The Wanting (36 page)

“How would I know? It could be a forgery.”

“Do you think she hasn’t already admitted this is her handwriting?”

“Again, how would I know?”

“Don’t you think Collette Petrovna is an honest person?”

“Of course she is.”

“I can show you her statement where she admits these are her letters. So what good does it do you to deny it? It will only turn us against you.”

“I don’t deny anything.”

“Comrade. I am not here to hurt you. I am only asking you one thing. Look at this letter. This one in particular.”

The way he held it out to me, the odd tone of urgency in his voice … I snatched it from him and glanced down at it.

“Now,” he said.

“I told you,” I stammered, “I … I don’t know.”

“But you do know.”

“How could I know?”

“Because you’ve already read them.”

“Not this one.”

“No. Not this one, but clearly you have read the others. It would be unwise to lie about this. Do you think we haven’t double-checked every detail? Do you believe you didn’t leave fingerprints? I can show you the test results if you like. I imagine these are your tears on them as well, because I know it was hard for you. How could that have been easy? Even today, she doesn’t deny her love for this Frenchman. Let’s talk about the times you drove out with the spy Charles Spaulding—you called him Charlie, yes? Did you think because you drove out to the forest we couldn’t trace you? It was illegal in the first place for him to leave the city limits, except on a train to Leningrad or Kiev or on a tour bus. You knew this, yet you abetted his illegal behavior. That alone could land you three years. Normally, quite honestly, you would have nothing to worry about. Because if that was all it was—an American tourist out for a lark—but we know he’s a spy, and you knew he was a spy, and
you were with him, and you went into illegal areas to avoid being detected and to speak of illegal things and pass information and receive instructions. All right! All right! Perhaps you were unaware of this. We know they walked alone for the most part. They left you in the car or perhaps you went out to hunt mushrooms! To be honest, I am willing to believe you are the innocent party here, just a victim of the American Zionists. I am even willing to believe Chernova was also a dupe of the Americans. I frankly would be willing to recommend a very light sentence for her, maybe even a parole, or at worst we could just send her to Gorky with the Sakharovs. That’s not so bad, is it? I’m sure they would get along very well. But I can’t do anything for her unless I understand more completely what you were doing in the woods. And you were also present at other meetings, Zionist provocations, public displays, all of it illegal. Suddenly I am worried, because when you add up all these infractions they become very serious, in aggregate very damaging, and though I completely accept that you could be innocent, and I am fairly convinced that you are a loyal citizen—after all, how many times do you have to prove it?—still, this can look very bad to anyone who doesn’t have a firm grasp of your character and where you really stand on the issues. I mean, if you were to be put on trial, it could go very badly for you. It could be even worse for poor Collette Petrovna, because now we must add conspiracy, and that makes it unlikely there can be any clemency at all. So I just ask you to think about it. What would be best for everyone involved? We’re not asking you to tell us anything we don’t already know. Collette Petrovna has already confessed everything. And what really has she done, after all? She is just a misguided young woman. Did she kill anyone? No. Did she hijack an airplane? She never got that far. In any case, how could she have managed it? It was a pipe dream. Did she expose nuclear secrets? Of course not. She didn’t even publish a derisive book in the West. Still, it is a very serious case, or at least many of my colleagues think so. But I am trying my very best to find some shred of evidence that might exonerate her. Well, let’s be honest, she can’t get off scot-free, she
broke the law, but if I just had some little kernel to help her. Soviet law requires we investigate every lead. Perhaps you have information that could help her. We just want you to clarify things, and naturally this would also confirm that we are right about you, that you are a loyal citizen. Otherwise, you know … well, it could be painful for you, and especially for your mother. To be left alone at her age. Possibly to lose her apartment. And you. I don’t know what I could do for you. I know it may not seem this way, but, honestly, I have nothing against you. On the contrary, I want to protect you, because the consequences for everyone could be very serious.”

He paused to take the dead cigarette from my fingers and place it in his crystal ashtray.

“You see what I mean?” he said.

“Yes,” I said.

“All right, Roman Leopoldovich, let’s begin again. So I will ask you: you often stayed with her in her apartment?”

I looked up at Vasily Vasin. There was no enmity in his eyes, no cruelty. They seemed hopeful, even kind. “So, you stayed with her?” he repeated.

“Yes,” I finally said.

“And naturally you noticed that she received letters?”

“Everyone receives letters,” I said.

“Exactly. And you saw the very letters I’m holding in my hand.”

I tried not to look at them.

“You already said as much,” he reminded me.

“Yes, all right, I guess so.”

“Well, that’s all you need to say.”

“I can go?”

He smiled at me again. “I can understand why you fell in love with her. She is a very beautiful Jewess, very elegant, very striking.…”

“Yes, she is,” I found myself saying.

“I wonder, though, did she sew?”

“Sew?”

“She wore such beautiful clothes! I admire beautiful clothing. I can see that you noticed my uniform. You have an eye for such things. Where did she get her clothes?”

“I don’t know,” I answered.

“You see, that’s why I’m asking if she sewed them.”

“Really, I don’t know.”

“Did you ever see her sewing?”

“No. I don’t know.”

“Very well then, she must have purchased them. But I just have to wonder, where, on her salary, could she purchase such clothes in Moscow?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Perhaps they came from Paris?”

“Clothes come from Paris only in our dreams,” I said.

“We don’t dream in this office, Comrade Guttman. Here we are honest with one another. So please, think about your answer.”

“I don’t know. Maybe she inherited them.”

“That’s possible! Thank you! Because you and I are thinking alike. We’re both thinking that obviously either they were given to her, or she bought them with money someone paid her! But not inherited. After all, she never smelled like mothballs, did she?” He laughed.

Vasily Vasin poured himself more tea in the English manner, directly from the teapot into the cup. The happy scent of bergamot circled obliviously around us.

“She received payment, that’s clear,” he continued. “If it were just clothing, we wouldn’t care. It’s a typical Zionist activity. Everyone does it. We’re aware of this. We don’t care about it at all. For instance, the jacket you are wearing. Have you ever seen anyone in Moscow wear corduroy? One of those Jewish groups in New York sent it—if not to you, then to one of your friends, who gave it to you.”

I said nothing.

“But you all receive things from abroad. Collette doesn’t deny it. I already asked her.” He took a sip of tea. “You Jews are always complaining about everything; I suppose that entitles you to dress
better than the rest of us. But as I said, it’s not of much importance, so don’t worry about it. But in her case—you never saw her actually receive clothes did you?”

“No.”

“So it must have been money.”

He leaned back in his chair, smiling.

“Very well, let’s summarize. You acknowledge that you lived with Collette Chernova, and her clothing was extravagant and was undoubtedly purchased with hard currency. You saw the letters that passed back and forth from the capitalist countries in the hands of the CIA agent Charles Spaulding, and you have intimate knowledge of their contents, including all the coded passages and instructions having to do with foreign lovers, seditious documents, fabricated invitations etc. etc. She mentions, in code of course, her intention to hijack a small plane from Tallinn airport and have it flown to Stockholm. By the way, I am assuming that Comrade Chernova was unaware you had read her letters, is that correct?”

“Yes.”

Vasin sighed. “Even then, you understood she was not completely trustworthy. It’s too bad.”

He stood up and strode toward the curtains. “Why don’t we get some light?” He fiddled with the cord, then changed his mind and swung around to face me. “I want to ask you something, man to man. In all this time you were with the Chernova woman, did it not occur to you that she was merely using you?”

“Yes,” I said, “it occurred to me.”

“But you didn’t care?”

“No. I guess I didn’t.”

“Perhaps, Guttman, your father never taught you the meaning of honor.”

“Perhaps not, Comrade Investigator,” I answered, “but he did teach me the meaning of love.”

“Ah,” he said, deciding not to open the curtains after all, “so this is love.”

In the end, we came to an agreement about my testimony. On the stand, I would be allowed to utter as few words as necessary,
but whatever I said was to adhere strictly to a script he and I invented, and no one, except perhaps Collette herself, would be surprised by any of it.

Less than twenty minutes after my testimony ended, Collette was sentenced to eleven years, three in prison and eight in “rehabilitative labor.” As a gesture of belief in our Soviet process of rehabilitation, her property was not to be confiscated.

Dear You,

Miriam finally arrived about fifteen minutes ago! She was perfectly happy to be here, so I don’t know what Shlomo was going on about, and we went for a little walk in a garden just beyond the gates of this building (you would never know how beautiful it is outside, sitting in this stinky cellar where all you breathe is dust). First, of course, she talked to Yohanan and me together, and then to Yohanan alone, who just sat there very calmly, his eyes still in his book, nodding, and then Miriam came over to me and said, Hey, let’s go outside. It was hot, of course, but I didn’t mind. Actually, I like hot. Sometimes I don’t even want to come to Jerusalem in the winter because it’s too cold and wet, not that it’s not wet at home, but there’s something about Jerusalem in the winter that makes you sad. Maybe it’s the rain dripping off all those black hats. Anyway, she opened the door for me, and we stepped out into a yard that seemed totally abandoned, strewn with old tires and broken boilers. I hadn’t really noticed it on the way in, but now I took a moment to take it all in. There were coils of rusted barbed wire heaped in a pile, old traffic signs stacked against a wall, some wooden crates filled with unusable machine parts swimming in crud. Resting under a messy old pepper tree was a skinny gray cat licking its paws and mewing to itself. And then I had this sudden flash! Was it déjà vu? Had I been here before? But that was impossible. And then I realized it wasn’t even my own memory I was remembering! Because it wasn’t me who had been here, but Pop.
This was exactly the way his old courtyard looked in the house he grew up in, the one he always told me about, the one he called Veshnaya.

All these memories came flooding over me, all the fairy tales he told me, and I had to take a deep breath and let it out, and I swear I almost cried, even though I don’t know why. But then it was over, and we made our way out of the yard and down the narrow streets of Geula. Dressed as I am in my killer short-short skirt, I knew I could be yelled at or worse by the local black hats, but that is precisely why I put on the leggings, so no one could say I am immodest, and though I am wearing my fabulous sleeveless camisole with the lacy bit along the neckline, I was wise enough to stow a white, long-sleeved linen blouse inside my backpack, which I am now wearing over the camisole, unbuttoned, yes, but tied at the waist, so my arms are covered for modesty, yet I am gorgeous at the same time. And OK (as I mentioned before), there is a teensy bit of skin showing between my tights and my polka-dot socks, but it’s so little and so perfectly nowhere (not the ankle, not the thigh) that even the Satmar rabbi couldn’t find it offensive. I would say the buzzword for me today is
demure
. Of course that didn’t stop some guy from calling me a harlot and spitting on the ground, but Miriam told me to ignore it. He’s an asshole, she said. I love Miriam.

So we stayed off the main drags, you know, Yehezkel, Malchai Yisrael, Kikar Shabbat, and just wandered the lanes and alleys. Those blocks were mostly Belzer and Dushinsky Chasidim. They can be crazy. But everyone left us alone.

At some point Miriam asked me, Are you afraid? I told her, No, not at all, why should I be? Maybe because you’re the youngest here, she suggested. No, I said. Then what is it? she asked me. I don’t know, I said. (Sometimes I think that’s all I say—“I don’t know.” But there comes a time when you have to know something, doesn’t there? When you say, I KNOW that. I know that
absolutely
.) And that’s when I blurted out all the stuff about my doubts and about my father and about the voices in the mud and just
everything
! She listened very carefully, of course, because that’s what she always does. And then she told me her thoughts, which I am going to put down here as best as I can remember: