“Yes,” I said. “Yes. Yes, just so.”
When he was done work, we met at a café near the library. For a long time we exchanged pleasantries. He did not ask about my past ten years; it was not clear whether he knew I had been to America. I asked him about work and he spoke with a rambunctious, unconvincing enthusiasm. Finally there was a lull in the conversation and I told him why I had come to Moscow. I told him that I was looking for some men who knew my work, who might be able to help me.
“I cannot give you a job,” he blurted.
“No, no,” I said, “of course not. I wish to continue my research. But I am looking to speak to some men I once met. Generals.” I swallowed. “I thought perhaps you could teach me the best way to — to reach …”
“Generals?” Totov whispered.
I took the paper from my jacket. “Budennyj, Ordzhonikidze, Tukhachevsky, Voroshilov.”
“Is this a joke?”
“No.”
“You know these men?” he said.
“I did know them.”
Totov quavered in his chair. “I do not know them. I do not know that I can help you.”
“What is it?”
His eyes flicked up and down.
“Totov?”
“Ordzhonikidze was in the Politburo. He died a few years ago.”
“Yes?”
“Tukhachevsky was executed,” he said. “Treason.”
“I see. And the others?”
“Budennyj is a marshal.”
“A marshal?”
He stared at me, incredulous.
“What?”
“A marshal. A marshal of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. He is the second-most important soldier in the world.”
“I see,” I said. “And Voroshilov?”
“Voroshilov?” he said. “Voroshilov is the most important soldier. He is the first marshal. The hero of the southern front. The commissar for defence. You didn’t know this?”
“No.”
“Do you remember Luhansk?”
“The city?”
“Now we call it Voroshilovgrad.”
I swallowed.
“How did you not know this?” he muttered.
I folded up the paper. “I was not here.”
“How did you not know this!” he repeated.
“If I wanted to meet with Voroshilov, how would I do this?”
Totov threw up his hands and squeaked. “How would you meet with Comrade Stalin? How would you meet with the man in the moon?”
I paid for our tea and cakes.
The next day I ironed my suit and went back to the Kremlin. I passed through red-brick Spasskaya Tower and to the entrance of the senate. At reception I said in a quiet voice that I was the scientist Lev Sergeyvich Termen, from Leningrad, and that I wished to have a meeting with First Marshal Kliment Voroshilov. In my message to the first marshal I said that we had met ten years ago, when I had shown him how to see through walls.
I thanked the secretary and sat down and waited.
When visitors’ hours ended that night, I returned to the Dnepr Hotel. In the morning I ironed my suit and went back to Spasskaya Tower. I passed through security and crossed the stone streets, past patrolling guards, birds in chirruping oaks, and arrived at the senate. I told the secretary I was the scientist Lev Sergeyvich Termen, from Leningrad, and again I was here to see First Marshal Kliment Voroshilov. I sat down and I waited.
Just as it was turning dark on the other side of the glass, an officer in shoulder boards appeared beside me.
“Comrade Termen?” he said.
He took me upstairs.
I passed through seven sets of closed doors. They checked my identification three times. In all my meetings with military leaders, my meeting with Lenin himself, I had not undergone so much scrutiny. Men surveyed me with faces like attack dogs. The corridors leading to Voroshilov’s office were bizarrely arrayed: oil portraits of horses, brown and black, like a parade of derby winners. Although there were also painted cavalrymen, the humans seemed like servants: men-in-waiting, holding the bridles of their leaders.
Finally they led me into a room that was three or four times the size of Eva’s apartment, filled with paintings of Iosif Vissarionovich, Voroshilov, Iosif Vissarionovich walking with Voroshilov, and a dozen life-size canvases of Arabians, Tersks, Tchernomor horses. I recognized Voroshilov and immediately felt a sinking feeling. This was the general who had seemed most ambivalent to my research. He had a round face and platinum hair, a moustache like a smear of charcoal dust. His chest was full of medals. His eyes were too near together.
Voroshilov sat. I stood. Between us rested the bronze sculpture of a horse. His desk did not even have a pad of paper: just a single lined sheet, and I could see no pen. Perhaps Voroshilov carried a pen in his pocket, with his military whistle.
“Thank you for meeting with me,” I said.
He said, “You are the doctor?”
“I’m sorry?”
“The doctor from Leningrad.”
“My name is Lev Sergeyvich Termen. I am a scientist. Yes, from Leningrad. Thank you for meeting with me, Comrade Voroshilov.”
“I only have a moment to see you,” he said. He did not seem to blink except when other people were talking.
“I know you are very busy. I will try not to take up much of your time.” I clasped my hands.
“What is this about?”
“We met ten years ago, when I made a presentation on distance vision.”
“Yes?”
I hesitated. I was not sure if he remembered me or not. “So … I — since then, I have continued my research in other fields. This brought me to Germany, to France, to England, to America …”
He had his eyebrows high, his lips dead flat.
“In New York I collaborated with the NKVD, collecting intelligence for the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics,” I said. It was the first time I had ever said such a thing.
“For Beria?” he snapped.
“Who?”
“Comrade Beria.”
“No, I worked — for other officers. Now I have returned to the Soviet Union and I am seeking a new project.”
“So?”
“So …” I began.
“Do you think I am in need of doctors?” he said.
“No, I am a scientist and I thought that as you had—”
“You thought you would come here and dream up some kind of scheme? A swap of favours?”
“What? No! I’m looking for work and—”
“You’d line up and murmur the NKVD’s name and abracadabra, some magic powder floats down from the sky—”
“No!” My fingertips fell against the edge of Voroshilov’s desk. I had interrupted him. He showed his teeth.
“Comrade, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is built on systems. These are plain, practical systems. Sometimes these systems are so plain that they appear ugly. But they are not ugly. They are the most beautiful systems in the world and they function only if the people abide by these systems. Work is the most basic thing. It is the bedrock. If you try to bypass the systems, to exploit some influence in your own self-interest, it is as if you are taking a chisel to the bedrock of the Revolution.”
There was a long pause. I said nothing until I realized that he was waiting for me to say something. “Yes, of course,” I murmured.
“You say ‘of course’ as if you were not trying to corrupt the very foundation of the Soviet system,” Voroshilov said.
“No, no, I just hoped that—”
“You may go,” he said.
“Comrade Voroshilov, I am deeply devoted to the—”
“It is all right; we all make mistakes. Glaunov — show the doctor out.”
A man took me by the elbow and then I was outside Voroshilov’s office, off-balance among the stallions. “Was he angry?” I said to his assistant.