“Are you acquainted with Ayshe Mustafaevna Usmanov?”
But this Melamid character clammed up, then denied it. This was just how he had behaved during the last interrogation, when he had been brought face-to-face with Chernopyatov—which the captain was able to gather from the documents. For an hour and a half they circled around and around the issue, and then Safyanov, the first one to grow tired of this game, pulled out a piece of paper covered with foreign print and said with feigned chagrin:
“Well, Mr. Melamid, I can’t see that you have any interest or desire to help us in our work. This is most unfortunate. We conferred about your case, considered your situation, and decided that, from our side, there wouldn’t be any objections to your leaving for somewhere beyond the boundaries of our homeland. You are not one of us, Mr. Melamid. Which is astonishing—your father died on the front lines, but you have no respect for…” Safyanov did not find it easy to say these words. “In short, I won’t hide from you the fact that an invitation has been sent to you and your family from the state of…” Here he inserted a pregnant pause, cleared his throat, and pronounced, with repugnance, “Israel.” He placed the stress on the final syllable, which made it sound even more sinister.
“Your relative Marlen Kogan—you know someone by that name?—has interceded for you, to reunite the family. The invitation is for you, your wife, and your daughter. Have a look.”
He held out a beautiful letter. Mikha took it, and held it up close to his nose. The invitation had been issued three months before. All that time it had been languishing somewhere in the Foreigners’ Registration Office or the KGB, and they had decided that now was the time to put it to use.
“It’s expired, Comrade Captain,” Mikha said.
“Well, we’ll take care of that. It can be extended,” he said, tapping his finger on the telephone. “It’s in our hands … we won’t object. Think about it. You have many things to consider, too. You haven’t kept your word: you signed a document stating you wouldn’t get mixed up in any of these kinds of activities. And what do we see? You allow undesirable people to live under your roof, with no residence permit, no passport records; you go to Academician Sakharov, and he writes all kinds of libel that he distributes abroad. You invite foreign correspondents to your house. And who gave you permission to engage in these activities? Leave the country! It will be better for you. If another case against you is opened, you won’t get off with only three years, Mr. Melamid. Why are you dawdling? All your people are champing at the bit to get to Israel! They would give anything for an invitation like this. All right, all right, think about it. You won’t have a lot of time to think, but we’ll give you three days or so. If you don’t leave, we’ll throw you in prison. Although there are other possibilities … Take a pen and a piece of paper and write a frank confession: about your connections with the Tatars, about Mustafa Usmanov, and about this Ayshe. How you went to see Academician Sakharov, and what you did there. And about what Robert Kulavik, a fake American, was doing at your house. Write it all down in detail, take your time, and we’ll be able to part on good terms. I can’t promise anything, though. I’ll do my best. You do your best, and we will, too.”
He rubbed his purple birthmark with the back of his hand. Mikha decided the captain must be a nervous sort. And I don’t have any nerves at all, it seems.
Mikha smiled and put the invitation on the table. He pressed it to the tabletop with his palm, as if it might fly away.
“I understand you, Comrade Captain. I’ll think about it. May I leave?”
“Go, go. I’ll expect you on Monday at three.” He signed Mikha’s pass. “Personally, I think you should seriously consider this proposition. Such an opportunity will not present itself again.”
He went outside. Winter? Spring? What time was it? Late morning? Early evening? Was he in Kitai-gorod? The Boulevards? The Lubyanka?
O God, don’t let me lose my mind …
No, no, not that one.
When will the pall on my
Ailing heart disperse?
When will the tangled nets
I’m caught in set me free?
When will this demon that
Commands my mind’s dark dream …
He forgot. He forgot what Baratynsky wrote next.
He walked in circles, first away from home, then approaching it again; but he couldn’t find the strength to go home and say that single word to Alyona: emigration.
Finally, he mustered his courage and told her everything: about the summons, about the unexpected offer. Alyona heard him out. Her face went dark. She averted her eyes, dropped her lashes, bent her head down so her hair fell over her face, and whispered:
“This is what you’ve always wanted. Now I know for certain, this is just what you’ve always wanted. But let me tell you: Maya and I will never leave here. Not for anything. Not ever…”
But it wasn’t so much her words as her altered face that said everything—in the space of a second it had become suspicious and alien. Her eyebrows seemed to elongate, her lips compressed into a straight line. That drop of Caucasian Mountain blood she had inherited from her father—both proud and wild—surfaced like a sudden sunburn. Alyona lay down on the divan and turned her face to the wall.
From that moment on, she stopped washing, eating, dressing, and talking. She could hardly drag herself to the WC before returning to the divan with tiny, uncertain steps and turning her face again to the wall. Her clinical depression was so obvious, the symptoms so classic, that Mikha had no trouble diagnosing it himself. Even Maya’s whimpering entreaties couldn’t rouse Alyona from the divan. Mikha floundered in despair and helplessness. For several days he rushed to and fro like a madman, trying to balance work, domestic duties, and taking care of Alyona and the child. Zhenya Tolmacheva came to help. Alyona refused to talk to her as well, but she accepted the help without a murmur of thanks, as though she didn’t notice it. Sanya showed up again, and Ilya came after Mikha’s phone call.
Ilya looked around, raised his eyes to the heavens, searched for an answer in the invisible expanse of space, and called in a psychiatrist named Arkasha. Arkasha was also one of their own. He was active in dissident circles and had written letters of protest, exposing the judicial-psychiatric establishment. He had lost his job a year before, and was now working as an orderly in a hospital outside of town. He recommended immediate hospitalization, and getting a categorical refusal, he prescribed some strong psychotropic medication.
Maya hovered around Alyona, but she remained indifferent to everything, including her daughter. For a second week in a row, Mikha took his daughter to work with him. He missed his appointment with Safyanov, and he didn’t bother to open the mailbox, where—he knew!—he would find another summons.
At the end of a second week lying on the divan, Alyona’s mother, Valentina Ivanovna, suddenly arrived from the Ryazan countryside, where Sergei Borisovich had been exiled. Why she had had the sudden urge to come to her daughter was unclear—most likely maternal instinct. She was horrified at what she saw when she arrived. She kept trying to find out what had happened, but Alyona refused to speak to her, either, and turned her face to the wall again.
Valentina Ivanovna recalled some strange episodes from her daughter’s childhood, so she didn’t insist, but did the only thing that was in her power—she took Maya with her.
Mikha expected Maya to cry and resist, but his mother-in-law behaved very wisely: she whispered to the little girl that in the country she had a real live goat, a white cat, and a speckled hen. Maya, tempted by this domestic zoo, went happily and willingly with her grandmother. Alyona said good-bye to them sleepily and turned back toward the wall.
Mikha finally went to see Safyanov two weeks after their scheduled appointment. He told him that his wife was ill, and Safyanov believed him: Mikha looked completely haggard and miserable. He told him he wouldn’t accept the invitation to leave, that his wife didn’t want to go, and that he wasn’t ready, either.