talking about Sakharov or Bukovsky. The only thing that worried me was that these bloodhounds carried out their task in such a brazenly obvious way, making no attempt whatsoever to keep a low profile—when I took a taxi they didn’t even follow at a safe distance. One day, after checking the rearview mirror several times, the elderly driver burst out: “Oh fuh . . . ! Your syphilitic mother should have aborted you! Antichrists! Satan’s hemorrhoids! Sacks of stinking vomit . . . Let’s lose ’em.” “No, please.” Why complicate my life even more?
The Petenky (that’s what I called the four in the Moskvich with license plate 79-54) returned happily to their toasty car, which they always kept running, while the Vovochky (the ones with plate number 59-60) trailed me on foot, much less happily, to the metro. I was able to get a look at them: light eyes, high cheekbones, hard Slavic features, blank and icy stares.
It was noon when Shklovsky threw me out: “Get out of here!” Upset, my tears hardening into crystals on my cheeks, I headed straight for the Aeroport metro stop. Once again, my escort split up—this time it was the Petenky’s turn to follow me through underground Moscow. They must not have enjoyed the ride on the crowded train; at the Mayakovskaya stop they escorted me off with a shove. As I fell to the ground, I felt—through several layers of wool and a fur coat—a colossal kick on my right side. I was on the ground when I came to, surrounded by concerned bystanders. Two police officers arrived. “What’s going on here? Is she drunk?” “She’s not,” one lady answered, “but those four huligany who knocked her down certainly were, I saw them with my own eyes, they’re right over there.” I lifted my head a little: the Petenky were standing a few meters from our huddle and for the first time their lips stretched into little smiles. I saw the militsionery’s boots march over to the would-be thugs and come back in less than a minute: the KGB badge terrorizes even the police. One of them took me back to my hotel. An hour later, a doctor came. A broken rib, most likely. “Apply this ointment and bandage your chest tightly.” “With what?” “It’s up to you; if you prefer, you can go to the trauma ward, but I’d advise against it—with this cold, you’d have to wait for hours at the emergency room. Most importantly, be careful not to laugh.” That was the last thing I felt like doing. I cut up one of my pajamas and wrapped the strips around my chest, howling with pain. Shklovsky called: “. . . My God, I made you cry, forgive this crabby old man. I’ll expect you tomorrow.”
I asked if I could dine in my room: “We don’t do that here.” I went down to the restaurant and for a nominal fee of fifty rubles they put me at a small table off to the side; as usual, I ordered soup and Peking chicken, and for once, a double vodka (200 grams). I went back up to my room, lay down for about half an hour, and went back down just in time to sip the broth with bits of Chinese mushrooms floating among the traditional pelmeni. The orchestra was playing “Midnight in Moscow.” Back in my room, I rested again, and then went back for the second course. Seeing me heading for the elevator again, the guard for that floor asked me: “Is there something wrong? Up and down, up and down . . .” “Is that not allowed?” “No, but it makes our job difficult.” He didn’t specify which.
December 30. 34° below zero. Serafima Gustavovna draped a blanket over her husband’s body like a peplos, brought in an electric heater, and then got into bed, in her clothes, under two tartan blankets. She was snoring by the time Viktor Borisovich finished his long, sad tale. As I was softly saying good-bye and asking about the plan for the following day, Shklovsky interrupted me: “Serenochka, tomorrow is New Year’s Eve, I want to give Sima a present. With the royalties from my translations abroad I’ve been able to stash away a little money, that is, tsertifikaty, but I’ve never set foot in a Beryozka. My Sima neither. And she dreams of having a dublyonka. They sell them at the Beryozka by the Novodevichy Monastery, she found out. Would you be willing to take her?” “Now???” “No, she’s tired, poor thing. Tomorrow. Since it’s a holiday the store will be almost empty, you’ll be able to take your time.” “And how will we get there and back?” He struggled to free his right arm from under the blanket, grabbed an address book and handed it to me. “You look, please, I don’t want to get my other glasses. Under V: Veselitsky, Afanasy Veselitsky, Writers’ Union.” Stunned, I replied: “Veselitsky? Do you know him, what kind of guy he is, how much he drinks?” “Of course. No less than the Central Committee put him in that position; he could drink even a whole distillery of vodka and no one would be able to move him from that chair. But he’s useful, and he can get us a car from the Union—am I or am I not a living icon?” He cleared his throat, summoned his threatening Dantonesque tone, and dialed the number. “Shklovsky here . . . Afanasy Aleksandrovich, tomorrow I need a . . .” After he hung up, he told me that a car would come pick us up at two on the dot.
Who’d have ever thought—even the eighty-something Serafima Gustavovna had been seduced by the dublyonka. The original sin came from Lelouch and the film A Man and a Woman: the sheepskin overcoat Anouk Aimée wore became the dream of Soviet women for years (though the men’s version was also much sought-after), a symbol of western chic, privilege, affluence.
“What a horrible day you picked!” Afanasy said to me as he helped Serafima Gustavovna into the car. “I had to make a hundred telephone calls to find a driver . . .” It was a miracle that he’d found one, he added, so he would take advantage and run a few errands; he would be back to pick us up at five sharp.
During the trip to the Novodevichy Monastery (an ancient, splendid convent, where Chekhov and Gogol are buried: the ghost of the latter no doubt wandered around the “hard currency” store nearby to rob the fortunate clients of their warm, elegant overcoats), I turned two or three times to look out the back window. The Petenky and Vovochky were still there. Afanasy, who must have downed at least one vodka already, didn’t notice a thing.
Around the Beryozka the snow had been cleared to make paths for vehicle access. Cars were scarce, as were customers, and Serafima Gustavovna had at least three salesgirls at her disposal to try on the dublyonki for sale. She couldn’t find one like she wanted—with a hood and not too dark, “otherwise it would age me.” We moved on to the hats, without much luck. As a gesture to the sales-women, who had been unusually kind, I bought a kind of fur turban: it made me look vaguely like Josephine Baker, but it paid off in warmth when we left the store at five—but no Afanasy and no car. We waited between the two doors, where we could feel some of the heat from inside, but after five minutes poor Serafima Gustavovna could hardly stand up. “That’s what I get for trying to look stylish at my age,” she mumbled, trembling. I took her back inside and asked for a chair. After we’d lost an hour and all hope (Afanasy’s errands must have been of the alcoholic variety, perhaps the driver had taken him to the hospital—if he wasn’t drunk himself!), I realized that I absolutely had to catch a taxi, hail down a car: planting my feet firmly in the hard snow I went down the path to the street and stood there, waving my right hand persistently. I couldn’t stand it for long, and after a few minutes I went back inside the Beryozka. Every time I came out, from the parallel paths, the Petenky and Vovochky put their cars into first and moved forward toward the street, only to reverse when I went back into the shop, completely frozen. I asked if I could call the Writers’ Union. Nobody picked up, of course. I resumed the quest: it was pitch dark, no cars except for my escorts’. Consumed with a desperate rage, I suddenly turned toward the Petenky on my left and practiced in my head what I was going to say: “At least let an old woman in your car to get warm, she could catch pneumonia. That would be a way to serve the State too!” Seeing me approach, the Petenky at the wheel of the 54-69 moved forward. In all honesty, I don’t know how it happened—they slid on the ice, or he was caught off guard, or he wanted to punish me for the unexpected insubordination, or the path was too narrow . . . When the Moskvich and I were side by side, the Petenky swerved toward me, forcing me to lunge onto a heap of snow so as not to be hit head on. By then the snow had become solid hard ice, rocklike . . .
I limped back to the shop. I slipped, I said. One of the salesgirls felt bad for us: if we waited until closing, her husband, a taxi driver, would help us when he came to get her. I called Shklovsky to tell him we would be late.
I
