"It's what you've always wanted as a person searching for himself through truth. Don't think I'd dream of asking you to perform espionage. We stand on the principle that you must do nothing against your own conscience—yes, and it's exactly the scheming that violates your conscience you'll want to discuss with people you trust. You can help us be sure of who is our friend and who isn't. Because a huge spy network is plotting against us here. . . ."
To the extent that the crudeness exceeded my expectation, I was relieved. The trick now was to avoid undertaking the smallest errand for him, which would lead to instant blackmail, yet not to prompt their revenge by refusing: more than ever, my job was to stay with Alyosha. Thank God, I'd begin with a week or more of clear sailing. I'd tell him I needed at least that much
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time to think, and ask for a copy of the Twenty-fourth Congress's declarations on how the Party is pursuing its goal of world peace.
Word had gone around. Well-wishers came regularly, the new ones with the apprehensiveness of first visits to a cancer clinic. They sat briefly at his bedside, trying to cheer him up with snippets of news, or, if he was dozing, peeked from the corridor and talked to me about the incredibility of what was happening, with reminiscences about escapades with him to prove this point.
Most were happy to leave quickly, either not to tire him or to escape his coughing. Some said silly, self-serving things, such as reminding him of some favor they had performed in the business of acquiring him cloth for a suit or a reservation in a hotel room. Many fought not to disturb him by crying.
The mainstays were from the eclectric collection—the Ilyas, Ediks, Lev Davidovichs—he'd seen most often during the past four or five years. But some of the cultural achievers present at the preoperation soiree also came, as well as former clients he'd assumed, as he sometimes quipped on their way out, were still in the clink. And a smattering of Erstwhiles bearing touching, useless gifts.
And his former wife, who came twice a week since I first brought her at his request, and was less pleasant than I'd imagined from our brief meetings last winter. I wondered why he had taken such pains to continue seeing her all these years. Keeping her new husband away, she spoke of herself as Alyosha's closest living relative, a weakly disguised hint about inheritance, accompanied by eyes on the Volga.
Anastasia had been coming when I wasn't there. Ever since my plane touched down in September, the knowledge that I was near her again—that she was still here, in this closed world and within my reach—was my comfort as I tried to comfort Alyosha. Alek came by to apologize for his London behavior and to tell me of Anastasia's parting from the professor. I sensed we would start almost anew when we met again, for something had happened to make me want to know her, and not my dreams about us.
But we could not talk about our future during his ordeal; and to avert my old tendency to play a noble role, I did not want her
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to see me at his side. We cooperated by avoiding each other, until I caught sight of her leaving the building one evening, her head hung, her hat askew. I remembered the hiding behind tree trunks to spy on her, and she looked up just then as if she'd known I was there. We smiled, perceived the importance of our forthcoming meeting, nodded. Everything took a long time, as though we were moving through water, whose current bore her off to a street on my right.
Still feeling obliged to try, the doctors asked the chief chemotherapist of the prestigious Blokhin Institute to examine Alyosha personally. The day before his appointment, I entered the ward to see him sitting up in bed.
"Give me your hand." The absence of greeting revealed how impatiently he had been waiting for me.
His ribs were like the struts of a Japanese lantern. On the damp skin stretched across the middle ones, I felt a lump the size of a meat ball. I wasn't startled, because I had noticed it two days before when shifting him to a more comfortable position.
"It's all over," he said, settling back into the pillow. "Nature taking its course." In the next minute I felt him making his peace not with his fate as before, but with death itself He was utterly calm.
"It might not be so bad," I ventured weakly.
"Oh, muchacho, I don't need that.''^
Silently, he showed me more lumps on his back and stomach, then broke into a grin like the limey POWs photographed when first catching sight of liberating British troops.
"What are we waiting for? Time to vacate the premises."
He knew that some terminal patients were allowed out and resented losing a single extra hour to bureaucratic delay. Home beckoned so powerfully that strength returned for plying me to get him discharged. But I hesitated about leaving medicine's keeping.
"It's going to be harder if I have to be cute with you too," he said impatiently. "I understand you think it strange, but I know everything and am prepared for everything. Let me go out with a memory of real life, as opposed to this hospital imitation."
Feeling I had no further duty to encourage him with
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treatment, I argued his case to the doctors, who met informally the same afternoon and concurred that keeping him against his wishes served no purpose. The last X-rays had shown large voids in his lungs, and the disease was still spreading "as if it had something against him." The tricky question was who was going to look after him, but despite the extreme irregularity, I convinced them to accept me. I fetched his ex-wife, who still bore the name Aksyonova, despite her remarriage. It was agreed he be signed out to her official care, while the nursing procedures were explained to me.
I hurriedly packed his things. The doctors said that curative measures could be resumed at home in two weeks, but Alyosha did not need this pretense either. He thanked them warmly, each with a personal mention of what they did best. They slumped, as if not thoroughly used to this. The final examination and writing of the discharge would take place in the morning.
Bastard was drinking more than usual, probably because it was too early to expect my final decision, and this meal was merely to keep his presence felt. More for the microphone than for me, he was mouthing his old monologue about giving me the chance to atone for my mistakes. Some of his colleagues were still demanding retribution for my joining Joe Sourian as a CIA scout, inciting Chingiz to defect, using Alyosha's illness as a front for—
"For God's sake, stop," I said. "Why do you need the lies, what good do they do?"
I wondered why I'd snapped. He'd long been stuffing me with worse junk and graver implications. But there was no time to puzzle over this. In a flash, he was cold sober and ready for action, as if he'd never touched a drop.
"Watch your tongue and don't ever try to call me a liar. You're on the territory of the Soviet Union, not your Harvard playground. And I'm sick of your stalling, make up your mind."
For the first time, I thought I must forget the complications and go to the Embassy. But the cultural attache's lie when I had told him about Anastasia meant they trusted me as little as I them. They'd only suspect me of cooperating with Bastard—and in any case, KGB microphones in the Embassy building would
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probably give me away. . . . No, drawing them in would only worsen everything. They'd see to it that I, tainted, was expelled.
The fear of Bastard's threat the night before extended to every little thing. I was afraid of Maxi's attitude toward Alyosha, not having seen him since before the first operation. But the minute I wheeled him through the doors, she sent a howl of anxious greeting from inside the car. An assistant and I negotiated the chair down the ramp and settled the patient under his blankets.