“Oh, I have an entitlement all right. Whether it will ever be recognized is another question.” He was still fumbling in his greatcoat pockets.
“You understand this is in any case the wrong office for you,” Letsukov said. “But how many weeks do you think you’re entitled to?”
“How many weeks is twenty years’ worth?”
Letsukov frowned. “Twenty years in an enterprise?”
“The same enterprise, young man, for twenty years.”
“I don’t understand. Your Trade Union should have dealt with that. What sort of enterprise was it?”
The old man smiled, his new teeth white against his gray face. “I suppose you could say I was in the metal industry. Lead, to be exact.”
“Safety and Health regulations, and vacations come under that heading, are very strict in any enterprise dealing with toxic metals like lead,” Letsukov said gravely.
“Is that really so, young man? Well, I’m sad to say our enterprise sometimes showed a lamentable lack of care.” The old man had found his papers. He handed the internal passport to Letsukov.
It was brand new, the photograph taken in the last few months. Letsukov opened it at the center page. Details recorded a period of Army service during and after the Great Patriotic War. The next page carried the red stamp of the Procurator’s Office and the legend: Sentenced on December 10, 1956, to twenty years in a corrective labor camp under special regime.
He glanced up at the old man. Then with his thumb Letsukov turned to the first page — and found himself staring at his own name: Alexei Alexeivich Letsukov.
“It was not my intention that you should find out,” his father said quietly, “but I wanted to see you just once more.”
The door opened and the First Secretary strode in, his file under his arm. The thudding of Letsukov’s heart was transferred down his arm, making the hand that held the internal passport tremble spasmodically. He handed back the document to his father who shoved it quickly into the recesses of his brown greatcoat.
The First Secretary had stopped halfway toward his desk and was looking at Letsukov. “Any problems?” he asked, nodding toward the old man.
“No,” Letsukov said. “He’s what he claims to be. An old soldier.” He got up and rounded the desk. “Come along, Comrade,” he said to his father. “I’ll see you out of here. You want the Military Pensions Bureau, not us.”
In his shirtsleeves he stood over his father, resisting the urge to reach down and help him to his feet.
The old man got up. “Thank you, Comrades,” he said to the room at large, and shuffled toward the door. Letsukov followed him, close to tears. This bent old man, his father, was only fifty-six years old.
Outside on the landing, Letsukov closed the office door behind them. Glancing down quickly he saw that the doorman had still not returned.
“I must speak quickly,” he said. “Your passport’s stamped ‘Exiled.’”
“I’ve travel permission to pass through Moscow on my way south. For the moment at least I’m legal.”
“Do you remember the suburb of Khimki?” Letsukov said urgently.
“I can find it.”
“Beside the textile factory there… a kvas bar. Can you be there at six this evening?”
“I’ll be there,” the old man said.
For a moment they stood looking at each other. “You know we thought you were dead,” Letsukov said.
His father touched his arm. “You’ve hardly changed at all,” he said. Then he turned and shuffled quickly down the staircase.
When he had passed through the glass doors Letsukov went quickly to the washroom along the landing. Locking the door behind him he rolled up his sleeves and ran water into the basin. Then bending forward he splashed his stinging eyes.
At six that evening Letsukov walked quickly into the little kvas bar. His father was sitting at a corner table drinking tea. Letsukov ordered kvas and sat down beside him.
His father rolled rough mahorka into a cigarette paper. “I’ve given you a shock today, Alexei. Forgive me.”
“There’s nothing to forgive,” Letsukov said, “you know that.”
“I know nothing any longer, my son. For twenty years I’ve fought for my life. What else do I know but how to stay alive?” He laughed. “Then again perhaps it’s the only thing that’s really worth knowing.”
“A lot has changed, father. Here in Moscow things are better than they were.”
“I can see it in the streets.”
“Other things have changed,” Letsukov said cautiously.
“Don’t be gentle with me, Alexei. I’ve been to the village already. I know your mother married.”
“Did you speak to her?”
“No. I saw her. Asked a few questions at the farm. She didn’t see me.”
“You came away?”
“What else was there to do?”
The girl brought Letsukov’s drink. He lifted the kvas to his lips, grimacing at the burnt bread taste.
“I think she would have wanted to see you,” he said. “I know she would.”
“What sort of man is Pavel Ivanovich?” his father asked.
“He’s a good man. He’s been good to both of us. But he never replaced you. Ever.”
“You’ll break my heart, Alexei.”
“It’s true.” He reached across the table and took his father’s hand. It was wrinkled brown, the palms calloused. “You must see her again,” he said, “before you go to exile.”
His father nodded over his tea. It was not an affirmative. It was a signal of fatigue that was to become more and more familiar.
“Are you a member of the Party?”
“Pavel Ivanovich arranged it for me,” Letsukov said.
His father looked up. “That was good of him. And your Moscow residence permit?”
“He got that, too.”
“Your mother’s happy with Pavel Ivanovich?”
“She respects him. As I do. Like me, she is fond of him, too.”
The old man pushed the tea aside. “My exile is for ten years, Alexei. A small town in Central Asia. There are worse places.”
“You’ve served your sentence,” Letsukov said. “Why are you now to be exiled?”
His father smiled. “I’ve too many stories, my son, stories too fresh in my memory. It wouldn’t do to have me hanging around Moscow on park benches. There are foreigners here, tourists, Western correspondents eager to talk to old men like me. But in my new village in Central Asia I can sit in the sun for months with never a foreigner in sight.”
“But you’ll see her before you go?”
It was a long pause. “You arrange it, Alexei. As soon as you can. But make it clear to her that I do not expect her to leave Pavel Ivanovich.”
“And if she wants to? If she wants to follow you to Central Asia?”
“How old is Pavel Ivanovich?”
“Much older than you. Over seventy.”
“Too old to have his life disrupted. I have reason to be grateful to him, not to destroy him. He has shouldered burdens in my absence. Perhaps, all that time ago in Hungary, I should have thought more of my wife and son and kept silent. Is it not a proverb in our country that silence is truly golden?” He rubbed his thumb and index finger together. “In the Soviet Union,” he spoke of the country as if he were an alien, “it is a decision every man faces at least once in his life. Perhaps it hasn’t happened to you yet, Alexei. When it does you will have to decide alone.”
He thumped the table with his clasped hands making the teacup rattle in the saucer. “All right,” he said. “Tell your mother I’m here, in Moscow. But do it gently. Do it gently.”
Two days later Nadya Rodontov traveled to Moscow. Letsukov never knew exactly what happened when they met. But when he saw him afterward his father had decided he would not go to Central Asia. He would join instead the thousands of illegals living in Moscow. This way it was possible to see Letsukov’s mother from time to time and to have the feeling always that she was there no more than 20 miles away.