The Knife Sharpener's Bell (32 page)

Earlier in the evening Vladimir had stood in the doorway of the apartment, his slippers dangling from one hand, an old bathrobe and pyjamas hanging over his arm.
Your toothbrush
, I said, and he grinned.
I've got it.
And kissed me on the forehead. That quizzical, amused look on his face.
It's nice of you to stay with her, Vladimir. You should have been a Boy Scout
, I said, and he'd frowned slightly, not following.
Canadian Pioneers
, I said.
I'm too old for the Pioneers, Annette, too old for the Komsomol.
And I smiled and told him,
Then you can join the Party
, and we both laughed, but I thought, maybe he will, someday. Maybe that would be best.

He's safe downstairs. Best keep him out of the way, keep him out of it.

Among all the men who are making the apartment small there's one who doesn't move: it's Polankov, the caretaker, his normally ruddy face gone white, his hands nervous in his lap. What's he doing here?

“Where is your son?” The man speaking towers over Pavel, my tall uncle; he's three times his breadth.

Pavel opens his mouth, closes it. Raisa puts a hand on his pyjamaed sleeve. “He's gone out with his friends,” she says. “They're young people. Sometimes he doesn't come home all night . . .” She smiles, shrugs her shoulders. “Boys. What can you do with them?”

A sound, a low growl almost, from the table. It's Polankov, clearing his throat.

The man beside Pavel turns to Polankov. “What? What was that you said?”

Polankov's words are incoherent.

“Stop muttering. What is it you're trying to say?” Polankov clears his throat again. “I said, she's lying.” Raisa goes stiff. “Earlier in the evening I saw the boy go downstairs to the apartment across the hall.”

“Which apartment?”

“Downstairs on the fourth floor,” Polankov says. “Number seven. An old woman lives there with her niece: Yevseyova.”

“Polankov . . .” As quickly as she says his name, Raisa covers her mouth. He doesn't look up. Bastard. Coward. He won't look at any of us.

Two of the men leave the apartment. We hear a loud knocking, muffled voices, the brief sounds of a scuffle. Raisa starts, moves towards the door just as the two men re-emerge, Vladimir between them, tall, and thin. And afraid. He's never afraid. He's gone white; his eyes are dull, unknowing. They've woken him too, and some part of him is still asleep, still unbelieving. He won't look at Pavel and Raisa, won't look at me, but his gaze scans the men, as if he's measuring them. As if he's measuring what's to come, making some sort of calculation.

“Vladimir Efron?” The tallest, broadest of the men goes over to him. Vladimir nods. “Read and sign.”

Black letters on the small page; Vladimir's name and the round, official stamp: Arrest Warrant. MGB, Moscow Region. They're MGB, not local militia, police. MGB the new acronym for the NKVD. Names, signatures, flourishes – the banal insignia of bureaucracy. Vladimir's friend Solly's name is there as well.
Confirmed by the depositions of other arrested members
. . .

“Comrade,” Pavel's voice wavers, “my son is a medical student, the top of his class. It must be a mistake.”

“It's always a mistake.”

“Comrade,” Pavel says, touching the man's sleeve lightly, “Comrade.”

The man stiffens at Pavel's touch. “If there's a mistake, then we'll sort it out. Read the documentation. It's all legal.”

It's so familiar, the process by which he's being taken from us. First with Lev, then Polankov. And then all those whispered stories we've wanted to evade. This is how they come for you. This is how it happens – carefully, deliberately. There are procedures, papers to be signed, red tape.

“Sign.”

Vladimir leans over the page. He looks up at me, and for the first time since he was taken into the room, our eyes engage. I can see the dullness of his fear sharpen into something different, some kind of knowledge.

Don't sign. If you don't sign it's just a piece of paper
.

But as I'm thinking the words, Vladimir signs. His hand is trembling, though I can see he's holding his body still. His face has gone dull again, obedient. Pavel has his arm around Raisa's shoulder. She's holding herself still as well, though one hand clutches Pavel's arm. None of us moves; none of us says anything, our bodies compliant.

As long as you cooperate, everything will go smoothly.
What good would it have done him not to sign? He'd have been beaten, dragged into the Black Raven anyway. The whole family would have been arrested if we'd made any trouble.

“And you,” the man says, nodding at Polankov, “you sign here.”

Polankov nods back, picks up the pen. That's why they brought him in. It's more procedure: he's the civilian witness protocol requires. He signs, his hand steady. Bastard.

“I'll get dressed,” Vladimir says.

“Go with him.” The man, the one giving all the orders, who must be the boss, gestures to one of the others to follow Vladimir into the bedroom.

A low mutter – it's Polankov.

“Speak up. I can't hear you.”

“May I go now?” Polankov asks. “I want to go back to my apartment.”

“You can go. You've done enough.” A faint smile passes across the man's face and then, before it can vanish, before his expression can go back to its impassive norm, Polankov is gone.

I hear one of the men shouting. Except for the boss, I can't tell them apart.

“What are these?” He's waving a packet of letters tied with ribbon at Raisa. It's my hoard, the letters from Joseph, from Canada.

The man's face is red, an inch or two from Raisa's. He's shouting. “What are you hiding here?” The English is unintelligible to them. I can hear my old Pioneer leader's, Raya's, voice, when I was learning Cyrillic:
to us the Latin alphabet is foreign
. Us. Raisa's mouth is moving, but she can't seem to find any words. Pavel and Vladimir are also mute. My letters
from home. Now the man is shoving the packet right in Raisa's face, shouting, “Tell me!”

“Don't talk to her like that!” I feel my own face go red, step towards him, wrench the packet from the meat of his hand. “It's my cousin who's under arrest, not my aunt. There's no need to shout; there's no need to be so uncultured.” The man goes redder, but steps back. I set the letters on the table. They're not touching Joseph.

“Can you explain what these are?” he asks Raisa, his voice quieter now. “And you,” he turns to me, his voice even, “you are to sit in that room.”

I turn, walk back into the bedroom, put my hands in my lap. I can see Raisa's hands shaking. I've never seen those sturdy doctor's hands tremble. She undoes the ribbon, spreads out the letters, the envelopes. These fragile sheets of paper, the delicate squares of stamps. The stiff, elegant head of George VI, the white or dark military cap too large for his small, fine face. There are larger stamps too, the bigger denominations – size is value – rectangles with their peaceful graven landscapes, the blue and maroon and green dulled, as though the colour had faded, though they're only a few years old. I remember them now, those colours, remember them vivid, the deep green of the line of shelterbelt trees at the horizon, wheat the thick gold of a lion pelt. Taking the Moonlight Special back from the beach with Poppa. The language of home.

Raisa and the man are talking quietly, but I hear my surname spoken over and over again as Raisa counts out the letters, explaining: Gershon, Joseph. Gershon, Avram; Gershon, Anne. A murmur. Gershon, Ben. As though a net were being drawn round us all, though it's only me now, only me.

Pavel has taken a suitcase and set it on the davenport. And I hear it, the knife sharpener's bell, clear, pealing. It's here now. I knew it would come. I let it ring as Raisa comes quietly into the bedroom, her face still, impassive. She doesn't look at me, but I watch as she gathers an armful of heavy sweaters and socks, underwear, and I can see her hands twitch as she tries to control them. She goes into the front room, starts folding them into the suitcase.

The men – how many are there? I can't count them; they keep moving through the apartment. Two are going through every book in the bookcase, through the papers stacked on Pavel's desk, on tables, in corners. What are they expecting to find in books, in papers – razor blades? Bullets? The flattened ghost of a corpse pressed like a leaf between the hard-bound, worn covers of one of Pavel's agronomy textbooks?

Words. They're word hunters. Looking for dangerous, criminal words. These large men are afraid of black marks on white paper.

Now they're putting papers into folders. What are they taking? Vladimir's school essays? His volumes of Lenin? Nothing. There's nothing for them to find. It's madness. He talks with his friends, argues, debates. They're children; they chatter. There's nothing for these men to find.

Vladimir is in the doorway, mechanically putting on his coat. Then he stops, looks at me, looks at his father, his mother, then looks away, stalls.

“No,” Raisa says dully, “not that one.” And pulls another from the wardrobe. “This one is thicker.”

“No, Momma, I can't. It's Poppa's.”

“Don't argue with me, Vladimir. Just put it on.” She adjusts the collar.

I get up from the bed. I've been sitting here for how long – hours? The sky is paler now, a pale day ahead of us. I've been drifting; I've been everywhere in the room, but now I snap into myself.

“Take leave of your parents now.” The massive formality, even here, even now.

Pavel draws Vladimir to him, then Raisa. I'm across the room; in one slight movement I slip by the men. No. I will not let him go. I hold onto the lanky body, so tall, my head against the middle of his chest.

“I have to go.” Vladimir says, gently letting me go. “It's all right, Momma, Poppa, Annette. I'll be all right.”

And the room is suddenly empty of them, the overcoats, the anonymous men, Vladimir.

I let him go.
Promise.

I shouldn't have let him go.

Raisa is on the davenport, her hands cupped over her face, rocking back and forth, back and forth the way I remember seeing the men in synagogue at prayer. Maybe she's praying now; maybe we're all at prayer. But to whom? Who would Raisa, the rationalist, the agnostic, address in prayer? God? The devil? Stalin?

The room is empty now, the table. There's only a glass of cold tea, the sugar bowl on the embroidered cloth. The letters. They've taken my letters.

“It's all right, Raisa,” Pavel is saying. “He went quietly; no one made any kind of fuss. He's innocent. There's been a mistake. People
are
questioned and released. Vladimir hasn't done anything. He's just a boy.”

“A mistake,” Raisa echoes, lowering her hands, wiping her face on a sleeve. “They must have made a mistake.”
The apartment is back to itself, composed. The books are orderly again in the bookshelves, papers on the desk. But the rooms wear that hunkered-down aspect that I remember from the war: waiting, afraid.

He's done nothing – he can't have done anything. So he and his friends talked; university students and their philosophy. He's done nothing. People
are
questioned and released. Lev was questioned and released. And Polankov – Polankov came back.

Polankov.
He came back because Pavel and Raisa helped him, and then – the coward. Bastard. He was the one that told them Vladimir was downstairs. If he hadn't, would they have found Vladimir? Bastard. Traitor. Polankov and his unctuous gratitude; Polankov and his little deals, his arrangements. What did I expect? The bile rises in my throat, the rage. I want to go downstairs and tear his throat out. Bastard.

“Annette?”

Did I say it out loud? Raisa's standing in front of me, a blue striped tea towel in her hands. She's been polishing that same glass for fifteen minutes. I take it from her.

“Raisa, sit down.”

Raisa sits, her hands, her mouth, the glass, dry. “I keep remembering,” she says. “I keep remembering him as a baby. Why would I be remembering that now?”

“Raisa –” I touch her hand. Cold and dry.

“I keep seeing him as a newborn, that callus on the upper lip when he was born. It was slightly paler than the lip itself. A sucking pad, they call it. He must have sucked his thumb in the womb. Isn't that strange, to think that they have this life even before they're born?”

“Raisa –”

“Did I ever tell you that he never learned to latch onto the
breast properly? The nipple cracked on one breast; it didn't heal for months.” She looks up at me. “It was very painful. But you bear these things, you know. And the child survives.”

“Raisa, it'll be all right. He'll come home. They'll release him.”

Raisa draws back from me. “Of course he'll come home! He hasn't done anything! I have to finish the dishes,” Raisa picks up the tea towel and is back at the dishes, bone-dry.

I hear something.

A scratching. It's Pavel. He's at the table, sitting, writing. He runs a hand through his hair.

“Pavel, what are you writing?” I ask.

He looks up at me, smiles, pushes the page towards me.

“
Comrade Stalin,” I read, “I am appealing to you personally. There has been a mistake. My son has done nothing wrong . . .”

We didn't know where he was. Lefortovo, Butyrka, Lubyanka – we counted the rosary of names in this city of prisons. We had no news, didn't even know what the charges were. We went from building to building, bureaucrat to bureaucrat, standing in endless, hopeless lines. It was a treasure hunt: one slip of paper with a name, an address, took us to a desk, a face, that in turn gave us another slip of paper that led us to another desk, another face. Forms to be filled out in triplicate.
You'll find out soon enough
, we were told.
You have to be patient, have to understand that certain procedures must be followed.