The Sisters

by Robert Littell

  Now he thought he understood. And he wondered, not for the first time, whether he had been Piotr Borisovich's teacher, or Piotr Borisovich had been his.

  Outside of Moscow, the first peasant cottages, looking distinctly one-dimensional through the dirty window of the bus, appeared on either side of the Minsk highway. With their painted, carved wooden shutters and carefully tended vegetable gardens-in Russia, something like half the fresh vegetables came from these tiny peasant plots-they provided quite a contrast to those pillboxes that would eventually rise in their places.

  In the old days, before the revolution, the peasants going off to the fields used to leave their doors unlocked and food set out on the table in case anyone happened by. But then the Bolshevik grain-confiscating squads had happened by, and the peasants had started locking their doors. Probably because of his peasant roots, Piotr Borisovich had talked a great deal about the subject during his stay at the Potter's school. The trouble, he would say, his voice reduced to the soft purr he used when he felt deeply about something, was that the Bolsheviks, being city-bred and city-oriented, never quite knew what to do with the eighty percent of the population that lived outside the cities. The peasants were the enemy, the Potter would explode. In their heart of hearts, they were all capitalists-they wanted to own the land they worked. What they wanted-Piotr Borisovich would shake his head in disagreement-was to own the crop they harvested, and not have it carted off without compensation to feed the workers in the cities.

  They hadn't seen eye to eye on everything, the Potter and Piotr Borisovich, but their differences only seemed to bind them closer together-to reinforce the notion, foreign to Soviet Russia, that holding different opinions was perfectly normal.

  Arriving at Peredelkino, the Potter walked the four kilometers along a rutted road from the depot to the peasant's cottage the old man had moved into. "I always wanted to water, and be watered," he had said then, but he had been exhibiting symptoms of senility already, or at least that's what they had claimed when the theoretical journal for which he worked decided it was time for him to retire. The Potter himself had never been convinced that the old man's wandering mind-he alighted on subjects like a butterfly, and left a butterfly's imprint on them-was worn thin. It might just as well have been his way of coping with a world glued together by a peculiar attitude toward power: confronted by hypocrisy, people simply shrugged.

  The old man, whose name was Boris Alexandrovich Revkin, had had a good run for his money. He had worked his way up to become a division propagandist in the Red Army during the Great Patriotic War, and had gone to work after the war as an editor for a well-known theoretical journal. One of his early articles dealt with something called "left deviationism." In it, Revkin had used the expression "political narcissism" to describe the Chinese Communist leadership. When asked, at the weekly editorial meeting, where he got the expression, he had replied, "Why, where else, I invented it!" The chief editor, who had made his reputation by taking a single line from Marx and writing a four-hundred-page book on it, had laughed outright. "If all you want are lines out of Marx and Lenin," Revkin had cried indignantly, "get someone else to do it." Assuming that his audacity indicated he had friends in high places, the chief editor shipped the article over to the Central Committee for a decision. When it came back, four months later, it contained a handwritten notation in the upper-left-hand corner.

  "Publish," it read, followed by an initial: "S."

  Which is how Boris Alexandrovich Revkin became the Soviet Union's resident expert on "left deviationism."

  His spine curved into the shape of a parenthesis by his years of harvesting cotton, the old man was on his hands and knees weeding between the green peppers in his vegetable garden when the Potter, his collar open, his suit jacket slung over his shoulder, finally arrived.

  The sun, sinking through a stand of white birches, dispatched slats of yellowish light across the ground. Revkin looked up, squinting into the light, and spotted the Potter mopping the perspiration off his neck with his handkerchief. "Contrary to appearances," the old man cackled, struggling to his feet, wiping his palms on his overalls, masking behind a studied briskness his pleasure at seeing the Potter, "sunsets don't grow on trees. What brings you all this way, Feliks? You have news of Piotr, maybe?"

  "No news," the Potter said quickly. "What brings me all this way is you." He fished one of Svetochka's bottles of Bison vodka from his jacket pocket and handed it to Revkin. "A small present," he mumbled in embarrassment.

  "Ha! Now I know you want something!" cried the old man, hopping over a row of baby cabbages, snatching the bottle from the Potter. He led the way to his cottage, lighted the stove, put some water to boil on it.

  When it grew dark he closed the shutters, served tea (which he himself drank, peasant-style, through a lump of sugar wedged between his teeth), eventually reheated some cooked cabbage with chunks of meat in it, on the assumption, which the Potter never challenged, that his visitor would stay the night. In time the vodka, served with the meal, loosened the old man's tongue and he began to reminisce, his words slurred, his voice hoarse, about what he called the bad old days: the Big Mustache (Stalin) and the Little Mustache (Hitler); the exhilarating struggle against the Nemtsi, the tongueless ones, the Germans; the endless double lines of beardless farm boys in gray caps with thick winter longcoats rolled and strapped on their backs making their way through ruined villages as delayed-action mines exploded in the distance; two teenagers with signs around their necks saying they had been collaborators, hanging by their twisted necks from tree limbs. The end of one story tugged at the beginning of another. His well of memories had no bottom.

  Stretched out on a battered couch, the Potter nodded off, then woke with a start to hear the old man droning on. "I knew the Germans would lose the war," he was saying, "but not because of the reasons we used to give in our newspapers. They were going to lose the war-are you paying attention, Feliks?-because their ultimate goal wasn't to win it, but to fight it. Do you follow the distinction, Feliks? If they had wanted to win the war, you see, they would have mobilized everybody who could have helped, instead of eliminating them in death camps. To m it was always as evident as the nose on your face, Feliks. They wanted to lose the war and bring the world crashing down on their heads like dishes spilling from a shelf. They were acting out myths"-the old man poured the last of the vodka into his glass and tossed it off-"but then, in one way or another, all of us are acting out myths. You. Me." A distant look came into his ancient eyes. "Piotr even. Even Piotr." The old man cackled gleefully. "Especially Piotr. I always said he was meant to be a prince, or to kill a prince. I was never sure which. What do you think, Feliks? . . . Feliks?"

  The old man gently drew a cover over the Potter, stoked the fire, carefully allotted two more logs to it, and shuffling off to his bed in the far corner of the room, drew the Army blanket that served as a curtain and went to sleep himself.

  The Potter woke up in the pitch darkness and heard the old man snoring from behind the curtain. Moving quietly, he struck a match, lighted a candle and made his way into the unheated room that Revkin used to store his vegetables for the winter. He found the loose floorboard without any trouble, pried it up with a kitchen knife and retrieved the package wrapped in a woman's kerchief. He unfolded the cloth and examined the contents. It was all there. He had hidden it away years before, when he had returned from his tour in New York. At the time he had been riding high, and the precaution had been a professional reflex; an act of tradecraft that wasn't spelled out in any of the textbooks; a hedge against difficult times that was second nature to people in his business. Later, when he had been obliged to retire as novator and move into a small apartment with another family, he removed the package from its original hiding place and stashed it away under the floorboards of the old man's cottage.

  The Potter had started to slip the floorboard back into place when he noticed the second oval of flickering candlelight superimpose itself on the first. He tur
ned to see the old man standing in the doorway, the hem of his nightdress brushing his bare feet.

  "I knew it was there," he snapped, inclining his head toward the package. "And I know what brings you all this way."

  "I would have come anyway-" the Potter started to protest, but the old man, smiling sadly, interrupted him.

  "What brings you all this way, Feliks," he said, blinking away the film of moisture forming over his eyes, "is to say good-bye."

  The Potter couldn't, didn't, deny it.

  And then the old man astonished the Potter. "If you can get out the way Piotr got out," he whispered fiercely, "more power to you. My future is in my past. For you, for Piotr, there is still life before death."

  The Potter was up and dressed at first light; he wanted to get back to Moscow as early as possible. He looked around for a scrap of paper on which he could jot a note. His eyes fell on the Army blanket that screened off the old man's bed from the rest of the room. It seemed incredibly still, as if there were no life beyond it. ... The skin tightened on the Potter's face. He tiptoed to the curtain and peeled back an edge. The old man lay on his back, his mouth gaping open, his eyes, unblinking, fixed on the ceiling over his head. The Potter stepped up to the bed and placed a palm on Revkin's chest. He felt his rib cage under the quilt. It was deathly still.

  Another myth acted out! And what timing. For the old man had been the hostage that kept Piotr Borisovich on the straight and narrow. With him gone, the Potter would be free to betray his last, his best sleeper-and then, if he moved rapidly, save him from the results of that betrayal.

  Carroll's cheeks were swollen from having swallowed a candy with finely chopped walnuts in it, and Thursday had trouble making out what he said.

  Francis provided a running translation. "He says you are to touch base with the West Germans. He says it is a matter of protocol."

  Carroll said, ". . . eason hern ang ound en u alk otter."

  "He says there's no reason for them to hang around when you talk to the Potter."

  "In other words," Thursday said, "I'm to skim off the cream, as we say in the trade, and leave the milk for them."

  "Ite," Carrol! mumbled.

  "Right," Francis repeated.

  "I'm to get three items from him," continued Thursday. He wanted to show that he had memorized his instructions. He ticked off the items.

  ". . . r ack eeee oes," said Carroll.

  "Or back he goes," translated Francis.

  "If he doesn't come across with the aforementioned items," repeated Thursday, "back he goes, on the next plane out, wife and all."

  "Ite." Carroll nodded, touching an inflamed cheek with his fingertips to make contact with his twitching

  nerve.

  "Right," Francis interpreted.

  "Un ore ing," muttered Carroll.

  "I got that," said Thursday, smiling brightly- "He said, 'One more thing.'

  Carroll glared at him over his half-empty box of candy. In the Company's early days, a good man Friday was seen and not heard. Still, they were lucky to have one as thick as Thursday. If anyone could carry out instructions without really understanding what he was doing, it was him.

  "Ve ev-ing," Carrol! said, "u unicate ith ol'ody, ot ven eetor. out is."

  Francis raised a pencil and tapped Thursday on the shoulder as if he were knighting him. "He says, above everything, you communicate with nobody, not even the Director, about this."

  Thursday giggled excitedly. "Mum's the word," he said.

  "You what?"

  "Svetochka couldn't abandon them like that, Feliks," she pleaded. "They would die of dehydration."

  The Potter strained to control himself. No matter how many times he went over it with her, she still didn't seem to grasp the situation. They had to walk out of the house as if they were coming back in two hours, and avoid at all costs making it appear that they were going away for a long time. Not to mention forever! "What exactly did you tell them?"

  "Svetochka didn't tell them anything," she insisted, fighting back tears. "Svetochka only asked them to water the plants."

  Above all, he must not make her nervous, he reminded himself. "It is not serious," he told her. "They may think we are going to visit the old man in Peredelkino for a day or so."

  Svetochka breathed a sigh of relief. "About my sister," she started to say, but the Potter cut her off.

  "Not a word," he ordered. "News travels fast. If you tell her, she will phone up her husband, and his brother works as a Merchant for the Center and will immediately suspect something if he hears I am leaving the country. You can always send her a picture postcard from Paris," he added.

  "Paris," she repeated wistfully, her round face relaxing into a distant smile. "Will she be jealous!"

  It wasn't the easiest thing in the world to turn your back and walk away from everything you had, you knew, you were. The Potter understood this more than most people. He had discussed it at great length with Piotr Borisovieh before he had turned Iris back (albeit on assignment). They had come to the conclusion that you had to bring something with you from your past, no matter how insignificant it was, in order to get a hook into the future. It provided a transition. It helped you keep your sanity when you finally realized that none of what was happening to yon was a dream-or a nightmare. When his time came to leave, Piotr Borisovieh had taken with him a small, well-thumbed American paperback edition of Whitman poems, with the lines they both loved, the ones about the sisters Death and Night, underlined in pencil.

  The Potter too had given in to the temptation of travelling with a security blanket. Locking up his attic workroom, he had treated himself to a last look around. It had meant a great deal to him, his workroom, especially since he didn't have an office to go to anymore. If he took something with him, he decided, it would come from here. He was sorry to leave his wheel behind-he had constructed it himself from a kit imported from Finland-but there was nothing to do about that. He would buy a new wheel in the West, an electric one maybe, whose speed was controlled with a pedal. His eye had fallen on the length of wire he used to cut his pots off the wheel. Piotr Borisovieh had made it for him with a middle A string from an old piano, and a thick piece of bamboo at each end to grip it with. On the spur of the moment, the Potter had pocketed the wire, switched off the bulb and left.

  "You are absolutely positive there is no danger?" Svetochka asked him for the hundredth time as they prepared to leave the apartment. She was wearing her highest spikes and her shortest skirt, which was her idea of how women looked in Europe.

  "There is no danger as long as you do precisely what I told you," the Potter promised her. He wondered, even as he spoke, if it were true.

  "Paris," Svetochka repeated under her breath, as if the mere mention of the word could still her doubts, calm her nerves, give her the nervous energy she needed to cross thresholds. And the Potter understood that what she carried with her from her past in order to get a hook into the future was her longing for something that, until now, she could never have.

  The little man with the shirred skin was waiting behind the wheel of the taxi parked in front of their door. Seeing the Potter and his wife, he crooked his emaciated finger in their direction. When they had settled into the back seat, he tipped his hat to them in the rearview mirror.

  The last time the Potter had seen this gesture, the little man had accompanied it with a mischievous wink. Now he exhibited all the formality of an undertaker. "I am told," he said over his shoulder, throwing the taxi into gear, drifting out into traffic, "that you are going to the Holy Land."

  Svetochka glanced quickly at the Potter, but he cut off her protest with a warning look.

  "We are not paid for what we do," the little man continued intently, "we are volunteers. Getting Jews out of Russia is God's work. I take it as an honor to be part of Oskar's organization."

  "How many have you gotten out?" the Potter asked politely.

  The little man preened behind the wheel of the taxi. "I myself have
been involved in fourteen confutations before you two." He laughed self-consciously. "For reasons I have never fathomed, that is what Oskar calls it when we smuggle someone out of the country. A confutation."

  The little man's use of the word "confutation" had a calming effect on the Potter. It was a professional term, and reinforced the impression that Oskar was the professional he claimed to be. And getting out of Russia would very much depend on Oskar being a professional.

  The little man maneuvered the taxi through afternoon traffic. He drove slowly, cautiously, observing every sign, signaling every turn until he came to a light turning red. Accelerating sharply, he shot across the intersection.

  "Nicely done," the Potter observed, and he turned to look at their wake.

  Nobody was following them.

  The Potter noticed that they were heading in the opposite direction from Moscow Airport, but he said nothing. "Listen carefully," the driver called back over his shoulder. "There is a pedestrian island ahead, where the peripheric becomes Valovaya." He glanced at the dashboard clock. "We are right on schedule," exclaimed the little man. "I will pull over. You will get out and jump across the island into the taxi you will find waiting on the opposite lane."

  The pedestrian island came into view ahead. "I wish you both Godspeed,"

  the little man cried in an excited, high-pitched voice as he braked to a stop next to the island. The traffic piled up behind the taxi. Drivers leaned on their horns in annoyance. The Potter jerked open the door on his side, pulled Svetochka from the back seat and practically dragged her across the island into the back seat of the taxi that was headed in the opposite direction. Without waiting for the door to close, the driver-it was the squirrellike man who had kept a scarf over his lower jaw the first time the Potter had set out to meet Oskar-floored the gas pedal and propelled the taxi into the traffic flowing through the peripheric.