We sat down to play, and soon, I won back Magda’s camera. Next, I won back her dress, her coat, and all the rest.
As they watched our battle, the “minions” got quite carried away with excitement.
“Holy cow, look at that!” one or other would exclaim. “This guy’s a pro and no mistake.”
First, they were all rooting for Tsar Pest, but gradually, their sympathies switched to me. Clearly, the Tsar’s subjects were enamored of their master.
“Watch out, or he’ll have the shirt off your back,” said the pregnant girl with a guffaw.
“Shut it, you,” muttered Tsar Pest, who was puffing nervously at a roll-up, turning it around now and again to smoke with the lit end in his mouth. His cheeks were scarlet, and smoke came pouring from his nostrils.
Once or twice he went for me with a knife made from a piece of sharpened metal. “I’ll rip out your guts, so I will!”
All the kids roared as we scuffled together.
“Had enough?” I asked, pinning Tsar Pest to the floor.
“No-o!” he wailed, and we got back to our game.
In the end, Tsar Pest lost everything he had—his crutch, his knife, his “minions,” and even the box labeled “Froot.” Burying his head in his shoulders, he got to his feet and shuffled to the hole in the wall.
The urchins, who had all fallen silent, stared at me with eyes like saucers. I have no idea whom they took me for: a savior or a new slave owner.
I told them I had no intention of exacting tribute from them, but I needed them to help me.
“I want you to go around all the market traders and ask them if they’ve seen a red velvet coat with Chinese dragons on it. I’ll give a handsome reward to the one who finds it.”
I had tied Magda’s clothes into a bundle and was already on my way out when the pregnant girl called out to me.
“There’s a foreign lady in the cesspool over there,” the girl said. “She might be dead already. Tsar Pest went at her with his crutch.”
It turned out that the foreign lady was Magda: she had come to visit the urchins two days before. They had battered her and thrown her into a shallow cesspool in the corner of the cellar.
The “minions” helped me drag Magda out. She was unconscious, her face was smeared with dried blood, and there was a gaping, wet wound on the back of her head.
The children assured me that they had attacked the foreigner on the orders of Tsar Pest; had it not been for him, they would have left her alone.
“She was kind,” they told me. “She even gave us buns.”
I was surrounded by underage murderers, unpunished by the law and quite unwilling to accept responsibility for their crime. To look at them, it was clear they really believed they had done nothing wrong.
I took Magda off to the hospital. The doctor’s told me she had a bad concussion, a great many injuries, and generalized hypothermia. It was a miracle that she had survived her ordeal.
The whole affair left me deeply shaken. What incredible luck that I turned up at that place at that very moment!
Another thing: it gave me an insight into the nature of power—the power of one person over another.
The street urchins almost killed Magda because their feared leader told them to do so. They didn’t hate her. And in any case, all the loot went straight to Tsar Pest, so they gained nothing for their wrongdoing. Their crime was simply a symbol of their obedience. “Do you see how much we respect you? We’re prepared to murder or to stoop to any despicable act so long as you leave us alone.”
Tsar Pest’s authority stayed in place until he experienced his first symbolic defeat. After losing a few games of cards, the “minions’” mighty commander was transformed before their eyes into a pitiful failure, and his power melted away like snow. The “minions” had committed a horrible crime out of fear of a power that turned out to be entirely illusory.
Alas, all too often, the world of adults follows similar laws.
I visited Magda in the hospital. She is already looking more like herself again.
An investigator came to see her, but she told him she has no intention of reporting the crime to the police. In her opinion, the children who tried to kill her were not guilty—they had simply been unlucky enough to fall into a corrupt world of crime.
Soon, we were joined by a mutual acquaintance, a pilot by the name of Friedrich. I had met him once at Seibert’s house: when Friedrich was sober, he had sworn allegiance to Stalin, but once he had a drink or two inside him, he began to sing Trotsky’s praises. Clearly, he was one of the many oppositionists who quickly had to change their views in order not to share the fate of their leader, who, at the time, was about to be exiled either to Siberia or Central Asia.
Friedrich had not even got through the door before he began to curse Magda, calling her every name under the sun and accusing her of going to the street kids to buy cocaine. Eventually, I had to step in, and we left the ward together. Then, blushing, nervous, and shamefaced, he began to thank me for saving Magda’s life.
“Would you like me to bring you some ketchup back from Berlin?” he asked. “Or Coca-Cola? You Americans like that, don’t you?”
I asked him if he could smuggle abroad my article exposing the amorous exploits of the Bolsheviks, and after a few awkward moments, he agreed.
So, today, I had my second lesson about the nature of power. People may fear their leaders so much that they shake in their shoes at the sight of them and forget all their morals. But despite all this, they will still happily thumb their nose at their oppressors on the quiet. It’s a very natural human impulse: you may have the right to airplanes, Berlin, ketchup, and Coca-Cola, but you can’t be truly happy unless you are free.
Once Magda was out of the hospital, she sent me a long letter of thanks with a snapshot of Nina taken not long before her disappearance.
Just now, I’m sitting at my desk looking at this small black-and-white photograph printed on bad paper. This picture is all I have to show for my efforts after several months.
In the daytime, I can forget about my troubles for a while and can even feel happiness over little things. Friedrich took my article out of the country, and Owen has already sent a telegram: “Letter received from Berlin. Expect bonus.” Of course, I should be happy.
But an obscure ache creeps into my heart every night. I try to distract myself with books and newspapers, but I can’t get away from it.
I can recall everything so clearly: how Nina and I used to amuse ourselves at bedtime acting out idiotic romantic novels, trying to keep a straight face, and always end up crying from laughter. Or how I would walk past Nina as she was washing her face and put my arms around her waist for a few moments. I can still remember how it felt to run my hand over the silk of her open peignoir and the warm skin beneath.
How many moments of secret intimacy we enjoyed when we spoke to one another by touch alone!
Magda has captured Nina’s beauty for me, but the photograph doesn’t show even a tenth of what I have lost.
10. THE SMUGGLING ARTICLE
Alov arrived at work early to find crowds of people already in the entrance hall. It was payday. The OGPU was a sizable organization: it had two and a half thousand working in its central staff alone and another ten thousand agents in Moscow, and all of them needed to collect their wages.
Showing his pass at the door, Alov pushed through the turnstile and took the elevator up to the fourth floor where the Foreign Department was based.
His tiny office was furnished with a table, three chairs, a divan upholstered in oilcloth, and a coat stand. A courier had already brought in the mail and the latest copy of Pravda. All OGPU employees were expected to read the paper from cover to cover to make sure they kept informed on the latest Party directives.