The second attempt was the ruin of Paul's whole life. He was ready to burst, desperately seeking a way out. He would come to me in Moscow and say nothing, stare into space all day, distraught; in the evening he would disappear, starting out for suspicious addresses. Then he went away.
I later learned that he had gone south to Novorossisk, and there had managed to reach an agreement with some sailors from a French ship that they would hide him and take him out of the USSR. But Dame Fortune evidently did not favor Paul. One of the crew turned out to be a man who worked for Soviet customs. Such cases are said to be frequent – these are paid informers. On the basis of his denunciation, at the outer roadstead at Batum, the last Soviet port on the Black Sea – beyond it lay Turkey – the ship was detained, a search was made, and they pulled Paul from his hideaway. They found on him political caricatures of Soviet heads of state. There was a trial, and… here, at least he had a small piece of luck, if you can call it that: he was judged insane.
I don't know whether he really was. I suppose he was. I don't think he was born insane, but there was something pathological about him, and it must have developed gradually. He hated Russia too much, immoderately. "Tribe of goats," "imbeciles," "queerstabulary," "Communists" – these were his usual words, spoken many times a day. He addressed them not only to Communists, but also to ordinary innocent philistines.
They kept him in the mental hospital for a year, and before long he was sitting again on a bench near the Shevchenko monument in Kharkov, smoking a cigarette and glancing occasionally at his daughter Fabiana, who played by his Beatles boots. He talked to no one. Then he suddenly disappeared.
No one knew where he was or what had happened to him, until an inquiry arrived at the mental hospital in Kharkov from the western border of the USSR, from the Carpathians, requesting them to forward the medical record of a Pavel Shemetov, who had been arrested while illegally crossing the western border of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in the vicinity of city X.
A sad story, isn't it? I, little Eddie, remember yet another detail. Years ago, back before the navy, Paul got married. There was a wedding reception. All the guests got dead drunk, but even so there wasn't enough liquor. The bride, by now his wife, sent Paul for beer, she had an urge for beer. When Paul came back from the store with the case of beer, he discovered his bride in one of the rooms fucking his best friend… Nice… Perhaps it was then that he came to hate the filth and vileness of this world. The only thing he didn't know, poor guy, was that filth and vileness existed everywhere. And how could he know, poor guy, that it was not the Russian people who were at fault here, nor the Communist system.
Paul's further fate, after the letter from the Carpathians, is unknown to me.
But let us return to John. John had much less education than Paul. Paul was almost an intellectual. And he was straining toward France as the world of art, as an Eden. John was guided by far more practical considerations. He came to America to get rich, become a millionaire. And I'm sure he will. I do not have a very clear idea who owns Beautiful Moving. John takes care of all the business. He's the driver; he's also a helper and an administrator. He hires us, the helpers, at his own discretion. And the orders come to his, John's, telephone. Evidently the owner merely gives him the money, or gave it to him, the original capital.
We move people from apartment to apartment. Sometimes people move within the confines of one neighborhood, sometimes from state to state. From New Jersey to Pennsylvania, from New York to Massachusetts. The long moves are more interesting. By now I've seen a number of small towns, all similar to one another, in five or six eastern states, mainly in New England. If we ride together, then either we are silent, in which case I study the landscape along the road, or else the taciturn John suddenly begins to tell stories about his life on the trawler. The Jack London hero can't hold out, he cracks, talks about himself a little, insofar as his frugal, stern nature allows.
Usually this happens in the middle of the day. In the morning he is silent as a statue. When I jump into the cab with him, he utters only a short "Hi!" I may address him after that, but you can be damn sure I don't get much of an answer. I'm used to him and remain silent too. Basically I like him, I like his face, figure, character. Among the spineless bellyaching intellectuals who have come to America, he is a pleasant exception – a simple, ordinary man. A curiosity. He's a tough guy. He doesn't argue, he works very hard and is saving money in order to open his own business. He's a genuine Russian, although he once said he didn't give a fuck about his nationality. Despite what he says, he can't escape it – he's Russian, like me. Russian even in that he doesn't want to be Russian.
As I said, he's a very tough guy. Doesn't drink, doesn't smoke, saves his money, lives in a bad neighborhood, and shares an apartment with someone else. He's very deft at handling his heavy truck. In some ways I envy him, my agemate, although little Eddie is a tough guy too, on the whole. I don't know whether he, John, associates with women. This question interests me to a certain degree; they say he fucks some woman from whom he supposedly rents the truck. Maybe she's his boss, too – one and the same person? I could easily find out about company affairs from John, but I don't want to appear curious. In the final analysis, I need my $4 an hour, which I earn by lugging other people's furniture up and down in elevators and stairways. Besides, I am interested to see Other people's apartments – things tell me much about their owners.
I am John's chief helper now. Evidently he considers me a good one. He has had other helpers too. The dissident Yury Fein, a man of about forty-five, known mainly for being married to the sister of the first wife of our celebrity, our prophet, Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Then there's Shneerson, also a dissident, a man who arrived in Israel in Soviet prison garb, a professor's fat son. Shneerson quickly got out of Israel and is now on welfare. I have already mentioned that it was he who led me – half dead, my mind not functioning, my arm streaming pus – to the welfare center and got them to put me on welfare inside of a day. "Emergency situation!"
I remember how wide-eyed and astonished the Americans at the welfare center were when wheezing, fat, disheveled Shneerson pointed at me, a pale man with idiotically short-cropped hair, and explained to them that I had an emergency situation, I was in a terrible state, my wife had left me. They were astonished, perhaps even amused. Most of them, being aloof and self-involved, could hardly have loved another person so madly. But I must give them their due, they did not dispute my right to be the way I was. If the departure of a woman was an emergency situation for the Russians, so that they couldn't eat, drink, work, or keep an apartment – well, then that's the way they were, the Russians. What the hell, let's give the man welfare.
That may have been exactly how they thought. Or maybe, as many emigres claim, Welfare has a secret order from the American government to give welfare to all Russians who want it, in order to avoid exasperating people and appearing ridiculous in front of world society with their much-vaunted system, which is supposed to have room for everyone. A great many Russians are on welfare. I think Soviet emigres should be sent to the welfare center straight off the airplane. Having counted on mountains of gold here, they are utterly unable to assimilate the modest philosophy of the Western laborer. If they have to be like everyone else, then what was the point in coming? Here the ordinary man pronounces with pride: "I am like everyone else."