I was not especially anxious to do this. From what I understood, internal security within Russia is honed to a keener edge than in the Eastern European satellite nations. Even the police in countries like Hungary and Poland will occasionally overlook subversive activity on the grounds that it is not so much anti-Hungarian or anti-Polish as it is anti-Russian. The Russian authorities, on the other hand, cannot gift themselves with this convenient excuse, and a conspirator’s lot is proportionately more difficult there.
That was only part of it. The political crazy quilt of Eastern Europe was dotted with friends and comrades of mine, political oases in a desert of officialdom. And, while I had a smattering of such friends in Russia itself, notably my Armenian Nationalist friends in the south and a handful of Ukrainians and White Russians, they were scattered far and wide and came under rather close government scrutiny.
A final factor: I had never been to Russia. The new and unknown carries its own special terrors.
I planned my route. North through Yugoslavia to Belgrade, the capital. On into Hungary, bypassing Budapest to the east. Cutting across Czechoslovakia at the extreme eastern corner of Slovakia, and on into Poland with a stopover at either Krakow or Lublin. Then due north through Poland to Lithuania, and onward from Lithuania to Latvia, and then-
Then home again, home again, jiggety-jig.
Of course I would have to find a simpler and more direct route home. If I actually did manage to get into Latvia, I could go home via Finland. If I found it too hazardous to cross into Russia – and this certainly seemed likely – I could choose between crossing the sea from Poland to Finland or Sweden or working my way westward through Germany and France. Any of these possible courses would take a good long time, and time was one thing I had in abundance. If nothing else, I had to stay out of the States long enough for the CARM revolution to take place. It would probably fail – the vast majority of revolutions do – but if it failed, at least it would do so without my having contributed to its defeat.
Meanwhile I was in Yugoslavia, a political absurdity, the last stronghold of prewar Balkan nationalism, an ill-sorted lot of Serbs and Croats and Slovenes and Bosnians and Montenegrins and Macedonians, of Stalinists and revisionists and anarchists and monarchists and social democrats and assorted unclassifiable madmen, all nestled among jagged mountains and pea-green valleys and winding blue rivers.
I love Yugoslavia.
Once I had reached Belgrade, it was no particular problem to find Janos Papilov’s house. I had been there before on a trip that had led south through Yugoslavia, and his house was still the same, dark and unimposing on the outside, immaculate and tastefully furnished within. Janos himself met me at the door with a smile and a firm handshake. No rough embraces; Janos, Professor of Indo-European Languages at the University of Belgrade, is a man of infinite culture and sophistication. He led me to the dining room, where his wife and father-in-law were seated. There was a place already set for me.
“You see,” he said, “I knew that you were coming, my friend.” He smiled at my surprise. “In my country,” he said, “news travels even faster than an American agent provocateur. But be seated, Evan. There will be the whole night for conversation. May I strongly recommend the wine? It is Slovenian, the sort of dry white wine they do rather well there. You might almost mistake it for a Moselle.”
We gossiped pleasantly during dinner. A fairly important officer of the New York chapter of the Serbian Brotherhood had been involved in an amusing scandal with another brother’s wife, and Janos was hungry for details. Some of the details, and some of his comments upon them, were not entirely suited for the ears of Mrs. Papilov or her father, so our conversation was not conducted exclusively in Serbo-Croat. Janos’s wife spoke French and Russian and a little English. But Janos himself spoke all of the major European languages and a few others as well, and the conversation bounced from one tongue to another, from Rumanian to Hungarian to Greek, as we elaborated upon the strange bedfellows that politics makes.
After dinner Janos led me to his study. He was a long, lean man, with sparse gray hair and thick wire rimmed spectacles. He sat at his desk, and I sat in a comfortable leather chair, and for a few moments we chatted idly of political friends. Then the conversation ran out of momentum, and he sat back in his desk chair and regarded me thoughtfully.
“It is providential that you have come at this time,” he said finally.
“Why?”
“Because there is something you must read. Something you will find quite fascinating.”
“A book?”
“A manuscript for a book.”
“Yours?”
“No.” He smiled briefly. “I have a book coming out soon on the dialects of the Ukraine, but I would not press such a weighty tome upon you.”
“I’d be most interested-”
“You are kind to say so, and rest assured that I will send you a copy upon publication. But the manuscript I have for you is most important, believe me. Are you too tired to read it now?”
“Not at all.”
He opened the desk’s center drawer and drew out a large manila envelope. From the envelope he brought forth a sheaf of typescript. “The text is in Serbo-Croat,” he said. “But if you read as fluently as you speak, that should present no problem.”
“I read Serbo-Croat.”
“Then you’ll finish this in an hour or so if you’re a fast reader. Don’t read for detail. Merely read carefully enough to form an opinion of the merit of the work.”
I took the manuscript from him. There was no title page. I asked the author’s name.
“I will tell you when you finish.”
“And the title?”
“The work is yet untitled. Perhaps you will be more comfortable at my desk. Please sit here, I’ll leave you alone while you read. And would you care for a cup of coffee?”
“Fine.”
I sat down expecting the usual sort of Serb propaganda, perhaps a bit better than the general run if Janos was so impressed. But within the first few pages I saw that the book was a far cry from the normal class of partisan literature. It was, in fact, an astonishing document. With an impartial viewpoint almost without precedent in Balkan political literature, the author made a rational yet impassioned plea for the dissolution of the state of Yugoslavia and the establishment of wholly independent republics of Croatia, Slovenia, Serbia, Macedonia, and Montenegro.
It could have been mere polemic, but the man who wrote it had avoided this pitfall. Every charge leveled at the People’s Republic of Yugoslavia was carefully thought out and as carefully documented. Every argument for the Yugoslav federation was meticulously examined and meticulously demolished. The successes of Tito’s revisionist policies paled to the point of insignificance under the weight of the author’s charges.
And all of this was done, not from the point of view of a diehard Croat or Serb or Slovene, but with genuine scholarly detachment.
I found Janos working chess puzzles in the living room. “The book is a masterpiece,” I told him.
“I thought you would be impressed. You feel it deserves publication?”
“Of course.”
“But,” he said, “I find it unlikely that it would be published in Yugoslavia. If Djilas can earn imprisonment for his writings-”
“This author would hang.”
“Precisely.”
“The book could be published in America.”
“Ah. And then what would happen to its author?”
“The book could be published anonymously. Or under some convenient pen name.”
“Perhaps. But I have a feeling that this author’s name might carry weight.”
“Who is he?”
“You approve wholeheartedly of the book? Of its style? Of its message?”