'Who?' Arkady squinted.
'The woman you married. Can you recall her?'
'Only all too well! I'm trying to surpress the memories. Such teeth—like shrivelled olive pits. Why do you ask?' Arkady blinked rapidly behind his glasses.
Olga turned her gaze to the dim panes. 'The thing is, I can't at all recollect my Zvi.'
'Who's that?'
'My husband. I can't remember him. Not a bit. This is cause for dilemma. Am I missing him properly if I can't recollect him fully?'
Just then the grey teletype in the corner spat and spluttered. For several minutes the machine spewed a torrent of paper out of its yammering maw. And then, just as suddenly as it started up, it fell quiet again. Arkady looked at the machine and then at Olga. The plastic tubes whistled a grim melody. Neither of them made a move towards the machine.
Chief Editor Kaminsky materialized in the open doorway. His gaze shifted to the teletype, then to Olga. Standing as he was so close to the tube hatch, his pale blue tie and the two strands of his comb-over slowly lifted toward that source of immense suction power. To Olga's way of thinking, it lent to Chief Editor Kaminsky the look of a human windsock. Or perhaps a kite. And she observed again how very much his eyebrows resembled the typesetter's steep-pitched insert symbol and how opaque the lenses of his glasses were, so that even though she was close enough to him to smell the tomato and pickled herring he'd had for lunch, she could not see his eyes.
'How are things?' Chief Editor Kaminsky asked.
'Normal,' Olga said. 'I think.'
Chief Editor Kaminsky aimed a meaningful glance at the machine, then looked at Olga. 'Olga, to tell you the truth, I'm getting concerned. You look pale, and then again, sometimes quite flushed. You look as if you've lost a great deal of weight, or possibly gained. Clearly you are a walking manifestation of internal and external contradiction.' With both his hands, Chief Editor Kaminsky slapped at the errant strands of hair and held them tight to his head. His hands otherwise engaged, there was nothing he could do about that dull blue tie pulling him slowly towards the tube hatch. 'Probably there's not a thing in the world I can do to help, but I feel compelled to offer my assistance anyway.'
Olga glanced at the report still lodged in the teletype. It, too, flapped in the direction of the mighty tube system.
'Is it trouble at home?' Chief Editor Kaminsky leaned towards Olga.
Olga extricated herself from her chair and stood. She tapped her forehead. 'My body is in an uproar. I can't sleep at night. I'm seeing strange things at the apartment building, stranger than usual. And I'm smelling things, too.'
'Go on, go on,' Chief Editor Kaminsky murmured.
'I am forgetting things and,' Olga paused and glanced at Arkady, 'sometimes, I am terribly afraid that my semi-truthful rendering of fact will carry disastrous consequences.'
'Olga, Olga.' Chief Editor Kaminsky draped his arm over her shoulder. 'You are investing far too much thought into your work. You aren't being paid to think about the deep meanings of words and draw profound connections between them. Your job, more or less, is to cast upon facts and figures the penumbric shadow of neutrality and normality so that nothing, not a word, not a thought nor an idea unduly shocks the eye of the reader. Always remember that the written word is fact in itself. Especially when it is written with confidence!'
Olga nodded. It was a simple enough sounding procedure in theory. In practice she wanted desperately to chew off her hands. She wished she had five sets of hands so that she could chew off each and every pair. Chief Editor Kaminsky shifted more of his weight onto his arm and leaned into Olga.
'Always remember, the Russian language and, therefore, print media itself, abhors a vacuum. Your job is to keep filling the blanks with vague substitutes, to euphemize anything that carries a disturbing tone. The trick is to make sure your deft substitutions don't lack in subtlety. Here's where your gift for humour is so necessary. See?'
'But sir, truth is a transcendent value; it matters what we say and how we say it.'
Chief Editor Kaminsky paled slightly. It may have been her imagination, but it seemed to Olga that the howling from the tubes grew higher pitched. And most certainly Chief Editor Kaminsky's arm had grown heavier, its weight now driving her heels into the floor.
'Good God, woman. You know that and I know that. But that doesn't mean you have to go about repeating it! After all, we have our readership to think of.' At this, Chief Editor Kaminsky cupped his free hand under Olga's elbow and gave a panicked squeeze.
'Right, then!' Chief Editor Kaminsky spun on his heels. He glided through the open door and down the hallway, the whole way his tie whipping over his shoulder and fluttering towards the open mouth of the tube hatch.
'Everyone knows that paid fools are no better than the ones we get for free,'Arkady said. He rose, ripped the paper from the teletype, scanned it briefly and handed it to Olga.
Olga read the report quickly. Then she started back at the top and re-read slowly, her eyes drinking in line by line her every worst fear confirmed: name after name of the dead and the missing. Her heart pounded in her ears, her eyes watered and blurred. There were over a hundred names. And in the report conclusion even worse news. The President was calling for unilateral draft with no exemptions or exceptions, a request that had been enthusiastically passed in the Duma.
Olga sank into her chair. What to do? Forget rendering the facts harmless by means of deft and draughty euphemism. This was her boy they were talking about. Her boy who would be sent out in a ground infantry unit. Her boy who would be sent back in an open rail carriage stuffed with bodies. Olga laid her forearms on the desk and cradled her head in her hands.
'What shall I do?' Olga turned to Arkady.
Arkady speared the report with his pencil and examined it at arm's length for several minutes. At last he cleared his throat. 'You've suggested now and again that your son may be a bit of an, er, how shall I say? Idiot? Did you mean that in the literal or euphemistic sense?' he asked cautiously.
'Well,' Olga bit her lip. Yuri was more of a balbess, a dunderhead, which, as far as she knew, didn't carry a definite clinical classification, though perhaps it ought to. But her Yuri—an idiot? She could say yes. Her situation—his situation—was that desperate. But it wouldn't be true. And wasn't she the one who held forth her internal appeal for the truth made external? For telling a truth so pure it could not be heightened or dampened by people like her? Or was this one of those rare moments in a mother's life where she would and should break every rule for her children?
'He is an idiot in his own fashion,' she said at last, the sound of her voice in her ears foreign and strained.
'But do you have any proof of it? Anything in particular that is strange or crazy?'
'He fishes from the rooftop.'
'Does he catch anything?' Arkady sounded genuinely interested.
Olga shook her head. 'No, but he wears a souvenir cosmonaut's helmet day and night.'
'Yes, I knew about that,' Arkady said. 'Sadly, a lot of young people are dressing in odd ways. We need something more definitive. Something hugely idiotic—in writing, say. A silly love poem or poorly constructed joke?'
Olga squeezed her eyes shut, thinking. The tubes whistled and the sound was slightly obscene, like a low wolf call. 'Of course!' She opened her eyes. 'Mircha!'
'Who?'
'The Manifesto!' Olga dug through her plastic bag and withdrew Mircha's semi-transparent papers. Carefully, so that the shaky writing would not crumble at her feet, she began to read aloud:
Today a boy explains to his father how feathers on a chicken grow. Today a man looks over his shoulder and says nothing is impossible.
'Ah,' Arkady muttered.
'Wait. There's more,' Olga continued to read:
Today a woman washing shirts in a bucket of bleach watches the skin from the tips of her fingers disappear. Enough, she says. Today an old man with a violin breaks his bow and says now. Today I rattle every door handle of the city looking for the one still warm from the touch of my lover's hand and I say, I will never stop looking.