The car was enjoying a few days' rest just now, while he spent them in a clinic — an excellent one, run by the Central Institute for Advanced Medical Training — for an evaluation of the first series of X-ray treatments. (Tirst series? I shuddered when I understood the implication of this.) The various analyses were almost completed, and justified every hope for more decades of honest toil. "After all, my pension is ages away." If he asked again for the "5 Flurouracil" it was largely because his doctors were eager to try it. He was writing this from his clinic cot, where a dozen Samaritans — including Anastasia — had visited him. The food was fine; it was only the regularity of three daily squares, served by well-meaning others, that indisposed an amateur cook. Speaking of that, what was poor I eating now that the Soviet government had bought a billion bushels of grain to save Western farmers from bankruptcy?
Only one section revealed the deep pessimism still in him. "I can't forgive myself for that outburst," he wrote. "Those hrst days I felt I had to share my despair and therefore sloshed you with gloom. It looms sillier than ever now that I'm in constant high spirits (as opposed to strong spirits, which — an odd streak of obscurantism in our otherwise progressive clinics — the chief nurse unaccountably considers detrimental to recuperation). I'm confident of a future oflithoid (horny) health, and since I can't reach your shoulder without a chair in any case, promise not to slobber again on your chest. Despondency is an enemy of the people."
The self-reproach was superHous. We had woken at noon after the drunken night when the disease was confirmed. That day and the next, he occasionally cried, insisting that his strain of
Interlude"^ 355
cancer was unresponsive to medicine and any treatment would be self-deceptive. His mental process of preparing for burial, he said, had already begun. What changes happen in life! How he loved his empty existence! But these few days were the full extent of his "unpardonable burden " on me, for which he had already apologized effusively before I left. After that, he took himself in hand, declaring his optimism "incorruptible'' — and this new reference to the first blow was a bad sign.
The letter ended with a toast for my "luck, love, happiness, richness, health; choose your own arrangement, add what I forgot" and was signed, "Your old friend, your trustworthy colleague. " But "trustworthy" could also mean "reliable" as we always applied it to the faithful Volga: a promise that despite minor breakdowns, he would roll on indefinitely. And by satirizing the Sovietese use of "colleague" with its phony representation of a virtuous official toiling for The People, he conjured up a dozen images of our bootleg activities together. It was a satiric disquisition for an audience of one. And although it contained no direct mention of my return — before I left, Alyosha kept insisting I must get on in life, and shouldn 'f press my luck by coming back — each of the four packed pages was like an appeal floated in a bottle.
The P.S. was written with a different pen. "Big hugs and kisses from me. (My malady is not contagious.) It's grand to have time for reading again; any suggestions for enlightening books? Incidentally, it's becoming chic here to pass evenings, in reading or other useful activity, by candlelight rather than under vulgar bulbs. So if your power shortages occasionally leave you without electricity, you can turn to more fashionable sources of light. Whenever you say the word, I can mail you some candles. And resign yourself to long boring letters. With clinical greetings, Alexei."
The term for exchange students was to begin on September 8 — Tankists' Day on the "Leninist Calendar" displayed in the Soviet Embassy. I went to the consulate immediately, knowing that failure today, September 6, would make me miss the start: a clear sign they had no intention of letting me back. A man who was probably the Musketeers' M. de Tr6ville glanced at my Hie,
356^MOSCOW FAREWELL
cupped his hand over a question on an internal telephone and slipped a visa into the pages of my passport, all within two minutes. It was somehow obvious that my permission had been in his desk for weeks, awaiting his last-minute stroke, the implication of which escaped me.
"You are going to our capital to study?" It wasn 't clear whether the idea itself or my pretension to it was preposterous. "You will inform the State Committee the exact moment of your arrival. Good luck. "
Mother Russia's gravity pulled me to Heathrow hours early, also dulling my senses with apprehension and relief A clutch of Russian tourists — shoes as blunt as faces, suits screaming "Soviet" though bought specifically for Western Trip — huddled around their leader in the lobby. Years ago, I used to approach such groups to try out my Russian, but their pathetic recoiling taught me to desist. Fear of being compromised, of informers' reports, of the outside world itself . . . What drew me to the land that produced this?
(In the Embassy one morning, I had caught sight of bantam Alek, Anastasia's chum, in a delegation of medical students. When he turned and saw me, he so sustained the blank in his eyes that for a moment I wondered whether Fd made a mistake. Catching on, I pretended not to notice him, but wildly searched the others with my eyes in case Anastasia had come too. Then I remembered that her association with me was enough to keep her from ever getting out with an official group.)
"Air India, Flight 506, via Moscow to Delhi. "Are you a vegetarian, sir?" . . . "Drinks will be served, do you tolerate spirits?" . . . Nevermind; the pilot was surely British-trained, and he took off on the dot. The Indian rajahs Hew first-class while Soviet officials and Western tourists crowded together in economy, mutually humble victims of this third-world hoax.
The Boeing's altitude was breathtaking. The afternoon sun waned somewhere in northern Europe as we sped east, away from the giver of warmth and light. As if the plane knew its direction — at this exalted height, toward the Arctic's Holy Spirit — the cabin grew cool. Stewardesses in saris served mango juice, but the sensation of terrestrial bleakness grew with the
Interlude\^357
murkiness of new time zones. Dipping back below the clouds on the Moscow descent, we passed mile after mile of Russia 's swamps and uninhabited forests. I wanted to reach out and stroke the continent of enduring sadness.
We touched down at Sheremetyevo International, taxied, stopped near the terminal — and were ignored. Four hours before, Heathrow had been a Woolworth's-cum-World's Fair, bustling, throbbing, hawking shiny wares and briskly shuttling passengers to a Hit Parade of flights. Here we were the only plane in the disembarking area, and the air quivered with abandonment, not urgency. A skinny neon Moscow tried to stay alive. The crew operating the passenger ramp bided its time: three clump-booted workmen placidly rummaging for matches. I read their lips.
"Nu, Fedya, let's go."
"Easy friend, FU finish my smoke. "
"I heard a big shot's on this one."
"He'll hold his water; do him good."
A huge raven perched on a radar tower. Mud, fir needles dripping autumn rain and tommy guns greeted arrivals. And workmen cooing over the miracle of a dispatcher's swaddled baby. Through the airtight fittings and into the cabin seeped Russia's smell, an oily, dusty blend ofdiesel exhaust, dill, tar, sweat-soaked wool, birch sap, latrine disinfectant and Balkan tobacco. . . . A tarted-up Intouristguide was roasting the driver of our bus. Nothing had changed. I bathed in the fever of being lost in desolation, yet awake to spirits that roam the land mass like prairie wind, sighing about the futility and importance of existence.
Finally, the hatch opened to a blast of bracing air and an armed Army officer in the ankle-length overcoat of the full winter uniform. Striding into the cabin, he completed an eye-rolling scrutiny with an order for "pass-ports!", its sharpness startling the passengers whose first word this was from a Russian on home soil. While soldiers took up stations between the ramp and bus, a diminutive gentleman in transit to Delhi tried to make contact.