On October 11 received three letters, two from my parents, one from my sister Jessie. The dates—September 13, 17, 19—indicated a delay of twelve to eighteen days.
The first letter from Barbara did not arrive until a week later. It was dated September 10, and had taken twenty-seven days.
She had answered two of mine with one of hers. Unless some letters were missing, this was the first time she had written since the trial, and that bothered me. Her news wasn’t good. Neither Khrushchev nor Brezhnev had acknowledged receiving the appeals.
Yet just receiving mail made the day an occasion. And to top it off, that afternoon I saw my first movie.
The theater was located in the work-camp barracks; about forty prisoners were already in the small auditorium, seated on wooden benches, when we arrived. We weren’t allowed to join them. My cellmate and I, plus a guard, shared a bench in the projection room, watching the movie through a small glass window. Here, as elsewhere, the “politicals” were strictly segregated, not only from other prisoners but also from each other. No more than one or two attended each showing.
Between reels the lights would come on, and the work-camp inmates would turn around in their seats to stare up at us in frank curiosity. I was equally curious about them.
We were forbidden to talk to the projectionists, who were also prisoners. However, you don’t need words to convey a feeling of mutual sympathy.
The movie was about deep-sea diving. Zigurd translated enough for me to follow the plot. It wasn’t particularly good, but the change was most welcome.
Sometimes, Zigurd told me, there would be a movie almost every week. At other times, months would pass before the prison received a print. Too, it was a privilege revocable at any time, on whim of the authorities. During one period the Soviets had attempted to make Vladimir a “showcase prison,” even allowing TV. That phase had quickly passed. Now it was like any other, a place apart from the main current of life; yet, not quite. There were political commissars, to make sure prisoners were indoctrinated in each change of party line. And whenever there was a food shortage in the Soviet Union, prisoners were among the first to feel it.
On October 13 I received some good news: although I could write only four letters each month, I could receive as many as were sent me. I wrote Barbara to this effect, adding something else that had been on my mind: “This is grasping at straws, I know, but have you heard anything at all about the possibility of an exchange of prisoners? Maybe you could get the lawyers who accompanied you to Moscow to check into this and maybe accomplish something in this direction. If it isn’t pushed, it will probably be forgotten. I realize there are probably more important people they would rather exchange for; but I can hope.”
By the lawyers, I of course meant the CIA.
Diary, October 15: “Saw my second movie—about a quarrel on a collective farm. Not real good.”
After that I’d rarely have to ask Zigurd to explain the plot. All too often it was the same one: boy tractor driver meets girl tractor driver; they fall in love and drive tractors together.
Occasionally the singing was good. The acting was something else.
The next diary entry was October 20: “First snow. Pretty cold.” With it began my first winter in Russia.
Winter was early this year, the guard said, the earliest in seventy years, meaning it would be long and hard.
Our radiator was the old-fashioned type. When the wind was blowing from the west, or opposite, side of the building, the cell was nice and warm. When it came from the east, however, our teeth chattered.
When the temperature dropped below freezing, we were allowed to divide our walk time, so as to have one hour in the morning, the other in the afternoon. Even then we rarely wanted to stay out the full hour. We would walk steadily, stopping only to feed the pigeons.
As the days grew shorter, daylight did not come until eight in the morning, and getting up at six became more difficult. I no longer looked forward to the morning trip to the bathroom. Now, with the window open, the temperature inside was the same as out. It was something to be endured.
Winter brought some advantages. The milk didn’t spoil. And the dead-air space between the two windows became a freezer where we could store what meat Zigurd’s parents sent, permitting us to ration it out for a longer period.
Diary, October 23, 1960: “Saw a movie about a poet and artist in prerevolutionary days. Good, though I didn’t understand it enough to enjoy it thoroughly.”
October 29: “Saw another movie about construction of a railroad bridge in Siberia. Fair.”
The diary entries were brief, for two reasons. There was very little to write about, and it was so cold in the cell now that we had to wear gloves.
Letter to Barbara, October 31: “Winter has definitely set in here. It has snowed almost every day since the twentieth. The temperature has been freezing or below for about three weeks now….
“I suppose you have read about the American tourist who was sentenced to seven years for spying and who was released when he appealed to the Presidium. I heard about it on the Moscow News and was very surprised. He was convicted under the same article as I was, but then, his case was much different from mine.
“I am tempted to write an appeal, although I am sure it would do no good. One doesn’t know until one tries, though. Many things that have happened here have surprised me. Last May I didn’t think I would be alive in October, but here I am. I guess I should be satisfied, but I still hope for some miracle to happen.”
It was an up-and-down cycle. There were all-right days, and bad ones.
Diary, November 1: “Usual day of prison life. Have now been in prison for six months. I am sure I will never stay for ten years. Will do something drastic first.”
November 4: “People from Moscow KGB visited me today.”
The visit, which came as a surprise, was my first real interrogation since the trial. Obviously aeronautical experts had been studying the remains of the U-2, since all questions concerned the aircraft. Handing me photographs, they would ask: Why does the drive shaft in this electrical motor turn this way instead of that? Why do the flaps move up as well as down? There was nothing in this to fall into the realm of security or to give them any sort of technical advantage, yet I had resisted their questioning for so long that it was an ingrained habit. I answered all the obvious ones, replying to the others that when a pilot flips a switch he knows only that certain things are supposed to happen; he doesn’t necessarily know the engineering sequence involved.
Early in October, deciding to follow Zigurd’s example and keep a journal, I had ordered a bound notebook from Moscow. It finally arrived, and on November 4 I made my first entry.
The purpose of my journal, I decided, would be to put down everything I could remember about the May 1 flight and events following. If I didn’t do this, I’d probably forget many details, and there were some in which, I was sure, the CIA would be most interested. Like the diary, however, the journal posed two problems: when I was released, I might not be allowed to take it with me: and, in the interim, my jailers might read or copy it while we were outside the cell. Therefore I would have to continue to maintain all the fictions: this had been my first overflight; I had learned I was to make it only a few hours before takeoff; and so on. When it came to touchy matters, I decided to use a memory code, words or phrases to serve as reminders of things I didn’t wish to have read. Even should they keep both the journal and the diary, the two would have served one positive function—giving me something to do. But since I did want to keep them, I took out some insurance. Here and there I’d add a phrase such as “No brainwashing here… ” or “Have never seen a prisoner mistreated…,” the kind of thing they would be anxious to have publicized. I didn’t know if it would help, but it wouldn’t hurt.