The investigation and preparation for the trial took a little over three months. Mikha was held in a KGB detention cell in Lefortovo Prison, in the most secret and cut-off quarters—a whitewashed cell with a sealed-off window that blocked out all light, and the outside world. Every day, to the sound of a metallic clip-clop, clip-clop, the guard would lead him down the long, labyrinthine corridors, and up and down narrow stairways, where one could only walk in single file. Twice, when they met a prisoner being led toward them from the other direction, they shoved Mikha into a recess, like a side closet. Then they resumed their journey through the tangle of nightmarish, seemingly endless corridors, until, finally, they deposited him in the investigator’s office. Now the interrogators didn’t alternate. There was just one heavyset, gloomy officer, who always began their hours-long interaction with the words:
“So, are we still refusing to speak?”
He had absolutely no imagination, and always repeated, in the same soft, hoarse voice:
“We don’t have anything on you. You could be out of here tomorrow. You’re pushing up the length of your own term. We want to get rid of you.”
Mikha repeated, in a bored monotone:
“I even address my young students with the formal ‘you.’ Please be so good as to address me the same way.”
The investigator’s name was Meloedov. Mikha, with his keen ear, was immediately alert to the echo in their names: Meloedov and Melamid. But apart from the first two syllables of their surnames, they had nothing in common. True, Meloedov was no man-eating monster. He even had the reputation, in his own circles, of being almost a liberal (among those who knew words like that, at least). And, to the investigator, this redheaded fellow seemed at first like a chance character who had wandered into the wrong play. His dossier contained Gleb Ivanovich’s already old denunciation, and a piece of paper of indeterminate origin, testifying to his links to the Tatar right-of-return movement. Article 70—agitation and propaganda—was clearly not relevant here. And Article 190—the distribution of intentionally false information harmful to the Soviet authorities—would have to be proved, before it was imputed to him. A single denunciation by a single loony was a bit flimsy as evidence. Moreover, the fellow’s defense wasn’t half bad.
Mikha had no way of knowing that the decision to isolate him had been made beforehand, and that the powers-that-be were leisurely trying to come up with a case they could slap on him.
Finally, the decision came down from above, and the interrogation became more pointed and expedient, and Mikha realized that the case they were building was not related to the journal activities. Rather, the focus had been narrowed to his involvement with the Crimean Tatars. By this time, Edik had already been sentenced.
Mikha did not give any testimony, didn’t sign anything, and answered some mundane, insignificant questions, and only off the record. He was amiable enough, but he firmly denied having any part in the right-to-return movement, and insisted that he knew nothing about the Tatar demographics paper.
Meloedov, certain at first that it wouldn’t take much to make Melamid talk, grew progressively more agitated at Mikha’s recalcitrance, and resorted to ever more convincing threats. He raged and fumed at Mikha’s stubbornness, but nothing could make him give evidence. And to think that at first the investigator thought it would be enough to scare him a little, give him a light kick in the behind …
By the end of the month, Meloedov had left Mikha in peace and stopped calling him in for questioning. The interest of the investigative committee had shifted to the Tatars. One of them revealed that Mikha had helped them to write letters.
But Mikha knew nothing of this. Now he shared the cell with two other men. One of them was completely mad, and constantly muttered either prayers or curses under his breath. The other was a discharged military man, a procurement officer who had been caught stealing. These cellmates inspired no desire to socialize.
Then they transferred him to another cell, which he shared with a Tatar who was involved with the Crimean Tatar movement. It turned out that he was friends with Mikha’s acquaintances Ravil and Musa. It was only on the third day, when they removed the Tatar from Mikha’s cell, that Mikha realized he had been planted there. He was an informer. Now Mikha was even more adamant about not saying another word. After some time, Meloedov started calling him in for questioning again; now Mikha really did keep silent, like a deaf-mute.
In the middle of February, Mikha was formally charged, and he was allowed to see a lawyer. The lawyer was one of their own, not someone assigned by the state. Sergei Borisovich had seen to this. Her name was Dina Arkadievna, and she had the first intelligent and attractive face he had seen in a long time. She took a chocolate bar out of her pocket and said:
“Alyona says hello. And there’s another piece of good news: Alyona’s pregnant. She’s feeling fine. Now we’ll try to figure out how we can get you home before the baby is born. Eat the chocolate here. I’m not allowed to give you anything.”
She was one of the lawyers who took on political cases—the “magnificent five.” This was the third trial of its kind. It was also the trial that got her kicked out of the Collegium of Moscow Attorneys. After the prosecutor’s statement demanding the application of Article 190, Part 1, of the Penal Code—the dissemination of false information defaming the Soviet authorities—she committed the rash act of not requesting that the sentence be reduced, instead insisting on the absence of grounds for indictment. In other words, she claimed the defendant was innocent.
Alyona, whose face had grown thinner as her belly grew, was sitting in the last row of the small, packed courtroom. On her right was her mother, Valentina, and on her left, Igor Chetverikov, one of Mikha’s classmates from school, though not a close friend. Ilya and Sanya, along with many others, were not allowed into the courtroom, and stood outside the door.
Marlen, who was also present in the crowd outside the door, his face contorted with helpless anger, whispered fiercely in Ilya’s ear:
“He’s simply mad! What was he thinking? It’s just beyond me! Why the Tatars? Why the Crimea? He should have been thinking about himself! For a Jew to get mixed up in the right of return of the Crimean Tatars! He should have been organizing his own right of return to Israel!”
Mikha was sentenced to three years in a medium-security prison camp, after which he was allowed to make a final statement. He spoke better than the judge, the prosecutor, and the lawyer put together. In a clear, rather high voice, calm and confident, he spoke about the justice that would ultimately prevail in society, in the world; about those who would feel ashamed of themselves; about the grandchildren of people alive today who would find it hard to believe the cruelty and senselessness of the past. What a wonderful literature teacher he made, and how unfortunate that the deaf schoolchildren had been deprived of his rare gifts!
After the trial, Alyona’s parents took her home to their house. She spent two days there, quarreled with her father, then returned to Chistoprudny Boulevard.
Sanya, who turned up at Alyona’s on the day he found out about Mikha’s arrest, went to see her every day now. The years of mutual coolness in his relations with Mikha seemed to have evaporated overnight. Their friendship, it turned out, was alive and well, and didn’t require any special nourishment in the form of frequent telephone calls, status reports, or drinking beer together.
A week after Mikha’s arrest Ilya and Sanya were sitting one evening in Milyutin Park on the bench with two broken slats. Sanya stared at the toes of his boots: Should he say it or not? Either way it was lame; but not saying anything at all was wrong. He said it, without looking at Ilya’s face.