Outside on the street the bus revved its engine and the driver sounded his horn with impatience. The Party representative who acted as the delegation's guide, interpreter and way-smoother attempted to assure the unfortunate Franconi that if he travelled to Tashkent without his bag it would be sure to be found and would be sent on to him on the next flight. A totally unsuccessful effort, as the Partito Communista Italiana's Assistant to the Foreign Policy Committee was not to be budged with mere promises. Not till the other eight members of the PCI delegation touring the Soviet Union had joined in the angry chorus was there a sudden and exultant shout from the far side of the cavernous lobby area: the errant piece of luggage had been discovered nestling among the cases of the Rumanian football team that had just arrived.
There were more delays for a last re-checking of the baggage, and by the time the laden bus was on its way to the airport it was running late. The delegation were in poor humour, and Luigi Franconi, sitting alone at a window seat, was not one to show gratitude that his problem had been solved.
Edward R. Jones Jr and his wife, Felicity Ann, had been more circumspect in their travel arrangements and had left the Hotel Kiev on schedule a full twenty minutes before the Italians.
But then when you were on a free trip - and they always travelled on free trips - you went when the car came to collect you. His Russian hosts at the Cultural Section of the city's Party Administration had been puzzled by the use of the word 'Junior' in his name, and found it strange that a man represented to them as a distinguished American poet with more than forty years of writing behind him should bother with such an appendage. That Edward R. Jones Sr had died in 1937 was known to them because the visa applications that the couple had filled in had told them so, but why this ageing son should insist on using what they regarded as a child's title was confusing and baffling.
Edward and Felicity Ann had realized many years before that the best way to travel the world and enjoy their summer holidays was to spend the winter firing off letters that begged in their reply an invitation, and they had found their ploy remarkably successful. Leningrad, Kiev and Tashkent this year. Budapest at the invitation of the Hungarian Socialist International Writers Conference the year before. Two years ago an expenses-paid summons to a poetry seminar in Warsaw. Not that the hotels were that good, and the restaurants were slothful and lifeless, but it was at least a plane ticket across the Atlantic, and a month away from the suffocation of New York in high summer.
As the taxi made its way through the outer suburbs of the city Felicity Ann mopped her forehead with a scented square of cotton. I hope the plane's on time, my dear,'
'If it is, it'll be the first one we've had.'
He did not seek the conversation of his wife. Talk was only a distraction from the task in hand, jotting the iambic pentameters of an ode on the back of a postcard. When it was completed he would type it out with the portable Olivetti he always carried with him, and post it to Valery Guizov who headed the Department of Cultural Studies in the Ukraine. He'd found on earlier journeys that his hosts were quite touched by such a gesture, and sometimes printed the work in a Party periodical.
On the last stretch to the airport now. The fifth-year school children that packed the coach had had the noise and argument bounced and melted out of them by the 225-mile drive from Lvov on the Polish border. Silent and slumped in their seats, for which their teachers were grateful. Six hours, with thirty-eight children, they'd endured through all the usual gamut of threats and cajolery, and at last the little ones had succumbed to the jerking motion of the coach and the sun that pierced the curtain] ess windows. In front of them an hour and a half of fractious hanging around at the terminal and then the tedium of the flight to Tashkent. More delays there, inevitable, before there was another coach to take them into the Kazakhstan city.
' If any of them have the strength to appreciate ballet it will be a miracle,' muttered the head teacher, balding, sweating in his dark suit, bright tie knotted high, to his neighbour from the Art Department.
'Well, if they sleep right through it at least the little so-and- so's won't be fidgeting in the seats from halfway through the first act. Remember the ones last year? . . . But you wait and see, they'll sleep on the plane and be as awful as ever by tomorrow morning.'
The head teacher grimaced, then settled once again into his Pravda.
Other passengers for the 16.00 Aeroflot departure to Tashkent were already at the check-in counters, toeing their baggage forward, inching an advance with cloth-wrapped bundles, string bags and rope-fastened cases through a confusion of noise and objection and rancour.
David and Isaac were among them.
Nervous, both of them, and sweaty. Nothing strange in that, nobody in the queue able to keep calm and avoid the perspiration that the minimal air-conditioning system did little to counter.
Taking in the scene round them, looking with half-detached interest at the passengers who would share the plane with them, watching their stress and their push and their bloody-mindedness as they struggled to get nearer to the counter, another stage nearer the aircraft. There was a wry smile on Isaac's face as he whispered in David's ear, 'Wouldn't be shoving so hard, not if they knew where they were going.'
For a reply there was just a hushed, 'Shut up, you fool,' that telegraphed to Isaac that David was frightened and fighting to keep his control. Surprising really, thought Isaac; wouldn't have expected that of David - nerves, yes, but not fear. Would have expected him to button it down, shrug off the pressure. Last night that's how he'd thought he'd feel himself now, frightened; but he wasn't. A little tense, fingers stiff, voice hoarse, tight in the guts, but nothing else, almost distant from the whole thing. Not that he was worrying about David; he'd be all right once they had started, once they were in operation.
Isaac wondered how it would be there, what Israel would be like. Just a place that people talked about, dreamed about, but he'd never met anyone Who'd been there, nor anyone who had achieved the exit visa. The way they spoke on the foreign radio you'd imagine anyone who applied could get the visa, just filling in a form, and packing up and going. As if they didn't know how many were refused, how they weeded out the ones they wanted to stay, and how if they turned you down the pressures and persecutions built on your shoulders. Didnt know in the West what it was like, the reality of Soviet Jewry. And why was it important, this place Israel?
Different things to different people; obvious that, Isaac. Well, for the old ones, for them there was the faith, just a chance to stand at the wall in Jerusalem, stand there and pray to their God. For others it was a place where a man could work and earn his money and live his life and have no fear of the Party commissar and the Party spy. But for you, Isaac? A sort of freedom, that was what he was seeking, a freedom of choice, not that he wanted a society of anarchists, just the freedom to join the system if he wanted to - an end to compulsion. So he didn't really know. He'd have to find out, wouldn't he?
'Get the tickets.' David close to him, hissing the instruction, his face set, controlling his mouth muscles. 'The tickets - come on!'
'Where's Rebecca?' Isaac said as he pulled them from the inside pocket of his lightweight jacket.
'Coming from the far side, from the telephone. Give the girl the tickets.'
Isaac could hear behind him the strident voice with its American accent cutting across the other tongues. Not that he could understand the words - after all, he had studied science at school, not languages - and beyond and just surviving the drowning emphasis of the American was a further babble, European - could be Spanish or French or Italian- but he could not gauge which.
The girl at the counter said, 'Where's your baggage?'
It was something they hadn't thought about; so little time, and so much to think of, but they hadn't considered the need for baggage. Who goes on a plane with no baggage? With a 14-day excursion ticket? They'd gone home for the identity passes, and not thought of clearing a wardrobe, of scattering clothes in a case.
People were pushing behind them, the American voice brimming with complaint, while in front the girl was waiting for an explanation.
'Our friend took it,' said Isaac with David still lost and unable to conjure up an explanation,
"When he went earlier in the week.' First thing that came to his head, first thing he could think of saying.
'For three of you? Hope he paid the excess.' She ripped off the top sheet of the tickets, one by one, and gave them the boarding cards. Small and sparse scraps of thickened paper, flight number scrawled on them. 'Gate four you want. Through the departure door, then the security, and you wait in the lounge till they call you.'
Ts the flight on time?' David asked.
But her attention was gone from him, given now to the next passenger in line. She shrugged, and said she didn't know.
The American couple took their places at the counter. Red trousers - well, red with a white check in them and a faded cream jacket. The woman in mauve, her hair a delicate blued tint that caught Isaac's eye by its unfamiliarity. Why do they wear these clothes? Straight out of the cartoons in Krokodil.
Just security now and nothing for them to find. Clean. Not a germ among them. Scrubbed and shining and polished, that was the way to go through security. David was talking to Rebecca, arm around her shoulders, heads near to touching and she was showing him a piece of paper. Must have worked, must be where the guns were.
There's time for coffee. At least ten minutes till we need to go through.' David led and they followed over to the bar- not that any of them were thirsty, but the process of ordering and paying and waiting for the coffees to be brought to the table, and then drinking, all that would use up time, time which they had no use for, which had to be exhausted. Should have told the parents, Isaac thought, should have said something to them, they should know what has happened, and why it has happened, before the time that the police arrive. He excused himself and rose from the table and went to the small shop where there were magazines and newspapers, postcards and cigarettes and souvenirs of Kiev. He asked for some note- paper and an envelope, but the man insisted on selling him a whole pad of notepaper and two dozen envelopes because that was the way they were packaged. There was no option, so he paid for them all and took them back to the table.
'I think we should write something to our people. It will be long over by the time that it reaches them.' There was agreement, and for five minutes no talk at the table, as they wrote out their farewells and justifications.
"Esteemed and respected father and mother and dear sisters, By the time that you read this you will have heard of our actions. You must forgive us the danger and hurt that they may cause you. We have taken this course because of what we saw as the persecution of our people in this land. If we had stayed the police would have taken us and for what we have done there is only one sentence, and there would have been no possibility of mercy. Our air tickets have been purchased with money from Isaac's mother, who paid for the three of us without knowing for what reason her money was wanted. From the family savings please send her 174 roubles. Rebecca will request her family to do the same. We hope to be in Israel very soon. We hope that it will be possible for you to join us there.
There is much to say and little time. All so difficult to explain. We started because we believed in our actions, but we did not know where they would leave us - we still do not know.
Be brave,
Your loving son, who will not forget you, David.'
Rebecca took the three envelopes to the post-counter for the stamps while David and Isaac stayed at the table waiting for her. When she came back the three of them walked towards the departure doors leaving the near-filled pad and twenty-one envelopes beside the coffee cups that had remained untouched while they wrote.
Abrupdy Rebeoca tugged at David's arm, pulled him closer to her as they crossed the concourse. 'What will they do to them, when we have gone?' He didn't look at her, fastening his eyes on the doorway to the front. 'I don't know.' A lie, and he could not meet her. 'Will they be punished for what we have done?' 'We cannot think of that now.' 'They have punished others ...'
'What they will do to them will be as nothing to what will happen to us if we stay.' 'Do you care what happens to them, David?' 'I care more for what happens to my parents than you will concern yourself with the fate of Yevsei Allon. Think on that."
Her hand flew from his sleeve, leaving him free to walk on
unimpeded. If Isaac had heard he showed no sign of it- stern faced, regular stride. All three of them continued their way across the tiled floorway.
Beyond the doors there was an airline official, bored and uninterested, who checked their tickets and the boarding passes and matched their names written there against the plastic-coated identity cards, not troubling to marry the Polaroid photographs with the actual likenesses. Further on, the high arch through which passengers had to pass and which showed whether they carried metallic objects in their pockets. This was the realm of the frontier guards, pistols hanging on their hips, and clean uniforms with wide-peaked caps. The man in front of them was stopped when the small green light that the guardsman watched changed abruptly to flashing red and his body was searched till a cigarette packet was retrieved from his trousers and he was shown the silver paper wrapping that had caused the detector to activate. Thank God we carried nothing, Isaac said to himself. Then it was their turn, and the light stayed green, and they walked past the guard, and on.
All of them braced themselves, shoulders stiffened as if to ward off a blow, as if they were expecting a shout from behind. But there was none, just a sun-filled lounge, with the ashtrays overflowing and paper on the floor, and dust and grime, and children shouting and running between the wooden benches, and a teacher's command. Across the room from them were the windows through which they could all see the tidy, painted profile of the Ilyushin 18 turbo-prop airliner, due to depart for Tashkent in thirty-five minutes.
In a tight phalanx the little group approached the forward steps of the aircraft. All of them sweating from the slight exertion of the walk across the apron. The captain to the front, straight backed, grey hair thinning, uniform pressed, rank denoted by the gold rings sewn to his tunic sleeve, carrying his cap easily in his hand. A pace behind him the navigator with his briefcase filled with the maps that covered the air routes of the southern area of the Soviet Union over which they would fly to Tashkent. Alone, not seeming to wish to engage in conversation with her male flight deck companions,
was the co-pilot. Anna Tasnova's skirt rode high on her knees as she maintained their pace. She felt once at the knot of
her thin black tie, unnecessary and unfeminine she thought it, but if it were decreed that it should be worn then it was her obligation to make certain that it bisected her collar with precision. The two flight stewardesses, acknowledging they were not part of the cockpit club, came last, handbags on their shoulders, talking of men and prices, and hotels, and the boredom of it all.
At the bottom of the forward steps the captain waited, a fixed smile on his face, for the young technician in overalls to hurry down the stairs. The boy should have waited for them, should not have obstructed and delayed their boarding. He seemed in a rush, and bounced against the captain's shoulder. No apology, just something indistinct mumbled from behind his teeth.
'Dirty little bastard,' the captain said. 'Soap and water, but perhaps he's never heard of them.'
The navigator laughed cheerfully, all the more for the sneer of distaste on the co-pilot's small mouth as if the retreating, jogging boy had left an odour behind which would contaminate all of them.
'We'll be off on time today, sir.'
'Well, don't blame me for it. Accidents happen even to the best of us.'
More smiles, and a moment of gallantry from the men - stepping aside that Anna Tashova and the stewardesses should be first on the steps.
The major of the Committee of State Security - KGB- worked from a smaller and less imposing building than hi
s colleague in the militia security police. The address was not listed in the telephone directory, and was known only to those civilians who had a need for the knowledge.
The major was a frugal man who seldom took more than thirty minutes for his lunch, but since the arrest of Moses Albyov and his subsequent suicide he had not left his office, sleeping the previous two nights on an army bed that graced one corner of the room.
At half-past three the grey telephone on his desk, the direct line that by-passed the switchboard, rang out. A short message and from militia headquarters.
The Jew had been identified.
Quite clever really. The photograph they had taken of him showed indents at the sides of his face from the arms of spectacles, recent enough, but not worn when he had been brought in. One of the patrolmen from the car had said he might have been wearing them when he was taken; and the wounded policeman's description on which the arrest had been made, that had included spectacles. They had found them in the gutter where the street sweeper had pushed them, and the luck was that the lenses were still intact. The major had been kind enough to say that it would be police work that would identify the boy, and that was what it had been. A photograph of the glasses, an analysis of the lenses, a photograph of the boy, and twenty-five detectives touring the city's eye clinics. It was faster than doing it with the boy's teeth: fewer spectacle wearers than those requiring extractions and fillings.
And now they had a name, and were cross-checking with the statutory civil authority dossier.
Moses Albyov, residing at 428B Avenue of the First of May; a workers' quarter in the northern suburbs, he was informed, and also that there was no previous record of violence, and that two cars had left for the address and would be there within a quarter of an hour. Smash the little bastards, he thought, smash them till they screamed like the rats they were. Not long till they'd have their hands on them; the Albyov parents would tell of the associates, would have them all in the cells by dawn.
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