The Snowfly (28 page)

Once summer fishing ended, I did not see much of my pals from the river. I was not invited to their homes. To invite a foreigner home was to invite the suspicion of the state—and worse. The government had informers everywhere. The Russians also nursed a curious national inferiority complex and I was sure they would not want me in their homes because they felt these would not measure up to the West.

Moscow was a gray city filled with gray people. In winter the morning sun came late and left early, if it showed at all. People worked from dark to dark and in early evening the slushy streets were filled with people walking shoulder to shoulder, all dressed in heavy, dark overcoats, shuffling forward to keep from falling on the ice, all moving in the same direction, nobody speaking. The only sounds were coughing, from smoke or bugs, and in the street there were few vehicles. There was no life in the crowds, just motion. The city was only marginally lit, as if it were at war and keeping light low to not attract enemy attention. It was a sprawling, silent city filled with silent people and to walk among them as they went home from work was to feel their sullenness move into your flesh like a virus.

In Stalin's day the Soviets knew little about the West, but Khrushchev had opened the window and though Brezhnev was anything but liberal, information came in sporadically on contraband and homemade shortwave radios from Radio Free Europe and the BBC. Soviets lucky enough to travel outside the country on state business returned with wondrous tales. What they learned was turning them defensive. Paradise was showing its age and its incompetencies.

I was alone on New Year's Eve. I would've liked to have called Dr. Talia but she had made it clear that our dacha dalliance had to remain a one-time affair—for her protection. I couldn't fault her for self-­preservation. To understand freedom required you to lose it. The Soviet Union had given me new appreciation for the things I had taken for granted. I could find company among expatriates, but I was in no mood for their ritualistic whining about the difficulties of life in the gray and ominous Soviet capital.

I wanted to surprise Lilly and the gang in Grand Marais with a phone call. Before my arrival, reporters had been required to go to Moscow's Central Telegraph Office in order to wire stories to the outside, but now we had telephones and I stopped by our office, which was connected to Susanna's flat, but the phone service was down. The Soviets tried to disrupt us with planned technical interruptions and interminable red tape, but they underestimated our resolve. I could hear a loud party under way on the floor below Susanna's and, to avoid the crowd, I took the back stairs down and went outside.

I was barely out of the building when a black Pobeda swerved toward me and slid over to the curb through the slush. The passenger door swung open. I peeked in.

“Get in,” Valoretev said in an anxious growl.

As soon as I settled into the seat, Valoretev flashed a conspiratorial grin and handed me a bottle of vodka. “Tonight we celebrate.”

I accepted the bottle willingly. “You have rescued me from the slag heap of boredom. Where are we going?”

“State secret,” my huge companion declared, touching a finger to his lips. “Shhh.”

Once out of the center of Moscow, it was virtually impossible for most Westerners to identify landmarks, and I was as incompetent as others. There was block upon block of housing tracts, all dark, all the same. We had ­driven more or less north, which was about the best I could place us.

Eventually we pulled up to a garage. Valoretev blinked his lights twice and the door abruptly opened to admit us. Two bearded men with shotguns closed the door behind us and watched as Valoretev led us down a darkened stairwell to a steel door, which he hammered with a fist.

There were six men inside, most of them in their thirties, like Valoretev. They were seated at a table that nearly sagged under the weight of food, bottles of vodka, and wine. There was cabbage soup and
pelmeni,
ravioli that looked like ears, cabbage leaves stuffed with diced meat, a huge salad of pink rice, gobs of butter, wheels of black bread,
kasha,
wooden bowls of pickled vegetables, and mushrooms. It had taken some effort to accumulate so much food, which was always in short supply in the city.

“This is my friend Bowie Rhodes,” Valoretev announced. “He is a heartless capitalist pig.”

One of the men tore off a hunk of bread, held it out to me, and said brightly, “Welcome, capitalist pig.”

Another of the men filled tall, thin glasses with vodka and distributed them.

Valoretev said to me, “Make a toast to peace and friendship between our countries.”

“To peace and friendship between our countries,” I said. We drained our glasses. Refills all around.

Valoretev said, “May rivers never run out of fish.” Drained all around, more refills.

I saw the others grab for food between toasts, especially the heavy bread, and I did the same. With Russians you had to learn the art of defensive drinking.

One of the men said something in Russian I couldn't quite decipher. “He toasts to vodka that will make you blind,” Valoretev said. The drill.

And yet another, each speaking in Russian, Valoretev translating, though I could follow most of it.

“This man wishes to have carnal knowledge of your sister,” Valoretev said. Then a whispered aside, “The green snake has him,” meaning he was crocked.

“My sister accepts in the spirit of Soviet-American friendship,” I said. The men hooted and drained their glasses.

The last man's toast was short. “He says, ‘Drink to Robin Hood,'” Valoretev said. My head was spinning. A succession of shots of vodka Russian style was a fast and unforgiving high.

“What the hell does that mean?” I asked, then added, “Robin Hood was English.”

Valoretev growled and chucked my shoulder. “You are wrong! He was nobleman who joined the Party to take from royalty for serfs. Robinevich of Locksky . . . a true Russian hero.”

I laughed out loud.

“Eat!” Valoretev commanded and we all obeyed, piling our plates high with the abundant food.

The toasts stopped, but the alcohol flow didn't. We had sweet Georgian champagne and Armenian red wine and more vodka. Empty bottles were tossed over our shoulders. Some shattered. I was yelling in English and Russian. Valoretev was roaring in Russian and English. The rest were just roaring. I knew none of them. I was having a great time.

At some point Valoretev got up and clapped his hands on the table. “Okay, now we fish.”

To the extent that I could think at all, I thought he was crazy and wondered if I was hallucinating. We went into another room that stank of gasoline and oil. The men picked up brocaded valises and knelt down to open them.

I was weaving. What the hell were they doing?

“You must judge now,” Valoretev said. One of the men handed him what I thought was an antenna. Valoretev held it out to me. I squinted. Not an aerial. A fly rod, made of wood, light and well balanced, about seven and a half feet long.

“Good?” Valoretev asked.

“It's fantastic. Where did you get it?”

Valoretev thumped his chest. “We each made our own. They are ­Russian!” I noted that he did not say Soviet. “We got plans from books. Tonkin cane is from our socialist brothers in China.” The big Russian then lowered his voice and grinned. “
Na lyevo, da?
” The black market.

Each of the rods was a work of art.

Valoretev gave me a reel. It was crude, but sturdy. We pulled the line through. I whipped it back and forth with false casts. “Perfect,” I said. “Have you used these?”

“You will
teach
us!” Valoretev thundered gleefully.

“Now?”

“
Da!
Tonight.
Now!
”

I spent nearly five hours with them, teaching them a roll cast and a reach cast and what I called a sidearm curl. Most of my students were a little clumsy. All but Valoretev, who picked it up almost naturally, grinning the whole time. We had no real fly lines, which was a problem, but they had heavy braided line and for the distances they were working it served well enough to approximate the action of a weighted fly line.

When the beautiful rods were put away, we returned to eating and drinking and I talked about fly lines and leaders and fly sizes and nymphs and dry flies and streamers. I wanted to share everything I knew with them and talked like a machine gun until we were all too tired and too filled with booze. The men left one by one, each bidding me farewell with wet kisses on my cheeks.

Valoretev and I were the last to leave. We could barely get up the stairs.

“What the hell was that about?” I asked him.

He grabbed my shirt, nearly lifting me off the ground. “All America is private?”

“No.”

“Fish belong to the regime?”

“No, to the people.” In a manner of speaking.

“We are communist,” he said. “We own everything equally. And we own nothing.” He sounded forlorn. “Bastards,” he added. “The czar owned all. Now the Kremlin owns all.” He stared at me. “Where do you fish?”

“Rivers.”

“The people own them?”

“The water and the fish in the water. Some of the land is private, some is public.”

“The owners can forbid you to fish?”

“No. We have laws. All citizens may fish in navigable water. But you can't get out on private land. You have to stay in the water and wade.”

He grinned. “You have balls.”

His tone suggested trouble.

“I don't fish with them.”

He grinned maniacally. “Here you
must!
”

No more was said. I was delivered to my flat and I slept all that day and the next night.

 

•••

 

I had gone my own way the first time I asked for an interview with Brezhnev. This time I enlisted Susanna's help.

“I want to interview Brezhnev,” I announced.

“Why?” she asked, stifling a laugh.

“He's a sportsman. People say he hunts and fishes. Our readers would like to know about this. It's a human angle. Nobody's done it.”

“He rarely gives interviews.”

“I still want to give it a try.”

The simple act of making such a request was complex, requiring interviews, phone calls, continuous prodding and cajoling and voluminous paperwork, all of which had to go through layers, across departments and ministries. I got two turndowns. In the third request I noted that I had sources indicating that the General Secretary's agent had purchased rare fishing books for him in London and that I would like to talk to him about fishing and his collection. I didn't know who the Oxley books were for except someone in the Kremlin and since Brezhnev was the boss, I figured I would allege they were his. What was the harm?

Still no answer by mid-May. Instead, Valoretev picked me up on the street one night. He was driving a boxy green vehicle that looked part jeep and part VW. He looked grim, glanced my way, and growled, “Get in quickly.” It was an order, not a request.

When I was in he said, “
You
are insane!”

“Is that a diagnosis or an opinion?”

“Do not make jokes.”

We raced south and left the city. His credentials got us through security checkpoints. In the morning we dumped the strange vehicle in a woodlot and stood in the bushes beside the road. A green truck came along, stopped, and we clambered into the back and closed the canvas. We drove all day and all night. The truck dropped us in a forest and we slept in a ramshackle barn.

A motorcycle was waiting there. At sunrise we were on the motorcycle and aiming west. I kept asking what we were doing, but Valoretev was stone-faced and refused to talk. I was unnerved by his behavior.

We stayed on dirt roads, deeply rutted, and followed spine-­juddering trails through dark forests. Eventually we reached a poor excuse for a shack. It was unpainted, leaned to the left, and looked like a light gust of wind would flatten it. Valoretev stashed the bike. We went into a cellar through a trapdoor. The cellar was well equipped. Kerosene lamps lit the area. There was canned food. This was a cache. I realized that whatever was happening was neither practical joke nor spontaneous event. Valoretev had planned this and I wanted to know why.

“What the fuck is the deal?” I asked angrily.

He poked me in the chest with a powerful finger. “
You
are deal!”

“I could use just a touch more detail.”

He opened a can of beets. German label. “Okay, facts. You requested audience with Brezhnev and accused him of crimes against the people.”

“I didn't accuse him of anything.” Was he serious? I had to stifle a laugh.

“Rare books,” Valoretev said. “The regime is corrupt, Bowie. We know and pretend not to know. They know we know and pretend we don't know.”

“That's twisted.”

“
Da,
” Valoretev said. “This is the Soviet way. You said an agent of the General Secretary bought books. The agent's name was Mikhail Peshkov.”

I was shocked. I had not identified Peshkov in my requests. “That's right.” I initially missed the tense distinction.

“Comrade Peshkov was recalled to Moscow and transferred to a more distant place.”

“How distant?”

“Eternally,” Valoretev said.

I felt sick. “He's
dead?
Just because I wanted to get an interview?”

“Yes, he is dead, and you are in trouble. They are trying to decide what to do about you.”

“Expel me?”

“At the least take you into custody and trade you for a comrade traveler. They already have a warrant with your name on it. They have been trying to determine how to proceed next. They talk and talk and flit around dark offices debating your fate.”

I couldn't comprehend this. I was a fugitive? In the Soviet Union? This couldn't be.