Again, Mikha went to see his experienced father-in-law, this time about the magazine. He wanted to continue to publish it, but he was uncertain whether he could manage such a complex and important task on his own. Moreover, all the materials for the next issue had been confiscated; he did know how to restore them, however.
Sergei Borisovich was categorical in his answer: no, now was not the time. Mikha was sure to trip up.
As far as Mikha himself was concerned, he began to relish the situation. In the same way that he had once been completely consumed with methods and approaches toward developing the faculty of speech in the deaf, he now felt he was performing a very significant task, playing a crucial role. It seemed to him the future of poetry was in his hands. It was as though someone was instructing him from on high to preserve for posterity everything with intrinsic worth, everything that lived spontaneously, all that escaped the scrutiny of the authorities.
Ilya gave him some wise advice.
“Don’t continue the magazine; make a new one, Mikha! Change the name. Think up some sort of bird, it could even be fun. You’ll be able to manage the poetry yourself, and I’ll introduce you to some artists. I know some art historians; they’re really great. It’s the new avant-garde. I’ll help you make new connections. I know many amazing people. It will be an arts journal. As for politics, it will take care of itself.”
* * *
Three months passed. Just when Mikha had grown tired of waiting to be called in by the KGB for his activities surrounding the magazine, he found a summons from them in his mailbox.
Alyona wasn’t feeling well. She suspected she might be pregnant, but she decided not to tell Mikha for the time being. She had been silent for days, which was not unusual for her. He, on the other hand, talked nonstop: about Edik, about the lawyer some friends had found, about the magazine, old version and new, about Sanya Steklov, who had suddenly turned up and invited them to the Conservatory, though they hadn’t heard a word from him in six months …
He babbled on about everything under the sun, but didn’t say a word about the summons from the KGB in the pocket of his checked shirt.
There were two possible reasons that they wanted to see him. One was that they had given Doctor Zhivago a good shake, and the piece of paper with the Tatar demographics fell out; the other was that Edik had informed on him as an accomplice, which seemed improbable to Mikha.
He was not vexed by the summons. What he felt was closer to embarrassment that he had managed to do so little: nothing, really! He had only written a few articles, and selected and edited some poetry.
When he told Ilya about the summons, Ilya was very upset.
“It was to be expected. I was actually surprised that they had left you alone for so long. And I’m at fault for dragging you into this magazine business. We’ll have to figure out how to extricate you from it now. Edik has a strong character, I don’t think he’d set you up. They’re going to put you through the wringer for those Tatar statistics. You’ve got to think up a good alibi—you bought Zhivago a long time ago from a street vendor, because you’d heard a lot about it. But you hadn’t had time to read it, or even look at it, yet. You don’t know anything about any sheet of paper covered with numbers. And anyone in Moscow can buy the book near the secondhand bookshop on Kuznetsky Bridge; by Pervopechatnik there are street vendors, and it’s even easier at Ptichka, by the entrance. And describe the guy who sold it to you in detail. Say he had long hair, with greasy long locks hanging down from the sides of his head, and a really long nose that reached right down to his lip. And black eyes. And he spoke with a Ukrainian accent. And he wore a vest with spangles…” Ilya looked at his friend searchingly. “Or, let’s say, he was really small, with curly hair and curly sideburns. He had a down-turned nose, light-colored eyes, and small, womanish hands … and he spoke with a burr. Or how about this: He was a nervous, high-strung type, skinny, rather tall, yellowish, with a high, balding forehead, a scraggly beard. And he seemed to walk like a wind-up toy…”
Then Mikha jumped in:
“No, he was a big, burly guy with a massive beard, dressed like a peasant. And a mustache. I’d say he was kind of a slob; an old-timer. And he carried his books in a sack, and wore felt boots with galoshes over them! A giant of a man, indeed!”
They were almost rolling on the floor in laughter.
“No, a woman would be better. A tall, elderly, buxom lady, aristocratic-looking. Wearing a hat and carrying an umbrella. She took the book out of her handbag, and she was wearing gloves. And the strange thing was that it looked like she was wearing them on the wrong hands … The gloves are what made me remember her…” Mikha was getting completely carried away by the game.
“Well, Mikha, what can I say to you? Just say no to everything they ask you. That’s the best way to deal with the situation. I know from experience.”
“You’ve been there?”
“Yes. But I got out. The best thing is not to say anything at all. Remember, every word you say will work against you. No matter what it is. We’re just amateurs—they’re professionals. They have their methods, and they know how to make you take the bait, how to trip you up. The best thing is not to talk. But I’ve heard from other people that this is nearly impossible. They could make a deaf-mute talk.”
The mention of a “deaf-mute” seemed to sear Mikha. It was January. For three years in a row he had been with the boarding-school kids, with his deaf-and-dumb children, during these deep-winter days. They had gone cross-country skiing, first departing from the school gates and walking about a hundred yards into the forest, where a ski track had been made the night before. Usually he went first, followed by the children, with Gleb Ivanovich bringing up the rear. How long had it been since he’d visited them? A year? Two? Suddenly, he wanted desperately to see them. It was urgent. And he spontaneously signed the word to himself with his hands—urgent!
He didn’t say anything to Ilya. There were still two days until Monday, and he decided that on Sunday morning he would get up early and go to the boarding school to spend the day with the children. After all, they let parents visit. He had worked with them for three years. Who would dare try to stop him?
They arrested Mikha at Yaroslav Station when he was getting on the commuter train. He already had one foot in the train when two men yanked him off so adroitly that it seemed at first as if he had stumbled and fallen off the steps himself.
“Easy now, keep quiet!” one of them, wearing a rabbit-fur cap, barked in his ear.
“Quiet—if you know what’s good for you!” said the second one, wearing nutria.
Mikha had a cold. He wanted to reach into his pocket for a handkerchief, and he jerked his hand. He felt a sharp pain in his wrist.
Only then did he understand fully what had happened to him: they were afraid he would take to his heels, so they had intercepted him. That meant they had been following him.
He sniffed loudly.
“Let me just wipe my snot,” he said, and laughed.
“You’re fine the way you are!” roared the rabbit-fur hat again.
“What do you need with a snot-nosed wimp?” Mikha said, and seemed to grow completely calm, even apathetic. He was under arrest.
* * *
The first days were the hardest. He was determined to carry out to the letter all of Ilya’s urgings. On the third day they charged him, and he realized it was all over. The mousetrap had snapped shut, and he couldn’t get out. He fell into a depression then. All his thoughts were with Alyona, and an enormous sense of guilt, one he had known since childhood, gripped him. He didn’t know how she was; he had no connection at all to his life outside prison. The first familiar face he saw, in the second week, was the pale, haggard face of Edik Tolmachev.
They hadn’t agreed on a common strategy, but their actions in prison coincided remarkably. Edik denied Mikha’s participation in the magazine, Mikha refused to answer any questions at all. The only evidence they had against Mikha was the sheet
of paper in the volume of Doctor Zhivago, or, more precisely, Musa’s addendum at the bottom addressed to “Red.”
It turned out that this was enough. Besides Edik Tolmachev, two more people, whom Mikha truly didn’t know, had been brought in about the case of the unsanctioned journal Gamayun. Despite some shortcomings in his management, Edik knew the basics of conspiracy—not all the participants in the publication of the magazine knew one another.
The investigation and preparation for the trial took a little over three months. Mikha was held in a KGB detention cell in Lefortovo Prison, in the most secret and cut-off quarters—a whitewashed cell with a sealed-off window that blocked out all light, and the outside world. Every day, to the sound of a metallic clip-clop, clip-clop, the guard would lead him down the long, labyrinthine corridors, and up and down narrow stairways, where one could only walk in single file. Twice, when they met a prisoner being led toward them from the other direction, they shoved Mikha into a recess, like a side closet. Then they resumed their journey through the tangle of nightmarish, seemingly endless corridors, until, finally, they deposited him in the investigator’s office. Now the interrogators didn’t alternate. There was just one heavyset, gloomy officer, who always began their hours-long interaction with the words:
“So, are we still refusing to speak?”
He had absolutely no imagination, and always repeated, in the same soft, hoarse voice:
“We don’t have anything on you. You could be out of here tomorrow. You’re pushing up the length of your own term. We want to get rid of you.”
Mikha repeated, in a bored monotone:
“I even address my young students with the formal ‘you.’ Please be so good as to address me the same way.”
The investigator’s name was Meloedov. Mikha, with his keen ear, was immediately alert to the echo in their names: Meloedov and Melamid. But apart from the first two syllables of their surnames, they had nothing in common. True, Meloedov was no man-eating monster. He even had the reputation, in his own circles, of being almost a liberal (among those who knew words like that, at least). And, to the investigator, this redheaded fellow seemed at first like a chance character who had wandered into the wrong play. His dossier contained Gleb Ivanovich’s already old denunciation, and a piece of paper of indeterminate origin, testifying to his links to the Tatar right-of-return movement. Article 70—agitation and propaganda—was clearly not relevant here. And Article 190—the distribution of intentionally false information harmful to the Soviet authorities—would have to be proved, before it was imputed to him. A single denunciation by a single loony was a bit flimsy as evidence. Moreover, the fellow’s defense wasn’t half bad.
Mikha had no way of knowing that the decision to isolate him had been made beforehand, and that the powers-that-be were leisurely trying to come up with a case they could slap on him.
Finally, the decision came down from above, and the interrogation became more pointed and expedient, and Mikha realized that the case they were building was not related to the journal activities. Rather, the focus had been narrowed to his involvement with the Crimean Tatars. By this time, Edik had already been sentenced.
Mikha did not give any testimony, didn’t sign anything, and answered some mundane, insignificant questions, and only off the record. He was amiable enough, but he firmly denied having any part in the right-to-return movement, and insisted that he knew nothing about the Tatar demographics paper.
Meloedov, certain at first that it wouldn’t take much to make Melamid talk, grew progressively more agitated at Mikha’s recalcitrance, and resorted to ever more convincing threats. He raged and fumed at Mikha’s stubbornness, but nothing could make him give evidence. And to think that at first the investigator thought it would be enough to scare him a little, give him a light kick in the behind …
By the end of the month, Meloedov had left Mikha in peace and stopped calling him in for questioning. The interest of the investigative committee had shifted to the Tatars. One of them revealed that Mikha had helped them to write letters.
But Mikha knew nothing of this. Now he shared the cell with two other men. One of them was completely mad, and constantly muttered either prayers or curses under his breath. The other was a discharged military man, a procurement officer who had been caught stealing. These cellmates inspired no desire to socialize.
Then they transferred him to another cell, which he shared with a Tatar who was involved with the Crimean Tatar movement. It turned out that he was friends with Mikha’s acquaintances Ravil and Musa. It was only on the third day, when they removed the Tatar from Mikha’s cell, that Mikha realized he had been planted there. He was an informer. Now Mikha was even more adamant about not saying another word. After some time, Meloedov started calling him in for questioning again; now Mikha really did keep silent, like a deaf-mute.
In the middle of February, Mikha was formally charged, and he was allowed to see a lawyer. The lawyer was one of their own, not someone assigned by the state. Sergei Borisovich had seen to this. Her name was Dina Arkadievna, and she had the first intelligent and attractive face he had seen in a long time. She took a chocolate bar out of her pocket and said:
“Alyona says hello. And there’s another piece of good news: Alyona’s pregnant. She’s feeling fine. Now we’ll try to figure out how we can get you home before the baby is born. Eat the chocolate here. I’m not allowed to give you anything.”
She was one of the lawyers who took on political cases—the “magnificent five.” This was the third trial of its kind. It was also the trial that got her kicked out of the Collegium of Moscow Attorneys. After the prosecutor’s statement demanding the application of Article 190, Part 1, of the Penal Code—the dissemination of false information defaming the Soviet authorities—she committed the rash act of not requesting that the sentence be reduced, instead insisting on the absence of grounds for indictment. In other words, she claimed the defendant was innocent.
Alyona, whose face had grown thinner as her belly grew, was sitting in the last row of the small, packed courtroom. On her right was her mother, Valentina, and on her left, Igor Chetverikov, one of Mikha’s classmates from school, though not a close friend. Ilya and Sanya, along with many others, were not allowed into the courtroom, and stood outside the door.
Marlen, who was also present in the crowd outside the door, his face contorted with helpless anger, whispered fiercely in Ilya’s ear:
“He’s simply mad! What was he thinking? It’s just beyond me! Why the Tatars? Why the Crimea? He should have been thinking about himself! For a Jew to get mixed up in the right of return of the Crimean Tatars! He should have been organizing his own right of return to Israel!”
Mikha was sentenced to three years in a medium-security prison camp, after which he was allowed to make a final statement. He spoke better than the judge, the prosecutor, and the lawyer put together. In a clear, rather high voice, calm and confident, he spoke about the justice that would ultimately prevail in society, in the world; about those who would feel ashamed of themselves; about the grandchildren of people alive today who would find it hard to believe the cruelty and senselessness of the past. What a wonderful literature teacher he made, and how unfortunate that the deaf schoolchildren had been deprived of his rare gifts!
After the trial, Alyona’s parents took her home to their house. She spent two days there, quarreled with her father, then returned to Chistoprudny Boulevard.
Sanya, who turned up at Alyona’s on the day he found out about Mikha’s arrest, went to see her every day now. The years of mutual coolness in his relations with Mikha seemed to have evaporated overnight. Their friendship, it turned out, was alive and well, and didn’t require any special nourishment in the form of frequent telephone calls, status reports, or drinking beer together.
A week after Mikha’s arrest Ilya and Sanya were sitting one evening in Milyutin Park on the bench with two broken slats. Sanya stared at the toes of his boots: Should he say it or not? Either way it was
lame; but not saying anything at all was wrong. He said it, without looking at Ilya’s face.
“Ilya, you’re the reason Mikha’s in prison, you know.”
Ilya spat out defensively: “What are you talking about! Are you nuts?”
“You tempted him. Don’t you remember what it says in Matthew about causing the little ones to stumble?”
“No!” Ilya insisted. “We’re all adults, aren’t we? Well, aren’t we?”
But in his heart of hearts he felt uneasy. He was the one, after all, who had introduced Mikha to Edik, and he was responsible for what had happened in an indirect sense. But only indirectly!
* * *
The vindictive Meloedov did everything in his power to prevent Mikha from seeing his wife before being sent away under armed guard to the prison camp. Only the persistence of his father-in-law, an experienced ex-con himself, who managed to get an appointment with the deputy security officer of the prison, foiled in the end the machinations of the investigator.
On the eve of his departure, Mikha was granted a meeting with his wife. She had grown plainer, as some pregnant women do, especially (according to folk legend) if she’s carrying a girl. To Mikha, her beauty was angelic, but he was unable to express what was boiling and seething inside him. He was unable because of his habitual, innate sense of profound guilt toward every living being, which was magnified even more by the circumstances. The only thing he managed to say was some sort of nonsense that sounded like Dostoevsky: “I am guilty for everyone, for everything, before all people…”
That was what he was feeling as he left under convoy to the prison camp: guilty, guilty for all that had happened … Guilty before Alyona, since he had left her alone; before his friends, for not being able to do anything that would change the disposition of things for the better; before the whole world, to which he was indebted …
The Big Green Tent Page 51