Sergei pulled the car up to Baba Krista’s house and turned off the engine. They both sat quietly for a minute listening to the ticking of the engine as it cooled. Finally, Sergei spoke.
“Do you even knowhow to teach English?”
27
Yevgenia’s phone call to Victor came as no surprise. A month had passed since their last conversation, which had ended in his refusal to sign Oleg’s letter toThe New York Times.
Now Yevgenia wanted him to come to her apartment that evening. It was his first invitation to her home, but the timing was not good. Valery Bonderov had just returned from the Urals, where he had interviewed an orderly at the Orel asylum. Plus, Oksana had set up an interview with a former inmate of Little Rock Special Psychiatric Hospital, one of the six asylums. Two weeks had passed since Victor got the list from Titus Waal, and the search was progressing. The KGB-run asylums were fortresses, but their security was intended to keep inmates in. They were quite unprepared for the trio’s brazen assault. Soviet citizens knew so little about what went on behind the walls of the asylums that there was little need to guard against a curious public. So far, the size of the country and the very secrecy surrounding the asylums had worked in Victor’s favor.
Already, the three had logged one thousand combined miles of travel around the U.S.S.R., using an array of pretenses from simple surveillance, to interviews of workers, to bogus visits to patients. But for all the effort, only one asylum had been eliminated: Smolensk. Victor had gone there himself and found a sympathetic nurse. She had checked the admissions records and found no record of an Anton Perov.
Victor felt himself getting impatient with their plan. Under most circumstances he was a patient man. Compared to the time spans demanded by a single astronomical survey, this task was proceeding with the ease of taking out the garbage. What had changed was Victor’s own understanding of Anton’s predicament — the drug overdoses with the risk of permanent brain damage, nerve damage, loss of memory, kidney shutdown, death. At first, the nightly stories of sadistic orderlies, nurses, doctors and fellow inmates had merely horrified him. But with each new interview, a rage grew within Victor. Sometimes he wondered how he would ever quell it.
Despite the busy evening, Victor accepted Yevgenia’s invitation. There was something he, too, wanted to talk to her about.
The apartment was located near Patriarch’s Pond, one of Moscow’s most prestigious districts. The building was a twelve-story, red-brick monolith surrounded by a wrought-iron fence. Victor turned his car into the gate and was stopped by a uniformed guard. Victor gave his name, and the man checked a clipboard. He nodded. “Go ahead.”
In the lobby, he was met by another guard in uniform. Again, Victor’s name was checked off a list.
“Tenth floor, comrade,” said the guard. “Straight ahead to the elevator.”
The elevator was German-made and glided silently as it rose. Soviet-made lifts banged and clanked as if to remind you of their labor.
He got off on the tenth floor and stepped into a spacious lobby of red and green Dagestani carpets. A tsarist chair sat against a wall beneath a mirror and a chandelier. A door swung open, and Yevgenia stood before him. She moved aside, and he went into the apartment.
Victor kissed her cheek.
“You look good, Yevgenia,” he said. And he meant it. She wore an Italian-made gray suit with a high collar and a big bow at the neck: a bit dowdy, but classy in a way Victor usually associated with capitalist women. She wore her makeup less heavily than in the past, with softer colors more suited to her fair skin. Had someone taught Yevgenia Perova, at age fifty-five, how to properly apply makeup? Victor tried to imagine it, and the thought made him smile.
They went to the living room and sat down in facing armchairs.
“So you really did it,” she said.
“Did what?”
“Got yourself thrown out of the institute, out of theParty! ”
“You have it backward. They threw me out.”
“You gave them plenty of provocation.”
“I can’t agree with that.”
“The Party doesn’t make mistakes, Victor.”
Victor raised his head and laughed. “A Central Committee member, yes, but still the little peasant girl.”
Yevgenia bit her lip. “Don’t call me that.”
“That’s what Papa always called you.”
“I didn’t like it then.”
“Liar,” Victor said with a smile.
Yevgenia contemplated him a moment. “You’ve changed.”
“I’vechanged,” said Victor. “Look at this place! Even the sofa’s imported! Is Soviet furniture not good enough for you anymore?”
“Don’t be petty, Victor,” she said. “It doesn’t suit you.”
Victor sighed and sank back into the chair. “Why have you called me here?”
“You have made things very difficult for me.”
“I’m sorry about that,” said Victor. “I had hoped it could be avoided. It’s why I have kept you informed all along.”
“Am I supposed to be grateful? It would have been better if you had done what you were told.”
“I was told to lie, Yevgenia. And to hurt people I care about.”
“Don’t be insolent. My god! The son of a candidate-member to the Politburo cast out of the Party, the guiding light of our society . . . it’s a scandal. I am fighting for my political survival.”
“Yourpolitical survival? ” Victor repeated incredulously. “We should be talking about Anton’sphysical survival.”
Yevgenia rolled her eyes.
“Why can’t you believe that my career, the institute, the Party — it all means nothing without Anton?” asked Victor.
“Anton is gone.”
“We’ll see.”
She got to her feet and walked to the window. “I can’t help you, you know.”
“I don’t need your help.”
She turned to face him. “This is difficult for me to say, Victor. I’ve dedicated my life to the building of communism. And at the same time I have tried to be a good mother.”
“I know you have.”
“As a woman I have had to shoulder extra responsibilities that a man doesn’t have: the raising of our next generation, our shining future.”
“You’re quoting Lenin.”
She ignored that. “But I’ve always been a communist first. I put my country before everything else.”
Victor nodded. “I learned to accept that a long time ago. We all did. Me, Papa, Anton.”
“Not Anton.”
“No, I suppose not Anton,” Victor said. “He wanted a mother who was a mother first.”
“But you didn’t?”
“You are what you are, Yevgenia,” shrugged Victor. “I sometimes wished it were different, sure. But I was always proud of you.”
Yevgenia dropped her eyes. “I hope you can understand what I have to say now. My whole life has come down to a simple choice: You or the State.”
Victor frowned. “How so?”
“My comrades in the Central Committee tell me that the only way I can possibly stay on in my present post is to sever all ties with you. To disown you, if you will.”
“Disown me?”
“Just officially, of course.”
“You really wrestled with this one, didn’t you, Yevgenia?”
“Don’t be sarcastic,” she said. “It has been a very difficult decision.” She was quiet a moment, and Victor considered the possibility that her anxiety was genuine.
“From now on, Victor, you are completely on your own. You will be treated no differently than any other citizen.”
“I’m not afraid of that.”
“You should be,” she sighed. “You’ve grown up privileged.”
“Yevgenia, I don’t know what to say to you. I never meant to hurt you, and I’m sorry if I have. I know what the socialist cause means to you. All I can say is: Do what you have to do, just as I’m doing what I hav
e to do.” He paused. “But I want you to promise me one thing.”
“Yes?”
“When I find Anton, you will help me get him free.”
“You will not find Anton!”
“I’m saying if I do — ”
“Goddamn it, Victor! I forbid you to carry on with this.”
“Forbid?” asked Victor with exaggerated incredulity. “But Yevgenia, you disowned me, remember? You can’t forbid anything.”
“Don’t be cruel.”
“Promise.”
“It’s a stupid promise, and I will not dignify it.”
Victor felt the blood rise to his face. “Do you know what goes on in these asylums? Torture, beatings, isolation. And the drugs, my god — ”
“I won’t listen to this.”
“I do, almost every night. It makes me sick. I want to put my hands over my ears and say, ‘No, it’s a lie. It’s all a lie.’ And not just because of Anton. But because of how it has cheapened everything the Soviet Union has accomplished. We’re supposed to be the shining beacon of socialism in the world, the next step in human evolution, and here we are, the great Soviet state, behaving like some paranoid Latin American dictator with his midnight death squads.”
“It’s a lie.”
Victor sighed and went to Yevgenia. He kissed her on the cheek.
“Believe what you want,” he said. “I used to. I just can’t do it anymore.”
He started for the door. Yevgenia called after him. “Son?”
Victor whirled around. He could not remember the last time she had called him “son.”
“Yes, Mother?”
Her eyes danced over his face.
“What is it?” Victor asked.
“Do you miss it?”
“Miss what?”
Deep wrinkles criss-crossed her forehead, and suddenly she looked much older. “The institute. The Party.”
“I feel as though someone cut off my right arm,” he said.
She sighed. The reply seemed to settle some doubt. “So why did you do it?”
“To save the rest of me,” Victor said and went out.
Victor was late, so the interview was already underway when he stepped into Oksana’s living room.
The decision to use the tiny flat as the command center for the search was one of the trio’s first decisions. From the start, their campaign was designed for speed, not secrecy. It was the reason Victor had gone to the Serbsky to announce his intention to find his brother; and now it was the reason they conducted their campaign so openly in Oksana’s apartment. The KGB would know what they were up to, but it would move cautiously as its agents strained to balance the competing threats of Victor’s search and the power of the Perov family name.
For once, the cowardice of the Soviet bureaucracy was working in their favor.
An old man sat on the sofa talking softly to Oksana and Valery. They all looked up when Victor came in. The man’s left eye found Victor’s face, but the other one wandered off. The man had a stubbly beard, gray streaked. His hair was still short from when it was shaved in the asylum.
Victor already knew the man’s name, Gennady Obolensky, a Jew repeatedly denied permission to emigrate to Israel on the grounds that he had once worked as a machinist in an aerospace factory. Gennady had retaliated with a campaign of letters to foreign embassies, news organizations and a succession of Soviet leaders: Brezhnev, Andropov and Chernenko. He had been incarcerated in a number of different prisons and psychiatric hospitals over his seven-year-long campaign for freedom. His last arrest was six months earlier, as he tried to break into the American embassy. This time he had been sent to Little Rock asylum, which Pavel’s list told them was located in the Urals. Already, they had learned that Little Rock was the most secretive of all the asylums, and was reserved for the hardest cases.
Valery had a pen in his hand and a notebook on his lap. Oksana was seated beside him. Victor remained on his feet in the doorway. He was too wound up to sit.
“Go on,” said Valery, checking his notebook. “You were describing a ‘wet wrap.’”
“They wrap you in a wet bedsheet and then lay you on your bunk,” the man said, his errant right eye wandering around the room. It bobbed like the eye of a ventriloquist’s puppet. “After a little while, the sheet begins to dry and shrink. You can’t imagine the pain. It crushes you from all directions all at once. Some people pass out. I’ve heard of people suffocating. You scream and scream and the orderlies and the nurses just stand there laughing . . .”
“Enough!” said Victor.
The three of them looked up. Valery shot Victor a hard look.
Oksana mouthed, “What’s the matter?”
Victor frowned and went sullenly to the corner. He threw himself into a chair.
“And they did this how often?” Valery continued.
“To me, three times. But there are people who get wet wraps almost every week. They’re the ones the nurses don’t like. They let the orderlies do whatever they want.”
“And the orderlies are picked from the prison population?”
The man nodded. Victor got up and began to pace.
“What about the doctors?” asked Valery.
“We almost never saw the doctors. Once a month, at most.”
“Okay,” said Valery, turning a page in his notebook. “Now let’s talk about the drugs . . .”
Victor took a step forward and shoved a picture of Anton before the old man’s eyes. “Have you ever seen this man?”
“N-No,” the man said reflexively.
“Look at it carefully,” said Victor. “You’ve never seen this man?”
The old man studied it and shook his head. His eye, his one good eye, went to Valery like a plea for help.
But Victor pressed on. “Have you ever heard of a patient named Anton Perov?”
“No.”
“Never?”
“No.”
Victor grunted and pulled back the picture. Valery glared at Victor, who took a step backward and then went back to the corner. He sat down again.
In his best clinical voice, Valery said, “Now, about the drugs . . .”
The interview went on for another half-hour. Victor watched from the corner. The old man’s voice cracked and trembled — not from emotion, for he had a strange detachment from his words, as though he were describing things that had happened to someone else, but as an aftereffect of drug-induced Parkinson’s disease, his antitherapy for the past six months.
When it was over, Valery thanked the old man and closed his notebook.
Victor blurted out, “How old are you?”
The old face with the roving eye turned toward him. “Thirty-two.”
The room went silent.
“I’m tired,” said Gennady.
“You can sleep here, tonight,” said Oksana.
Gennady lay down and Oksana pulled an afghan over him. Then she and the two men went into the kitchen and sat down on stools.
Oksana faced Victor and asked sharply, “What was that all about in there?”
“Thirty-two!” said Victor. “My god, the man looks sixty — ”
“Shh,” said Oksana. “He’ll hear you.”
“There’s a rhythm to an interview,” Valery explained patiently. “You disrupted it, Victor. It nearly cost us the information we need.”
“Sorry,” said Victor. “Tell me about Orel. You talked to the orderly?”
“Yes, but I don’t think we can rule out Orel. Not yet.”
“Why not?”
“The orderly never saw the actual patient records. All he can say is, based on his own work routes, there is no Anton Perov in Orel Special Psychiatric Hospital.”
“Oh, I don’t believe this!” said Victor. “You went all the way to Orel andthat’swhat you came back with?”
“Victor!” Oksana scolded.
“Whydidn’the get into the records?” asked Victor.
“They’re in a locked room,” said Valery.
>
“So tell him to pick the lock. Steal a key. Break it down and make it look like a theft. But don’t come back with this! Now I have to go back and start over from — ”
“That’s enough, Victor!” said Oksana.
Valery looked at Victor, hurt. “The man did what he could.”
Victor jumped to his feet so suddenly that his stool fell backward with a crash. Without picking it up, Victor stormed out of the kitchen. He crossed the living room, past Gennady, who was already snoring, and onto the balcony because there was nowhere else to go. The balcony was so packed with boxes and toys and tricycles and bicycles that there was barely room to stand. It was cold and Victor wished he had put on his coat. He looked out at the back of another building, exactly like the one he was in. Frozen clothing hung stiffly on a dozen balconies. Some balconies had been enclosed, a common upgrade, but the workmanship was poor and the effect was to make everything even more dreary. It was urban poverty. His Moscow.
Oksana came beside him and put her arm around him. She laid her head on his shoulder. It was the first time they had touched in over a month.
“I’m sorry,” said Victor.
“It’s not me you owe an apology to.”
He hung his head. “I know. It’s just that . . . I can’t listen to any more of these interviews.”
“It’s getting to all of us,” said Oksana. After a moment, she asked, “How was your talk with Yevgenia?”
Victor shrugged. He shivered.
“You’re cold,” she said. “Let’s go inside.”
She moved for the door, but he stayed in his place.
“How’s Grisha?” he asked.
“Good. He’s still with my mother.”
“When we find Anton, are you going to tell him about us, or do you want me to do it?” asked Victor.
“We didn’t do anything wrong, Victor. We thought he was dead.” She sighed. “Soon this will all be over.”
“Will it?” Victor asked.
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve been thinking,” said Victor. “What kind of a man goes into a burning nursery and only rescues his own child from the flames?”
The Forbidden Zone Page 30
