Choking over her words, clinging to the body, she asked why he was depriving his friends of his goodness, abandoning us to darkness. She wailed in anguish—and I prayed she had enough strength to keep it up, because I had too little to cope with the numbness that would follow.
Gold Medal^421
When it was light, we washed the body, slowly, to protract our contact with him. Nina was already growing distant from me. The great emptiness had begun.
I switch off the hght and draw the half-curtain in case I'm being watched from a dormitory window overlooking mine. If the KGB acts, I think with surprising calm, it must be in the next few hours. December's predawn darkness affords a margin of safety, and anyway it's got to be now rather than never; left behind, the icon would be a trail of evidence.
In the glint of streetlamps on snow, I remove the square foot of crumbly gesso and wood from its hiding place and stash it between some legal journals and balalaika records near the bottom of my trunk. Although everything is still proceeding according to plan—New Roommate will be another ten minutes frying his breakfast in the communal kitchen—the suspense of what probably awaits The Madonna and me spikes my blood with adrenalin.
So I'm leaving Moscow as I arrived: edgy because of the country's harsh rules and my impulse to flout them. To cheat by
Come Again?^423
sneaking out contraband. One day—if I slip through at the airport— I'll no doubt attribute these palpitations to totalitarianism. I picture myself lecturing to college audiences about the Soviet citizen's subliminal dread. I alone will know that shouting at Kremlin evil helps drown internal whispers of my corruption; that there is a selfish temptation to diligently expose—and make capital of—the system's crimes.
The icon will rouse the customs crew to search for more. The real trouble will come from an envelope of Alyosha's notes about himself that I found in his wardrobe, including papers about cases he had tried. Classified as theft of state documents, they could teach me all about labor camp starvation for five years. And keep me from visiting Russia ever again: a severe sentence too, even though the thought of leaving—yes, for corny freedom! —has made me like a puppy whimpering for a walk throughout this last week.
I haven't time for that mood now. For the dream of getting out, breaking loose, escaping. Of freeing myself from the debasing fear that a capricious "they" will sooner or later get me—for doubting Communism, liking women, being me. After the funeral, I sometimes had to hold myself back from charging down the corridor, shouting my pride in being a lick-spitting dog of imperialist capitalism.
To assuage the longing for reprieve, I spent days in the offices of KLM and Air France studying timetables, rechanging routes —all to assure myself I could leave when my time was up. Just being in the office of a Western company bolstered my spirits. As with everything else, it took four times longer than in a normal country to fix a ticket; but while railing at the red tape and security mania, I was secretly pleased. For I could waste more time in an activity that passed for important and demanded no thought.
Yet the icon is a bleeper signal alerting officials to unmask me and keep me here, stamping their boots on my yearning to leave. A Virgin and Child with a tarnished brass cover and smells of unwashed generations in a peasant cabin, it would fetch no more than two hundred dollars if I ever thought of selling. Yet I must court this risk for it. All Russia's riches—never mind that they're riches of poverty—and Fm departing empty-handed after these
424.^MOSCOW FAREWELL
feverish sixteen months. A smuggled icon: token compensation.
Besides, it's the last survivor of the lot Alyosha was collecting for our get-rich scheme. We peddled most of the others for living expenses during the fall, and someone—probably a friend come to cheer him in his pain—made off with a few when I was out on an errand. Only this greenish one, with its touch of a souvenir-shop Christ, came down to me. And the flannel shirt for its wrapping, which Alyosha used to wear while greasing the Volga.
Locking the trunk, I look for things left behind. Thank God I got rid of the last of my dangerous books, the Khrushchev memoirs and emigre editions of samizdat. After the funeral, a stranger in a bus line whispered imploringly that my room had been searched in preparation for a trap. Although his scare might have been on instructions, I took no chances, quickly distributing a few copies to trustworthy people and mailing the rest to a professor who used to harangue Joe Sourian and me about Truman's wickedness.
The picture of the power-hungry academic frenziedly concealing the parcel of prohibited books from faculty colleagues awards me with a grin and I think of Heathrow, where my flight arrives in exactly twelve hours. Maybe I'll transfer straight to New York; might as well spend New Year's Eve in a plane, pretending Alyosha's with me for his last party. Or I'll stay a few days and walk the London streets I did when he was alive.
But now to finish packing before New Roommate reappears. How tiny this room is when you look at it; how barren compared to last year's. A final cigarette, then out to tackle my check-out documents. Since I first started planning this day, the main priority has been an early start for a long last walk around town.
I reopen the curtains. Sweatsuited enthusiasts are jogging into the winter dawn. Soon the nine o'clock news will be on, with announcers I know better than Walter Cronkite. The current broadcast is entitled "On the Soviet People's Vigilance Against Imperialism's Subversive Activities." The West is one large school for spies, the commentator is explaining. Detente is being used to train thousands of visitors to Lenin's homeland in espionage and psychological techniques to lower your ideological guard. . . . The communal kitchen is a babble of pans and sleep-grumpy voices. Someone is cursing the buffet woman for
Come Agam?X425
not having opened last evening, leaving him breadless. How familiar everything seems; how much hollower than it used to. My old "cosmic" ache fills only part of me.
The morning snow is heavy and wet. A woman with a walking stick asks directions to the "petitioning office" of the Supreme Soviet, then laments her husband's arrest as if I'm from her village. I point her toward her destination and unbutton my coat, despite the wet. Working people grumble that it started ten years ago, this ruining of Russian winters. "Sly Khrushchev was up to no good."
At the back of Soviet Square, I take a downhill street. Who lives in this building? Oh yes, "Uncle Grisha," the old cobbler who spends his fat profits entertaining pretty girls in restaurants. Who took me here? Yes, last semester's dusky Masha. She's in a different dormitory wing this year and I've hardly seen her, except when she's dropped by for Tampax. Once we slept together as a lark and my awkwardness was gone, so maybe I've gained something. Forfeited something too: she seemed less wholesome, and her stories of Perm life were turning stale.
Masha told me that Chingiz wrote from his Siberian exile, sending his regards to her "neighbor," a code word for me. He's coping, but I'll never see him again. Or the voracious book-borrower Semyon, who avoids me. Or Alyosha's Ilya, who's on a "working vacation" in Odessa, making a last try for the family gold. Half my friends have disappeared. When I bumped into the nicest of last year's clique, he said he'd like to talk now that he's learned a few things in the provincial radio station where he's working, but he'd better not. And Lev Davidovich of Alyosha's old Consultation Office begged me not to come again when I dropped in on him. We slunk away from each other like guilty ghosts.
Why are some people still happy to see me while others have been explicitly warned to stop? Leonid was told he'd never get the newspaper job he sought if we continued to meet. This was the straw that prompted his emigration application, despite his vows that he'd never trade Russia for Israel. His larger motivation was the general political situation, which he considers more hopeless than ever. Convinced that trade with America is only a