One day, I accompanied him to have a look at the application office, a division of the Ministry of the Interior run by the KGB. In the outer office, the archetypal setting for refugees at the mercy of unreachable bureaucrats, the line to see the officers in their cubicles was one hundred and forty-eight people long at 8:40 in the morning. A mean sergeant behind the reception desk was lashing out at everyone, but preferably at women over sixty. One—who was trying to visit a nephew in Belgium, her only living relative—was eighty-five, and her hands so failed her that she asked Zhenya's help in filling out the application form. "I've done it five times in five years," she apologized. "I can't remember everywhere I lived before 1905, so I keep putting down something different. Will that finish me?" There were collective farmers in cotton quilt jackets, painted tarts in foreign suede boots—they were applying to leave with their new husbands, Arab students—and elderly men wearing Brigade of
306^MOSCOW FAREWELL
Communist Labour medals to help their chances. And it was democratic: emerging from their interviews, young and old both wept. . . .
Zhenya's studio in an apartment building off Dobrininskaya Square is dominated by a statue of Lenin that could serve as a parody of its genre. Evenings the courtyard is dark to save electricity, but a bulb atop Vladimir Ilich illuminates his bald dome for passersby. As a daily reminder of what to rebel against, it has contributed much to Zhenya's search for new forms, and he often touches The Leader's shoe when coming home, in thanks for the "dialectical stimulation" toward genuine art. I pass the pedestal now, hurry down Zhenya's broken steps and pound on the door. He'll be glad to see me on D-Day, especially because I have some New York addresses he's requested.
Ten full minutes later, it comes to me that my knocking might attract unwanted attention. There has been no sound from behind his door.
To kill time, I wander toward the basement of an adjoining entrance on the courtyard. It is the building's "management office," a combination of repair center, ideological checkpoint and conduit for informing about suspicious goings-on. Of course I'm accustomed to mysteries and slipups in Moscow, to little working as it's supposed to. Zhenya himself has broken more appointments than he's kept. But at this moment, he's supposed to be up to his eyes in packing for his, mildly speaking, important trip. What's gone wrong? Over my shoulder, I scan the cars parked outside: last-minute arrest of parting Jews is a KGB hallmark. None look suspicious, but an army supplies depot guarded by armed sentries across the street moves me on.
The damp management office is festooned with the usual Lenin posters, interspersed with slogans exhorting more and better work. From behind the desk, a middle-aged woman with the hat of a volunteer social worker is beseeching a workman in grimy overalls to attend to a toilet with a history, and to pull himself together and face the day. His eyes are bleary and cheeks slack: vodka-drunk at eight o'clock. And he is not about to take orders from Frilly Hat. Who says the proletariat has no real power in this country? The embarrassed lady is happy to be interrupted by a telephone call.
The President's Day^307
"Hello, Mamachka, yes, it's early but I'm fine. . . . 'The early bird catches the worm,' as they say." She is so full of bright sayings and good intentions that it seems impossible the KGB has arrested Zhenya, ten yards away.
I push off in the direction of Dobrininskaya peasant market. This section of the city, mostly untouched by rebuilding, has a small-town flavor. In a decrepit "snack room" I breakfast on kasha and gritty coffee. After eying me, the ragged man sharing my stand-up table volunteers that he spent the decade 1944-54 in concentration camps, mostly in the notorious Vorkuta complex. Fingers are missing on both hands—Vorkuta was above the Arctic Circle, he reminds me—and he has difficulty swallowing a bun; might I spare a few kopeks? His crime was to be taken prisoner by the Germans in 1942, when his unit disintegrated near Rostov. Worked and starved to a living skeleton, he escaped, made his way to his own lines, and was immediately sentenced because former P.O.W.s were regarded as probable traitors. He is the first I've actually met of the hundreds of thousands so treated, and I had no idea how badly off" some still are.
"Keep well, brother," he says, and although he's a habitual beggar, this does not ring as pat thanks for my coins.
I find a working telephone booth to call Alyosha. One of the two girls using it while I wait—squeezed together, clutching briefcases, giggling—once visited him in the Juridical Consultation Office, but she doesn't recognize me. When I get through, Alyosha allows he's dejected because an actress met last evening spurned his "fraternal salaam," leaving him all alone. As if for spite, he must murder some of today's sunshine because a judge won't postpone a case he's trying. His final indignity is having to report to the hospital this morning.
"The hospital?" I respond, waiting for his punch line.
"Don't worry, I'm good at induction physicals. Cairo will hold out sans me. ... I'll be home by lunchtime; what do you fancy?"
It is almost nine-thirty. Hurrying back to Zhenya's for another try, I bump shoulders with Lev Davidovich, the lawryer who drops by to discuss personal problems with Alyosha. He says he's now handling a deeply disturbing case, which he'd better keep
308/^MOSCOW FAREWELL
confidential. I find myself walking him to his metro station while, his qualms notwithstanding, he spills the beans. He's been assigned by a court to defend a schoolboy charged with murdering his parents. Both victims were well-liked lawyers; respect for their memory makes him unhappy about appearing for the defense.
The accused is a typically pampered progeny of the professional class. The trouble began with his parents refusing permission, required for offspring under eighteen, to marry his paramour, an older shopgirl. Citing lack of common interests, the middle-aged lawyers also argued that the girl gave him her body, but not her love. Enraged by the latter imputation, the boy resolved a weekend-long wrangle by chopping mama and papa to death in their suburban dacha.
But Moscow's lawyers were even more distressed by the recruitment of sixteen-year-old Oleg as an accomplice. The aggrieved son first tried conscripting his younger schoolmate by simple bullying. "Don't be a stupider fool than you are," he blustered. "Alone, I can't be sure of finishing them both. And it's too risky if I miss one. Are you or aren't you my buddy?"
Although he did not blink at his friend's plan, Oleg was less malleable than his promise. "What's in it for me?" he asked with teen-age shrewdness.
"I'm reasonable. Name your price."
Oleg gave another moment to thought. "Don't try bargaining, I won't do it for less. Will you take the English exam in my place?"
"The written one? Yeah, I can swing that."
"It's a deal. But no welshing."
A second ax was obtained for Oleg and he joined his friend hacking off" limbs of the parents he'd never seen before. Exceptional brutality put the crime in a category about which the press is silent, and for which the KGB is brought in. From the unforced entrance into the dacha, the detectives deduced that the family knew the killers and they followed the son. He brought a bloody flannel shirt for washing to his ex-girl friend; for unrelated reasons, she no longer cared to see him—and, accompanied by friends consoling him for his terrible loss, searched department stores for an identical garment. The