Red Square (22 page)

   
'So you're not a CIA front anymore?'

   
'Those were the good old days. At least the CIA knew what it was doing.'

   
The beer came first. Arkady took small, reverent sips because it was so different from sour, muddy Soviet beer. Stas didn't so much drink as pour it into himself.

   
He set down an empty glass. 'Ah, the émigré life. Just among Russians there are four groups: New York, London, Paris and Munich. London and Paris are more intellectual. In New York there are so many refugees you can spend your life without speaking English. But Munich is the group that's really trapped in time; this is where you find the most monarchists. Then there's the Third Wave.'

   
'What's the Third Wave?'

   
Stas said, 'The Third Wave is the most recent wave of refugees. Old émigrés don't want anything to do with them.'

   
Arkady took a guess. 'You mean, the Third Wave is Jews?'

   
'Right.'

   
'This is just like home.'

   
Not exactly like home. Though Slavic conversation filled the cafeteria, the fare was pure German, and he felt solid food being instantly transformed into blood, bone and energy. Better fed, he looked around with more attention. The Poles, he noticed, had suits, no ties and the expression of aristocrats temporarily short of funds. The Rumanians chose a round table, the better to conspire. Americans sat alone and wrote postcards like dutiful tourists.

   
'You really had Prosecutor Rodionov here as a guest?'

   
'As an example of New Thinking, of political moderation, of the improved climate for foreign investment,' Stas said.

   
'You
personally
had Rodionov here?'

   
'I personally wouldn't touch him with rubber gloves.'

 
  
'Then who did?'

   
'The station president is a great believer in New Thinking. He also believes in Henry Kissinger, Pepsi Cola and Pizza Hut. These allusions are lost on you. That's because you've never worked at Radio Liberty.'

   
A waitress brought Stas another beer. With her blue eyes and short skirt, she looked like a large, overworked girl. Arkady wondered what she made of her clientele of sunny Americans and contentious Slavs.

   
A large Georgian broadcaster with the curls and beak of an actor joined the table. His name was Rikki. He nodded abstractedly through an introduction to Arkady, then launched immediately into a tale of woe.

   
'My mother is visiting. She never forgave me for defecting. Gorbachev is a lovely man, she says; he would never gas demonstrators in Tbilisi. She has a little letter of remorse for me to sign so I can go home with her. She's so gaga she'd take me right to jail. She's having her lungs looked at while she's here. They should look at her brains. You know who else is coming? My daughter. She's eighteen. I've never seen her. She arrives today. My mother and my daughter. I love my daughter - that is, I think I love my daughter, because I've never met her. We talked on the phone last night.' Rikki lit one cigarette from another. 'I have pictures of her, of course, but I asked her to describe herself so I would recognize her at the airport. Growing children change all the time. Apparently, I am going to the airport to pick up a girl who looks like Madonna. When I started to describe myself, she said, "Describe your car." '

   
'This is when we miss the vodka,' Stas said.

   
Rikki fell into a trough of silence.

   
Arkady asked, 'Tell me, when you broadcast to Georgia, do you often think of your mother and your daughter?'

  
 
Rikki said, 'Of course. Who do you think invited them here? I'm just surprised they came. And I'm surprised who they're turning out to be.'

   
'Having a loved one come sounds like a combination of reincarnation and hell,' Arkady said.

   
'Like that, yes.' Rikki lifted his eyes to the clock on the wall. 'I have to go. Stas, cover for me, please. Write something, whatever you want. You're a lovely man.' He heaved himself up and plodded tragically towards the door.

   
' "A lovely man",' Stas muttered. 'He'll go back. Half the people here will go back to Tbilisi, Moscow, Leningrad. What's crazy is that we, of all people, know better. We're the ones who tell the truth. But we're Russian, so we like lies too. Right now we're in a state of special confusion. We had a head of the Russian section, very competent, highly intelligent. He was a defector like me. About ten months ago he went back to Moscow. Not just to visit; he re-defected. A month later, he's a spokesman for Moscow appearing on American television, saying how democracy is alive and well, the Party is a friend of the market economy, the KGB is a guarantor of social stability. He's good; he should be, he learned here. He makes such a believable case that people at the station wonder: are we performing a real service or are we fossils of the Cold War? Why don't we all march home to Moscow?'

   
'Do you believe him?' Arkady asked.

   
'No. All I have to do is look at someone like you and ask, "Why is this man running?" '

   
Arkady left the question in the air. He said, 'I thought I was going to see Irina.'

Stas pointed to the lit red lamp above the door and ushered Arkady into a control booth. An engineer with a headset sat at the faint illumination of his console; otherwise, the booth was silent and dark. Arkady sat at the back, below the turning reels of a tape recorder. Needles danced on volume meters.

   
On the other side of soundproof glass, Irina was at a padded, hexagonal table with a central microphone and overhead light. Across from her sat a man in an intellectual's black sweater. Saliva sprayed like stoker's sweat when he talked. He joked, laughing at his own humour. Arkady wondered what he was saying.

   
Irina's head was slightly to one side, the pose of a good listener. Her eyes, in shadow, showed as deep-set reflections. Her lips, slightly open, held the promise of a smile, if not the smile itself.

   
It was not a flattering light. The man's forehead bunched in muscles, his eyebrows two hedgerows over the pits of his eyes. But the light flowed over Irina's even features and outlined in gold the corona of her cheek, her loose strands of hair, her arm. Arkady remembered the faint blue line that used to be under her right eye, a result of interrogation; the mark was gone now and she seemed flawless. An ashtray and a glass of water stood in front of her and the subject of her interview.

   
She said a few words and the effect was like blowing on coals. At once the man became even more animated, waving his hands like an axe.

   
Stas leaned across the console and turned on the sound.

   
'That's my point exactly!' the man in the sweater burst out. 'Intelligence agencies are always drawing psychological profiles of national leaders. It's even more necessary to understand the psychology of the people themselves. This has always been the province of psychology.'

   
'Could you give us an example?' Irina asked.

   
'Easily! The father of Russian psychology was Pavlov. He's best known to the world for his experiments with associative reflexes, particularly his work with dogs, accustoming them to associate their dinner with the ringing of a bell, so after a time they began to salivate just at the sound of the bell.'

   
'What do dogs have to do with national psychology?'

   
'Just this. Pavlov reported that there were some individual dogs that he could not train to salivate at the sound of the bell; in fact, he could not train them at all. He called them atavistic, throwbacks to their wolf ancestors. They were useless in the laboratory.'

   
'You're still talking about dogs.'

   
'Wait. Then Pavlov expanded. He called that atavistic trait a "reflex of freedom". He said that "reflex of freedom" existed in human populations the same as in dogs, but to different degrees. In Western societies the "reflex of freedom" was pronounced. In Russian society, however, he said there was a dominant "reflex of obedience". This was not a moral judgment, only a scientific observation. And since the October Revolution and seventy years of Communism, you can imagine how complete that "reflex of obedience" has become. So I'm simply saying that our expectations of any genuine democracy should be realistic.'

   
'Define
realistic
' Irina said.

   
'Low.' He exuded the satisfaction of a man describing the death of a reprobate.

   
The engineer broke in from the booth.

   
'Irina, we get feedback when the professor gets close to the microphone. I'm going to play the tape back. Take a break.'

   
Arkady expected to hear the conversation over again, but the engineer listened on his headset as sound continued to feed into the booth from the studio.

   
Irina opened a bag for a cigarette and the professor almost jumped the table to light it. As she shifted, her hair swayed, revealing the glint of an earring. The blue cashmere top was more elegant than anything Arkady would have thought she would wear in a radio station. When she thanked her guest with her eyes he seemed content to squirm in them forever.

   
'That's a little harsh, don't you think? Comparing Russians with dogs?' she asked.

 
  
The professor folded his arms, still wrapped in self-satisfaction. 'No. Think about it logically. Those individuals who wouldn't obey were all killed or left long ago.'

   
Arkady saw contempt in her eyes, like the dilation of a flame. Or perhaps he was mistaken, because she responded with more amiable small talk. 'I know what you mean,' she said. 'There's a different type leaving Moscow now.'

   
'Precisely! The people who are coming today are the families who were left behind. They're stragglers, not leaders. This is not a moral judgement, merely an analysis of characteristics.'

   
Irina said, 'Not only families.'

   
'No, no. Former colleagues I haven't seen for twenty years are popping up everywhere.'

   
'Friends.'

   
'Friends?' It was a category he hadn't considered.

   
Smoke had collected at the light and turned it into a tactile nimbus around Irina. It was her contrast that was arresting. A mask with full mouth and eyes, dark hair cut severely but gently touching her shoulders. She glowed like ice.

   
Irina said, 'It can be embarrassing. They're decent people and it's so important to them to see you.'

   
The professor hunched forward, eager to commiserate. 'You're the only one they know.'

   
Irina said, 'You don't want to hurt them, but their expectations are fantasies.'

   
'They've lived in a state of unreality.'

   
'They've thought about you every day, but the fact is that too much time has gone by. You haven't thought of them for years,' Irina said.

   
'You've lived a different life, in a different world.'

   
'They want to pick up where you left off,' Irina said.

   
'They'd smother you.'

   
'They mean well.'

   
'They'd take over your life.'

   
'And who knows anymore where you left off?' Irina said. 'Whatever it was is dead.'

   
'You have to be friendly but stern.'

   
'It's like seeing a ghost.'

   
'Threatening?'

   
'More pathetic than threatening,' Irina said. 'You just have to wonder, after all this rime why do they come?'

   
'If they listen to you on the radio, I can just imagine the fantasies.'

   
'You don't want to be cruel.'

   
'You're not,' the professor assured her.

   
'It just seems . . . it seems to me that they actually would be happier if they stayed in Moscow with their dreams.'

   
'Irina?' the sound engineer said. 'Let's re-tape the last two minutes. Please remind the professor not to get close to the microphone.'

   
The professor blinked, trying to look into the booth. 'Understood,' he said.

   
Irina twisted her cigarette into the ashtray. She took a drink of water, long fingers around the silvery glass. Red lips, white teeth. Cigarette bright as a broken bone.