ORDINARY EXIT VISA
Anatoly Altman
Translated
from Russian
by Ilana Romanovsky
Part 1. Delayed Start
Excerpts from an uncompleted book
In
1967 in the far-away Middle East the thunder of shells died away,
planes and tanks calmed down, the dead were mourned for, "kadish"
was recited over the missing. All these things were somewhere over
there, where they were supposed to be, where there had always been
the line between the two worlds: the world of Isaak the firstborn,
endowed with all the sweetness and the bitterness of the right of
birth, and the world of Ismael the rebel, the one who was rejected by
the civilization of Abraham our forefather.
All
this was happening somewhere over there, while here, at home –
radio announcers and commentators covered the news and branded the
aggressors, milkmaids and steel founders expressed wrath –
naturally, “simple people’s”, and Jews – made up jokes about
Six Day War, as a sign of making peace with the condemners. Some time
passed, and everything returned to the routine of normal life. The
churning with the latest news of the tolchok
[Odessa’s
outdoor market – translator’s note] and
the Lanzheron beach Odessa would not take to heart anything that
could break the slow and lazy indulgence of the cool dachas in
Bolshoi Fontan [popular
Odessa seaside resort – translator’s note]
or, its antipode, the football fans’ fiery cut and thrust at
Sobornaya Square. In “bodegas” [beer
bars in the specific Odessa's argot
– translator’s note] the
foamy Schwab beer was poured from huge barrels into mugs and from
mugs into Odessa’s townsfolks’ hefty stomachs, accompanied by
“your health, buddy!” – “you too, bro, keep your head up for
me!” [These
toasts, as well as other Odessans’ talk examples, are in rich
Odessa’s argot, which is so well represented in “Odessa Stories”
by Isaak Babel – translator’s note].
They
did not see themselves as “Soviet comrades”. The Soviet power –
there still are some witnesses of that – flew into Odessa on the
wings of the revolution. It dispersed Moldavanka [a crime infested Odessa's suburb - see Isaak Babel once more – editor’s note] thugs from Odessa streets,
gave a good shake to the well-heeled burghers, declared
freedom for the people - and in exchange it appropriated, without
much ado, the banks, the production enterprises, the port and the
like – the spawn of capitalist thought. After that the dashing
cavalrymen dismounted, creamed off the finest buildings in town and
fenced themselves from the rest of the town dwellers behind
intimidating signboards UPR, DOPR, GLAV… , [
abbreviations for “upravleniye” – management, dom
prinuditel’nykh rabot – forced labor house, “glavnyi” –
main, central – translator’s note]
and so on. Then they calmed down and the townsfolk of the glorious
porto-franco
city of
Odessa returned to their routine life. Again, the former chic was no
longer there, but there still was, let us say, the larger-than-life stock of optimism and humor,
big enough to cover the whole of Deribasovskaya street, and
Odessans generously shared them with anyone who “knew a good thing when
they saw one”.
Sometimes
– and it usually happened in the loveliest seasons – that is,
spring and fall, the streets of Odessa (ah, Odessa streets!) - my
memory keeps it in its deepest hidden corners – powdered with
golden pollen, weary from the summer heat or scented with the
fragrance of freshly showered acacias that could drive you crazy when
in full bloom; - the streets and the lanes where I wandered paying no
heed to time or direction, the streets and lanes that were soaked
with a vague sensation of a near farewell – of which my Odessan
spiritual ancestor had in his own words sung with dashing bitterness:
“Ah, Odessa, I will never drink your wine again – oi wei - / Nor
sweep your pavements with my bell-bottomed trousers” [“Odessa-mama”
by Soviet poet Boris Smolensky, 1921-1941 – translator’s note]
would turn, by the will of the Great Sausage-Maker [an
allusion to “Envy” by Yuri Olesha, here – the Soviet leadership
– translator’s note]
into endless purple-grey bowels stuffed with swarming and bubbling
pulp, the pink foam above the surface of the peristaltically
convulsing stream jolted at the turns and near the numerous bodegas,
the flags and the sausage-makers’ portraits that had fallen down in
shapeless heaps, their otherworldly magnificence lost, they no longer
looked from their height with reproach and suspicion, and the mob,
which a few moments ago had formed a stiffly whipped homogeneous
mass, split into its components – male and female Odessans and
“baistryuki” – [the
brats or bastards – translator’s note],
future Odessans. [The
whole paragraph is a metaphoric description of May 1 and November 7
demonstrations – translator’s note.]
Sometimes
multi-colored and red dragons adorned with flags and banners would
fill the streets of the city; the leaders cast searching looks at the
swarms from the portraits above people’s heads; drums pounded,
waves of compressed air from huge pipes hit the crowd and, after
wavering a little, it reverberated with a roar in answer. The dragon
wriggled, lingered more and more often at numerous bodegas,
drowsiness started to overcome it until, weary from the warmth of the
lavish southern sun, it started to molt; its red scales, shed from
its bristly back, formed small jams. The standard-bearers would then
club together,
forming
classical Soviet-style triptychs [to
buy a bottle of vodka for the three of them – translator’s note].
I
was carried to Odessa in 1963, from a plain town on the periphery of
the world and very quickly I felt at home in this constantly
celebrating life city, adopted the local speech and behavior manner
and was ready, after some pushing and elbowing, to take my own place
in this Ukrainian-Jewish-steppe-sea Babylon. Odessa’s young people
were raised on the principles of tolerance, enterprise and
non-interference in the USSR’s internal affairs. And even though
the whole city was at our full disposal, we favored the city and
country beaches and Primorsky (seaside) boulevard. The necessity to
work for one’s living was seen as an irritating obstacle on the way
to the beach, and the minute you were through with all that, your
feet brought you to the sea as if on their own accord. At night, the
stretched above the city like a trampoline boulevard soaked up
thousands of burning hot bodies; the boulevard buzzed and vibrated,
the breeze from the sea caressed and fondled the most delicate in the
world knees and cheeks and believe me, when you are just over twenty,
it doesn’t matter a bit who these knees belong to or whose lips
consent. After drinking up all the joys of the boulevard the crowd
would swim away to Pushkinskaya and Deribasovskaya streets and settle
in ice-cream and coffee shops or pubs, and then, late at night, with
guitars or without them, sometimes after a slight brawl, one by one
or in friendly bunches, the young Odessans would disperse and scatter
to their own “ranches”.
My
“ranch” was in Moldavanka. I lived in a workers’ hostel as a
holder of a temporal residence permit to which I was entitled when I
got employed as a worker at a ship repair plant. Our life was simple:
a booze-up on the payday, sport, movies, books – that is, from the
point of view of loyalty to the authorities – no deviations.
Tomorrow or today – “ready for work and defense” (only explain
from who…). Sometimes guests would come, male or female, and the
ritual of making acquaintance and sharing a meal together started,
significant sounding toasts were pronounced, the ritual meal
progressed from one stage to the next, then came the stage of sorting
things out, and this was done either in the corridor or in bed. To
say that we never had enough money would be an understatement, and
maybe this was the reason why my roommates and I “knew a good thing
when we saw one” so well. I saw a lot in my life later, but how can
one forget the triumphal blooming of acacias, the aloofness of the
immortal Duc
[Statue of the Duc de Richelieu, Odessa's founder and first governor
- one of the its main symbols – translator’s note] awaiting
the Armada which is already hurrying to his help. I roamed the lanes
of the Fountain and old Odessa, smelling out, like a dog, something
that my soul was seeking but didn’t know its name, though as it
became clear later, the soul got everything it was looking for…
Years
later, at night, in the freezing isolation cell of Duc de Richeiieu,
sitting on the detached for the event of superior importance plank
bed, leaning against the slop-bucket, I received the report of the
Commander-in-Chief of the free squadron of Genoa’s merchants, the
rebel Geuzen, the fleeing pirates. The echo brought the news to the
farthest corner of the huge hall: “The holy city porto-franco
Odessa IS FREE, HURRAY, gentlemen!” But of course, you can see all
kinds of visions on the twelfth day in a penal isolation cell…
The
summer of 1967 found me working at a commercial enterprise that was
not exactly approved of by the law. I will quote an experienced
Odessan whose opinion was that “there ain’t no melukha
better than
this one, ya only need zekher”,
which roughly meant “there’s no government better than this one,
you only have to find the right approach”. In those years, among
other new ideas, there was a directive “from the above”: to open
workshops on collective farms. The idea was to use the agricultural
production waste and work force that had not yet joined the noble
impetus of productive labor (old people, invalids, alcoholics). It is
well known that ideas have to be pushed from the heights of pure mind
into the world of pragmatic implementation. And then something
indescribable started… The enterprising spirit of Odessans does not
need to be exemplified. But this was a totally different type of
enterprisers – they did not have to resort to “zekhers”
when the
“melukha”
itself
endowed them with accessories of authority like seals, forms, bank
accounts and the right to employ, evading all the ideological and
regime limitations, all kinds of “-shteins” and “-bergs”. And
the most important thing was that the authorities did not make you
face the problem of who to employ. A person’s morals, ethnicity,
social background and other decisive factors of questionnaires’
traps had no currency at that market. The main principle was this: “I
give you everything, you give me fifty per cent”. For example, if
the highest wages of a collective farm worker were 300 rubles a
month, this was my lawful salary, and even if I had to give half of
it to the “boss”, it was in those times not bad money anyway,
taken into consideration almost free meals, free bus rides and two
days off. Without class fight, without the directing role of the
Party we were quite happy on this classless post-ideological island.
The majority of these “greenhouses” staff were Jews, and even
though this was the reason for my landing in this company, to tell
the truth, my ethnic roots did not add any pride to my ego. The bus
would pick us up in the morning and after an unhurried ride along the
Black Sea steppe, it would bring us to the village. The ride only
took an hour and the morning drowsiness gave way to vivid discussions
of the latest news. I seldom joined discussions of this or that
football team, and talks about “who, when, where, how” did not
interest me either.
But
one day on the way to work in the morning I heard some almost unintelligible
rendering of the latest news, most probably, from one of “foreign
voices”. Palestine, air battles, Sinai, UNO, Arabs – both the
topics and the vocabulary were so far away from our everyday reality
that I didn’t ask any questions. Then from the Soviet sources it
became known that Israel was waging an aggressive war against its
peace-loving Arab neighbors. As I have mentioned before, most of us
were Jews and that is why the problem and its discussion acquired a
certain bias. The later coverage of the events in the Middle East
contained military events, commentaries, including historical
commentaries. It suddenly became clear that Israel’s population was
about three million people, while there were 100 million Arabs, all
in all. And when one day they spoke of encirclement, I didn’t hear
well and assumed that Israelis were surrounded, communications
severed and defeat was inevitable. But even though I sympathized with
the Israeli team, I was not too much upset by its supposed defeat –
we knew little about this country and personal feelings did not
project onto our attitude to Israel. That is, we knew that Israel was
populated by Jews, but they were different from us. After some days of
military actions and cheerful reports from the battlefields, there
was a certain change in the announcers’ voices – dramatic and
wrathful condemnations of the “aggressors” who thought too much
of themselves, with unfailing demands to bring them to account. Then
it became clear that the Israeli team was making it to the finals.
And Israel was not playing in hopeful defense – their air force
attacked and destroyed Egyptian airports, Israeli tanks were breaking
fronts and flanks and rushing to Cairo, the infantry and landing
troops were sweeping the trash that had been left by Jordanian
occupation of Jerusalem, the Golan heights were ours!
Since
when I started calling them ours – I don’t remember. Maybe when
the unfathomable, Biblical sounding names of Israeli statesmen and
military leaders: Alon, Ben Gurion, Shamir – were back-translated
and became Gurevich, Meerson and even Rabinovich, or maybe when I had
read “Exodus” and for the first time felt related to those who
fought for a national home and then, for the first time, my being
Jewish stopped tethering my feet. Israel fought there, but won here…!
At that time there was no Jewish home where that war did not lay
front lines between the old and the young generations. To lie low in
rough time, not to draw attention to oneself, to camouflage – the
ways which had been tested by numerous pogrom victims’ generations
– did not find the evolutionary continuation with my generation. On
the contrary, the wish to stick to one’s historical past, to
national identity demanded being different from the indistinguishable
social environment. Though some of us were already acquainted with
the dissident movement, and even earlier had lived through the
happiest in the world childhood without apparent losses – sure,
Stalin is thinking of us! – and then the perestroika speeches of
the next “father” ( the word “pakhan” – chieftain,
Godfather – I learned much later) about the previous “father”…
My
acquaintance with the movement that opposed the regime started with
meeting Avram, my new friend. By that time he had already served
about ten years in a prison camp and then, after being exiled to
Karaganda, settled in Odessa and started to do woodwork for a living.
This was what drew me to him, because since childhood I used to play
with clay and wood and make figurines and masks from them. Avram
attracted people, especially young ones, by his unusual views and way
of life. For example, the problem of God, which had already been
forever solved by someone for us, had further development for him,
and even with an attempt to question the solution which you thought
to be your own. Though actually, the problem never existed for us,
like its object, and Avram’s extravagancy in the “esoteric” and
“theosophical” questions we ascribed to his unusual biography. He
wore a tiny pin with Israeli flag, but even without that it was clear
where he belonged to, for his eyes and beard were out of place in the
Slavonic landscape. Avram did not eat meat or fish, drank water in
small gulps, practiced Hatha-Yoga and, with a screwed up face,
stoically endured the pain in his leg from a sore left by a poorly
healed old wound. The door of his house was open for everyone. Here
you could read “Exodus”, listen to a Geula Gil song on an old,
swinging like a dervish tape recorder, eat, chatter and daydream. His
camp friends came to see him, Zola Katz [victim
of political terror in the USSR – translator’s note],
may he rest in peace, among them; they drank and talked about their
life in camps. These retired old men recollected the rough times,
places of “business trips”, names of cops and cellmates. Avram
had mysteriously smuggled out of the camp manuscripts, poems by
banned poets and prisoners, notes on Oriental philosophy and
religion. Undoubtedly, all these things virtually intruded your mind
and turned upside down all “that school and family teach us”.
One
bright day he asked me what I thought about going to… Israel. Just
like that, you are going somewhere and somebody stops you and asks:
“Do you feel like going to Mars?” By that time I already wanted
to go, but how? I certainly could not seriously accept this
suggestion, but the situation was too dramatic to laugh it off, if
you didn’t want to hurt the person’s feelings. So Avram wrote
down my passport data and sometime in the autumn of 1968 a letter
from Israel was delivered to the address where I was registered. The
owner of the apartment – my uncle – was on good terms with me
though he did not approve of my way of life. When the letter came, my
family held a council and everyone wept “Woe!” As if it was not
enough for my uncle to worry constantly about the surplus square
meters in his apartment in the city center, to worry also about his
work at a button factory where he was accountable not only for grams,
but for carats and where cases of breaking work discipline had almost
ceased, to say nothing about financial discipline, and where the
whole staff had already undertaken to raise their work effectivity
towards the coming national holiday and to bring down the number of
immoral behavior cases in private life by 20 per cent! All this
seemed not to be enough for the wretched lot of my uncle, who
officially was a marketing department manager but who, in fact, was a
genius of financial underground, one of my numerous other tribesmen
who managed to unearth from fantastic, totally improbable places some
unbelievable valuables, but it was always done while looking around
in horror of another inspection, with trembling hands and shaking
feet – and in addition to all that, this small surprise, a product
of my nationalistic ambitions!
I
was holding the letter and could not really trust my senses; it
looked as if it had materialized from the world of wishes and would
slip away any minute. But the countenances of my relatives increased
my confidence in the reality of the letter – the stamp, the
postmark, the standard Russian text. It was signed by Kubernik Braina
from Petah Tikva, 32 Shprintsak street. Being my "cousin“",
she was addressing the government of the USSR with a request to allow
me to go to her with the aim of uniting our families; she also
volunteered to help me settle in my new place. My late uncle later
pointed out at the investigation that his attitude to my intentions
was utterly negative; to his honor, I must say that I do not remember
this. Most probably, he was just scared, both at the family council
and at the interrogation, and also between these events, before and
after. He did not do any wrong, may he rest in peace. He was only
scared. Fear, even in the light-minded atmosphere of a southern city,
came out of diabolic seeds that were forever planted in the
subconscious.
But
something had to be done with the visa, so I found out where the OVIR
[Visa and
Registration Department – translator’s note] was
situated, and with beating heart I went there. They explained to me
everything –to register the invitation I had to bring various
documents: a reference from work, the birth certificate, written
permission from my parents (I wonder if when they sent soldiers to
Afghanistan – another foreign country - they also asked their
mothers for their permission?). To tell the truth, I did not feel
determined enough to appear in the OVIR with the invitation, but
after several nights of fear (for some reason nights are the most
appropriate time to feel afraid) I gathered enough evil impudence,
and, as they would later say in court, stepped on the road of
treachery and Zionism. Well, the inner movements of your soul and the
doubtless rightness of your choice are one thing, but what
practically comes out of it after that is quite a different thing. It
is extremely hard and frightful to leave the linear movement path
that you were sometime, by somebody, ordered to take. What force will
push you away from this path if everyone is close to you, pressed
together and moving in an even senseless motion? And yet I dived into
this tar and every movement demanded tremendous effort. At best,
people saw me as an idiot, though not everyone. Aba Agapyan, the son
of a circus manager who had been sentenced to death and shot, blessed
me in a short and touching blessing.
Here
is a story from that time. I knew a medical student, a guy who was
born in a mixed family, his mother was Jewish, his father was from
the Caucasus and he was for a long time not in contact with the
family. His mother, a very attractive diminutive woman, married a
second time. Her new husband was a quartermaster service officer, a
Byelorussian who was some years younger than she was. I often came to
their house and I knew that the three of them were good friends
indeed. Valerka called his stepfather Lyosha, a pet name for his
first name Alexei, and the friends that came to see them were treated
with equal care and attention. I visited them soon after getting the
invitation from Israel and told them of my plans without concealing
anything. Valerka’s response was disapproving and skeptical, his
mother’s – somewhat nervous and frightened, but Alexei’s
reaction was harshly negative.
-
Just imagine, there’s a war, we are here, you are there. Will you
shoot at Valerka, at me?
I
could not deny myself the pleasure of noting that quartermaster
service was not supposed to be shot at. As to Valerka, I got mad:
-
Valerka is not a fool to go get shot for your ideals, he will get out
of it. And all the rest, those who come to me, that is, against me,
have to know what awaits them.
Some
months after that talk I met Alexei downtown. He rushed to my side
and from his first words I saw that he was fairly boozed. At that
moment he spat out a phrase that sounded as if it had been prepared
specially for me and kept for a long time:
-
Go away from here, you’re right, get out of this puke, everything
stinks here, they fuck up the best things…
After
that memorable evening I didn’t show up at their place, I didn’t
want to strain the relationship. Meanwhile Valerka got married, by
the day of the wedding his bride had got to an advanced stage of
pregnancy, and a week before that encounter she had given birth to a
son. Alexei, a young and robust man, suddenly became a granddad.
Everyone drank – officers and warrant officers, Russians and
non-Russians – how could it be different? A man had been born, so
many changes at once: the young people had become parents, their
parents had become grandparents, new feelings and duties, new roles
to play. All these things were seriously talked about, with drinks
and food. The zampolit
[Deputy Commander for Political Matters – translator’s note]
came when the celebration was at its height and asked what the
occasion was. Alexei filled a glass and handed it to the new guest:
“A grandson! Only yesterday we brought him home from the maternity
hospital – 4 kilos 200 grams!” The zampolit
smiled when
accepting the glass and said: “Well, well, congratulations! A great
event – a new little Yid has been born in Odessa!” Next second
Alexei gave him a slap in the face. The upshot came a few days later.
The zampolit
would not
sue Alexei in military tribunal and Alexei would resign his officer’s
position. The Officers’ Court of Honor (a phenomenon that hardly
fits into our everyday reality) gave this “Solomon’s judgement”,
and Solomon, as they say, was an old hand at solving Jewish problems.
Of course, this story can be explained in a simpler way – everyone
was fairly drunk and the zampolit
was too much
of a boor, but I think that the main factor was “little Yid”,
who, strictly speaking, was only a quarter Jewish. The hero of this
story – a Byelorussian, a demoted officer Alexei somehow linked his
slap in the face of the zampolit
with the
Middle East wars and our memorable talk acquired a most convincing
finale from unexpected quarters.
Meanwhile,
I started collecting documents that were needed for an exit visa.
Everyone already knows of course how references from workplace were
obtained. My dear fellow Jews, I received permission to leave the
country the day after handing an application in Riga’s OVIR (though
a day before that I had been released from imprisonment only a trifle
before my ten-year time was finished) and nobody demanded any
references. But don’t think that I do not know how you earned them
(papir und
noch papir) [paper and another paper – Yiddish – translator’s
note].
I
worked at a collective farm co-operative near Odessa, and my boss was
Jewish. Without burdening myself with unnecessary doubts concerning
the results of my request, I addressed him in a conspirator’s tone,
without beating around the bush, but somehow drifting into an
emotional tone. I talked about our love for this melukha
and how,
accordingly, it loved us, and how good it would be to live at home
and not to be “this nation”. And what do you think – he pressed
me to his breast melting into tears or may be
he gave me a
gift of half of my salary which I gave to him according to our
agreement? Oh, come on, you’ll say, it’s quite enough for him to
write this reference with an unmoved face and throw it to me as a
proof of having nothing in common with me. Like hell he did! His
whole body was shaking and he yelled in a choking voice about my
ungratefulness towards the Soviet people, the party, the
co-operative’s management and my coworkers. My escapades would not
lead me to any good (he was right here!), I had better have pity for
my parents. I don’t remember now how I stopped this fountain, but
it was clear that I could not count on my Jewish brethren, and I
decided to go to the village where the chairman of the collective
farm lived. It was December and the weather threatened to freeze both
your soul and your body. I got on a bus in Odessa and reached the
district center and there I got to a country road that led to the
village through the snow-covered steppe. I was wearing a coat that
was in vogue then but that was good only for the Deribassovskaya
promenade, and only if you entered into some cafes on the way to warm
yourself, and I was wearing no hat, as usual. While waiting in an
open space for a car to pick me up I started to freeze, at first only
nose and ears, then the cold penetrated inside. After making all the
movements to warm my body I realized that I couldn’t last long.
Another wave of shivering overcame me. The evening was coming. I
looked at the road and at the wilderness around me. The steppe was
magnificent, the evening shadows of rare trees were getting blue; the
steppe was smoothed by the winds, but the finest shades of pink
betrayed the rare raised places. Black birds were crossing the white
area hurrying to their hiding places for the night. I felt a stranger
in this splendid landscape, but the piercing cold did not allow my
mind to reach a more favorable state, and I started to call into my
consciousness the landscapes of Israel as described in “Exodus”
and “The Judean War”. While I was musing on such exciting
subjects a truck came near me. After running a dozen meters after it,
I asked the driver if he could take me to the village and he said
that he would first take a woman who was riding in the cab to another
village. I climbed onto the loading platform and sat on a wooden box.
The truck started and at first I held on to the side with my freezing
hands, for it was impossible to remain seated on the box otherwise. I
was thrown from side to side, standing up would be suicide, the
freezing wind was piercing through the coat, jacket and shirt,
burning my body and making me breathless, my uncovered head felt like
it was compressed by a stiff hoop that caused unbearable pain.
Sitting was equally impossible – the box jumped and leaped in its
own rhythm and then I took the only possible in this case position –
on my half bended but thoroughly frozen legs I hopped across the
endless Scythian steppe towards some unknown finish, almost oblivious
to the reason of my actions because of the terrible physical stress.
Only not to fall down, only to keep standing, otherwise you’ll just
fall apart. How long this terrible race lasted I cannot tell.
The
Chairman’s house was heated as hot as a furnace, he wasn’t in, but his
wife looked at me with compassion and offered food and drink to me. I
sat near the hot stove, chill waves were passing through my body and
leaving it, legs were aching, the heated blood hurt the tips of my
toes and fingers. I took off my shoes and tried to rub the stiff feet
that seemed to be falling to pieces. Soon the Chairman came; he was
wearing a short sheepskin coat and felt boots. He greeted me and
disappeared in the next room without saying a word. I got sleepy
while I waited, but he came at last and we started talking. I
explained what I wanted from him and it looked like he understood the
situation, at least he listened with attention and did not look
hypocritical. That evening a meeting of the management had been
planned, and he promised to discuss my request. I fell asleep the
minute when the Chairmen's wife made a bed for me. When I woke up
in the morning I found a note from the Chairman. It didn’t leave me
much hope, but after the long way there and a talk with a man who
intended to help me it was bitterly disappointing to go back with
nothing.
The
time for processing my application was almost coming to an end and I
had to do something about this bloody reference, to bring any kind of
an answer from work. But “the boss” refused point-blank to “have
anything to do with Zionist affairs” and I threatened him with the
law that obliged him to give me reference and said that I would go to
Public Prosecutor if he refused.
The
visit to Public Prosecutor ended like this:
-
We do not deal with your affairs.
-
What are “your affairs”?
-
Of the Motherland traitors!
-
What kind of a traitor am I? I am still a Soviet citizen!
-
You will be one! (How did they know everything in advance?)
The
skies of my beautiful Odessa ceased to be blue and cloudless, the sun
did not warm me, the wine gave no joy. I felt that I was falling ill
with the fever that all of us knew so well. It must be the morbidity of
my state that generated pictures of different, unusual sights of my
world. The city seemed to be surrounded by enemies who went into
hiding and at secret hours, under camouflage, went on forays on the
peaceful city, its streets and beaches. It was impossible to
understand what they wanted and even to identify them, and this made
it even more frightening. I saw vague shadows that dashed about here
and there, condensed into grey lumps and rolled into crowds of
careless people making them freeze for a moment, after which they
continued their way but they were already touched by the grey ashes
and did not even suspect it.
Diabolic
farce! Thus, cancer starts unnoticed - something, let’s call it
“pre-cancer”, creeps into a healthy body and without killing the
healthy cells forces madness on them and the cells forget their
function and start functioning according to the program that was
thrusted on them, moreover – they infect other, healthy cells with
the same madness! I am not sure that the thought that the cancer will
die when the living being dies gives consolation…
My
relations with friends and family started to rot. With great
difficulty and threats to do something drastic to myself I made
mother send me
Moscow met me with snow,
cordiality and contentment. I stayed at Avram’s daughter’s.
Behind us was the summer of 1968, a country house on the seashore.
Crabs were darting about on the deserted sandy beach. The wind in the
thicket of reeds was trying to keep count of something: “S-s-six,
s-s-seven, s-s-six”, but got confused and, without finishing, flew to
our backs and heads, stirred our hair and tickled our naked bodies
with light touches. It was probably there that the idea of organizing
a summer camp in Karolino-Bugaz [a
place on the sea shore not far from Odessa – translator’s note]
for young people from various cities of the country first came to
mind. Young Jews from Riga, Moscow, Kiev and Kishinev stayed in our
little house in Bugaz. This was another subject for discussion in
Moscow. One evening we went to David, a man we had heard a lot about
from Avram. He was another former prisoner who boldly and openly
displayed his attitude towards the Reds and opened his house to the
lucky ones who had obtained permission to leave the country. Everyone
went through his hospitable house.
I
remember the specific atmosphere and order, if the constant mess in
Khavkins’ place could be called so. People came, played Israeli
records, had coffee at two o’clock at night; on the wall there was
a map of Israel and a portrait of Moshe Dayan, on the table there was
a menorah, dictionaries, and all that in a “communal apartment”
[a communal
apartment is one where several families share bathroom and kitchen
facilities – translator’s note]
where anyone could see it. One day David found a cable that was going
to the attic, and there he unearthed some device. Half an hour later
two men rushed in and claimed the device. David refused to speak with
them. And then they started talking in almost human voices – this
gadget was state property, the bosses would flay them alive, give it
back, have pity! David poured out a handful of the remnants, that’s
enough for the report, you can remove it from the list of equipment.
David suggested that I should live in Moscow vicinity and work “for
our cause”. It looked like he couldn’t help me in the nearest
time, but if I worked for them it would be easier to strive for the visa. He
also suggested another thing – a convenience marriage in order to
leave with another family. With this I left Moscow, first to Lvov,
then to Chernovtsy. I lived at my mother’s, found an inconspicuous
job somewhere far away, but my friends came to me and I openly
visited them. I did not know that I had already been “scented”,
but meanwhile I did not see anything that could worry me (in any
case, during that period the investigation could not collect any
material against me). I lost hope to find a family that would be
ready to have me as their son-in-law and returned to Odessa. I had no
place to live and Avram gave me shelter in his rented apartment. The
rest of the summer was uneventful. Avram was preparing for a trip to
Moscow - he had been suffering from sharp pains in the legs, from the
war and prison camp time. Sometimes he would leap from bed in the
middle of a night and moan, unable to bear the pain. He was to
undergo examination and treatment by Moscow professors. We saw him
off at the railway station without knowing what was in store for him…
At
that time rumors appeared that in Riga, Moscow and other cities they
allowed to leave the country to those who had served time and their
families. Somebody came from Moscow and said that David Khavkin
obtained a visa in a rather unusual way… Goldberg, who had once
been the USA representative in the UN, arrived in Moscow. One of the
bystanders broke close to some government building, to the car where
the ambassador sat. The police and civilians with armbands were
pushing him aside, but in an unbelievable way, he managed to thrust a
letter into the car. At the same time, David was grabbed by the
collar and thrown outside, smashing his head, what a nuisance,
against the side of the car, in full view of the US representative
and other lovers of scandal. Naturally, the KGB people’s actions
should have been seen as aiming to protect the important guest. But
Goldberg was cheeky enough to neglect the hospitability and rudely
interfere into the USSR’s home affairs and bring the application to
its addressee. The Reds demonstrated their efficiency when they
processed the application and in a matter of a few days gave the Khavkins
permission to leave the country. Without losing time, David packed
his things and came to the famous Sheremetyevo airport several hours
before the takeoff, in accordance with the Aeroflot rules. In the
airport, after a more than thorough check-up, they took David and his
family to a special service room. There they took the couple apart
and made them undress for a “personal check-up”. The procedure
was nothing new to him – five years of prison camps teach you
things like these, too. The problem arose unexpectedly: Fira refused
to send away their little son from the “frisking room”. “Let
him look and remember, he won’t see things like these in any other
place!” The cops stubbornly insisted that the instruction demanded
separation of sexes. Time was running, the cops were frisking, the
plane flew away… The KGB men worked with great zeal, they were sure
that David would not fly “empty handed”, but the fact was that
they found absolutely nothing on him and, in their bewilderment, let
the family go home. David used the situation to see Avram in the
hospital and say good bye to him. On the next day they flew to
Vienna. But he did smuggle papers out of the country, and quite a
number of them. When arriving in Lod he chopped open, in full view of
all those present, an object that did not look suitable for
transporting documents and took out of it a lot of “compromising
material”. The local customs officials, though, listed this object as
an electrical appliance and in this way deprived the newcomer of the
right to buy electrical appliances at a reduced price. But that is
another story…
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