The Moscoviad (12 page)

The thing is that
a time bomb has been placed inside my biography. I can even die (in which I
almost don’t believe), but sooner or later it will explode anyway. The first
random literary historian will feel festive and joyful upon stumbling in the
declassified archives on something about me! About me as well. For I am not the
first there, nor am I the last.

Every citizen of
our merry empire learns about the existence of this establishment, the KGB, at
a rather young age. As I recall, I first heard its name when I was six or seven
years old. For some reason I vividly remember my initial childish associations
with this word: something sleazy, slimy, abusive—something very much like the
phrase “fuck you in the mouth” (an expression firmly lodged in my vocabulary by
our neighborhood).

But all this is
pure lyricism, Your Royal Mercy. An avoidable pause before recounting the main
part.

As time goes on,
we learn more and more about this world and our potential place in it. Take me,
for example, between the ages of seventeen and twenty-two. That is, my college
years. A nonconformist poet, an advocate of pure art, a fan of paintings by the
old masters and of the latest rock music, a bit exited by Hinduism as
interpreted by Ramacharaka, then first tentative steps towards Christianity—in
other words, a rather traditional version of soul-searching and wanderings of
the bohemian youth during the empire’s twilight years in the late
seventies—early eighties. I stressed at the first opportunity my unbelief in a
social order imposed from above, in some communist ideals (You may be smiling
now, Your Eternity, and then this was indeed a topic for dangerous discussions).
Simultaneously all this time I yearned to find certain points of agreement with
reality. I looked for a personal niche, that is, for a way of staying unstained
in the surrounding ocean of shit. The list of my authorities and credos of the
time is also rather traditional and eloquent: Rilke, Hesse, Borges, then
suddenly Vladimir Solovyov . . .

This was my world
then, pure and innocent enough to make one even feel sick a bit, my drawn
circle, and somewhere there, outside, KGB’s on a prowl, searching, sniffing,
arresting, exiling, deporting someone, but I don’t play in these games, this is
too narrow for me, grown and reared on the Vedas and on baroque music concerts,
on Tarkovsky’s films and Apollinaire’s poetry. And what does it matter that my
distant grandfather was an officer of the district Ukrainian police, and then a
fighter in the Ukrainian insurgent army, dying in battle in 1944? My
grandfather, a sergeant of the Ukrainian Galician Army in 1918, when he was not
yet eighteen?

So I existed in
my circle, and KGB wandered somewhere outside it. Rarely a wave would roll,
like a warning, a light pulling at the very loose leash, the first ring in the
theater of baseness before a disgraceful performance. Here an artist friend of
mine is kicked out of school for announcing at an exam that he has not read and
has no intention of reading the draft of the new Soviet constitution. There
another artist friend abandons everything and for some reason turns up all the
way in Tallinn—as if it is already the other side of the border. And here are
the thick official-looking doors on the fourth floor at college, bearing a not
terribly eloquent sign with the words “First Department.” They say each one of
us lies there, behind those doors, in his or her personal file—completely
transparent, with all the data the empire needs so much. There they know about
us even something we don’t know ourselves.

A few more years
pass. Naturally, someone must have been making some notes about me over there.
At my first job after graduation; when I did my army service. From the army I
returned already with a few lucky publications. I am already known as a poet.
My first book will be out soon!

And here I feel
their close insistent breath. The signals are no longer just signals, the ring
is not just a ring, but the second, double ring. At the publishing house where
my first book is in the pipeline, the editor notes in an undertone that they’ve
noticed me. That inquiries are being made about me. So I should be aware.
Because all sorts of things happen. Some two months later—the first date. Not
with a girl, naturally. But with two guys in civilian clothes. A banal summons
to the district military office (this institution must be familiar to You, Your
Manliness), and an hour-long conversation inside a civic defense classroom
locked from the inside. The conversation’s essence is as old as this world:
temptation. Wouldn’t you like, dear Otto Wilhelmovych, to help us in our
difficult job? No, I wouldn’t, but thank you for your trust. Why not, if we
could inquire? Because I don’t have the right, eh, personality, and certain
views don’t fit. Which views? Well, religious, for example. But you’re a
patriot? Hm, patriot, yes, of course. If you’re a true patriot, you must help
us. No, I’m sorry. I’d rather do my own job. While being a patriot. And you can
do yours. I wish you success. We didn’t think, Otto Wilhelmovych, that you are
so indifferent to your motherland. What to do, we’ll have to make certain
unavoidable conclusions about you. Go ahead. It’s your right. They pay you to
make conclusions.

They didn’t stop
my book that time. And I was afraid of that most of all. So I was very happy
when it came out. But it turned out that they had only begun, and I, the fool
that I was, thought it was over, moreover, that I had won. Even decided to be a
perfect gentleman. And thus did not confess about this first date to anyone. I
thought it was the last one as well.

And in the
meantime they were working. They dug, they worked out various options. Made
inquiries in Kyiv, Moscow, Prague, Krakow, Vienna, even contacted the moles in
America. Read my book. Analyzed it. More than a year passed like this.

And now the
third, last ring. Again a banal summons to the district military office. And I
must note, by the way, that it is by now 1986, and the Moscow top echelons are
already planning to democratize or soften something, but the state security
office still does not take it seriously; on the contrary, it believes this is a
hint from above to enhance their efforts. It’s time, in other words, to launch
another full-scale attack on the ideological (ha-ha!) front.

This time for my
modest and indeed apolitical person they actually designed an entire plan,
flexible and multi-level. A case of shooting a sparrow with cannons. At the
district military office, in the same classroom, another guy in civilian
clothes greeted me, a new one. He began by praising my book. His wife (ha-ha!),
he said, likes it very much, although he is no connoisseur of poetry—but he
trusts his wife’s literary tastes. Then he offered me to read in manuscript the
works of a few other poets, little known, and then write for him something like
a review: are these people talented, can these manuscripts be considered
poetry, do they carry a positive healthy contents. And took some thick
notebooks out of his folder. No, I told him, take them back, I don’t do such
things. I am a poet and not a literary critic, my knowledge of literary theory
is extremely limited, I cannot distinguish an oxytone rhyme from a paroxytone
one.

And you needn’t
approach it from the theoretical point of view, Otto Wilhelmovych, but look
inside your soul, see how you feel this poetry. No, I say, it won’t work out.
The soul is a great mystery. You shouldn’t have, Otto Wilhelmovych, you shouldn’t.
Oh well. Great deeds are not done in a rush. Let’s meet in a week. You will
calmly think it over, improve your knowledge of theory. But let’s forget about
this gloomy building. Let’s meet, well, eh, how about by the furniture
showroom, all right? And one more thing; just as a friend to a friend, I beg
you: not a word about this to anyone. Such is the specifics of our trade, I’m
sure you understand.

Why, You would
ask, Your Royal Justice, why, you bitch’s tail, did you go see him the
following week? Couldn’t you just spit at all their intrigues, you piece of
crap, scorn this dirty pottering about and—not come? I am not talking about
throwing a bomb or shooting their general, or launching a secret society, no. I
am neither talking about nor demanding any of this. But it was in your power
not to show up for that vile date, wasn’t it, you good-for-nothing?

It was, Your
Mercy, I could very well not show up. But I thought that this way I would let
my fear and weakness show. I decided not to avoid the duel but to go face it.
And I did fear them anyway. This was the mystical fear of the most formidable
force in the empire. A force that was secret and pitiless, professionalized and
armed.

So a week later
he and I sit down, having closed the doors, in some apartment inside the
furniture showroom (why there of all places? who gave them the key? whom and
how did they recruit there?); we smoke and chat. This date lasts for five
hours. I fight like a lion. I am even surprised at myself, and admire myself
from the side, noting the dignified, wise, and profoundly decent way in which I
carry myself. And he already has new cards with which to attack me. He unearths
an anonymous typewritten epistle, a message that abounds in stylistic and
grammar mistakes, addressed personally to the First Secretary of the Regional
Party Committee. And in this letter the “concerned citizens” express their
outrage at the “sons and grandsons” of the minions of the Nazis, the Ukrainian
wartime policemen, living in our excessively humane Soviet state without the
slightest fucking worry, and one of them, the grandson of the well-known
criminal, commissioner von F., even “turned himself into a writer” and some of
his enemy writings were even published as a book in Kyiv. So where is justice
in this world, asked at the end of the letter the “concerned citizens,”
children and grandchildren of members of the communist underground.

Imagine, dear
Otto Wilhelmovych, tells me my new buddy, what would have happened if my people
in the regional party committee did not intercept this vile stuff in time? And
if it made it into the hands of our moronic first secretary? And he would
delegate it down to some shitty party instructor who day in, day out sits there
wearing, his pants out and dreams only of squashing, destroying, trampling over
something talented and genuine, like you for example? You can’t imagine? And
this is what would have happened. First they would hit you with an article in
the regional newspaper. A scandal! A grandson of a wartime criminal with his
hands up to his elbows in the blood of innocent Soviet people! They would “let
you go” at your job. You would have to stop even dreaming about any future
books. So you would start barely making your ends meet, surrounded by people’s
contempt, and possibly take to the bottle. And here, Otto Wilhelmovych, here
other characters would appear in your path. The “benefactors” long bought up by
the foreign secret services. And they would recruit you, as a person offended
by the Soviet power, even though you’re a patriot. It scares me even to think
about this, Otto Wilhelmovych, but thank God my trusted boys intercepted this
rag in time, and I can now promise you that we will find and punish the
scoundrel who wrote this! I swear on my officer’s honor! But for this we must
be together, dear Otto Wilhelmovych, we must help each other. They will learn
from me what it means to harm our talented poets, harm all of our
long-suffering culture! Give me your hand, Otto Wilhelmovych, my dear!

Thank you very
much, I say, my friend with invisible epaulets, for intercepting this
despicable rag, although I cannot fully dismiss the possibility that you were
the one who cobbled it together in the first place. But since I think too
highly of our honorable security services to suppose they would engage in such
primitive and brutal blackmail, I beg you not to disappoint me and, having
accepted my most heartfelt thanks, let me in God’s name go back to doing my
work.

My benefactor
sighs deeply and says, please wait for another fifteen minutes, Otto
Wilhelmovych, you and I have all the same spent a godawful amount of time here,
let me just make a phone call to the general and tell him about the results of
our conversation. And why didn’t I leave at that moment, firmly asserting my
own terms—no, I could have said, I don’t have the time, that’s enough, we have
talked up to here, and smoked up to here too, this is it, good-bye! No, the
damned good upbringing and excessive delicacy prevented me from doing this.
Frankly speaking, I even felt a little sorry for him: he worked so hard, and
all for nothing.

And it turns out,
Your Mercy, that one can’t feel sorry for them. Since fifteen minutes later
another guy bursts in like a whirlwind, twice as big and very aggressive. This,
as I remarked later, was a practical demonstration of the banal trick with the
“good cop” and the “bad cop.” A play with contrasts. So, the other guy goes
into a massive attack. The blood of your grandfather, a war criminal, he says,
runs and boils in your veins, young man. I can see that you are an enemy of our
power, an enemy that has hidden for the time being. And enemies are not treated
ceremoniously. Get ready for big and tough trouble. I will personally organize
an article to be reprinted all over Ukraine about your grandfather’s bloody
evildoings. Then another one, on the anti-Soviet essence of your book’s
content. By the way, I hear you have another manuscript being considered at the
publishers? You can go to Kyiv and withdraw it. It won’t be published! I ask
you for the last time: will you help us or not? Donnerwetter!

As far as my
grandfather is concerned, I say, I do not know all the details about him, but
know from some family stories that at his police job he did more good than all
your NKVD predecessors and teachers put together. That he saved many people
from being taken to Germany as forced laborers, and even from executions, as a
result of which he had constant run-ins and conflicts with the German occupying
administration. For he was a true honorable soldier, not a gendarme like some
people here. As for the anti-Soviet content of my book, I’d sure like to read
the critic who’d be able to prove it. I’d be genuinely interested. And I have
no intention of going to Kyiv to fetch the manuscript, because they will mail
it back to me all the same, following your instructions. As for everything
else, do what you know how, you can lop off my head, but I won’t be your stool
pigeon.