … Michael … I won’t have him referred to as ‘that guy.’”
We were still standing, facing each other as stiff as pokers, several feet apart. I felt the need to take a step back, so I positioned myself behind the table. The distance seemed to reassure her. She glanced toward the door.
“If that visitor permit is a fake, I’ll have to notify the warden.”
“No, please don’t do that.”
“They’ll use it against me.”
“I promise they won’t. If it causes you any trouble, I’ll own up.”
She fell silent. The blue of her eyes changed again, brightening. Her voice altered as well. The sounds that then came from her lips were unintelligible. I understood nothing except that she was speaking to me in Russian.
A flicker of amusement flashed across her face. She must have decided I was genuinely baffled. Uncrossing her arms, she ran her hands over her face as if to smooth out any wrinkles.
“Aren’t you with them?”
“With McCarthy and his cronies? Definitely not!”
She shook her head in irritation.
“No, I meant the New York crowd.”
I didn’t understand.
She persisted, “The Bolsheviks at the consulate, they’re after me too. They’re very powerful. They can get ahold of permits like yours.”
I hadn’t given it a moment’s thought. She shrugged her shoulders.
“It’s a stupid question, isn’t it? If you’re with the consulate, you’re hardly going to admit it, but at least this way you know that I know too.”
“I’ve got nothing to do with those guys! I don’t know them. … ”
“Of course not.”
She shook her head, curling her lip. I didn’t try to argue. It was crazy, but I sympathized.
“Koenigsman is a Jewish name. Are you Jewish?”
“Yes.”
Now wide awake and as taut as a bow, she pulled one of the chairs toward her. The sound of the metal scraping on the tiles went right through me. She brushed her palm across the back of the chair before sitting down on the very edge of it. Not for the first time, her gestures struck me as theatrical. It was a precise science, rehearsed a thousand times. She was well aware of the effect of her body language and the look in her eyes when she asked, “Is that why you believe that I didn’t kill Michael, because you’re Jewish?”
There was a sarcastic edge to her voice.
“No … I don’t know why I believe it, but I do.”
I had decided to be absolutely straight with her, since I couldn’t think of any other way to overcome her suspicion. She eyed me scornfully in silence. I was tempted to tell her about T. C. Lheen, to explain that I knew a lawyer who could help her, but I didn’t have the nerve. The time didn’t seem right. I wasn’t wanted. She was calling the shots, and I just had to go along with it. I kept my mouth shut, as if I’d forgotten my blustering lines. In a matter of minutes, she had managed to transform the squalid visiting room into a set. I had become both her audience and some obscure minor character.
She closed her eyes for a moment and remained silent, then snapped them open and stared at the wall in front of her.
“Memories are funny things. Since I’ve been living here, in your country, I had almost forgotten … I wanted to forget, be a new person and lead a new life. But now the questions they’re asking me at the hearing keep bringing it all back. It’s as if I’ve dived into a river and can no longer get back to the bank. I can hardly sleep. Last night, I relived all the days of my journey to Birobidzhan as vividly as if I were back on the train. It was such a long journey, so long and so cold! It must have taken ten or twelve days, perhaps more, and as many nights.
“I made the first leg of it in an old carriage with wooden seats. There was a stove in the middle with a grate around it. They would burn thick logs on it. The cast-iron plates would glow red in the dark. We left Moscow before dawn. There were mostly women on board, many of them heading for the arms factories in Gorky. They were tough old women laden with bundles, trunks, and bags. Now that the Germans were no longer a threat to Moscow, they had decided to join their daughters and grandchildren in the Urals. Determined not to leave anything useful or precious behind, some of them were wearing several layers of clothes, one on top of the other, two or three coats, several petticoats and blouses. Others had to help them climb into the carriage because they couldn’t even move their arms. They giggled like schoolgirls as we peeled off their layers like onionskins. There were a handful of toothless old men at the far end of the carriage who hadn’t been sent off to war and didn’t have families, wives, or daughters-in-law to take care of them. They cracked jokes, eyeing the bags packed with food and vodka. The old women scolded them as if they were children. They told the men in no uncertain terms that they wouldn’t get their hands on their bags, and that they should grow up and start behaving like men, real men, that is. There was a lot of shouting, joking, and loud laughter. You would have thought the women were going on vacation. They seemed to be looking forward to what was in store for them at the end of their journey, but it didn’t last.
“Once the train was chugging along at a steady pace and everyone could see the shadows of Moscow disappearing behind them, nobody felt like cracking jokes anymore. The laughing was over. All anyone could think of now was the life they were leaving behind in the vast city of Moscow, the past, the feelings, good and bad. They were having the kind of thoughts that people have when death is close at hand. Like the others, I had a lump in my throat. It was as if, even then, I knew I would never see Moscow again.”
She had forgotten all about me, just as she had forgotten the jail walls. I didn’t dare to move a muscle, or even sit down. I would have hated to make her lose her thread. She had slipped back into the storytelling style that I had found so fascinating at the hearings, but this time the show was just for me.
“After the high spirits of departure came the tears. All the women could talk about was the war, the men they had lost or would probably never see again—sons, brothers, husbands, and even lovers, calling them by their pet names. They spoke fondly of the men’s funny little habits, their weaknesses, when they had first met, the way they smelled, the tender words they had spoken before going off to face the machinery of death. Dry-eyed, they talked about all the things they missed every evening and all the things that stopped them from sleeping at night. Some women had cried so much that they couldn’t cry anymore. Those women had turned to alcohol from the very beginning. They would slowly drown their sorrows until nightfall. It was the only way they could get any sleep. I listened but kept quiet. No one was surprised because I was the youngest in the carriage. They weren’t interested in me and were in no state to be curious.”
She paused briefly to get her breath back.
“I got into the habit of going to fetch the logs for the stove. There was always wood on the platform at every station, but you had to be quick. People didn’t even wait for the train to come to a standstill before leaping off and dashing for the piles of logs. Since I was the youngest, I was a fast runner. The women in the carriage would crowd around the step to watch me run and cheer me on. It was like being in a race. … It was funny. I hadn’t brought enough food with me for the journey and before long I had nothing left in my basket. They fed me like a child. ‘Eat, Marinotchka, eat! You have to make sure you have enough energy to fetch our wood for us.’”
Instinctively, I smiled when she did. A glance at my watch told me that we had just under fifteen minutes left. The officer was pacing up and down outside the glass door. Marina wasn’t paying any attention to her. I decided to sit down. Marina didn’t notice.
“The questions did come, just the bare minimum. They asked me where I was going and why. I didn’t tell them that I was going to hide out in Birobidzhan. I just said, ‘East, faraway from Moscow.’ They nodded. ‘So you aren’t going to Gorky then?’ ‘No, farther than that.’ ‘Are you going t
o Perm?’ ‘Even farther than that.’ Now they knew. Beyond Perm, there’s only Siberia. ‘Do you have family out there?’ Why didn’t I just tell the truth? Perhaps because I suspected that their attitude toward me would change at the mention of the word Jew. I told a little white lie and nodded. It was almost true. Although I didn’t know it yet, the big Jewish family was waiting for me. The women didn’t press me any further. They thought they understood. They imagined I was going to join a husband or lover in one of the thousands of corrective labor camps, Gulag camps. Everyone knew about them. Some women with no children and no remaining family would go and live near the camp where their men were held. They became prisoners themselves in the hope of keeping a kind of love alive.”
Marina wasn’t talking to me. She was softly recounting her memories as if she found it somehow comforting, like a soothing caress. I had to listen hard to catch what she was saying. Perhaps she talked to herself like that when she was alone in her cell, telling herself her story, perhaps not. Maybe it was all just another ingenious theatrical trick and she needed an audience, but that didn’t make it any less genuine. I only wished T. C. could hear her as I was hearing her. It would have made him less cynical. For the first time since she had come into the visiting room, I realized that she was naked underneath her smock, as if her words and her skin were protection enough.
“All that time, I was ‘Marinotchka, the girl who was going to join her zek, her man in prison.’ Lots of passengers got off at Gorky. Others climbed into the carriage, though they were fewer in number. They were going to Perm, on the other side of the Volga. A few were heading for Kuybichev. At every station stop, in every town, new passengers clambered aboard. They came in with their bags and their smell of snow and ice. The cold grew even more bitter. The heat from the stove was no longer an effective weapon against it. We took to keeping our coats on at night. After that, there was Kazan and Sverdlovsk. Four days had passed since we’d left Moscow. We had crossed the mountains and were still half a day away from Chelyabinsk when our journey was interrupted by a snowdrift. It was pitch dark and nobody could see a thing. In the morning, the conductor announced that the line was blocked for at least half a verst[6]. We were given shovels, and we all got off to clear the rails, men and women alike. The snow was so deep that it took all day, and what a beautiful day it was, very cold and clear. We were halfway up a hill. Below the track, a forest glistened with frost. Above us, the ground rippled, softened by the snow that crunched under our shovels. Digging the snow wasn’t tiring. It was nothing like digging trenches in Moscow. After days subjected to the infernal rumble and rattle of the train, it was actually a pleasure. The silence was glorious. Voices didn’t carry. Our breath formed icy little clouds that hung motionless above us. When the sun sank lower in the sky, the air glittered with billions of vapor crystals. The thick silvery clouds looked like crowns hovering above our heads. The women were so moved that they crossed themselves. At nightfall, before the train went on its way, the stoves glowed like never before. Food was produced out of baskets. Passengers with vodka opened their bottles. Up and down the train, there was a mood of celebration.”
She had brought her knees up to her chest. Crossing her ankles and pressing her heels against the edge of the chair, she was rocking ever so slightly, like a child or Jews I’d seen praying at the synagogue. Her face had changed. It was no longer gray with exhaustion. She looked years younger. I could picture her sitting on the edge of a bed telling children about her journey as they battled against sleep.
“Everything changed at Chelyabinsk. A dozen families were waiting on the platform. There were children, young men, old men, and grandmothers holding babies wrapped in blankets. Some of them were clutching battered suitcases, others bundles. Their clothes were different, their faces were different. They looked fraught with fear and exhaustion. The guards jostled them into the first carriage behind the locomotive. We were going into the belly of Siberia. The windows iced up, barely letting in any light. One woman asked who the families were. A man replied that they were Jews heading for Birobidzhan and explained that trains from the Crimea stopped in Chelyabinsk. ‘From time to time, Jews get off them,’ he said. ‘It looks like things are going from bad to worse over there for them with the Krauts.’ And that’s how it happened, that’s how I became a Jew even before I arrived in Birobidzhan. For the first time, I felt as if I had something in common with them.
“At Omsk, the train was split. Part of it was to go straight on, toward Novosibirsk, the other was to head south toward China and Lake Baikal. Once again, a Red Army officer and a politruk checked our domestic passports and tickets. They were giving passengers directions depending on whether they were getting off at Irkutsk or going on. When they saw my ticket they looked surprised. The politruk studied my face from every angle. ‘You need to go and join the Jews bound for Birobidzhan in the front carriage, comrade.’ There were no compartments in the carriage, only wooden seats. Children were sleeping on bags and in luggage lockers. The cracks around the windows had been stuffed with newspaper to stop soot from the engine coming in.
“They scrutinized me, their eyes anxious, mistrustful, and weary. What was I doing there all alone? It was some time before an old man with no more than a smattering of Russian plucked up the courage to ask me where I was going. When I replied, ‘Birobidzhan,’ he smiled, astonished. ‘Yid?’ he asked. It was a Yiddish word that I had never come across before, but I guessed what it meant and nodded. Yes, I was a Yid too! They made room for me. I didn’t have much luggage.”
She laughed softly, looking at me for the first time since she had begun to tell her story. Suddenly, her blue eyes clouded with tears. She shook her head.
“They were all so happy, so looking forward to getting to Birobidzhan! How could they possibly have imagined what was in store for them?”
She was interrupted by the sound of a key turning in the lock. The officer appeared.
“Time’s up!”
Marina froze for a fraction of a second. Standing up, she snatched the bag’s straps before the officer could get her hands on it.
“They think they’re punishing me with their stupid farher,” she said, using the Yiddish word for examination, her eyes running over me. “But I’m happy. I’m reliving every minute. Soon I’ll get to Michael.”
The officer pushed her toward the door.
“Time’s up.”
On the threshold of the visiting room, Marina turned.
“Who knows? Meshané mazal?”
The visitor’s door had opened behind me without me noticing. Another officer was standing in the doorway.
“What was she saying?”
“It’s a Yiddish expression,” I said, picking up my hat. “It means that luck can change.”
“Yiddish? You mean that mumbo jumbo the Jews speak?”
“I think so, yes.”
She didn’t seem too pleased.
Cohn’s man from the CIA was Irish. In his forties, he was small and podgy. Pale and freckled, he was not at all the kind of spy you’d find in a Hollywood movie. A leather briefcase tucked under his arm, he came into the auditorium and gawked excitedly at Marina like a kid in front of a chimp’s cage. She didn’t pay any more attention to him than she had to me as the guards escorted her to her seat. Nobody would have guessed that we had met in the visiting room of the Old County Jail three hours earlier.
I barely had an hour at my place to jot down what she had told me before I had to leave for the capitol. The woman we now saw before us was nothing like the exhausted prisoner I had wrenched from her cell. I’d like to believe that my visit to the jail had lifted her spirits. She made her appearance in a green summer dress with a white caraco jacket over the top. Once rid of her handcuffs, she took off her jacket, exposing her bare arms and the high neckline of her dress. The dress was perfect for the occasion. Hardly showing any cleavage, it was sensible but snug-fitting enough at the waist and bust to ensure that the men on the Committee missed
nothing of her sensuality. Nobody would have guessed that this was the first time she had worn it. She had also put on some light makeup. A hint of mascara emphasized the blue of her irises, while her lips had lost that chalky paleness I had noticed earlier that morning.
Shirley turned and gave me a wink. She had reason to be proud of her choice. I only hoped that Cohn, Wood, and the Committee members didn’t have the sense to wonder who was behind their witness’s new appearance.
Apparently they didn’t. They were more interested in their Irishman from the CIA than in Marina Andreyeva Gousseiev’s new frock. As soon as she had taken her seat, Wood put his gavel to use. The hearing resumed.
More foppish than ever in a squirrel gray chintz suit with his tuft of hair plastered down, Cohn exchanged a friendly greeting with his new witness and then continued.
“Would you be so good as to tell the Committee your name and profession?”
“Roy Markus O’Neal. I’m a strategic analyst for the CIA.”
“Are you aware that you are giving evidence under oath?”
“Yes, sir, within the limits of what I am authorized to disclose.”
“That goes without saying. Do you, in your capacity as strategic analyst, know of a region or state in the Soviet Union called Birobidzhan?”
The Irishman took some papers out of his briefcase. He consulted them, nodding all the while.
“Yes, sir. The region does exist. The Soviets know it as the Jewish Autonomous Oblast of Birobidzhan. Its capital is also called Birobidzhan. The region is only slightly bigger than Massachusetts. It’s on the Amur River, which marks the border between the USSR and Manchuria, not far from Harbin, the capital of Manchuria, around two hundred miles away by road.”
O’Neal shot the Committee members a sardonic smile.
“I don’t suppose you’re familiar with the geography of that part of the world. It’s less than three hundred miles from the Pacific Coast as the crow flies, and five hundred from the Japanese island of Hokkaido. In other words, it’s a very long way from Moscow, over five thousand miles, and it’s no paradise. You’d have to have a really good reason for going there. Just imagine the Siberian boreal forest known as ‘the taiga’: larch trees as far as the eye can see, marshes, mosquitos, a land where nothing grows, bitterly cold in winter and scorching hot in the summer. So that’s the geography of the place, but geography is crucial in the whole Birobidzhan affair.”