He reached across to run a circle over the steering wheel. Passenger cars were beginning to crowd some streets, but when he had wangled the Volga thirteen years ago, he was the one Russian in a million with private wheels and his kind of grin in the driver's seat. In a cap I'd bought for the occasion, he now looked like John D. Rockefeller in his last, wizened years.
I had wanted to take a taxi because of a snowstorm and the doctors had ordered an ambulance, but Alyosha pleaded to go in the car that had taken him to the Black, Baltic, Azov and Caspian Seas in the days when that alone was enough to provide an illusion of freedom and indulgence. Now we intended to defy doctors' orders and drive out to the river beach where he used to swim every summer before his annual trip to the subtropical south. It was to be just a look, but he was deprived even of this because the motor stalled and neither of us could restart it. Alyosha was scrunching into the ball in which he had lain after the first operation and turning greener with each round of coughing. Appalled at my foolishness in helping with the discharge, I ran down the street, waving wildly for a push from passing cars.
At last the nightmare was over; we turned into his street. Neighbors in the courtyard whispered the feared word "cancer." Very slowly, I helped him up the stairs, Maxi following a step behind like a trained pointer, although Alyosha's new scent had made her nervous during the drive.
I plopped him into the daybed, which I'd moved beneath the window for his reading. But after a rest, he asked to "tour" the apartment. His weight on my arms, he shuffled down the corridor, in and out of the bathroom and across the living room to the kitchen. I'd completed the remodeling a few days before, painting the cabinets with a good semigloss I'd managed to
Gold Medal^403
obtain. I had sometimes worked late into the night: the term project to end term projects. Alyosha's smile was reward enough.
"A new kitchen is a fresh . . . Let's think of a nifty proverb, muchacho.^''
He was bathed in sweat, like a white trader with tropical fever. Shifting his grip to hug me in thanks, he suddenly began trembling. "Can't walk any more," he said abjectly. Slipping away from me, he leaned against the wall to rest, only to jerk straight up because of his sweat splotches on the new wallpaper.
"Ozj I've queered your beautiful job."
I helped him negotiate his last steps back to the bed.
He offered me a smoke—partly as a stand-in for this evening's carrot, for he had dropped the stick. But it was also to show off his access to the American cigarettes sold at the special stores for his Service. His attempt to do it casually—to convince me he saw nothing extraordinary in a pack of Marlboros—only accentuated his fawning regard for the red-and-white box.
"What's this hesitation? Why don't you trust us? Don't think we'd ever blackmail you, that's the last thing that would occur to us."
The homecoming was a shot in the arm. I caught myself hoping again. Alyosha himself spoke of his condition as "stabilized," and reckoned the chemotherapy had done some good after all. Again, he seemed to read my thoughts.
"All right, I do believe in miracles. I'll go on believing until the last day. But that's wildly futuristic, so will you please hatch a smaller commercial wonderwork to sanctify the redecorated kitchen with meat and potatoes?"
Ignoring my admonitions, he applied himself to an approximation of his old activity. I had to move back the bed in reach of the telephone, which he used constantly, calling business contacts to raise money, giving legal and personal advice to old friends together with medical reports about himself. These highly exaggerated his improvement: he was sensible enough not to encourage an exhausting stream of well-wishers.
Besides, he was planning to see everyone on New Year's Eve. Changing his mind again about the party—it was now to be a
404^MOSCOW FAREWELL
"recluse's extravaganza" at home—he sent me out for the LP's to finance it. Bastard's knowledge that I had no license provided another little lever for blackmail, but also an odd measure of protection against ordinary traffic cops.
One day, I returned to find a girl washing up in the kitchen, a homemade beret pulled over her ears despite the indoor warmth I maintained with extra heaters. Like a maid of many years, she moved on to the bathroom, stopping only for a comment about a scratch in the new sink. This was my introduction to Nina, an old Erstwhile. Tall and once probably attractive, she was already growing peasant-thick at twenty-three. But her very unobtrusive-ness gave her dignity. And her wide-lipped smile, which appeared at unpredictable moments, was the outward indication of an original sense of humor.
From then on, she was with us every day, taking over most of the domestic work, knitting in a corner when nothing was needed. She came at dawn, directly from the telephone exchange where she worked, and left in time for her night shift. At first she said nothing about her attachment to Alyosha; I thought she was simply a kind girl who, in the best Russian tradition, offered her large red hands for sweeping and scrubbing in a tragedy.
Bastard resumed his coaching after a short pause for effect. Back in America, he explained, I would overhear anti-Soviet plots. Contemptible articles being planned, "nefarious" agents preparing to pose as diplomats or tourists. But first I had to place myself in earshot.
"Travel around some: you're an active person, you don't like sitting in one place. To Washington, for example. You should know your own capital anyway, and also the State Department experts; you're curious about what makes people tick.
"And when you get wind of some filth, you take the next plane here. Forget the expense, the Soviet people aren't stingy defending peace—or rewarding peace fighters."
My head ached with envy of Moscow Americans who avoided this pimping by living "clean." And I had to clear it for something freshly timewasting.
"All right, Evgeny Ivanovich, Fm in Washington. And I hear something urgent but don't have enough money on me for a
Gold Medal^405
ticket; I can only contact you. Should I use the telephone number I have?"
His smile sagged into a grimace. Propelled by his shout, flakes of horseradish were splattering my jacket.
"No. I forbid it. Not from abroad."
His black eyes blazed in revenge for this attempt to take the initiative with him, the counterintelligence expert. But he wouldn't be tricked; he knew no one would ask for such information without CIA coaching. Yet this quick counterstroke did not abate his inner fury: not he but his superiors would have to take any decision about contact from the States—and he hated me for revealing his lowly status.
The question grew sorer with his puzzling delay dealing with it. Surely the KGB had dozens of suitable fronts? But during our next meetings, his admonishments that he would instruct me about contact procedure at the proper time only made it more obvious that he hadn't received his own instructions.
Finally, he produced the address and telephone number of an apartment and ordered me, as if he'd thought of the idea, to call or cable there if I had to make an emergency contact. Passing a telephone booth the same night, I wondered whether he'd named his own place. The test was so simple: I'd hang up when someone answered. No one did. There was no such number, and, as a quick taxi ride proved, no building at the given address.
Prone Alyosha was cocking a snoot at doomsday: propped high on pillows, declaring he thought he'd licked the pain, taking pleasure in the telephone's constant chiming. The talk was about tickets for Duke Ellington's forthcoming visit and about the weekend dog show, for which members of Moscow "society" were already grooming their entries. Suddenly he cupped his hand over the receiver and announced that Maxi was going to cop first prize.