Dancing on Thin Ice

by Arkady Polishchuk

  I trusted him, but to protect her, did not tell Lipavsky that I had been hiding in her apartment while writing a book about the trial of Dr. Stern.

  Everything was going according to our plan until Lucy received permission to leave for Israel and went to the United States instead. Her departure deprived me of my last line of communication contact with Yuri. Judging by the absence of any news from him, there was every reason to assume that the examination in Rostov found him unfit for military service, and after a while he probably emigrated. Otherwise, he would have found a way to get in touch with me.

  Thus the adventures of Yuri Yukhananov ended like a Hollywood blockbuster—with a happy end. Our hero defeated all his enemies and withdrew to the accompaniment of fanfares to the fairyland of his ancestors. I don’t think Hollywood would have come up with such an unrealistic scenario in which a KGB provocateur provided some professional advice to our hero.

  Thirty-eight years later I found two Yuri Yukhananovs in the United States. One phone number, in Iowa, no longer existed, but dialing the other, in Queens, New York, I got through. A recorded female voice said in good English that the Yukhananov family would call me back, and I left my agitated message. No one responded to my reminder about water under the bridge, I decided not to bother them further.

  MEANWHILE, in the late fall of 1975, another, in a way, unique trial was awaiting me. It was initiated not by the KGB, but by me and my co-conspirator, the architect Gary Berkovich, though he was really the one who dragged me into this ridiculous adventure. He had been fired on suspicion that he was preparing to apply for emigration, but in fact, at that stage Gary had only befriended the family of refuseniks at whose door we were once arrested. He wanted to figure out if America really needed two more architects—him and his wife Marina. While the suspect tried to solve this dilemma, he was punished before committing the crime. Thus his bosses unwittingly set Gary’s thinking in that direction. That is why he, being an assertive and restless individual, had the nerve to sue his state architectural enterprise to demand back his job as well as back pay for the months of his enforced absence from the drawing board.

  To my amazement, a Moscow judge agreed to accept this odd case for consideration. To suspect the judge of sympathizing with Gary was ridiculous, but his foolhardy attempt to sue the authorities had worked. Maybe the KGB strategists thought that if Gary remained in the country and continued to insist on reinstatement, a swarm of fired Jews might copycat his legal moves. My accomplice was soon somewhere on his way to America. The judge and the KGB certainty couldn’t imagine that before the departure of this full-fledged anti-Soviet family, I would become an obedient tool in the hands of this rabid Zionist. He supplied me with the power of attorney to continue the fight for his unpaid wages. I had to tell the judge that Garik borrowed money from me to feed his children, and promised to return it with the help of the Soviet court, the most just court in the world.

  I said, “The judge will laugh her head off and tell all her friends at the KGB about our brazen escapade.”

  “That’s good,” said Gary. “Let the world know about our fight.”

  “Your scheme is designed for idiots. Everybody will understand that we’re just teasing the Russian bear, and for all we care, we can kiss your money goodbye.”

  “So what?” Gary was unrelenting. “Aren’t you tired of cowardly Jews, who are flogged at thousands of meetings for having the audacity to express their desire to emigrate? You’re going to remember this trial until the end of your life.”

  I said, “Because of its unheard-of absurdity.”

  In fact, I liked the scheme.

  An impregnable secretary refused to pass a copy of my power of attorney to the judge and recommended that I send it by mail. She took it to the judge only after I said, “She won’t be grateful to you for such a delay.”

  A minute later the unhappy secretary invited me into the judge’s small office. The young woman behind the desk asked, “Are you serious?”

  “Absolutely,” I said.

  “Why are you doing this?”

  I tried to relax my facial muscles. “I need this money and hope that you will take this case on its face value and not as a provocation.”

  She studied my face for a second and asked, “Where’s your friend now?”

  “Probably walking day and night around the Roman Coliseum with his children, five-year-old Slavik, and ten-year-old Lana, and his wife. After all, they both are architects.”

  “So, they’re not in Israel.”

  “No. He wanted to see the American skyscrapers.”

  “But they were given an exit visa for travel to Israel.”

  I had to check the level of her awareness and tolerance. “That’s an official game, you know, a privilege given only to Jews. But for many, where they go is less important”—I caught myself and instead of “than from where they go,” I said, “everybody knows that.”

  She was not irked and said, “Okay, I will accept your claim for consideration as an ordinary civil case if you promise not to inform foreign correspondents about it and not to bring your friends here.”

  I couldn’t believe my ears. “Fine. I promise. Thank you.”

  She smiled wryly, “Another judge would consider you a provocateur and report you to the proper authorities.”

  The judge was certainly not a coward.

  “Usually this courtroom is full of ordinary plaintiffs and defendants in all kinds of civil cases. Don’t use this audience as a platform,” she stressed, “for expressing your views.”

  I promised to speak only to the merits, which are only about the money.

  “If you don’t keep your promise,” the judge said, “I can always stop the proceedings and do other nasty things.”

  “I don’t have any reasons for that.”

  “May I ask you a personal question?” she said reluctantly.

  I nodded.

  “Where do you want to go?”

  “Nowhere,” I said.

  The judge shook her head and refrained from the next question.

  She underestimated the power of two inevitable words—“emigration” and “Israel.” While I was speaking about Gary’s unpaid wages, I dropped these two stink bombs in the jam-packed courtroom. Deathly silence reigned. Only two representatives of the Design Institute of Marine and Riverine Structures were loudly indignant. The chairman of the Institute’s trade union and the head of personnel, interrupting each other, proclaimed noisily and at length that Gary Berkovich committed a spiteful act against the country that nurtured him, brought him up, and gave him an education.

  The judge called them to order. “The defendants will get an opportunity to object to the plaintiff,” she told them.

  I kept my promise, was brief, and asked that the three-month income Berkovich was denied, should be returned. The unionist continued expressing his contempt for traitors who go to the “fascist state” of Israel. I could not help asking, “Well, what if the destination were not Israel, but fraternal China, would you mind then?”

  Dumbfounded, he looked at the judge, who then asked me to shut down my fountain of eloquence. I apologized. He said that Berkovich had been fired by the unanimous wish of all his colleagues who angrily rejected his attempts to cajole them. To my delight, he said, “This brazen renegade brought a big cake to work and invited everyone to take part in a farewell tea party. He cut the cake and laid its pieces out on every desk. All our employees, without exception, rejected this pitiful attempt at yet another provocation and unanimously dumped every piece of that cake in their waste baskets.”

  I yelled, almost hysterically, “It’s not true!”

  The judge looked sternly at me and covered her mouth with her palm. I apologized anew.

  With the same fervor the head of personnel confirmed everything the union leader said. Now it was my turn again. “Both representatives of the administration didn’t mention the very reason for our presence here—the money,” I said. “Fortunatel
y, they clearly admitted before this court that Berkovich was fired not because of dissatisfaction with his performance, but at the request of the perturbed masses. I have nothing to add to their honest acknowledgment and at this point could conclude my testimony.”

  I made a dramatic pause, glanced scornfully at the other actors of our theatrics, borrowed from them a powerful weapon of demagoguery, and continued when the judge had already begun to sort through the papers on her desk. “The political short-sightedness of the Institute’s senior staff contributed to the successful departure of Berkovich to Israel.”

  They did not expect such audacity from traitors. I saw fear in their faces and enthusiastically carried on, “Actually, he could’ve continued working for the benefit of Soviet society until his departure. In such a case we wouldn’t have any financial claims against the Institute today. Why had these comrades twice failed to appear in court? There could be only two explanations for such anti-social behavior—unwillingness to pay 840 rubles or disrespect for the Soviet justice system.”

  I caught the judge’s interested gaze, took a deep breath, and introduced the facts related to the skills of Berkovich. Recently, I stressed, he had designed two successful projects for large passenger river stations. One of them was already operational in the big city of Ufa.

  “This work involved the entire collective of the Institute!” shouted the head of personnel.

  “Exactly! Finally, we hear the plain truth from the defendants. Yes, the entire staff worked on both projects”—I paused dramatically again—“which bear Berkovich’s signature.”

  Never before had I experienced such pleasure from my public speaking.

  “Well,” the judge said dryly, “proceed to the cake, if, of course, it’s relevant to the case.”

  “It is,” I said. “The treatment of the cake by the Institute’s representatives reflects their unwillingness to…”

  I clearly had skidded, and while I was agonizing about a politically acceptable formulation of my rebuttal, the judge to my delight, cut me off, “Plaintiff, don’t deviate from the essence of your claim!”

  “Okay,” I said quickly. “Everybody ate this dirty Zionist cake.”

  “It’s a lie!” yelled the trade union leader.

  “And washed it down with Indian tea,” I said gloatingly.

  “We protest!” he yelled again. “Berkovich was trying to demoralize our healthy collective!”

  The judge, both hands over her mouth and nose, was clearly enjoying herself and briefly lost control of the situation.

  I said, “In fact, Gary mentioned the only architect who didn’t eat the cake.”

  “Who?” barked the personnel boss.

  “Sorry, I can’t help you identify this good man,” I said. “All I know is that he was a Jew who was frightened to death.”

  At this point the judge whom I now adored, interrupted our squabble and declared a break before announcing her decision. The people in the courtroom started lively debates. I sat quietly, knowing what the verdict would be.

  She returned in five minutes to announce, “The claim of Berkovich and Polishchuk against the Design Institute of Marine and Riverine Structures is rejected for insufficient evidence.”

  To relax after this strenuous ordeal, instead of taking the bus, I walked leisurely toward my home and mused about the two bureaucrats frightened by my unexpected politically correct rebuff; by now they were perhaps thinking of reporting to the KGB the judge’s amusement and anti-Party behavior. Following my habit of recent years, I glanced back and noticed behind me a young man whose burning eyes had caught my attention back in the courtroom. I cursed the judge for deceiving me. So, she had the KGB’s blessing, I thought, and quickly took hold of the door handle of the nearest house; I wanted to see the reaction of my shadow to this sudden move. To my surprise he came up to me. Tails do not usually start talking to the subjects of their sleuthing and I joked, “Did you decide to emigrate?”

  “Yes,” he said with beads of sweat standing out on his forehead. “Sorry, I think … I changed my mind … Fear …”

  “It’s all right,” I said, “I have a similar problem in my family.”

  I appealed the district’s court decision to the Moscow City Court. It dismissed my complaint without listening to me though I was present, along with a lawyer turned refusenik. I was not disappointed. Judges certainly considered our very presence there to be a political demonstration and reported the outrageous event—to the KGB—contributing to my growing file.

  TWELVE

  More Dangerous Than Jews

  TWO SHABBILY DRESSED MEN, both wearing thick rimmed glasses, apparently villagers, stood outside the Moscow synagogue. Some refuseniks glanced at them warily, each man a sore thumb among the crowd.

  That night they did not sleep in the railroad station, but in my apartment. That night, Nikolai Petrovich Goretoi and Feodor Sidenko stood on my balcony and told me about the flight of their persecuted church from city to city, from the West of Russia to the Far East and back to the West again—from the shores of the Pacific to the Krasnodasky Territory near the Black Sea.

  “We have no place to run to anymore,” said Nikolai Petrovich, looking at the dark roofs nearby and at the nocturnal panorama of Moscow.

  For me, hearing their stories was like discovering an unknown planet.

  “Well, what a company!” I said. “Three myopic men are staring at nighttime Moscow at the flight altitude of a swallow, talking about things that no eagle would be able to discern.”

  They had begun talking about emigration soon after the war. But they didn’t know the mundane word emigration and called it an “exodus,” just like the exodus of the Jews fleeing the Egyptian Pharaoh. “Since that time,” said Nicholai Petrovich, “we have been ready for the miracle of a Christian exodus from the Red Pharaoh. He’s been trying to destroy our faith since he seized power. He’s putting us in prisons and madhouses, he’s taking away our children and sends them to orphanages.”

  Nikolai Petrovich Goretoi in internal exile next to an arctic reindeer in the village of Chumikan on the Sea of Okhotsk (part of the Pacific Ocean). 1966. The Chumikan population in 2012 was 1091 people; in 1966, thanks to exile settlers like Nikolai Petrovich, it was larger—1361 people. In this frigid subarctic climate, the residents are hunters, fishermen and several not very successful gold diggers. The nearest railway station is 330 miles away, the nearest port is 453 miles away.

  From: Get Out of Your Land and Go: Interviews—autobiographical testimonies of believers in a stage of their exodus from the USSR to freedom (Bramante: Urbania) 1988, cover image.

  “To me the Jewish emigration is also a miracle,” I said. “It weakens this dragon. But you, you’re trying to kill it—you’re true fighters.”

  “For Christ,” Feodor Sidenko added.

  And I made another discovery—they loved Jews. Nikolai Petrovich Goretoi, quoting the Bible from memory, was patiently explaining to me that the Jews were God’s chosen people and therefore should be particularly close to the heart of every Christian.

  “Chosen for what?” I said. “For suffering?”

  “I know,” he said, “you’re thinking about the persecution which the Jews were subjected to for the rejection of Christ.”

  I could not help but observing, “If only for that! Jews had been persecuted millennia before Jesus came to this world. History has proved that there are more occasions to hate Jews than for a Russian to drink vodka.”

  The ingenuous Feodor Sidenko laughed hoarsely, “Russians drink more than anybody else in the world.”

  “Do you?” I asked.

  “No, we don’t drink, don’t smoke, don’t steal, don’t swear, and don’t beat our wives.”

  “Such a boring life!” I said. “Now you have convinced me that you are American spies and more dangerous for this society than Jews who do all that you mentioned, maybe, except beating wives.”

  Feodor liked my silly jokes, though I was not joking. />
  The remainder of the night Nikolai Petrovich Goretoi spent on a bed-chair in my small office; Feodor Sidenko could choose between two floors—next to Goretoi’s bed or in the living room next to mine. At first I hypocritically offered them my large bed. To my relief, they delicately refused.

  After that day many Evangelicals passed through my apartment. Their unsuccessful attempts to file applications for emigration with local authorities led them to Moscow. Wherever they were from—the Far East or Western Ukraine—they taught me how to pronounce the words of grace to the Creator before a meal and to kiss the lips of ill-shaven men when they meet. The first lesson I took with joy. Initially, the second one required some effort. I still remember the young Ukrainian villager who opened his thick-lipped mouth wide for a slobbery kiss. Thank G-d, his unique manner of greeting was the exception to the rule.

  In the morning we continued to learn about each other and about differences in our vocabulary.

  I said, “Our acquaintance is the finger of fate.”

  They said, “This is the hand of the Lord.”

  I did not see a big difference in these formulations. They definitely saw one, and explained to me that it was God who sent them a clever Jew as an assistant. To explain, rather incoherently, what strengthened my interest in Evangelical Christians, I said, “I don’t know of any Protestant country where Communists were able to seize power. Catholics and Orthodox Christians cannot make a similar boast.”

  “Only an educated Jew could make such an observation,” remarked Goretoi.

  “To get better acquainted with you,” I said, “I’ve read a few books about dangerous cults of Pentecostals and Baptists. You, horrific sectarians with terrorizing rituals and ties with foreign anti-Soviet centers, look a little Jewish to me. The bullshit published about you includes the same age-old stories used in the libels against Jews—the same immortal dead or half-dead babies, global conspiracy, and espionage.”